Matthew 6:22-23

Pastor Drew Williams

One thing that I have loved since moving here a few years ago is how dark it gets at night, especially earlier this time of year, and you can see all the stars. We live right outside of town, kind of out in the country, and just all the stars just fill the sky.(...) And even though it's so dark outside, once your eyes kind of adjust to the darkness, you start to realize that all those little pinpricks of light are actually illuminating the surroundings around you, and it's kind of incredible how much you can see, even on a night that doesn't have a moon. It makes me think of when I was younger, we had a storm come through and knock out power for our entire neighborhood, and there was not a light on anywhere. There's no lights on in the house, no lights outside the house, in the distance, no other houses or businesses. We didn't even have the little indicator light at the bottom corner of like a TV or on the oven. There's just no light anywhere.

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But when my dad grabbed out a candle,(...) and he lit a match,

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and then lit his candle,

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even that little bit of light filled the entire living room with warm glow, and all of a sudden I could see the room, and I could see my parents, I could see my brother.(...) And as we walked through the house with the candle, the light from the candle would bring to life every single room as we entered it.

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And as we'll see in today's passage, this theme of light and dark has something to do according to Jesus with our life, with generosity, and with how we view our stuff.(...) Last week we started a message series called Money Shouldn't Make You Miserable. And we looked at the part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus speaks directly about our relationship with our stuff, calling it our stored up things. And as it turns out, our relationship with our possessions(...) determines a lot about our lives. When we store up wealth and possessions, we end up devoting our time and attention to worrying about them, to protecting them, to trying to get them.(...) But ultimately, these things will let us down.(...) So Jesus says, don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth.(...) Instead, Jesus urges us to store up a different kind of treasure. We might call sky stuff, or more commonly, treasures in heaven.

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Last week we talked about how this kind of treasure isn't a future bank account that we build up and then access later after we die.(...) Sky stuff, treasures in heaven, isn't something we accumulate at all.(...) It's something that we spend.

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It's time that we spend with someone who's lonely. It's the generosity that we show to those in need. And it's in these moments that we bridge heaven and earth in our lives for ourselves and for others.(...) That's the kind of treasure worth storing up. And so Jesus is urging us to be people who chase after sky stuff, God stuff.(...) Because if we really believe that God is an infinitely abundant provider,

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and it will transform your heart.(...) And so today we're gonna move into that next teaching about money in our longer passage. And it comes in a form of a riddle. Now on its own, it might sound weird, doesn't really make sense, but in the context of generosity, it starts to become clearer. Now here's how the riddle starts, right? It says, "Your eye is the lamp of your body."(...) Now remember, this is a riddle. And so to understand it, we actually need to look at the Greek word behind it that's usually translated as good eye or healthy eye. So I'm gonna teach you a little bit of Greek today. It's a word play that has two meanings and both of which are intended here. And this riddle takes us all the way back to the beginning of the Bible, to the very first image of God's infinite life and presence in Genesis chapter one, and that is light.

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Now I'm really thankful to the teaching of Tim Mackey. He's a Bible scholar, he's a pastor. I've leaned on him a lot for my preparation for this message series. And here's how Tim describes this image of light. He says, "Humanity," this is a quote from Tim, "created in God's image is like a lamp,(...) "embodying God's light and shining into darkness, "just as God did on day one of creation."(...) And so let's dive into the idea of good eyes, bad eyes, light and dark. And we're gonna read that shorter section again from Matthew chapter six, verses 22 through 33. These are the words of Jesus and he says this.

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"The eye is the lamp of the body.(...) "So if your eye is healthy,(...) "your whole body will be full of light. "But if your eye is unhealthy, "your whole body will be full of darkness. "If then the light in you is darkness,

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"how great is the darkness."

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Now, remember I said it's a riddle and it starts with a figure of speech that the eye is the lamp of the body. It's a metaphor, it's meant to communicate a deeper truth. Nowadays we would say something like, your eyes are the windows to your soul, right?

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When we think about, when you look someone face to face, you look them the eyes, you actually get an inner glimpse at who they are as an inner character. And maybe you've noticed that about someone before, someone with bright eyes seems to be more open, more connective, more able to be a personable person, right? But someone who has shifty eyes, well, maybe they're a little less trustworthy.

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So this is the same thing, this riddle says that the eyes are the lamp of the body. They're the source of light that light up the whole house of your body, your whole life.(...) Now this was a common figure of speech in ancient Jewish thought. Proverbs chapter 15 says that, "The light of the eyes brings joy to the heart." It's kind of like when someone tastes something delicious for the first time and we say that their eyes light up, right?(...) The light of the eyes brings joy to the heart. Bright eyes are meant to communicate vitality,(...) energy, life.(...) And all the way back at the beginning of the Bible, God himself is the one who brings light to the darkness when he says, "Let there be light." And so humans made in the image of God, made to reflect God are meant to be little lamps that bring light to the world.(...) And so our riddle, that was in Matthew chapter six, it states that if your eye is healthy,

(...)

which is the Greek word, hoplous,(...) then your body will be full of light. Now hoplous can have two meanings and both are intended here. Usually we translate hoplous as good or healthy, but the one translation of hoplous, the first meaning is single as opposed to multiple.(...) The second meaning is complete or whole as opposed to divided.

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And so when a riddle says that if your eye is hoplous, it's trying to make us think of if your eye is singular, if your eye is whole.

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Now I can tell from the glazed looks on all of your faces, this isn't really helping us understand how this connects with treasure and generosity yet, but don't worry, there's more clues to the other parts of scripture. I'm gonna bounce around a lot here. There's another word in scripture that comes from the same root word as hoplous, it's hoplotes,(...) and I'll see if I can get here quick enough. Romans chapter 12 says this, it says,(...) let the one who gives, let the giver give a generosity, let the one who gives give with hoplotes. And then if we keep going in second Corinthians chapter eight, wow, I just went right there, that's awesome.(...) Second Corinthians chapter eight says that, he's talking about the Macedonians and he says that they were abundant in joy. Even in their extreme poverty, they overflowed in a wealth of hoplotes.

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And then in James chapter one, James says that if anyone lacks wisdom, let them ask God who gives hoplotes(...) and it will be given to you. And so we're starting to see that hoplotes is talking about a manner of giving, right?(...) It means to give with singular intent,(...) to give wholeheartedly or sincerely, to give generously.

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And Jesus says that when your eye, the lamp with which you shine, when your eye is generous,

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then your whole body will radiate with light.

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But if your eye is unhealthy or bad, then your whole body will be full of darkness. This is Jesus calling back to an Old Testament figure of speech where it compares good eyes and bad eyes in ancient Jewish thinking. And the good eye and the bad eye is talking about someone who is generous or stingy.

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In Proverbs chapter 22,(...) if you look it up, you'll see that it says, "Those who are generous are blessed, "for they share their bread with the poor." But the actual Hebrew is translated as, "The one who is good of eye is blessed "because he gives his food to the poor."(...) The next chapter in Proverbs 23, there's a warning not to eat bread with someone who has a bad eye. Don't desire his delicacies for even though he says, "Eat and drink, his heart is not with you."

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This reminds me of, like for instance, you're having a bunch of people over for a meal and you throw out a real big spread and it's like the food is so good. A couple of weeks we're gonna have Thanksgiving, it's gonna be like this. You have a bunch of people over, lots of food. It's a celebration, it's good. Your heart is happy until you start to notice that one person who's taking thirds and fourths of your favorite item. And you start to think, wait a second, I was gonna have those as leftovers. He's eating all of my leftovers. How dare he? And so you say, eat and drink, but inside you're like, don't take the.

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And it's like, your heart is not with you.

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Or for those of you who are married, maybe you've had this experience, you've gone out to dinner with a spouse at a restaurant and your spouse says the thing I don't ever wanna hear, hey, what if we share tonight?

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Wouldn't that be great if we shared? We could get two different things that we could share. And in my head, I'm just thinking, but that bacon, cheeseburger and fries are mine. Get your own.(...) And so the thing I think is it's on. I'm gonna protect these fries myself and make sure I get the fries because you sharing means that you're gonna take.

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I'm proving that my treasure is actually on my plate.

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I'm trusting in my plate treasure to satisfy me, to provide for me, to be what I need it to be.(...) I'm looking at the world through a stingy eye, a heart of stinginess. But if I really just trusted the economy of God, and that's what Jesus is trying to give us to do, he's trying to say the economy of God is different though. If I really trusted the bringer of light and generosity, I would know there's always more in the kingdom of God.

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If we took those two examples and taught them as parables, we would say don't worry about your guests overeating because you can always get more the next time you're at the grocery store.

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Don't worry about running out of fries at dinner because you can always order another plate of fries.

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Jesus is trying to ask, are we looking at the world with a stingy eye(...) or with a generous eye?

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Now Jesus uses this figure's speech one more time in Matthew chapter 20, and he's telling this parable about a farmer(...) who hires day laborers to help with the work. And he agrees to a certain set to pay them for their work for the whole day. And so he gets people first thing in the morning, but there's more work, he's got to get more people. So it goes out at noon, gets some more people, and there's still more work. And right before the end of the day, he gets even more people who just worked the last hour of the day. And so it comes time to pay everyone their daily wage. And the people who showed up most recently get paid first and he hands them each 100 bucks. And so the people who were there at the beginning of the day said that's what he agreed for the whole day's worth of work. Maybe he meant $100 per hour instead of $100 per day. This is great! But then they get up to get paid and he pays them the same thing that they had agreed to, $100.

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And they start to complain. What? Why are we getting paid the same as those people? We've done way more work than what those people did. And this is what the owner says in Matthew chapter 20. He says, "Are you envious because I'm generous?"

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He actually says, "Do you have a bad eye(...) because I have a good eye?(...) Is my generosity exposing your stinginess?"

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See, we're starting to see in our passage in chapter six, the meaning of the riddle that Jesus gives us. If you have a good eye, if you are generous, then your whole body will radiate with light.(...) Everything about you will shine just the way that God intended you for. But if you have a bad eye, a stingy eye, then your whole body will be full of darkness. And therefore, if the light that you were created to shine is actually darkness,(...) how great is the darkness?

(...)

Remember, this is meant to be bringing us back to the core image at the beginning of the Bible, which is light versus dark. And so Tim Mackey puts it this way, I wanna quote him. Tim Mackey says, "Light is the primary image of divine presence,

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is the primary image of divine generosity and care. Because light is required for humanity to flourish."

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The fact that the sun shines light on the earth and warms it just the perfect amount for our entire existence to happen is meant to show us God's generosity.

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Whenever we see light, we're meant to think generosity.

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And since we are created in the image of God, since we're meant to be reflections of God, then generosity is a core part of what we were created to shine out to the world.

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But if we take that light that we are meant to be, and instead we project it out as darkness,

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because of our stinginess, because of our greed, that's the ultimate tragedy. We're not shining the light of God, we're not shining the generosity of God. We've closed off that light.

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We've blown out the candle.(...) Now everything around us is in darkness.(...) And how great is that darkness?(...) Because generosity not only shines the light from us to light up the world around us, it also shines in and lights up our whole body.

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But greed and stinginess cuts off that light, leaves us in dark, leaves everything around us in the dark, leaves our body as a darkened husk of what we were meant to be, what we were designed to be.

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Now I don't know if you remember last week how our larger section of scripture started. Jesus is telling us that having stored up stuff on earth, it isn't secure. And so he's telling us to seek out sky stuff, to store up sky stuff, God stuff, treasures in heaven.

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And so we ask, well, how do you know if someone's treasure is truly in heaven? How do I know if my treasure is in heaven, like Jesus encourages us?

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Well, sky treasure, according to Jesus,(...) means that you'll be really generous with your earth treasure,(...) because you know that your earth treasure can't provide your ultimate security or joy.(...) That's not the thing your life is built on.

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When you know that the stuff that we have here are our money, our possessions, it's not secure,

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we can't bank on it,(...) but we don't have to worry, because we're learning how to trust God. We're learning how to trust that he's been providing for us. We're learning how to trust that he will continue(...) to provide for us. And so that enables us to generously join his work, rather than stingily clutching what we have, cutting off connection to the world around us.

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Generosity shines a light into the darkness around us, and generosity creates opportunity.

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Because if we tell someone, just like we said earlier, he drank, yeah, I'm having you over. If we say that and we actually mean it, we actually wanna generously give to them. It creates opportunity. That's a first step towards friendship, and friendship is the first step towards who knows what. The opportunities are endless after that.

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Or if I invest in God's work through the church by financially giving, because I really truly wanna reach more people for Jesus, that creates opportunities for Jesus' name to be taken even further. Whether it's through a program here, whether it's out in our community, whether it's outside of this community to bless people in other parts of the country and the world. Look what God has done already. And so imagine what God is still planning on doing by working through our generosity.

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So if we listen to Jesus' wisdom here,

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we can learn how our lives can shine brighter in the image of God.

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And who doesn't want their life to shine brighter?

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Don't you want your life to shine brighter?

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Well, Jesus says,(...) give generously.

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Because generous lives bring God's light into the world.

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It's what we were created for. It's part of the character of God that we were meant to reflect. Generous lives bring God's light into the world, and generous people carry God's power into the world.(...) Because generosity creates opportunities that keep going and going. And generous gifts reveal God's grace to the world. And because it's God's grace, it spills over into the people around us that need it most, and it helps them feel the warmth and light of God's presence.

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Generosity creates opportunities and it keeps going and going. The best example I have of this is something that just happened to me just a week ago.

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After church last Sunday, Megan and I decided that we would take the kids out to a diner for lunch after church. Sometimes it's just easier than going home and then starting cooking. You all know what I'm talking about. And so we went there, we'd been there before, we liked this place, but they seemed a little understaffed that day. And after we got seated, I overheard our waitress telling someone else that someone else had just quit. And that's why they were a little more busy that day. And I had seen her before, but she seemed extra frazzled, extra tired today. And so after we ordered our food and we were waiting for our order, I overheard her telling another table there, like, "Oh, how are you doing?" And she's like, "Yeah, I'm just, I'm really tired."

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Because I had seen her before, she had waited on us before when we had been there previously, but I had never seen her just so tired that she could barely even smile, you know, I noticed. And so we had our meal as a great meal and so we were getting ready to pack up. And I asked for a couple boxes and she came back with the boxes

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and the biggest smile on her face that I've ever seen.

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And she said, "Okay, so are you all set?(...) Good, okay.

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Everything's been taken care of, you're good to go."

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And I looked at Megan, I was like, "Wait, what?

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Everything's been taken care of, you're all set."

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Someone else had paid for our meal without telling us.

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And I had looked around when we got there, but I didn't recognize anyone there earlier.(...) And so I'm assuming it was one of you and I just wanna say thank you because I was stunned. I didn't know how to respond to that, that had never happened to Megan and I before. But I'm telling you, not just because of the generosity that Megan and I received,(...) but because of how it influenced our waitress as well.(...) She had just had a hard day, it seemed, and just being a messenger(...) for the good news of generosity lit her up(...) with the biggest smile I've ever seen. And this is true because generous people shine brighter.(...) That is just a truth.(...) See, I was stunned in receiving generosity,(...) but it also made me excited to then share it. So I got to leave one of the larger tips I've ever left in my life. It was still less than what our bill would have been, but it was a cool big tip to be able to give because I had been given generosity. I get to keep giving it and it keeps going. And I know it's keeping going because I'm telling you about it right now, but generosity just keeps going and going. And it overflows because that's how God works.

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See, someone else's generosity had turned around the whole day for a waitress just by getting to share the news with us. And then that let us be generous back to her

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and it keeps going.

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This is what we are created for. Jesus wants us to not get cut off from his light and his life just because we're clutching onto our stuff.(...) The life of following Jesus is a life of generosity here and now.

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Following Jesus isn't just about learning more about Jesus so that we can act good and then someday have eternal life later on in heaven.

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Jesus invites his followers to become apprentices here and now in this life to do the things he did so that he can transform us to become more and more like him in every area of our life. And we want to become more like Jesus.(...) We don't want to just get to heaven, we want to bring heaven here. That's why we pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." We want to bring it here now.

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The point of following Jesus isn't just to receive abundant life, it's to share it.(...) The point of following Jesus is not just to get to heaven, it's to bring heaven here. The point of following Jesus is not just to learn that God gives us grace and forgiveness and love, but to trust that truth and then share what we've been given so that others can experience it as well.

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See, Jesus is inviting us to practice generosity. That's why that's one of the spiritual habits that we talk about here at New Life Often, the spiritual habit of generosity. We want to practice that spiritual habit because that's what God uses in one way to transform us a little bit more, more into Jesus,(...) more to be more like Jesus in our lives. And I think he's actually inviting us to practice generosity this week.(...) And so I want to encourage you to take action on what he's showing to us.(...) I want to encourage you clearly this week to give financially to God's work, whether that's here through the church or some other way, but I want to encourage you to give financially because generosity makes us shine the way we're created for. And so I want to encourage you, test it out.

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Test it this week.(...) Remember that Jesus tells us that where we put our treasure,

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forms our heart.(...) And giving, specifically giving financially, is the only thing that God tells us is such a proven framework of his kingdom that he actually tells us to test him in it.(...) There's a passage in Malachi chapter three.(...) It's a prophecy in the Old Testament where God tells his people to engage in the practice of the tithe and to test him in his promises, to see that he won't pour down an overflowing blessing.

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Jesus reaffirms this later in Luke chapter six. He says the same promise. He says, "Give and it will be given to you. "A good measure pressed down, shaken together, "running over."

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Generosity is a character trait of God.

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It's one that we were created to reflect.(...) And so when we practice the spiritual habit of generosity, when we commit ourselves to do the things Jesus tells us,(...) it transforms our heart.(...) It transforms our lives to become more like to him.

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Now, I don't know what God is inviting you to give,

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but that's my incursion for you this week.

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Ask him,(...) ask him, what is God inviting you to give this week?

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Maybe you've never given to God's work through our church. And so maybe he's inviting you to test it out.

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Maybe you already do give to God's work in our church. And maybe God's inviting you to reconsider the amount you give or reconsider the regularity you give. But what is God inviting you to give? And I don't know, I can't answer that for you. That's between you and God,(...) but ask him and then do what he tells you to.

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Test him,(...) experience your heart change,(...) because we've been blessed beyond what we can imagine through the generosity of God. He's given us everything we have.(...) And he's inviting you to join him in his work,

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to join him in his life,(...) shining our light through generous acts. And little by little, we actually get to be a part of revealing the kingdom of God here on earth.

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Isn't that good news?

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Amen.

I can’t tell you how many stories I watched and listened to about families who have been affected by Hurricane Helene, but they aren’t easy to watch. People’s whole lives, all their mementos, all their family heirlooms, ruined and gone in an instant.

 

[SLIDE 2] lower third blank

Where I used to live in California, we would have wildfires every year that would cause people to evacuate and would leave behind nothing but ash.

 

Maybe you experienced a flood, or a tornado, and had to rebuild or mourn the loss of property or cherished stuff.

 

And how many stories have we heard about people who lost everything in investment accounts or retirement accounts when their company went belly-up, or when the economy took a drastic turn?

 

It’s in these moments that the stuff that we take for granted disappears, and we don’t know how to react. Shock sets in, grief takes over, fear looms as you wonder how you’ll recover. How life will change. Whether you’ll be able to climb out of this again.

 

All of us have experienced this to some extent, as the money, the property, the stuff we have isn’t as secure as we had assumed. And that’s why we’re starting a new series called “Money Shouldn’t Make You Miserable,” because money – and property, wealth, our stuff that we’ve accumulated – is such a hard topic to talk about with anyone.

 

And yet, we struggle with financial questions and stress every day. Couples fight over it. Many people are ashamed to admit where they’re really at financially, and that’s true if you have money or if you don’t.

 

And many people have no idea what God has to say about our money except that they think he wants it.

 

Get ready for a surprise. Jesus had some astonishing things to say about money and wealth, things that might actually provide the freedom and help you’re looking for, whether you’re deeply in debt, are just getting by, or have more money than you ever imagined.

 

And we want to look at what Jesus had to say because that’s what we are trying to do here at New Life: we’re trying to be apprentices of Jesus so that he can transform us to become more and more like him in every area of our lives.

 

And one of the best places to start learning from how Jesus invites us to live is in his very famous Sermon on the Mount, which can be found in Matthew, chapters 5-7.

 

The intro to this overall message is all about WHO is invited into what God is doing in the world through Jesus. It’s not just the powerful or the influential people who get to participate, God actually focuses on the outsider who hungers for right relationships. Anyone who comes to God and seeks to create peace in the world is who Jesus says is participating in the Kingdom of God.

 

This is all an description of Jesus's definition of what the good life is for his kingdom of heaven crew. He called them the salt of the land and the city on the hill that shines light to the nations.

 

Then, we get to the large main body of the sermon on the mount, where Jesus invites his followers into what he calls “a greater righteousness”: Jesus’ vision for living in right relationships with God and each other.

 

He talks about how God’s law in the Hebrew Bible was establishing the wisdom for this way of life. Then he talks about different religious practices, and tells his followers that things like prayer and fasting and generosity to the poor aren’t meant to just be religious “duties” that can become empty and meaningless.

 

He says that when we do things like that to bring attention to ourselves, they actually get in the WAY of connecting us to God and all of a sudden you're doing the right thing for the wrong reason – which is Jesus’ definition of what it means to be a hypocrite.

 

But in our series this month, we’re going to look at the end of the main body of his teaching, which focuses on our relationships with others by beginning with teachings about our relationship with our stuff.

 

Because, Jesus knows that how we relate to our stuff: our money and possessions tells the truth about what we really value and believe. And it's really clear that in Jesus's mind how you relate to money is one of the truest indicators of how much you love God.

 

We already heard the whole Scripture read, but let’s watch this short animated video that helps us understand it a little better.

 

[PLAY VIDEO: BIBLE PROJECT WHY WEALTH IS DANGEROUS]

 

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There is so much wisdom in this section of Scripture, and each little part is like a riddle that teaches something new. Each way you turn the diamond, there are just so many things to look at. But today, we’re looking at the first of these four teachings on money: Don’t store up treasure on earth, but store up treasure in heaven. Where your treasure is – where your stored-up things are – there your heart will be also.

 

What is treasure in heaven and why does it have a more enduring value than things we store up here on the land? Let’s try to discover that together.

 

[SLIDE 4] Matt 6:19

“Don’t store up for yourselves treasures on earth.” Or, another way to say it, “STOP storing up for yourselves treasures on earth.”

 

The word for “store up” and the word for “treasures” are from the same root word in the original language, so it could just as easily be translated “Stop storing up storage on earth,” or “Stop treasuring your treasures on earth.”

 

But notice that Jesus isn’t telling us NOT to store up stuff. He’s not telling us NOT to treasure things or value things. The main point is on WHERE we are keeping it, where we are placing our value. And Jesus says, “stop storing up stuff on EARTH, because it isn’t guaranteed.”

 

Stuff on earth, stuff in the realm of humanity, like money and possessions and property, won’t endure. It doesn’t last forever. It can’t be perfectly protected, whether from an awful storm, or a blip in the economy, or from someone else with the intention to rob you.

 

[SLIDE 5] Matt 6:20

Instead, Jesus says, store up your treasures in HEAVEN. Literally, the word for “heaven” means “sky.” It’s the domain of God, as opposed to the domain of humans. Jesus says, “Don’t store up earth stuff – store up SKY stuff, God-stuff, because moths and rust and thieves can’t touch that stuff.”

 

But what IS God-stuff?

 

Well, Jesus gives some specific clues in a few other places. Look with me at Matthew 19. This is traditionally known as the story of the Rich young man, or rich young ruler.

 

[READ Matt 19:16-22]

 

[SLIDE 6] 19:16

Some young guy who seems to be earnestly doing everything he can to get the good life asks Jesus what is still missing. And Jesus, since he’s able to see right into the heart of this guy, knows that he’s someone who cares a whole lot about the stuff he’s accumulated.

 

And all that stuff, not only is it not guaranteed. Not only is it not secure. It’s also become the #1 thing in his life. And Jesus knows that anything that is #1 in our lives is the thing that rules us.

 

Money, stuff, the pursuit of it, the reputation we get from having it, the way we compare ourselves to others based on how much they have or don’t… it turns our life into an endless loop of clutching, hustling, protecting, and worrying.

 

We think more stuff or more money will give us the freedom and security we want, so we hustle to get it. But we don’t want to lose it, so we spend time protecting it and worrying about what would happen IF we lost it.

 

And then if the unthinkable happens, and a storm comes, or a thief comes, or inflation gets the better of us, we’re left with an aching hole in our hearts.

 

[SLIDE 7] 19:21

And Jesus knows that’s not the best life we were created for! So he tells the young guy, if you want to be “perfect” – if you want to attain the highest standard of living that you were created for – get rid of that lesser ruler in your life and follow me. Then you’ll have treasure in heaven.

 

And unfortunately, we see that the young guy couldn’t wrap his head around this and chose to stick with his current way of life.

 

In another spot in Matthew 25, Jesus is telling a parable about three different servants who were responsible for their master’s business. And the two guys who stewarded it well, put it to work and got a return on the investment are told this:

 

[SLIDE 8] 25:23

“Well done, good and trustworthy servant; you have been trustworthy in a few things; I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.”

 

So Jesus is trying to tell us that earth stuff can get in the way of our ability to receive sky stuff, heavenly treasure. And then he says that heavenly treasure is connected to Joy and entering into the kingdom of God, entering into the type of life that’s available when we trust God above all other things.

 

And even when his followers were confused and asked about what he meant, he gave them this promise:

 

[SLIDE 9] 19:29

“Anyone who has let go of trying to clutch at the things we can control here on earth, anyone who trusts me as the king of their life, WILL INHERIT abundantly far more than they ever left behind and will experience eternal life.”

 

And I don’t buy the explanation that Jesus is saying that we’ll inherit the same THINGS in heaven as what we let go of here in our lives. Because he’s using metaphors to describe something you can’t fully name, but has ultimate worth.

 

Just like in our video, Jesus is saying that the abundant, eternal, kingdom of God life that is available to us now if we just trust him as our #1 source and guide, it’s full of the types of things that last forever. Love, joy, connection, purpose, fulfillment. A storm can’t take that away. Rust can’t destroy that.

 

But we’ve got to face the fact that holding too tightly to earth stuff is actually keeping us from being able to receive the gift of heaven treasure that Jesus’s life is offering.

 

[SLIDE 10] 6:21

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Notice that Jesus didn’t say, “where your heart is, there your treasure is.” He didn’t say that whatever you care most about is where you invest your value and focus.

 

He says it actually works the other way around. Where you invest your time, and value, and focus, THAT forms your heart in that direction. What you focus your life on transforms what you care about.

 

[SLIDE 11] lower third blank

Before I moved here to IL, I never wanted a truck. They aren’t practical in SoCal. But once I moved here, man, a truck started looking pretty good. I could haul stuff. I could get a trailer to haul my mower around, and help my mom with her lawn! I could go pick up mulch myself instead of having it delivered.

 

And then I tried to pull out a cement footing with my Toyota Camry…and it did not go well! And so I’m focusing on how dumb I feel and how dumb a Camry is and how it would have been so much better if I had a truck and all of a sudden I’m looking up trucks and calculating what a monthly payment would be, even though Megan and I haven’t had a car payment in 6 years!

 

The thing I was focusing on was forming my heart to be discontent, and impulsive, and secretive because I wasn’t talking to my wife about the truck research I was doing.

 

Discontent, rash, isolated. Doesn’t really sound like the full abundant life that Jesus offers, does it?

 

[SLIDE 12]

That’s why Jesus tells us that “our hearts are shaped by where we invest.” And when we invest our time and focus and value into things that don’t last, our hearts experience the anxiety of lack and the fear of comparison, just like Jesus talks about at the end of our section of Scripture.

 

Life feels pretty miserable. Heavy. Uncertain.

 

But when we invest in God-stuff, heaven treasure that is secure, meaningful, and impactful beyond just our life, we get to experience our hearts being formed to understand God as a generous provider who invites us into his work of redeeming and restoring the people and creation around us.

 

I want to show you a little bit of the story of Jim and Jan, who have experienced the type of heart transformation that Jesus promises…

 

[PLAY VIDEO: Generosity Jim n Jan]

 

[SLIDE 13] blank

Did you hear them express it? They expressed it as “joy”, whether it was through giving a financial gift or whether it was creating a shared memory of helping others with their grandkids. They’re articulating the same thing Jesus is talking about when he says that when we seek God’s kingdom and his right way of life, we experience the abundant generosity of God’s providence for us in all areas of life.

 

We’re going to be spending a few more weeks talking about this because Jesus wants you to experience freedom and joy in life. And he knows that our money, our stuff, the things we cling to, they can actually get in the way of the life he’s inviting us into.

 

He knows that when we invest in God’s kingdom, it transforms our heart. We don’t give our money and our time to God because he needs it. We give to the work of God because WE need it. We need the opportunity to experience joy in participating in what God is doing. We need the help in weakening the grip that money and possessions has on us. We need the reminder that when we trust God with what He’s given us, he proves himself to be a good provider, able to take care of us better than our stuff ever could.

 

Because he’s already proven that he’s the best provider for us. He’s GIVEN us everything we have. And every time we have turned from him or doubted him, his FORGIVENESS shows us that he hasn’t changed, and is still generous in how he deals with us. And when we realize that all that we have is a gift, he actually allows us to be a part of his GIVING by working through us to accomplish his work!

 

And we get to experience the joy of investing in eternal things: like connection and compassion towards others. Like the properties of a life that last well beyond any physical THING. Like the love that is fully received and given in the life of Jesus.

 

Jesus says, don’t settle for stuff that won’t last. Invest in God-stuff and experience the heart transformation that will result.

 

[SLIDE 14] Reflection Questions

So maybe you’re listening, and you’re recognizing that there is earth-stuff that you’ve allowed to become too important in your life. Maybe God is highlighting for you something that you know is keeping you from fully trusting him.

 

I can’t tell you what to do with that, but I would encourage you to talk with God about that. Ask him if he’s inviting you to let go of something in your life so that you can more fully pursue his life.

 

But for everyone, I’d like to offer this experiment this week: choose one God-stuff activity to invest in this week, and see how it affects your heart.

 

Choose to invest in one God-stuff activity. It might be serving a neighbor. It might be giving financially to a cause like the Giving Tree or the hurricane relief. It might be committing to a recurring tithe here at church to join what Jesus is doing here. It might be committing to a prayer practice each day this week.

 

Choose to invest in one God-stuff activity this week, and then see how it affects your heart. See if it brings a sense of joy. See if it relieves some stress or anxiety. See if it makes you feel more connected to God and the people he’s gifted us with.

 

It’s just an experiment, but what is God inviting you to do this week as a small step of trusting him?

 

Because God cares so deeply for you that he has given you everything you have as a gift, and then he gave his Son as a sacrifice to prove his willingness to bridge the gap to us. And NOW he’s inviting us to join him in his life of giving and sharing and healing the world around us through love. Isn’t that good news?

The Abundant Life

Ephesians 3:14-21

Pastor Erik Anderson

I wanna invite you to grab the seatback Bible in front of you, underneath your seat there's like a little compartment that has a black Bible. You can grab that black Bible, or if you have your own, you can open it up. We're gonna be in Ephesians chapter three. If you are using the seatback Bible, it is page 149 in the New Testament. So toward the end, the letter to the Ephesians is a letter that Paul the Apostle wrote, and he wrote it to the churches in and around Ephesus. And so this was a letter meant to be circulated to the churches. It's a great conversation distillation of the gospel. One of my favorite books of the Bible. We're gonna be in chapter three beginning in verse 14, and this is what we read this morning. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes his name. I pray that according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Holy Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.(...) I pray that you may have the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.(...) Now to him, who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine to him, be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever, amen. This is the word of the Lord, thanks be to God.

(...)

Well, as mentioned a couple times, today is my final Sunday with you all. I've been your pastor for six years. It's been a fantastic six years, probably the best six years of my life, and as I've been able to pastor you,

(...)

and being able to learn and grow with you and follow Jesus together, oftentimes what comes up in conversations are challenges that you're having, and challenges that I'm having, and we get to share and figure out how to follow Jesus together, how to grow in those things, but there's several things that I've noticed over the years that keep coming up, and I'm guessing that you probably experience these too, especially for those of you who are still in your career.(...) I, oftentimes the conversations that we have, busyness comes up as a stress that is going on. You just feel so busy, so spread out, like you can't keep all the plates spinning. You have to do your job and then get your kids from this activity to that activity, pick them up from daycare, take them to soccer, go here, do that, take care of your parents, go visit family, whatever it might be. You just feel so busy that you can't actually really feel like you're living life.

(...)

Or if you have kids, you experience a lot of parent guilt, which is very real. You feel like you're a failure as a parent. You're not able to take care of your kids the way that you would like. You feel like you yell too much. You feel like you see other people's kids and they're more well behaved than yours, and you feel a lot of guilt. That's something that has come up quite a bit. Or even sometimes just like the fear, generalized fear around like money in the economy and that kind of stuff. Sometimes those conversations come up where it's just like hard to make ends meet, maybe like an overextension based on your house or your car or whatever, and sometimes those are the challenges that people are facing.(...) Not to mention when sickness comes around. Or if you have a chronic disease. Or if you have children or parents that are estranged and you're not quite connected, and even just a more general fear of cultural change, of societal change, that things are different now than they were 20 years ago when we were growing up. There's a lot of challenge and even a lot of stress. And something that I've noticed that people want to do, maybe you've experienced this yourself, is that try to minimize or even remove the bad things from your life. And your life is spent trying to manage and trying to understand how do I get rid of the bad things? How do I get rid of this guilt or get rid of this anxiety? Or how do I make sure I just get exactly the right job or that right promotion or make sure that I get that right house? Or maybe if my spouse and I could just get on the same page on this, then everything would be okay. We try to remove,(...) minimize the bad things in life. But I wanna make an argument today.(...) And I think that it's from scripture. My argument today is this, that a life overflowing with good is better than a life without bad.

(...)

A life overflowing with good is better than a life without bad. And these things are not mutually exclusive.(...) You can have hard things, challenges in your life, but also you can have a life that overflows with good. That's my argument today. And I'm not going to bury the lead. I wanna give you the answer now. I believe that the answer is Jesus, surprise, surprise. I'm a big Jesus guy in case you didn't know that. There was a scholar named Carl Barth in the 20th century. And there was a joke about his theology as he wrote his theological writings. The joke was that the answer was always Jesus. And what is the question? It's always Jesus. And that's true. The answer is always Jesus. And Jesus today is gonna show us that we can have a life overflowing with good,(...) even when the bad is still in our life, even when the challenge and the struggle is in our life. This passage that we're looking at today from Ephesians chapter three is a continuation of a conversation that Paul is having with the Ephesians about his own suffering. He's talking about how he has been beaten and bruised, that he's been stoned, that he has been not martyred for the faith, but he has been persecuted for the faith. And everywhere that he goes, he suffers from poverty and from beatings. And even we read in Paul that he has some sort of, probably some sort of ailment. He calls it a thorn in his flesh. We don't know exactly what it is. Most likely with some sort of sickness or something like that, that he asked the Lord several times for the Lord to take it from him. And so in response to all of this conversation about his suffering, this is what he says beginning in verse 16. He says, "I pray that," and so he's praying for the Ephesians, "I pray that according to the riches of his glory," that is God, "he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his spirit,

(...)

and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love." We know that in our lives, a challenge and struggle and guarantee or pain are guarantees. We know that there's always gonna be the bad in our lives, that we are gonna get sick, our kids are gonna get sick, things are gonna happen in our lives that feel bad and that are bad, that are not fun, that hurt us in different ways. We know that the bad is always going to be there, and Paul knows this too, he experienced bad. Yet in the midst of him having bad in his life, he prays that the Ephesians may be strengthened in their inner being.(...) And what we're gonna see is that God actually promises. He promises strength and transformation within us. The promise is not to give us a smooth, easy life. The promise is not to remove the bad, but the promise is to make us new, to make us transformed. And the way that this happens is through Jesus,(...) that Christ may dwell richly in us.(...) We have heard this several times, that Christ is at work, always at work. It's kind of the beating drum that I repeat quite often, is that Jesus has a desired future for you, for me, for our world, and that is for new creation. He is recreating the world where heaven and earth overlap again, just like in the Garden of Eden, and God lives with man, and there is no more sickness, there is no more pain, there are no more tears. This is Jesus' preferred future. This is what Jesus wants for you, it's what Jesus wants for me, it's what Jesus wants for our world. This is the work that Jesus is at doing. He's at work recreating heaven and earth, and he actually starts now, he starts today. He starts in you, that though our outward body might get sick, our outward body might die, our inward person is being renewed, it's being made new. Paul writes about that in the second letter to the Corinthians in chapter four, that our outward body is failing and dying, but our inward self is being made new, and that even in the darkest times in our life, even when the most painful things are happening, we can experience goodness. This is the promise of God, that even when things are challenging, even when things are struggling, even when our bodies are dying and we are at our death,(...) Jesus is giving us good things in our inward self, in our heart, and in the scriptures when they talk about heart, we think about it about emotions, kind of Valentine's Day, lovey-dovey emotions. In scripture, the heart actually means literally like the gut. It's the place that we make decisions, it's the place that we really decide how we feel about something and how we want to move forward with a situation, that all gets decided in our gut, it's where we make decisions. And that's the heart that Paul is talking about here, that Christ may dwell in our hearts in the deepest part of us, where we make decisions, that that's where the change happens. And my wife and I actually experienced this in our life. A few years ago, after the birth of our second child, we went through a pretty dark time.(...) There was some of the kind of normal postpartum issues, but then that expanded and it kind of became much, much more. It was a great struggle on our marriage. Then our marriage was in a really bad place, a really rocky place. I was even dealing with some suicidal ideation, these kinds of things. It was a dark, dark time in our lives and we got rescued out of that time by the gospel, by Jesus.(...) That time in our lives, we were rescued because we would proclaim the gospel to each other. And there were two things that had to happen as we were proclaiming the gospel to each other. The first is that we had to accept that we were sinners and that we fail.

(...)

That's one thing that we had to accept. And I know that maybe sounds a little bit depressing, but actually I wanna show you that it isn't. It actually gives us freedom because when we understand that we fail, when we accept failure, it actually doesn't create guilt in us, it creates freedom.(...) Because our own self-loathing comes from when we say, I should be here, but I'm actually here.(...) And when we can fully accept that I'm a sinner and that I fail, it brings our expectation down to reality.(...) And then we don't have self-loathing anymore. We're actually quite free. We're like, you know what? I can't do it. So there was something that Sarah and I would say to each other. It would sound something like this. Sarah would say, Eric, you are not a good enough husband, but Jesus is good enough for you.

(...)

You are not a good enough husband, but Jesus is good enough for you. We would say that kind of thing to each other all the time. And again, it wasn't, it actually didn't create guilt. It created freedom. I would say, oh yeah, I don't have to feel bad about failing because Jesus actually dwells in me and he can give me the power. He is good enough even when I am not. Because we do fail and because we are sinners, we can accept that, but we know that we are loved despite our failure. And we know that we are loved despite our sin. And we know that we are accepted and acceptable despite our failure. We know that we are accepted and acceptable despite our sin. We learned by saying that to each other that we are defined in God's eyes, not by our failure, but by his love for us.

(...)

The second thing we had to accept was that Jesus actually gives us his success when we fail.(...) That Jesus gives us his goodness when we don't have the goodness in us. That he gives us what we need when we are weak. In fact, Paul writes about this when he was praying to the Lord to take away this ailment, this thorn in the flesh. We read about this in the second letter to Corinthians.(...) And the Lord said no to him three times. And the third time, then Jesus said to Paul, he said, Paul, my power is made perfect in weakness.

(...)

And then Paul says, when we are weak, he is strong.

(...)

That's actually Jesus who has the strength. It's Jesus who has the joy. It's Jesus who has the power. And when we don't have it, he gives it to us. When we don't have it, when we feel confusion, when we feel fear, when we feel unease, the Lord gives us his peace and his goodness and his patience. Excuse me, I'm not doing karate up here, I promise. There's a fly bothering me.

(...)

(Audience Laughing) And so I don't want you to be confused by this. I don't want you to be confused about how your success or failure defines(...) how God feels about you or whether or not God is gonna give you a good life, a full life, an abundant life.(...) That is not the reality. It is not by your success or failure that God gives you good gifts. He gives you good gifts because he loves you.(...) And so my wife and I would say to each other, you're not good enough, but Jesus is good enough for you.

(...)

And it is because of his goodness and his love that then we can have love, that we can have peace. So our prayers during this time sounded a lot like this. Lord, you promised us peace and we don't have peace, so we need that now.

(...)

That's what our prayers sounded like. And you know what?(...) The Lord gave us peace.(...) He did. Jesus actually tells us, he says, "Ask and it will be given.(...) "Knock and the door will be opened. "Seek and you will find." When we ask the Lord for the things that he promises us, transformation, renewal in our inward being, he does give it to us. That things can change. So that is something I want you to know. That if you feel in your life you don't have peace or joy or patience or goodness or things like that, you need to ask the Lord for it. Because he's the one who gives it. You can't muster it up on your own. You're not strong enough. You're not good enough to do that. But the Lord will abundantly give it to you. Way more than you could ever ask or imagine.(...) And so because of this, there's something that I say to my boys almost every night when I tuck them in. I tell them, "You are good because Jesus makes you good."

(...)

I don't want my boys to be confused either. I don't want them to think that they're my love for them or God's love for them is based on their performance as a child, their failure or success.(...) They are good because Jesus makes them good.(...) And this is why we read in verse 18, that Paul prays that they may have the power to comprehend, the power to understand with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth(...) of God's love. That is why Paul prays this. He wants the Ephesians to understand the gospel. We need to understand it. That it is the power of God to help us know that this is true. Because it's beyond our knowledge. It's beyond our comprehension. It's beyond what we could even imagine. It requires the Holy Spirit to tell us that. There are lots of conversations that I've had with people where I'm telling them this. I'm telling them that God loves them, that it doesn't matter what they do, that even in their sin, it doesn't change the way God feels about them. And it's like the glass just goes over their eyes.

(...)

Can't understand it. It doesn't make sense to us naturally that God would love us despite what we do. And even some of you in this room probably aren't understanding it. We need the Holy Spirit. We need to ask the Lord to help us know it to be true.

(...)

Because this is how God works.(...) Despite what we do, He gives us good gifts.(...) And this is the gospel. That God loves you greater than you can know. And God can accomplish abundantly more than you can even imagine in your heart.(...) In your inner being. The way that you think, feel, the way that you make decisions, that can be thoroughly transformed more abundantly than you could ever even dream of.

(...)

Which is how He closes it. Now to Him, who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we could ask or imagine. To Him be glory in the church, and in Christ Jesus and all generations.

(...)

God can accomplish more than you could ever ask or even imagine.

(...)

And if we run through the fruit of the Spirit, which is a promise of God that we have, if we have the Holy Spirit, we have the fruit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

(...)

These gifts that He gives to us. If you imagine how much peace you want in your life, if you imagine how much, what your life would look like with peace, if you could imagine it, God wants more peace for you.(...) If you could imagine all the joy that you want in your life, all the joy that you could ever hope for in your life, God wants more joy for you. If you could imagine all the love in your life, what a life would look like full of love, God wants more for you. If you think about all the patience and the kindness and the goodness that you could ever hope to have in your life, God wants to give you more.(...) More abundantly than you could ever even think to ask Him for. That's what He wants for you.

(...)

That's what He has done for you.

(...)

When we are weak, He is strong.(...) He can do more than we could ever ask. And He's offering us the gift.

(...)

Ask and it will be given.

(...)

Knock and the door will be open. Seek and you will find.

(...)

So if there is anything that I want you to know, it is this, that God loves you infinitely more than you could imagine or understand.(...) He's seeking you.(...) He's hunting you down. He's pursuing you.(...) And He wants to give you a good, full and abundant life.

(...)

And this life is a life lived with Him in a steady, confident relationship with the one who made us.

(...)

That Jesus is the only thing worth having in our life.

(...)

He's the only thing worth our worship and our love.(...) And to experience His joy and His delight in us is what makes life worth living.

(...)

That's what makes life good, full and abundant.

(...)

So I wanna end by praying for you and praying for our congregation.

(...)

To Lord,(...) thank you so much for your goodness to us.(...) Thank you for your good gifts that we don't deserve.

(...)

Thank you for your joy and your peace.

(...)

And Lord, I pray for this congregation

(...)

for the people in this church, in this community,

(...)

that you would do more abundantly than they could ever hope for.

(...)

Lord, I pray that you would give them more joy than they could have ever hoped for,(...) more peace than they ever could have hoped for, more love than they ever could have hoped for.

(...)

Lord, I pray that they are surprised and delighted by how good you are.

(...)

And Lord, even in the midst of the bad things,

(...)

I ask you that you would give them joy,

(...)

that you would give them peace,

(...)

that you would give them gentleness and kindness,(...) self-control.

(...)

Lord, even in the bad,(...) I pray that the bad would be a window to see your goodness.

(...)

I would pray, Lord, that it would be the opportunity

(...)

for you to show up in their life.

(...)

And Lord, that your strength would be made perfect in their weakness.

(...)

Help them accept their weakness and trust in you,

(...)

because you are the only thing worth having.

(...)

So Lord, I ask that you would bless them and keep them, that you would fill their lives with goodness, more goodness than they ever could have asked for, or ever could have imagined.

(...)

Pray this in Jesus' name,(...) amen.

Colossians 2:6-14

Pastor Erik Anderson

Well, I'm gonna invite you to open up your scriptures and if you need, you can use the black seat back Bible in the seat in front of you. Reach underneath, there's a little compartment down there and it's the black Bible. You can grab that or if you have it on your phone or if you brought your own Bible, that is fine too. We're gonna be in the book of Colossians. It's right toward the end and I don't have the page number off the top of my head. So somebody finds it in that black seat back Bible, holler out the page number for me.

(...)

155 is what I hear. 155 toward the end, it'll be page 155. We're gonna be reading from Colossians, which is a letter that Paul wrote to the church in Colossae. We're gonna be in chapter two, beginning in verse six. Chapter two, verse six, and this is what we hear.

(...)

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus, the Lord continued to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. In him also, you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh and the circumcision of Christ. When you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith and the power of God who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. This is the word of the Lord.(...) Thanks be to God. I don't know if you have this same experience that I do, but almost every conversation that I have, if I shake somebody's hand or say hello, I say,

(...)

"Hey, I'm gonna get a question. "I almost always get the same answer." And it's busy. Do you get that answer too? And I find myself giving that same answer. We're in the process of moving and all that kind of stuff. And our life feels pretty hectic. So anytime anybody asks us how we're doing, I'm usually say busy or stressed. That's usually how I answer. It feels like we just, there's not enough time for everything. And everyone is like that. In fact, sometimes you can even get into awkward conversations, where you're trying to like almost outdo each other

(...)

and you're like, "Oh yeah, I'm busy." And they go, "Oh man, I know about business. "I got this thing, that thing, the other thing." And before you know it, they're listing off their whole week, everything that they have to do. They feel stressed. In our society, business is almost like a badge of honor. It's something that we wear that when we talk to people, we want them to know and experience how stressed we feel about our own lives. And so we talk about all the things that we have going on and all the different things that are happening. We try to compete even for who's, even for who's busiest. And even if we aren't busy like with work or things to do, our minds are also really busy.(...) I don't know if you've noticed this and when you have conversations, but people bring up a lot of weird stuff that they find on social media, or they bring up stuff that they're outraged about. Stuff in politics is where, just days away from an election of other cultural fears that they might have. People's minds are busy, even if their hands are busy.(...) And as I've had conversations with people, it just seems like everyone's lives are so full. Full of thoughts are full of activities. They're taking their kid from this activity, that activity, they're getting their kid tutored, and they're doing this and doing that. They're trying to do all these things, trying to work and trying to make ends meet, trying to make sure that their kids are successful while also being upset about whatever this politician or that politician said. They're just busy. There's lots of thinking going on, and life feels full, but ultimately for a lot of people, it feels unfulfilling as well.(...) It feels full, it feels busy, but it's unfulfilling.

(...)

That even though we have all this busyness, we have all these thoughts, we have all this stress, it doesn't seem like it's producing good things in our life.

(...)

And scripture would actually just call this busyness, it calls it emptiness.

(...)

And this is what we see here in what Paul writes in Colossians chapter two and verse eight. He says, "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit." He's writing to this church in Colossae. He's not writing to a particular person, but actually to a whole church, and probably to a series of churches. He probably meant this letter to be sent around to lots of different churches. And the churches in that area, they were influenced. They spoke a Greek and they were influenced by the Greek culture, which was very busy thinking about the nature of reality. Very busy thinking about philosophy. The biggest philosophers that you heard of, Plato, Aristotle, are all Greek philosophers.(...) And this was in the water. And there was some sort of false teaching, maybe some false ideas out there in the culture, or maybe even in the churches themselves, that Paul is warning against. Make sure that no one can take you captive through this kind of philosophy and empty deceit. He calls it empty. Specifically, he says that it's according to human tradition.(...) Paul's talking about how these people's minds were busy trying to understand the reality of the world. They were busy trying to understand all the things going on around them, what they were seeing, if that was real or if it was actually just a projection. Plato was having conversations about, are we living in a matrix? He was having those like 3,000 years ago. He was like, is this real or is it not real? How do we know? How can we know? Is it by what we can see and touch, or the breakdown of the world? And Paul is looking at this and saying, "Hey,(...) don't get carried away with that. "Don't be captive with all this stuff "'cause it's all based on human tradition. "It's humans trying to wrap their minds "around how the world operates. "And if you went to college and you took a philosophy class, "you just know how ridiculous it can be." It's those questions that they're like, what if your blue isn't my blue? You know what I mean? It's like not deep, right? It's just empty. And it really doesn't mean anything. It doesn't really connect to real life. And he's saying, "Don't be caught up by this. "Don't be caught up by spinning your wheels." And maybe we fast forward to 2024. Maybe he might say something like, "Hey, don't be caught up in useless conspiracy theories. "Don't be caught up in all of the busyness of thinking "that you know exactly how the world actually operates "and you need to make sure that you share it." Or you somehow have some sort of secret knowledge that you can unlock the world for other people. Don't be captivated by this. Don't be worried about this. Don't busy yourself with this thinking because it's according to human tradition. It's humans trying to understand through a human way what's going on. And then he says, "It's according to the elemental spirits."

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And this needs to take some unpacking because it's a weird phrase. So I've never heard that before. And I've read it, I've read this passage hundreds of times. And I never paused and thought, what in the world does that even mean? And what he's talking about here, that word elemental is also the word like elementary,(...) like the basic, like the building blocks of matter elements.(...) It's the ABCs. And Paul is saying that there are actually these spirits, these spiritual beings that are trying to distract people by being too worried about the basic things of life, what makes up the world. For Paul, for the scripture, they understood that sometimes behind some ways of thinking there are actually spiritual powers behind them. And sometimes there are even spiritual beings that can distract humans by making them think about certain things and have certain ways of thinking. That's what he's saying here. It's a basic, it goes back to that like childish or useless way of thinking. The elemental spirits of the universe and not according to Christ. Paul's looking at these false teachers and he sees that they're trying to navigate life and spirituality from a human, from a natural perspective.

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They were not considering God's revelation. They were not considering who God is as Christ shows him.(...) And Paul says, "Instead of this," he continues in verse nine, "in him," that is in Jesus, "the whole fullness of the deity dwells bodily. "That in Jesus, all of God, "the creator and sustainer of all things," earlier in Colossians, Paul says that God is in all and through all, that the one who sustains all life is seen fully, the fullness of the creator is in Jesus. That in Jesus, the fullness of God is in a body, a human body. That Jesus is this master human, this ultimate human, this superman kind of image,(...) that we get to follow and learn how to be human. That Jesus is the fullness of all things that God is and he shows us who God is, because Jesus is God. Jesus is the fullness of everything that the universe is meant to be and is meant to point towards. It's all in Jesus that he's the only one that can show us the revelation of God. He is the only one that can get us to truth.(...) Philosophy and empty deceit and all this busy way of thinking, this doesn't get us anywhere, but Jesus gets us somewhere to a good life, to a full life. And then Paul says, "And you have come to fullness in him "that you can follow him as Lord, "that he is the head and the ruler of every authority, "that he stands above and beyond all things spiritual "and physical and you can follow him, you can know him. "You can be part of Jesus's family, "you can be part of Jesus and you can have your fullness." This is where we find our meaning, because we know that if we try to find our meaning in other places, we turn up empty.(...) If we try to find our meaning in money, in our career, in our ambition to be successful in our family, or in our stuff, ultimately we wind up empty.

(...)

If we put so much stock in making sure that we're getting all the money that we can to have all the fun toys that we can,(...) natural disasters happen. There were two hurricanes that blew through and destroyed the southeast. You can lose everything that quick.(...) If you spend all of your time worrying and thinking about this,

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you can lose it so fast. Your job, your career, your ambition, that thing gets lost. If you're so concerned about your kids being successful and doing well and they decide to make poor choices and derail their lives, that thing can get lost.(...) When you try to find fulfillment(...) in the things of this world, they come up empty. Whether it's your family, because families get broken or people die.(...) If it's your stuff, natural disasters happen or you can lose everything.

(...)

You lose, you know, jobs come and go. And this is why we find ourselves working so hard to try to manipulate and lie and cheat and steal in order to have some sort of security blanket, in order to find some sort of meaning, but ultimately we're failed by those things. And we're ultimately failed by ourselves.

(...)

We fail ourselves and this pressure is suffocating

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and inevitably we'll feel empty. We'll feel without security, which is why we have to find meaning and we have to find fullness from something outside of us, not within us, but something that does not go away. Something that does not perish. Something that does not change.(...) And we're told that Jesus is the only one who fits that description.(...) Jesus is the only one who never changes. Jesus is the only one who rules forever. He's the only one that we can't lose.

(...)

Paul continues, he says, "In him also you were circumcised "with a spiritual circumcision "by putting off the body of the flesh "and the circumcision of Christ.(...) "When you were buried with him in baptism, "you were also raised with him through faith "and the power of God who raised him from the dead." Paul points here, when he talks about this empty deceit versus fullness of life, he points to the proof of that in baptism.(...) Baptism is how you can have fullness of life. Baptism is how you can have a good, full life. And it's not because of something you do, but it's actually because of Jesus, that you are buried with him in baptism and that you are raised to life with him. And other places in scripture,

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we're told that when you're baptized, you die. Your old self dies, it goes away, and you are brought up into a new life, which is in fact the life of Jesus.

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So it's not only your life with Jesus that you have, but you actually have Jesus's life. He gives you his very life.

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He is outside of us and he bestows upon us the gift of life, the gift of this new life.(...) When we rely on our own power, our own authority to be fulfilled, we come up empty, but the joy and the good news that the gift of Jesus for us is to live his life with him, that he is the ultimate human and he teaches us how to be fully human.(...) And in baptism, he gives us his life. And we die, we're brought back to life with him.(...) And Paul uses this metaphor of circumcision. And I know it's like an uncomfortable thing, so we're not gonna belabor the point. But it's helpful for us to think about this, how circumcision and baptism are connected or how we can learn about baptism through circumcision. In the Jewish world, in the Israelite world, a baby was circumcised on the eighth day and it indicated that that child was part of God's family, that they were different from the other people around them. And they were actually physically different from the other people around them by way of being circumcised this particular way. And so just like when you are born into a family, you don't get to choose your family, do you?(...) And you don't get to decide if you are born or not.(...) No, the ideal thing that happens is that a husband and a wife love each other and out of their love for each other, a child is born.(...) That's the ideal way that it's supposed to happen. You did not get to decide if you were born.(...) And also as a child, you did not get to decide if you were part of God's family. You were circumcised, you were brought into God's family because of your parents. God made his promise to you, not because of anything you did, but it's actually was a promise that he made to you.(...) And so just like that with baptism, you are brought into the family of faith, not by your own will, but by God's will. It's actually God's love for us that then creates new life. Just as a husband and a wife's love for each other creates life in the natural way. And this happens even as an adult. So even as an adult, if you're baptized, it is still not really your choice. And this is why, because somebody else had to tell you about Jesus.

(...)

You did not come up with Jesus on your own. You do not decide on your own one day, hey, you know what would be great? If there's some Messiah who died for me and wants to give me his life. That's not a natural way of thinking. No one naturally comes to that conclusion. Instead, God had to send somebody to you.(...) God had to tell you through somebody else that Jesus is the Christ.(...) And so it's not even a decision that you really make on your own because God assists you in the same way that you are born naturally, you are born spiritually. Out of God's love for you, he sends someone to you. Oftentimes, that's through a Sunday school teacher, through a family member, through a friend, through a preacher, whatever that might be. Somebody else, though, outside of you has to tell you about Jesus in order for you to have new life in him.

(...)

And also, just as in circumcision, your body is fundamentally changed. There's a mark on your body that is different now. In baptism, you are spiritually fundamentally changed. And again, it's not by your doing. It's by someone else doing it to you.(...) Somebody else baptizes you.(...) God uses somebody to preach the gospel to you. God uses somebody to baptize you. It is from somebody else that you receive the gifts of God. It's done for you without your work, without your effort. It's simply a gift.

(...)

And when we try to attempt to take our life for ourselves,(...) we come up empty.

(...)

But when we realize that actually all of life is done for us and is given to us by God, it feels quite full.

(...)

It feels quite joyful.(...) And so when we back up to verses six and seven, this is what Paul writes.

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"As you therefore have received Christ Jesus, the Lord,(...) "continue to live your lives in him."(...) Notice he did not say, "As you therefore have sought Christ Jesus."(...) "As you therefore have decided for Christ Jesus." Not what it says, "As you have received him." This is the reality that we have received Jesus. We have not found him. We have not searched for him. He is the one who has found us. He is the one who has hunted us down. He has sought us up. We are the ones who are being pursued. We do not pursue Christ. He pursues us.(...) And we receive him as a gift.(...) And then we're encouraged to continue to live your lives in him, rooted in him and built up in him, established in the faith just as you were taught. Again, you have to be taught by somebody else. Abounding in Thanksgiving for Paul. All of Paul's writing can be summed up that life is a gift in Jesus Christ. And all of our lives is lived as a response to what God has done. And that primary response is with Thanksgiving.(...) With joy for what he has done for us.

(...)

Thanksgiving is the fundamental reality of our lives. The full life is a thankful life. Because we have received a gift. And everything good comes from God. It comes from outside of ourselves.

(...)

And so we respond to him with Thanksgiving.(...) We respond to him with praise and with joy because we have received Jesus.

(...)

We have not sought him. He has sought us. We have not hunted him down. He has hunted us down.(...) And we get to receive a good life. We get to receive a full life. We get to receive all the gifts of Jesus Christ and they are abundant. Paul says, "Greater than we could even imagine."

(...)

Now our life may not be full of empty deceit. Our lives may not be full of money and things and family and all of these things. Our lives may not be full of philosophy and human tradition, but we are wrapping our hands around understanding everything that goes on in our world. Our life will not be full of that, but our life will be full of Jesus.(...) Because Jesus has given himself to you.

(...)

Jesus has given himself for you and for your good. That you may have a full, good and abundant life. My prayer for you is to receive Jesus today.

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Receive a good, full and abundant life.

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And enjoy an enjoyment of Jesus.(...) Amen.

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We're gonna take some time now.(...) The music team's gonna come up. They'll play a little bit of music. But we're gonna take some time to reflect.(...) And we have two reflection questions in response to scripture that we oftentimes go through. And it's these two questions. What is God saying to me? So we have heard the scripture now. We've heard it expanded. What is that thing that the Holy Spirit has brought up in your heart and mind? What is the thing that really hooked on to you as you heard the word? And what is God inviting you to do in response to that? What is Jesus asking you to do in obedience in response to what you have heard? So let's take a few moments now and do that.

This morning we are going to be in 1st Timothy chapter 4. So I want you to grab the See-Back Bible in front of you or if you you have it on your phone or brought your own Bible that's right. We're gonna be in the New Testament in a book called 1st Timothy. It's right toward gonna be almost to the end of the Bible. I don't know what page it is on in the See-Back Bible. If somebody has it, yell it out for me.

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161. Is that what I heard? 161. This is a letter written by a fellow named Paul who was an Apostle who saw witnessed the risen Jesus and he went around and started churches and preached and he's writing a letter to a young pastor named Timothy who is pastoring in a city called Ephesus. And so this is from his letter from the fourth chapter of the first letter to Timothy beginning in verse 1. This is what we hear. "Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will renounce the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons. Through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared with a hot iron. They forbid marriage and demand absence from food which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected provided it is received with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified by God's Word and by prayer. If you put these instructions before the brothers and sisters you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound teaching that you have followed. Have nothing to do with profane myths and old wives tales. Train yourself in godliness for while physical training is of some value godliness is valuable in every way holding promise for the present life and the life to come. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance for to the sin we toil and struggle because we have our hope set on the living God who is the Savior of all people especially of those who believe. This is the Word of the Lord thanks be to God.(...) Well we're starting a new series this morning called the good life we're gonna spend three weeks talking about what it means to live a good life and how we can live a good life and as most of you in here know my time here at New Life is coming to a close at the end of this month and oftentimes the last thing we say to a loved one or the last one we say to somebody is some of the most important things we want them to know when we're at a loved one's bedside before they die we want to make sure that they know that they are loved and that we're there for them and so I wanted to take three weeks and share with you all some of the last words that really will get to share at least as your pastor that I'll get to share with you and it comes from this it's driven by this desire that I have for each of you that I love you and I want you to live a good life that's what I want for you as your pastor that's what I work for is that you can have a good life and so though over the next three weeks we're going to see what it looks like to have a good full and abundant life and this comes from Jesus himself this is actually what Jesus wants for you as well in the gospel of John Jesus says this the thief he's talking about Satan the enemy he says the thief comes only to steal kill and destroy I came that they that is the believers may have life and have it abundantly the whole reason that Jesus was born that Jesus did his ministry that Jesus did his work for us was so that we may have an abundant life that's what God wants for you to have a good life a full life an abundant life and so we're gonna spend some time talking about that because we are all looking for a good life every decision that we make is toward some sort of end we're trying to get some sort of desired future every decision that we make whether good or bad reveals what kind of life we are wanting to live and sometimes we say one thing and we do something else sometimes we say we want one kind of life but really our actions are showing a different kind of life or we're building toward a different kind of life and so we're digging into this passage in 1st Timothy chapter 4 which this year has kind of been like my theme the theme verses I've been spent a lot of time meditating and thinking about this passage and it's really amazing and I think that it reveals a lot of what a good life is for us so we'll jump right in beginning in verses 1 & 3 this is how Paul starts this section of the letter to Timothy now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will renounce the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons he's writing to Timothy who's passing a church and he says hey the Spirit has told us that in these last times in these end times which started after Jesus was resurrected and will continue until he returns again from heaven we know that in these last times there are going to be lots of folks who trust in Jesus and then renounce them there's gonna be lots of folks who lose or renounce their faith because they're paying attention to deceitful spirits to things that are coming from outside of the church outside of the scriptures they're following something different Paul continues through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciousness are seared with a hot iron he's talking about these false teachers they the false teachers they forbid marriage and they demand abstinence from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth so in this church in Ephesus there were obviously some teachers some false teachers who were teaching things that were different from what the Apostles were instructing the believers something different than what was heard in the Gospels and heard from the Apostles there was some false teaching that was going on here and it's centered around two things one was forbidding marriage demanding celibacy demanding that you live a single life and only a single life and demanding abstinence from foods that there are certain foods that you should not eat and that you cannot eat and so these false teachers were kind of dealing in these two different categories they had this false idea of holiness this false idea of what it meant to live a godly life if you want to be godly if you want to be holy if you want to want to excel in the faith then you can't get married is what these false teachers would say they would say you need to be celibate you can't ever have sexual intercourse you can't have children you can't you can't cleave yourself to your spouse and also you can't eat these certain types of foods certain types of foods either make you unclean or they don't they don't get you closer to God and they make you think that what's right in front of you the normal things of life like marriage and food are evil that they're not real that they're not right in front of you later we also hear that there is what Paul calls old wives tales or silly myths there were there was some sort of belief or some sort of chasing down some sort of secret knowledge there are these old wives tales almost maybe we would say conspiracies out there that these people were believing in and even to this day we still see these two things operate there are people who kind of chase down silly myths silly conspiracies this desire to figure out some sort of secret knowledge that will unlock the way of life that we need the key to a good life that if only you had this secret knowledge that you know you you hear in the Bible that Jesus said this but also Jesus maybe said this too and that's gonna help you really live a good life there are these silly things that come up conspiracy theories or political discourse or also even just more abstractly being concerned with having some sort of comfortable life that's almost like a secret knowledge there just is maybe there's just something that I need to figure out if I just figure out my finances or get that better job or live in that better neighborhood or if I if I just raise my kids exactly this way then it'll unlock this comfortable way of life for me some secret knowledge that I can figure out to live a good life but there are also people who have this false holiness that we can't do certain things or can't eat certain things or that we shouldn't do certain things that what's right in front of us the normal everyday things of life like marriage and work and our neighbors and our families is somehow it's not it's subpar it's not what real life is really about these things still show themselves today but false teachers in this time 2,000 years ago and today have something in common that false teachers will make your faith about you

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false teachers will make the good life the way of life that you ought to live godliness or holiness they make it about you and what you do and don't do what you know and don't know these false teachers were saying hey the way of life is actually about the best way to live or the way to have a godliness or holiness is that you need to do something or not to do something don't get married don't eat certain foods or the way to godliness or holiness or the good life is based on you knowing some sort of secret knowledge unlocking some sort of myth or unlocking some sort of conspiracy and then you can really figure out how to live false teachers always make your life about you they paint the good life as about you and they make faith about you what you do or don't do what secret knowledge you have or don't have and Paul here actually says that these false teachers forbid marriage and demand absence from food but these are things that God created and he created them to be received with Thanksgiving by those who believe and know him Paul continues in verse 4 for everything created by God is good everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected provided it is received with Thanksgiving for it is sanctified by God's Word in prayer Paul writes that all of these things are good and in fact they're not about us at all they're actually about God God created them for us it is God that we are to be thankful to we ought to show gratitude to God because he is the one who gives us things like food in marriage and work and our neighbors this brings the focus of our life of the good life of our faith away from us from what we do what we don't do what we know what we don't know and it brings the focus to God the things that God has done the things that God has given because these things that these false teachers were teaching about not getting married not eating certain foods there are things that God has created and we are to look to God and say thank you and amen that actually the way to a good life is not about us at all but it's actually about God the way to a good life the way to holiness to godliness the way to live rightly in this world is actually about Jesus it's not about us at all but surely you might be thinking that we have to behave a certain way surely there is something that has to do with us well Paul actually addresses this in the chapter before chapter 4 and chapter 3 in verses 14 through 16 this is what this is what Paul writes I hope to come to you soon but I am writing these instructions so that if I am delayed you might you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God which is the Church of the living God the pillar and bulwark of truth great Paul's gonna get down to brass tacks he's writing this so that we know so that Timothy knows how we ought to behave all right Paul how should we behave without a doubt Paul says the mystery of our religion that's also the same word as godliness is great this is what Paul says he that is Jesus was revealed in flesh vindicated in the spirit seen by angels proclaimed among Gentiles believed in throughout the world and taken up in glory Paul writes I'm writing these things so you know how to behave here's how you're to behave the mystery of godliness the mystery of our religion the mystery of the right way of life is great and it's all about Jesus Jesus was the eternal Son of God and he was born of the Virgin Mary he took on flesh to become like us he was revealed in the flesh he was vindicated in the spirit meaning that he healed and he operated with authority over the physical world he was seen by angels which means that he exists both as a spiritual being being seen by angels and a physical being being seen by us that's important in the Old Testament and as Jesus is revealed to be the Messiah he was proclaimed among the Gentiles and believed in throughout the world that means that Jesus was the Messiah who was prophesied to bring all nations to God during all nations into God's family and Jesus was taken up into glory after he was crucified he was brought back to life and he did not die again he actually ascended into heaven and is currently alive still today this is the mystery of godliness this is the mystery of holiness this is the mystery of a good life Jesus Christ was revealed in the flesh has authority over all things he was seen by the angels he's been preached throughout the whole world and believed in throughout the whole world and he lives to this day that's the mystery of godliness that's the mystery of a right way of behaving that's the mystery of how we ought to live the good life even our behavior as Christians is not about us it's about Jesus and when Jesus is at the center of our life then we are living a good life if we jump back to chapter 4 Paul continues and he says have nothing to do with profane myths and old wives tale we've talked about that's those silly things that people believed in instead Paul says train yourself in godliness and that's the same that's the same word as religion before the mystery of religion the mystery of godliness this is the same word train yourself in godliness for while physical training is of some value godliness is valuable in every way holding promise both for the present life and for the life to come living the life as a Christian living a good life is all about Jesus and we get to be trained in the way of Jesus Paul says that we can actually train be trained in godliness be trained in holiness the same way that we are trained physically and physically it has some value but godliness is actually far superior and so we can look at physical training and we can kind of we can do some things about it I'll tell you the most important thing about physical training is consistency day in and day out work if you are training for a marathon there is no way you can get off your couch without ever having run and say today I'm running a marathon you can't do it you're physically you cannot do it you have to train your body to be able to run a marathon but if you get off the couch do you say I want to run 500 feet today and then tomorrow I'm running half a mile and then the day after that I'm running a mile then the day after that I'm running to over time you'll find yourself running a mile if you run every day or train every day and some some form as many of you know over the last 10 to 11 months I've lost almost 90 pounds and that's come from consistency consistently eating the way that I should be eating you lose weight and over the last three months or so I have not been consistently eating well and guess what I haven't lost weight because the consistency hasn't been there but when you consistently train your body there are changes that are made to your body it's the same thing with our life if we want a good life we are trained in the way of holiness trained in the way of godliness trained in the way of Jesus then we see change in our life and this is why here at New Life Lutheran Church we talk about being apprentices of Jesus that Jesus is the expert human he's the master human he knows how to live a good life he knows how to live well and he trains us how to be human how to live well and how to live a good life and we talk about that in three ways by being with Jesus through spiritual habits things like Bible reading and prayer and weekly worship and giving and all of those good things that we become like him and how we think feel and act that over time we actually start to think the way that Jesus thought we begin to feel the way that Jesus felt toward others and we begin to act the way that Jesus acted and then three to do what Jesus did in every area of our lives to see our family and our work and our church and our community and our finances every area of our lives be transformed be changed because of Jesus and to act like him in every single one of those areas you see God wants you to live a full good abundant life that's what he wants for you that's the whole reason Jesus was born that's the whole reason Jesus did his ministry that's the whole reason that Jesus was crucified and resurrected was so that you may live a good full abundant life now and for eternity and this good full abundant life is a life that is full of Jesus not full of silly myths not full of secret knowledge not always trying to figure out the next best thing it's rooted deeply in the truth that Jesus is Lord over your life and that his kingdom works in the world and in you through quiet small consistent and oftentimes unexpected ways Jesus in the gospels he would tell parables and when he would tell parables by the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God he was talking about himself and he says the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed it's the smallest thing smallest seed in the garden but when it's planted it turns into the largest tree in the garden it's a small thing that's how he says that he works that's how the kingdom of God works he also describes himself and the kingdom of God as leaven that is put into into flour to make dough and as you work the dough the leaven gets through the whole batch and it can leaven the loaf it's a small thing that works its way throughout everything in these kind of small quiet consistent and unexpected ways God wants you to have a good life I want you to have a good life I want you to have a full life I want you to enjoy the things that God gives because everything is good in godliness knowing Jesus living the life of Jesus having Jesus work in you and through you train you to become more human to become more and become a better human this has benefit Paul says in the present life and in life to come we actually get to benefit in this life when Jesus is at the center when we realize that our faith that our godliness is not at all about us but actually about Jesus there's actually benefit that we get we get to have a better life because of that our marriage gets to be better the way that we enjoy food gets to be better if we're single our singleness is better our bodies are better our job our friendships all of those things are good and they all benefit from Jesus all of those things benefit when we are trained by Jesus having Jesus at the center of our lives having Jesus as the focus of our lives by turning our eyes away from ourselves and turning toward Jesus it actually frees us it frees us from the slavery of of it frees us from being enslaved to those things that are good it frees us from being enslaved to our marriage or being enslaved to our kids or being enslaved to our singleness or being enslaved to our job or being enslaved to food it frees us and it helps us actually enjoy those things for what they are good gifts things that ought to be we ought to be grateful for things that that we ought to enjoy in this life and in the next life. That forever we get to live with Jesus in the new creation. That we will die and then we'll be brought back to life. That he will remake our bodies and he will remake earth and remake heaven. And we get to live forever with Jesus. We get to live forever in his good world.

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And Paul ends this section with this. It is for this end that we toil and struggle.

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We work toward this end.(...) Enjoying and trusting in Jesus. And enjoying and trusting what he has given us.(...) And enjoying the good life that he has promised.

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This is end that we toil and struggle because we have hope set on the living God.(...) Who is the savior of all people. And especially of those who believe.

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So we, when we believe, we get the benefit of Jesus. We get the benefit in our life now and forever. Experiencing the gift of working with Jesus is something that we are offered now.(...) We get to work toward his desired end.(...) Which means that we can live a good life. Even if we are living in a trailer home or in a mansion.(...) We can live in a good life if we're making minimum wage or if we're making six figures a year. We can live a good life whether or not our family is like a Norman Rockwell painting or if our family is broken. And whatever situation we find ourselves in, we can live a good life because it's not about us.

(...)

It's not about what we do. But it's about what Jesus has done.(...) And we get to experience the work, the gift of working with him toward his desired end. Toward that good life now and forever.(...) And we get the freedom to see our work as part of his work. That it's actually Jesus who is at work in my life. It's Jesus who is at work in my spouse. It's Jesus who is at work in my friend. It's Jesus who is at work in my kids. It's Jesus who is at work in my career. It's actually Jesus the one doing the work. And when I set my hands to this work, I'm working with him.

(...)

We are blessed to be free from the performance(...) in the narrow sense of having to perform at everything we do.

(...)

Because we'll be free to truly love our neighbors, to truly love those around us.

(...)

Jesus wants you to have a good life.

(...)

I want you to have a good life.

(...)

And the good life ultimately is not about you.(...) It's about Jesus.

(...)

But when we make our life about Jesus, we're the one who gets the benefit.

(...)

That's the good news of Jesus Christ.

(...)

It's a free gift for you. You cannot earn it. There's nothing you can do or can't do. There's no secret knowledge you can unlock. It's been given to you. Because Jesus is the savior of all people, especially for those of us who believe.

(...)

Amen.(...) We're gonna take a moment now, a couple minutes here.(...) We're gonna reflect on a couple of questions as we hear the word together. We wanna take the time to ask two questions. You've heard this before, if you've been around New Life for a little while. The first question is this. What is God saying to me? So what is God saying to you? Is the spirit,(...) prick something in your heart? Is there some idea that you've kind of clung onto? What is he saying to you? And two, what is he inviting you to do about that? Is there some next step you can take? Somebody you can talk to, a sin you can confess, a commitment you can make, anything like that. What's the next step that God is inviting you to do because of what he is telling you through this passage? So we'll take a few minutes now and do that.

Matt 7:3-5; Philippians 2:1-8

Pastor Drew WIlliams

One of the worst feelings in the world is when you accidentally walk into a spider web. Am I right? Is that the worst feeling in the world? Because one minute you're walking along and everything is fine. And the next minute you want the world to stop because you know there's a creature on you. You're jumping around, you do a little dance, you try to brush off the web. And no matter how hard you jump around a dance,(...) you can never be fully sure that there isn't still a little spider making a home on your body somewhere.

(...)

Unless, unless you're with someone, right? And then you ask them, "Would you please just come over here, brush off the web, make sure that I don't have a spider still on me." And that is great as long as they're willing to help you.

(...)

Because let's be honest, I wouldn't ask my five year old to help check me for spiders. Number one, she's not tall enough and she's not going to be able to check all the spots. Number two, I've seen her clean her room. I'm not that confident in finishing the job all the way well, right? We're working on that. Another person you wouldn't want to have asked is someone who you know doesn't see very well. Because the last thing you want to say is, "Did you get it?" And they're like,(...) "Yeah, yeah, I think I got it. I think I got it. You're probably fine." In fact, someone who can't see very well isn't a very good person to ask for advice on many topics. Whether it's, you know, how tidy a room is or how you're dressed or anything like that. Just yesterday, my glasses, the one arm broke and I had to like super glue it back together. And most of the day I was walking around with no glasses on, just enjoying the fuzziness of the world. And at one point, my wife asked if, you know, the dishes in the dishwasher were clean or dirty. And I had to smell it to see because I couldn't, I was like, "They smell clean. I'm not sure." And those are not the type of people you want to get advice or help from. But that doesn't stop people, does it? Right? People love to give you advice. They'll give you all the time, even if they're not the best person to give you that advice. And when they do, when they're just trying to help out, what's our natural response?

(...)

Why would I listen to you? Right? We react defensively or we judge them back because we can see that they can't see all that well. So why would we listen to what they have to say?(...) Have you ever felt that way?

(...)

I was thinking about this earlier this week because we're wrapping up our series on fixing relationships called Reassembly Required a Beginner's Guide to Repairing Broken Relationships. So remember, this is just a beginner's guide. This is not meant to replace good relational work or counseling or anything like that. But sometimes what we need is a simple starting point because what we're experiencing in that moment is an immediate conflict, a lack of unity, a missed connection. And is this type of missed connection or miscommunication that leads to a lot of relational conflict, doesn't it? We don't want them in our business, especially when they aren't exactly an expert in the thing that they're telling us to do.(...) But what about when it's the other direction? Because almost all of us will admit that we've been on the other side of that conflict as well, right? Where we've been the one giving the advice because we see how someone else is doing something and we just know. We know how to help them. We can help them. And so we say something like, "Are you really going out dressed like that?"

(...)

Or we say things like, "Stop, you're doing it wrong. Here, let me help you."

(...)

Or we say things like, "You know that thing you were talking about.(...) I think you should just go talk to them and you should say...

(...)

And how do they respond when we offer that type of help?"(...) Whether it's a friend or a spouse or a neighbor, a family member, they usually respond the same way that you do when someone else gives you unwanted help. With judgment, with defensiveness. "Get out of my business!"

(...)

So what's the answer? Are we just supposed to leave each other be?(...) Ignore each other? Let each other just live our own lives?(...) Or are we supposed to chase the other person down and wrestle them to the ground and force them to take what we have to give them?(...) I mean, that might work if you're trying to feed your dog flea medicine, but it usually doesn't work with your spouse or with your neighbor, right? So it seems like the only other option is to just leave them be, to mind our own business,(...) to let them walk out of the house dressed like that.(...) But ignoring each other and slowly drifting away can't possibly be the best model for how God designed us to relate to each other. Even though many of us know people who have done just that, they have gotten fed up, they've gotten sick of the fighting, and so they just resign themselves to the quiet disconnection. They've just resigned themselves to avoiding and ignoring, slowly slipping apart.(...) Maybe you can even think of someone in your life that has slowly gone that direction. And when we look around at our community, when we look around at our nation, it feels like disconnection is becoming the norm.

(...)

Splitting apart into different tribes, the quiet judgment and the loud anger, all of that seems to be becoming the norm.(...) But deep inside myself, I know that that can't be the best way. It feels wrong in our deepest selves to allow the fighting and the isolation to keep going on. We know that we were made for something else, for something better.

(...)

And what about for those of us who follow Jesus?(...) Now, if you're someone who hasn't yet made the decision to follow Jesus with your whole life,(...) then what I'm about to say is just an idea for you to consider. And I'm glad that you're here, and you're welcome to be here while you're still searching on the journey. But for those of us who have decided to follow Jesus with our whole lives, to be a part of what the mission of new life is all about, which is to become apprentices of Jesus, allowing him to transform us to become more like him in every area of our lives. If you're bought in, then we have a very clear model to follow. And one of the Bible passages that we're going to be looking at today gives us some very clear instructions on how apprentices of Jesus are supposed to act when faced with division. So I want to invite you to open up your Bibles with me to Philippians chapter 2. If you're using the Black Seatback Bible, it's on page 152 of the New Testament. And while you're finding it, Philippians is a letter that was written by Paul, a man who had lived through some incredibly difficult relational conflict. But he had always tried to pursue God and God's way. Now, sometimes that led to healing and fixing of the conflicts, and sometimes it didn't go Paul's way. But he still leaned on Jesus as his foundation, rather than reaching and grasping and controlling and coercing those around him to make him feel like he's still in control. And this letter is written by Paul while he's in prison in Rome. So he's under house arrest. He's awaiting his trial, and he's writing back to followers of Jesus in another town to give them encouragement and wisdom. And so we're going to be looking at chapter 2 together, but the letter opens before that, back in chapter 1, talking about how his imprisonment has actually been used by God to spread the good news of Jesus to even more people. This is in verse 12. It's actually helped spread the gospel. People like his guards,(...) people that he would have never been able to talk to otherwise. And I just love it when God uses things that look bad from the outside, but he still uses it to work towards his good. And then he continues to verse 27.(...) He encourages the followers of Jesus in Philippi to not give up on their faith, but to stand firm even when they experience conflict and persecution and difficulty. And then here in verse 29, he gives them a surprising encouragement, saying that God has given them the grace, the privilege, not only of learning to follow Jesus, but also the privilege to suffer for him as well.(...) Paul knows that following Jesus doesn't rid us of our troubles. It doesn't help us fix all the difficulties in our life, because just as Pastor Eric reminded us last week, life often has seasons of suffering, of trouble that we go through.

(...)

And so, Paul says that that is a grace to suffer with Jesus as well as learn from him. And then we get to the passage we're actually going to look at, the main passage we're looking at today. In chapter 2, verse 1, Paul reflects on his own difficulties, and then he turns to talk to his audience about their life situations.

(...)

And he starts out by saying, if there's any comfort in Christ,(...) if there's any, I turned the wrong page, if there's any comfort in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the spirit, any compassion, and any sympathy, I want you to make my joy complete and be of the same mind. He says, if you realize that Jesus is actually able to help us get through the suffering that we experience,

(...)

then here's what Paul wants us to do. Get on the same page.(...) Be unified.(...) Work from the same script. Do everything you can to come together. And so, what does that look like? He continues in verse 3. He says, "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves." He says, don't operate in the way of the world, the way of the world that says, look out for number one.(...) Just look out for number one. That's how a lot of people operate, right? They're just looking out for number one. But when, if that's your main life philosophy, it's showing that you don't think anyone else is ever going to look out for you. So you'd better fight for yourself. We better keep others away. We better push others down so that we can keep ourselves afloat.

(...)

But Paul says, because we know that Jesus has given us life,(...) because we know that the love of God will never leave us alone,(...) because we know that the Holy Spirit is always offering us help and partnership,

(...)

because we know that there is someone else looking out for us. We get to humbly treat others in a way that would surprise the world. We get to serve them. We get to choose to love them by lifting them up instead of pushing them down. We get to actually open our eyes and look at the people around us to see if there's some way that we can help them, some way that they might need help and how we can help them. And then in verse five, Paul focuses in on the main thing. He just says, "Let's be like Jesus." He says, "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus." And in fact, this phrase, "Let the same mind be in you." It doesn't feel that strong, and I feel like it's, I think it's meant to be stronger. The phrase actually literally translates as, "Have the same thinking as Christ Jesus." Have the same process of thinking as Christ Jesus. Another translation for it could be, "Let the same kind of thinking dominate you as that that dominated Jesus."

(...)

And then he shares these poetic words about what that means. He says, "Have the same attitude as Jesus, who, even though he was God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself." He says, "Even though he was God, even though he had the fullness of the power and the knowledge and the ability of the creator of the universe intrinsic to himself,(...) he didn't grab, he didn't hold onto, he didn't clutch the power or parade it about to show off that he was God." No, he emptied himself.(...) He left behind his position of prestige.

(...)

He stepped down into our human existence.

(...)

And even that wasn't where he stopped. If we keep going in verse 7, "He took the form of the slave, and being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death."(...) He says, "Even after choosing to let go of his powerful position and to enter humanity, he then went further to show us how far he's willing to go to serve us, to save us.(...) He allowed himself to be killed.(...) He allowed himself to die for you,(...) for me."

(...)

So it's pretty clear if we're following the model of Jesus, for followers of Jesus,

(...)

for apprentices of Jesus who are learning how to live the way that Jesus lived,

(...)

we're called to serve like Jesus, to get into Jesus' mindset where we don't grab control,(...) but we serve because of the love and the grace and the forgiveness that we have received. It's a pretty clear thing.

(...)

But it's also a pretty glaring problem.

(...)

Does anyone else see the problem with this?

(...)

I mean, you might see lots of problems, but the biggest problem that I see, and this stands out the most to me, I'm not Jesus.

(...)

You're not Jesus.

(...)

If I'm going to try and serve like Jesus, I'm going to mess it up. We just talked about this at the beginning. Every time I try and get in there and help, I'm getting my fingers into things in ways that get in the way of the other person, in ways that cause them extra stress. And when other people try and serve me like Jesus, I don't always receive it well. I always get very judgy when people try and offer me help. And I go, really? I'm going to listen to you?

(...)

But Jesus actually talks about this. He talks about it at the end of his really famous Sermon on the Mount. You can flip there with me if you'd like. It's in Matthew chapter seven. Also put it up on the screen.(...) Matthew chapter seven is the end of his Sermon on the Mount. And this is where he says,(...) why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but you don't notice the log in your own eye? Have you heard this passage before? Right? And he continues, he says, or how can you say to your neighbor, let me take the speck out of your eye while the log is in your own eye.

(...)

Now, this is exactly what we described at the beginning of our message, right?

(...)

We don't like receiving advice from someone that we know is more messed up than we are.

(...)

And Jesus calls it out.

(...)

It's way easier to notice someone else's speck. It's way easier to notice someone else's mistake,

(...)

even when we don't notice a much larger issue that we might be dealing with in our own life. But then Jesus calls it what it is. This is verse five. And actually, I think he says this with a smile. He says, you hypocrite.

(...)

Now, here's why I think he says it with a soft tone of voice. The word for hypocrite is actually brought over directly from the Greek word, hubocritase.(...) And hubocritase means play actor. It means pretender. It's actually the word used when you've got a troop of people who are putting on a skit. You're at the county fair, they're doing a skit, they're doing a comedy. You got someone dressed up like a clown walking through the crowd, playing pranks on people, singing silly songs, trying to get people to laugh. And you look at that person, a hubocritae, a play actor, and you know that's not how they really act.

(...)

That's a character.(...) They're putting it on. They're being silly.(...) They're pretending.

(...)

They're just playing around.

(...)

It's like, it reminds me of this moment actually at the end of vacation Bible school just two months ago this summer. We had the most kids we've ever had. There's 150 kids at Bible school this summer. It's amazing. And we had a big goal for the kids to actually join Jesus in his mission of serving other people. We asked him to raise money by bringing in coins, bringing in a loose change. And we're going to donate all the change to Hope Life Center. Hope Life Center is one of the local missions partners that we support here. They're a women's clinic that provides free prenatal and postnatal care to women and to moms. And so we wanted to just bless them. We wanted the kids to be a part of that. We said, if you raise $200,(...) we're going to throw a pie into Pastor Eric's face. And let me tell you, they raised that money so quick. I think the first night. I think the first night. And then we said, okay, well, we got to raise the bar. Okay, if you raise more than that, then we'll throw a second pie into our youth director, Mike. We'll throw it in his face. And they hit that goal. Then we said, okay, well, if you guys keep going, then we're going to get our music director, Danny. We're going to get a pie in his face too, because these were all people up on stage helping out with different things, known by the kids. And they're so excited. And by the end of the week, we would raise over $500. And so first Pastor Eric gets a pie in his face and everyone cheers. And then Mike gets a pie in his face and everyone cheers. And then Danny comes and he plays it up. And he gets a pie in his face and everyone cheers. And they had passed every single goal. And so, of course, we had to get a pie in someone else's face. And so they all wanted it to be, but I said, let's get this kid.

(...)

She's been helping us be an MC. McKenna had been helping us. She's like, I want to do it. And I said, that's great. You don't have to wash it out of a beard. That's wonderful. And so then we got McKenna in the face. And of course, everyone cheered, but then also booed because they wanted me to get hit in the face with a pie.

(...)

Now, I knew that there was another pie backstage,(...) but I played it up saying, well, I'm really sorry, kids.(...) No more pies. I guess we'll just have to wait till-- and then, of course, the kids are like cheering and yelling and stuff. And I'm like, what is it? What are you guys all saying? Because Mike had gone back there and gotten the pie and he was sneaking up on me like this. And so then I play it up and I look one way, but he ducks. And I look the other way, but he ducks. And I look out there like, what are you talking about? And in mid-sentence, he just smashes me in the face with a pie. I think we even have a picture.

(...)

It was hard to see through those glasses for a while after that.

(...)

But I was playing it up.(...) It was fun. It was hilarious. But it was clearly play acting. And everyone knew it. It was silly. Like, how silly is it that I wasn't able to see Mike right behind me with a big old pie while there's 100 kids cheering and pointing and stuff?

(...)

And that's just what Jesus is saying, too.

(...)

He's saying how silly it is that you focused on this little speck in someone else's eye while you're walking around with a 2x4 sticking out of your eye.

(...)

How silly. What a play actor you are. What a pretender you are. What a hypocrite.

(...)

Don't do that. That's not what you're supposed to do.(...) And most people, when they read this passage, they stop right there. And they say, see,(...) don't be a hypocrite. It means don't get in someone else's business because you've got your own stuff, too. You are messed up, too. You have a log in your own eye, too.

(...)

But if we keep reading, that's actually not where Jesus stops. He keeps going. He says, you hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye,(...) then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.

(...)

Because helping someone else is good.

(...)

Investing in our relationship by serving someone else is good.

(...)

But if we're going to follow in the model of Jesus, if we're going to allow him to transform us to become more like him, if we're going to have the same mind as Christ, we serve others by first focusing on our own blind spots.

(...)

Because working on our own blind spots is actually a way to help others.(...) Because it allows us to see better so that we can serve better.

(...)

When you see better, you can serve better. And honestly, when we go through the process of partnering with Jesus to remove our blind spots, that's usually a great preparation to be able to help others with a similar situation. Because we've all been there, but it's so different to tell someone you should fix this.

(...)

It's way easier and way better to receive when someone says to you, you know, I've dealt with his blind spot before,

(...)

and Jesus has been working on me to heal it. And the steps that I've taken actually might be helpful for you as well. It's totally different when someone shares part of their journey and how that might help you as well. And can you just imagine how great it would be if everyone in your family offered help by reflecting on their own journey first?

(...)

We would have people who have overcome addiction,

(...)

being able to gently and lovingly walk alongside others in the same battle.

(...)

We would have people who have survived marriage fights, being able to compassionately share ways that they've reconciled with people so that the people who are currently in the middle of that tension can glean from that.

(...)

We would have people who have over time grown to be less angry, grown to be less arrogant, grown to be less judgmental, being able to offer grace-filled correction when they interact with others who are trying to grow in those same ways.(...) And can you imagine how that would change our families? How that might change our friend groups? Can you imagine how that would change our church to be a beacon of compassionate healing for our community?

(...)

But even better than that,(...) it would be an opportunity to point to Jesus.

(...)

Because do you know what happens when we share how God has helped us heal and grow? It shows how God is a healer,

(...)

and God doesn't give up on anyone.

(...)

See, when we focus on our own blind spots, when we partner with God to experience healing and growth in ourselves,

(...)

our faith grows, seeing how God's love and grace extends way farther than we could ever know. And then when we get to share that process, then we can open up the journey of how God has worked in our weakness, on our blind spots, on the log that was blocking our ability to see.(...) When we share that process,(...) it invites others who have a similar story to lean in close. It invites others to experience healing from God as well.

(...)

See, when we don't play act about being perfect,

(...)

when we don't pretend that we have all the answers,

(...)

when we stop being hypocrites who are just trying to fix people,(...) but instead we are open about how God has been and is continuing to work in us,(...) it helps others get real.

(...)

It helps others draw close to Jesus because it points to Jesus. And that's the whole point of being an apprentice of Jesus. Because yes, we want to experience a better life.(...) Absolutely. Yes, I want to help fix relationships in my life. I want to help fix other people's relationships. Absolutely. But the whole point of following Jesus is to point to Jesus because He is the only true source of life.

(...)

He is the only source of full healing. He is the only one who is worth following so that we can experience that full abundant life now and in eternity.

(...)

And so that's why Paul encourages us in our passage, we looked at first,(...) Paul encourages us that if there's any comfort in Christ, to have the same mind as Christ Jesus. And then he continues, he says, who?

(...)

Being fully God, he still did not regard equality with God as something to be clutched, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, stepping into our human frail existence.

(...)

And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself even further and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. And then Paul just keeps going. He says, therefore, God exalted him. He lifted him up. He pointed everything towards him. He exalted him even more highly and gave him the name that is above every name.

(...)

Jesus is not just some lowly failed preacher who got killed on a cross and forgotten. No, he is Jesus. He is the Christ, the savior. He's the Lord of lords, the King of kings. God lifted him up so that in the name of Jesus,

(...)

every knee should bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father.

(...)

See, when we serve like Jesus, when we partner with him, allow him to work in us so that we can help others,(...) when we commit to the daily journey of being an apprentice of Jesus, so that we can be transformed by Jesus together for the sake of others,(...) that points to him as our Lord.

(...)

That points to Jesus as our King.

(...)

That gives glory to God as more and more people are drawn towards Jesus.

(...)

It's not to point to us and to show how our life has been fixed or changed or bettered.

(...)

It's to show how Jesus has worked in us to show how he is the best.

(...)

So how do we fix to work, how do we work to fix broken relationships?(...) Well, it's not done by ignoring each other's flaws,(...) just letting each other be. And it's also not done by rushing in and trying to fix each other or coerce each other.

(...)

Jesus tells us to take the log out of our own eyes first so that we can help others.

(...)

In other words, we allow him to deal with our stuff first so that we can join him in his work of serving others.(...) That's the goal for apprentices of Jesus. We're not called to be perfect.

(...)

We're called to be aware, aware of our own brokenness, aware of the grace that we've received, aware of how God is inviting us to extend that same grace to others.(...) And when we take on the mind of Christ, when we humbly serve others,

(...)

we're investing in the kind of relationships that can actually heal.

(...)

So let's commit to that today.(...) Let's commit to being people who serve like Jesus, starting with our own hearts,(...) because that's how broken things get fixed when we partner with the healer and we choose to follow his way together.

(...)

Isn't that good news?(...) Amen.

Romans 12:9-18

Pastor Drew Williams

 

I was talking with a good friend this week about a conflict they were having with a family member, and then they said it, “It’s hard to be a Christian sometimes.”

 

They said that, because the conflict was making them WANT to act very NOT Christian-like. And I’m sure all of you have felt that before, right?

 

[SLIDE 2] lower third blank

One of the pastors that I learn a lot from is Andy Stanley, and he tells about a time when he was in counseling with his father, and they were just…stuck. And the way Andy tells it is just so relatable:

 

[SLIDE 3-4]

“My dad saw things HIS way, and I saw things the RIGHT way.”

 

And he couldn’t figure out why they weren’t making progress. “Dad, if you just see things MY way, then we’ll be on OUR way!”

 

And you might be laughing right now because you’re thinking, “Finally, someone who understands me!”

 

Because isn’t it true whenever we’re facing conflict with someone that if they would just see it YOUR way…everything would be okay?

 

[SLIDE 5]

That’s why, for the next few weeks, we’ll be addressing a question that many of you have been asking: “What is wrong with these people?!”

 

[SLIDE 6]

So we’re starting a new message series entitled “How to Get People to See Things Your Way.” And I promise this will be a super practical series. You can use these methods with anyone.

 

[SLIDE 7] lower third blank

This will work to convince your HS student that earth science is important, even when they hate earth science, because you’ll be able to show them that getting a good grade in earth science will allow them to attend a better college, and THAT in turn will help them get a better career so that they can make more money so that they will be able to better take care of YOU later on!

 

These tools will be so practical that they will help you convince your mom or your MIL to not glance around the house with that quiet look of judgment every time she comes over, and that way you can actually have her over more without the passive aggressive comments.

 

And, as we’ll see in this series, in order to get someone to see things your way, and better yet, in order to get them to apologize for how wrong they’ve been… (I know, I know, FINALLY something practical) … you have to master relationship MANAGEMENT. Because, we all know that people NEED to be managed.

 

[SLIDE 8]

So, I was so appreciative to find out that Pastor Andy Stanley had developed what he called the C4 Approach to Relationship Management. And, I assure you, it’s completely a coincidence that C4 is also the term for a powerful explosive.

 

But the thing you need to realize about the C4 Approach to Rel Man is that this doesn’t bring people TOGETHER, because that requires compromise and all that. No, this method brings people towards YOU and your way of thinking, and if it’s done right, they won’t even realize that it’s happening to them.

 

[SLIDE 9]

So, to introduce you to the C4 Approach, we have to learn the 4 C’s: Convince, Convict, Coerce, Control. Go ahead and say those with me…

 

Again, I think some of you are laughing because you’re doubting that I’m serious, but if you doubt the effectiveness of the C4 Approach, just consider how effective these have been in bringing our nation together…

 

The way to manage other people and get them to follow your view is to Convince, Convict, Coerce, and Control. But you’ve got to be careful NOT to share this with anyone, especially not the people you’re hoping to change, because the main thing that is wrong with them is that THEY think YOU’RE the problem…!

 

And if you tell them about the 4 C’s, they might try to use them on you, and you might end up moving towards THEIR view. Because, we can see how EFFECTIVE this is. THIS is the way forward, right?

 

Wrong! We KNOW this isn’t the way forward. These methods don’t work on you, or me, or anyone else. But, for some reason, we still reach for these 4 C’s first, don’t we? And they usually make things worse. They DON’T heal anything. They don’t cause people to grow or become better versions of themselves.

 

[SLIDE 10-11]

And even when people are trying to be diplomatic, they STILL end up using these methods. Have you ever heard someone say, “I’m sorry IF I offended you…”

 

That’s actually a controlling statement because the translation is “You’re too EASILY offended…because what I said wouldn’t have offended most people.”

 

[SLIDE 12-13]

Or, have you heard someone say, “I said I’m sorry, why are you STILL upset?”

 

That’s convicting or coercing language, because what they actually meant was, “I’ve done MY part. You should be FINE now…

…Since you’re not fine, clearly something is wrong with YOU.”

 

And even though we know these 4 C’s don’t work, we keep reaching for them. Meanwhile, the others around us can clearly see that the relationship is broken. And it’s usually the people around us that can see how small the conflict actually is.

 

[SLIDE 14] blank

How many of you, when you were growing up, knew about an estranged uncle, or cousin? Someone who you know you’re related to, but who isn’t around hardly ever, and when you finally find out what happened to cause the rift in your family, you think, “That’s silly! Just call her! Just talk to him!”

 

But instead, the people in the conflict choose to just keep up the “holiday avoidance dance.” → “When are THEY coming? / How long are they staying?”

… “Oh, I’m sorry, but we can’t stay that long…we don’t want to overlap too much with their time…” for the 17th year in a row. Bummer, we can’t seem to make the schedules line up!

 

And even when you’re at an event where you can’t avoid them: you know, the graduation or the wedding, everyone seems to be practicing eye-avoidance. It’s uncanny how both groups can spend hours in the same party without ever “seeing” each other.

 

Until some tragedy happens. And then you’re both at the hospital. Or you’re at the funeral. It’s highly emotional, and in the face of the tragedy, this huge mountain of conflict seems smaller, and smaller, and smaller.

 

And it’s in those moments that people DO and SAY what they SHOULD have done and said…a long time ago. And that’s why we’re actually starting a message series called “ReAssembly Required.”

 

[SLIDE 15]

Because all of us have relationships in our life that we wish were better. That we wish we could fix or heal. And if we don’t learn how to, we’ll end up missing out on YEARS of relationship that could be happening now. And we don’t want to wait until the tragedy causes us to come back together.

 

And you might be wondering why we’re talking about this in church?

 

[SLIDE 16]

Well, it’s because I have run out of topics. Just kidding. We’re talking about this, because here at New Life, we’re learning how to be apprentices of Jesus in every area of our lives. We’re practicing Jesus’ way of life so that we can be transformed to become more like Jesus in how we think, feel, and…act.

 

[SLIDE 17] ref

And, as followers of Jesus, we don’t actually have a choice with whether or not to work towards healing relationships. Our main passage that we’ll be looking at today is in Romans ch 12, which can be found on p124 of the NT in the black, seat-back Bibles.

 

[SLIDE 18] vv1-2

And this is the chapter that starts with the very famous statement about “presenting ourselves as a living sacrifice,” because that’s our way of worshiping God in response to the mercy he has shown us. And it encourages us not to be CONFORMED to the ways of the world around us, but to allow God to TRANSFORM us to become more like Jesus. And then it tells us what this looks like:

 

[ROMANS 12:9-18]

 

[SLIDE 19] v9

Because of God’s mercy, let’s worship God and let him transform us. So we’re called to LOVE, but not in a fake or fickle way. Not just when we’re on good terms with those around us. We’re encouraged to “let love be genuine.” Without pretense, literally, it means let love be without play-acting. Don’t fake your loving behavior. CLING to what is good.

 

[SLIDE 20] vv10-11

“Love one another with mutual affection, and OUTDO one another, LEAD THE WAY with showing honor.”

Don’t HESITATE with enthusiasm, but be ardent – be STIRRED UP in your spirit – so that you can serve the Lord, be SUBJECT TO the Lord.

 

But just know, this isn’t a list of “do this because you’re SUPPOSED to, or else…” Remember how this section started: “Because of God’s mercy…”

God has already pressed in towards you. God has already made a way for you to experience healing and hope and joy and growth. So, based on THAT, here’s how you GET TO respond.

 

[SLIDE 21] vv12-13

Be glad in hope, hold your ground in suffering, be DEVOTED TO prayer. Keep yourself busily engaged with prayer.

Because if God has already made the way to come towards you, and now he’s beckoning you to follow him so that you can heal and grow and experience joy in following his way of life, you’d think that you’d want to HOLD ON to him through everything that comes.

 

Because following God doesn’t mean life gets easy. It means that life isn’t LONELY anymore. It means that WHEN you have hope, you can be glad in it because God is with you.

 

WHEN you experience tough times and suffering, you can HOLD ON to God to get through it. WHEN you experience everything in life, you’ve got a direct line to the creator of the universe through prayer, so you don’t need to try and survive alone.

 

And when you realize that you’ve got God who you can depend on, it allows you to live differently. So give to the needs of the servants of God, AND pursue hospitality to strangers. Look for ways to bless people you don’t even know.

 

[SLIDE 22] vv14-16

And HOW do you practice hospitality? Verses 14-16 give us examples.

Bless others, EVEN IF they curse you. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. In other words, practicing hospitality can mean entering in to the space and experience of someone else and just BEING with them in their experience. Step towards them.

 

And you don’t have to be arrogant, you don’t have to be a social climber just to get ahead. You’re already brought in to the family of God, who else do you need to get ahead of? Instead, associate with the lowly. Be okay with accommodating to people in more modest situations than you. Be okay with simplifying your life so that you can rub elbows with people who might think they are alone at the bottom.

 

You used to be there. You’ve felt that before. And God stepped DOWN into your situation, didn’t leave you alone there, and is in the process of healing you and helping you grow. So now we can do the same for others!

 

[SLIDE 23] v17

Don’t repay evil with evil, because life isn’t all roses all of a sudden. There will still be awful things you’ll face. There will still be evil situations you need to overcome with God’s help.

 

But, BECAUSE you have God’s help, you don’t need to “get back” at anyone. It’s not needed anymore. Because of God at work in your life. So instead, choose the good and beautiful ways to react. Choose the response that makes others stop and say, “Wow, that’s different. That feels like goodness.”

 

[SLIDE 24] v18

And in all of these things, remember that you CAN’T control others. We already know that convince, convict, coerce, control doesn’t work. So, “as far as it depends on YOU…” As much as you are able to decide YOUR own actions, your own responses, live at peace with those around you. MAKE peace with those around you. Choose to act in the Way of Jesus. Because of how Jesus has acted towards you.

 

[SLIDE 25] blank

And what I DON’T want you to come away with is to think that I just gave you a new list of burdensome jobs that you HAVE to do. Being a follower of Jesus isn’t about “well you’d better act better now.”

 

That’s too hard. I’m not strong enough. Remember what my friend said earlier this week? Being a Christian is hard.

 

But the good news is that it’s not up to us. Living like Jesus isn’t something that we try and muscle through with our own power. It’s not something that we try to exert more EFFORT with. It’s not something that we’d “better do”, and if we mess up, then we’d “better pretend.”

 

[SLIDE 26] 2cor 5:17 nlt

Look at how Paul says it in this other letter, in 2 Corinthians. This is actually the theme verse of our whole church: “Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”

 

That means that even when you FEEL like you haven’t changed that much, being claimed by Jesus means that you’re actually ABLE to act differently now!

 

[SLIDE 27] v18-19

And this is all a GIFT. Not something we earn. God has done all the hard work. God has reconciled us to him. God has invited us into the work of reconciling others.

 

[SLIDE 28] v20-21

And now we GET to be God’s ambassadors, his messengers. We get to tell others that God wants to heal THEM too.

 

It’s a gift. Jesus took the payment for our guilt. All the ways we have and will continue to mess up — Jesus paid it in full, so that we could learn how to live the way God created us for in the first place.

 

[SLIDE 29] blank

The good news of God is that forgiveness isn’t the whole story. Forgiveness is only HALF of the equation.

 

And we know this, because we can forgive someone without that actually changing anything between us. That’s because forgiveness is way easier than reconciling. We can forgive without ever even ATTEMPTING to reconcile.

 

Because when we forgive, we hold all the cards. We hold all the control. “Well, because I want to be the bigger person, I’m going to forgive them. But, no, I’m not going to give in to their demands.”

 

Reconciliation is harder because we have to give up something to move towards someone else. It takes submission and vulnerability. And that’s hard. That can feel TOO hard, when we try and rely on our own power.

 

[SLIDE 30] know

But the good news of God is that he wasn’t content to MERELY forgive you.

 

God’s forgiveness was a means to an end. God’s forgiveness removed the obstacle that was standing in the way of your relationship with him: sin. God’s forgiveness took care of that guilt, that blockage.

 

But he wasn’t done yet! He didn’t just turn us loose. Once that obstacle was taken care of, God KEPT GOING to repair our relationship with him.

 

[SLIDE 31] 2cor5:21

God came to us in the person of Jesus to take away the penalty of our sin, SO THAT we could be made right with God.

 

And when we want to learn the proven path for repairing our relationships with others, we can follow Jesus’ way. Because he’s already cleared the obstacle through forgiveness, and kept going to reassemble our relationship with God.

 

So, on the basis of God’s mercy, because he’s already done that with us, we now GET TO begin that process with others. And sure, it’s hard, but we don’t do it alone.

 

[SLIDE 32] do

And so the first step to repairing a broken relationship is to fix what isn’t working.

 

It doesn’t work to Convince others to see our side. It doesn’t work to Convict others of how THEY’VE messed up too. It doesn’t work to Coerce others and manipulate them. It doesn’t work to try and Control others.

 

[SLIDE 33] blank

The first step is to fix the way WE try to do those things. The first step is to STOP trying to do those things. The first step is to let God work in OUR hearts to fix us.

 

When I have a broken relationship, the way I act and try to fix THEM isn’t working. I’m what isn’t working.

 

But God has reached out to me. God has given me mercy and forgiveness. God has begun to work in my heart to bring healing. And God has committed to KEEP GOING with me along this journey so that I can continue to grow and heal and be transformed to become more and more like Jesus in how I think, in how I feel, and in how I act.

 

And it can be a long process sometimes, but God never gives up. And because I didn’t earn that – Because it’s a gift, and he just keeps showing me love and grace – well, it makes it more possible for me to share that love and grace with others. Even the others who have hurt me. Even the others who have broken trust with me.

 

It’s a process, but the first step is to fix what isn’t working, and to allow God to work in MY heart, so that I can then make that step towards reconciling with others, because THAT’S the mission we’re invited into as the family of God.

 

We GET to work towards forgiveness and healed relationships, because God has started that work in us.

 

We GET to share love and forgiveness with people who don’t deserve it, even people we don’t know very well, because God has done all the work of bringing us back to himself through Jesus.

 

We GET to show the world how brokenness isn’t forever, because we follow the One who can heal and repair and restore ANYTHING.

 

So let’s say yes to God today. Let’s take that step of allowing God to reconcile to us. Whether you’ve never done that before, or whether you’ve been following Jesus your whole life, God is STILL reaching out to you.

 

So let’s receive God’s grace again TODAY. Let’s give up trying to control everything around us. And let’s choose to share the forgiveness AND the willingness to reconcile, because of what God has done and is continuing to do through Jesus at work in our lives. Amen?

Mark 2:1-17

Pastor Drew Williams

One of my favorite days that I can remember was when I was running late to get home. My wife, Megan, and I were going to be getting dinner with another couple, and my friend, Steven, and I had run to the store and were late getting back.

[SLIDE 2] lower third blank

For some reason, Steven had decided that it was a good time to “enjoy our time out” and “chat about whatever” and “take his time looking at what type of snacks we might want to grab for later.”

And I was enjoying hanging out with him, but now that we were in the car, and I realized we were 15 minutes behind, I was starting to stress a little bit.

So when we walked in the front door and all the people popped out and yelled “surprise” and starting singing “Happy Birthday”, I was so disoriented that I started singing with them. I thought, maybe we’re singing for Steven, not thinking at all that he and I had birthdays only a few days apart.

It turned out that Megan had planned a surprise 30th birthday party for me, and it was a triple celebration with two other friends who had birthdays within a week of me.

The “dinner” I was running late to had been a sham. No double date that night. Instead, ten guys got to hang out, eat wings and pizza, enjoy cold beverages, and chat about whatever came to mind. And it was amazing.

Parties are good days, aren’t they? And I love days like today, because it FEELS like a party. We get to celebrate with people as they receive Jesus’ invitation to new life, and then we’re going to have lunch together and fun activities this afternoon during our Harvest Fest.

Parties are good days, because they are full of celebration and joy, and they help us feel connected to others and realize that we’re not alone and there is so much good in life.

Unless, of course, you don’t really know anyone at the party, right? And almost every party has someone who feels a little left out. Who feels outside of the “in” group. Who feels they don’t quite fit in.

Maybe that’s a personal feeling, or maybe that’s because others at the party MAKE you feel that way. And we’ve all experienced that in some way or another at gatherings of people. There’s going to be SOME people who look around and wonder, “Why are THEY here?”

It’s the group of people who are huddled around with a hushed conversation that always seems to stop when someone else walks up. And you just KNOW that they were talking about someone, gossiping about the rumors, laughing about the failures, pitying the sad situation.

And if that’s something you’ve ever been the recipient of, I’m really sorry, and I know that makes parties NOT the best types of days. But if you’ve ever experienced that, it’s actually a GOOD thing for you, because Jesus LOVES to find the people on the outside and welcome them in.

[SLIDE 3]

And as we’ll see in our Jesus story today, Jesus liked to party, and he loved to party with people that others stayed away from. So open your Bibles to Mark ch2, which can be found on p28 of the NT in the black, seat-back Bibles.

As you’re finding it, This story is very early in Jesus’ ministry, but he’s already getting a bit of a reputation as someone who brings healing and hope wherever he goes. And he doesn’t seem to mind the outcasts, the types of people who are usually left out.

In fact, as we’ll see in our story today, Jesus likes to help those people be brought IN. So let’s read together…

[MARK 12:1-17]

[SLIDE 4] v1-2

It seems like whenever Jesus comes back into town, a crowd gathers. A party starts. Because Jesus has gotten the reputation as being someone others WANT to be around.

“Jesus is back, go gather everyone!”

“Jesus, can you tell us about God, hope, heaven, what life can be like without Roman oppression?”

So, over the course of the welcome party, Jesus starts to teach, and the crowd that is listening doesn’t even fit in the house, but is spilling out onto the street, which probably gathers an even bigger crowd of people who were just walking by and wanted to know what was going on.

[SLIDE 5] vv3-4

But it also attracted some folks with a mission. They had a friend with a physical need, and for some reason, they thought Jesus might be able to help. But when they couldn’t get through the crowd, they got creative.

Their friend needed help, and they weren’t going to give up! So they climbed up on the roof somehow, CARRYING a paralyzed guy on a mat, and then made an opening in the roof by removing the woven thatch top, and then digging through the clay supports.

This was NOT sneaky. They were NOT just hiding in the corner because they didn’t know anyone. These friends were BOLD. And as the roof opened up, sending clay and debris down into the house below, they lowered their friend down, right in the middle of where Jesus was gathered with everyone else.

[SLIDE 6] v5

And Jesus didn’t yell. He didn’t scold them for wrecking the roof. Our text said that he SAW their faith. He noticed how determined the four friends were. He saw how bold they were, not for their own sake, but for their paralyzed friend. In fact, they were willing to get in TROUBLE if it meant helping their friend.

And so Jesus saw THEIR faith, the faith of the friends, the fact that they trusted that Jesus could do something for man, and that trust caused them to take action. He saw their faith, and then he says to the PARALYZED guy, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

It’s not the paralyzed guy’s faith that leads Jesus to say this. It’s the faithful actions of the FRIENDS to bring the paralytic to Jesus, and Jesus gives him something he didn’t even know he was asking for: forgiveness.

[SLIDE 7] blank

Why didn’t Jesus just heal him right away? Well, in that culture, the philosophy of the day was a lot like what we would describe as karma. If something bad happened to you, it was probably because you did something bad to deserve it. So when they saw someone who was paralyzed, everyone figured that God had punished him for something awful. “And if he’s such a bad guy, let’s just stay away from him. We don’t want any of his bad juju to rub off on us.”

So this guy not only is dealing with being unable to walk, he also deals with most people judging him and whispering about him and avoiding him.

So when Jesus says, “Your sins are forgiven”, he is doing it to heal the guy’s heart. No, God isn’t staying mad at you. You are forgiven! And, Jesus said it publicly so that everyone listening would hear it too. Don’t judge this guy anymore.

[SLIDE 8]

Because Jesus can heal wherever you’re hurt. And he knows us better than anyone else in the world. He can forgive every way we’ve been hurt and hurt others.

And I just want to point out again that Jesus gives forgiveness BEFORE this guy has done or said ANYTHING. Forgiveness from God isn’t something we EARN. It doesn’t depend on us.

It’s a gift from Jesus. All we do is turn to him and receive from him, whether we turned around ourselves, or whether we have a friend who gently brings us back to Jesus.

Some of you might have been invited by a friend today. God still looks at YOU with love and grace.

It doesn’t matter whether you feel like you belong or not. God reaches out to you with forgiveness.

The paralyzed guy was an outcast. And we have that still today. People look at us and make assumptions as if they know us.

Got a lot of tattoos? You must have a past.

You’re a single parent? You must have a failed marriage.

Are you dressed a little dingier than some? You must be down on your luck, so we’ll pity you.

Got a nice car? You must be loaded and trying to flaunt it.

But Jesus doesn’t see us that way. He looked at the paralytic and said, “CHILD…” He uses a term of affection. He doesn’t say, “Who invited YOU?!”

He says, “You’re mine. I claim you. And I give you forgiveness.”

[SLIDE 9] vv6-7

And the religious people listening didn’t like that AT ALL. Because “only God can forgive”, so what is Jesus doing? Is he saying HE’S God?! Or is he just saying empty words that he can’t back up in order to become more famous with people?

[SLIDE 10] vv8-9

And Jesus somehow reads their minds (wow, miracle) and responds to them, even though they weren’t saying their disagreements out loud. He says, “I’m not using the term “forgiveness” casually. You’re right, words are easy, but actions are harder. So, is it easier to say I forgive someone, or is it easier to say I can heal someone?”

Obviously, that’s a rhetorical question, because how could they disprove whether or not he can offer forgiveness? But healing? There’s a clear way to see whether that’s possible…

[SLIDE 11] v10-12

“So,” Jesus continues, “in order to PROVE to you that the forgiveness I give is real, let me heal the guy, too. Because if I can do what I say I can do with the healing, then you’ve got to trust the forgiveness thing.”

And Jesus turns to the guy and says, “Stand up, take your mat, and walk home.”

…And all eyes are on the paralytic. What will he do? Will he trust Jesus? Will he obey? Or will he say, “no thanks”? Will he rather stick with his mat because it’s what he knows and he doesn’t want to risk being ridiculed?

But he chooses to obey Jesus. He gets up, and WALKS. And everyone is amazed at what they saw and they glorify God. Because they KNOW that healing can only come from God. And Jesus proves that he can heal WHEREVER you’re hurt.

[SLIDE 12] vv13-14

So later on as Jesus is walking along, there’s DEFINITELY a crowd following him, hanging on every word. And as he was walking along he SAW Levi and INVITED him to come along. He invited him to obey.

There is a whole crowd being taught, but Jesus singles out one guy, Levi. And you might be listening right now, and you might feel like you’ve been a part of the crowd your whole life. But Jesus SEES you and he’s INVITING you to follow him. He’s inviting you into his way of life.

And did we notice that Levi didn’t DO anything to earn Jesus’ attention or invitation? He was just sitting there. Sitting at his job. His awful job. Because Levi was a Jew who was working for the Romans, collecting taxes from his own community, his own people, and helping the oppressors stay in power. Levi was probably also getting rich in the process. So, talk about a guy who was an outcast in his own community, to his own family.

The paralytic was someone who people thought had “probably” sinned, and that’s why God punished him. But Levi? He was ACTIVELY betraying his people, so you KNOW that he was hated and judged every single day.

[SLIDE 13] v15

But Jesus? He goes right to him, invites him along, and then invites himself over to Levi’s house for a dinner party. And he’s there with a bunch of the types of people that Levi could associate with: other outcasts and tax collectors who were hated by the others.

And I’ve got to pause really quick to point out the repeated theme of friends here. Our paralyzed guy was brought to Jesus BY his friends. What if we could all be like those friends? Who can we help carry to Jesus, who can we point to him?

[SLIDE 14]

Maybe someone just came to mind, and I want to encourage you to invite them to come back to church next week with you. We’re going to be starting a very practical series on how the Bible gives us a proven path to repair broken relationships. So if you know anyone who could use some pointers on how to begin the process of repairing and healing a relationship – with their spouse, with their kids, with a neighbor – invite them to come sit with you next week.

[SLIDE 15] v15

And that’s actually what we see in the second part of our story, because Levi has JUST been invited to walk alongside Jesus, and HE’S inviting his friends too! Levi isn’t some super strong Jesus follower! He’s some guy who has received kindness from Jesus like two minutes ago and he’s already bringing his friends along, because he knows that the kind of hope that Jesus brings is something that needs to be shared! Who is God telling YOU to share with? Who is God inviting you to reach out to?

[SLIDE 16] vv16-17

So Jesus is at a party with Levi and his friends, and the religious people are there again, noticing this. And they don’t like it. What the heck is Jesus doing? First, he’s speaking as if he’s God, and NOW he’s hanging out with all the wrong people.

These are the wrong friends to have, Jesus!

Have you ever been the “wrong type” of friend? Maybe others have stayed away from you. Maybe when you were younger, dads didn’t trust you with their daughters.

Maybe you’ve been told you were a bad influence.

I mean, if you’ve ever been the “wrong type” of friend…Jesus would go straight to you! Because Jesus doesn’t stay away from outcasts. He doesn’t steer clear of broken people. He doesn’t ignore people with a past.

[SLIDE 17] v17

He said it best himself: He CAME for the sick. He came FOR sinners. Healers spend time with sick people. Jesus like to party with sinners. Because he can heal wherever we’re hurt. And he WANTS to bring healing.

[SLIDE 18] blank

So, if you’re listening right now, and your life is great and you don’t have any problems or failures, you have my permission to stop listening.

But if you know you’re sick somehow because the world has beat you down…

If you know you’re broken somehow because life has kicked you around…

If you know you’re messed up somehow because you keep doing things and making choices that hurt yourself and others…

…then Jesus came for YOU.

Because he’s a healer. And he knows you were made for more than this. You were made for more joy, and peace, and love. You were made for more gentleness and self control. You were made for more generosity and patience.

Our hurts are calling for a healer, and Jesus goes to wherever there is hurt in order to bring healing. Jesus can heal WHEREVER you’re hurt.

So don’t hide from Jesus. Don’t cover up your hurt.

That’s a natural reaction when we’re hurt, isn’t it? It’s a natural response to cover it up. Protect yourself. Don’t show vulnerability.

We say things like, “I don’t want pity, so I won’t tell anyone about this.” or “I don’t want to be taken advantage of, so I’m not going to admit my weakness.”

But if you don’t attend to your hurts, if we don’t let a Healer help, it can get infected. It can scar permanently. It can heal wrong and keep causing problems later on.

[SLIDE 19]

But Jesus can heal wherever you’re hurt, so we’re invited to bring hurts to Jesus.

If you’ve got hurts, bring them to Jesus. If you have a friend who is hurting, bring that friend to Jesus!

Because Jesus has the TRUE cure for our brokenness. Hiding won’t cure us, it just keeps us alone.

Numbing the pain with alcohol or shopping or porn won’t cure us. It justs avoids our issue and gets us deeper into different problems.

Trying to TAKE from the world or from others won’t fill us, because nothing can truly fulfill our lives apart from Jesus, because we were created for more. We were created for a better way of life.

And Jesus’ way of life is what he’s inviting us into. He invites us through the grace of his sacrifice and beckons us to follow him through his forgiveness, and that’s how we begin to experience his life.

His way of life is how the Holy Spirit works in us to heal us, to transform us to become more and more like Jesus, to help us join Jesus in his work of inviting more and more people to the party.

And it’s not because of anything we’ve done to earn his love. There is no entrance test. There are no prerequisites before we can ask for forgiveness.

Jesus has SEEN you, even when no one else sees you. He has called to you, even when no one else wanted you. He has claimed you as his child, adopted you into his family through his death and resurrection, and is promising to never leave you as you learn how to follow him each and every day.

Because he loves you. Because he came for you. Because he wants you to spend eternity with him at the party in heaven. Isn’t that good news?

There’s a quote I’ve heard a lot, but I don’t know where it originally came from, “Variety is the spice of life.”

 

It means that just like adding spices to the ingredients of your meal can completely change the meal and make what used to be bland into an exciting dish, the variety of choices in life is what keeps it from being bland or boring.

 

[SLIDE 2] lower third blank

And I’m definitely someone who appreciates variety in life. Even though I have some areas of my life where I am a creature of habit, there is something in me that yearns to be able to choose something new or novel.

 

And I think all of us like to have choices, don’t we? The ice cream chain, Baskin Robbins, has become known for its “31 flavors” of ice cream. Coffee shops spring up all the time and draw a crowd to try out their new and novel recipes.

 

Streaming platforms like Netflix and Disney are completely built upon the idea that we want to be able to choose what we watch, instead of just turning on the TV and seeing whatever has been programmed for us.

 

But all the choices and options in our society have also created a new phenomenon called choice paralysis. Have you ever experienced that? Where there are TOO MANY choices, and you don’t know what to pick?

 

You sit at a new restaurant, and are handed an entire NOVEL of all of their menu items, and you have to spend 30 minutes just reading all the choices and then don’t know how to narrow it down.

 

You turn into the cereal aisle at the grocery store, or the chip aisle, and you’re overwhelmed with all the options. Do I go with name-brand or store brand? Are they really any different? And what size? Family size? Jumbo?

 

Or here’s one that my wife does all the time: you sit down on the couch and turn on a streaming platform like Netflix and then you spend 45 minutes just scrolling through all the OPTIONS of what you COULD watch, and then you’re tired and you’ve never actually started anything! Anyone else do that?

 

That got me thinking about the difference between having to choose something, and having someone else choose for you, or BEING chosen for something.

 

Being chosen means that it’s clear what you have to do. When you’re on the playground and you’re chosen for one of the teams for dodgeball, you know what to do. Participate on this team and win the game.

 

When I was in college, I was involved in a few theatre plays, and after the auditions, they would post the cast list. And if I was chosen for a part in the play, I knew what to do next. Start learning my lines, participate in the rehearsals with the cast, and try and do our best to create a great experience for the audience.

 

When you are chosen for a job, you know what to do, because you have someone else who has CHOSEN you and invited you into a mission.

 

[SLIDE 3]

And in our Bible passage today, we’re going to see how God has chosen US. And he’s got a plan for us. And he’s inviting us to join him in his work so that more and more people can know and follow Jesus.

 

So let’s open our Bibles to Colossians ch 3, which can be found on p156 in the NT in the black, seat-back Bibles. And as you’re finding it, I want to remind you that we’ve spent the last few weeks in our series called Dream Bigger, where we are learning that God is calling us into his family and his mission, and when we partner with him, he’s able to work through us to accomplish more than we could ever ask or imagine.

 

The last two weeks, we’ve been learning from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, where he’s telling them that their previous way of life before they started following Jesus was the type of life that feels more like death. It leads nowhere.

 

But God has made them alive with Jesus, and invited them into this journey of learning how to follow Jesus and let the Holy Spirit work through us. And when we join Jesus in his work, it will blow us away to see what Jesus can do through each of us.

 

Today, we’re looking at a different letter Paul wrote to a different group of Jesus followers who were asking a lot of the same questions. Now that they had started following Jesus, they weren’t sure how it should change the way they live. Is believing in Jesus just something in our heads? Can we still interact with the rest of the people around us who don’t follow Jesus? Do we change our behaviors?

 

And Paul encourages them, saying, YES! Following Jesus is supposed to change you. It frees you from old ways of death and slavery and anger and sin. Following Jesus is the process of being rooted and established in God’s love so that every part of your life can be an overflow of God’s love flowing into you. Therefore, he then encourages them with the passage we’ll read together. So let’s read…

 

[COLOSSIANS 3:12-17]

 

[SLIDE 4] v12

“Therefore, based on the fact that Jesus has healed you and claimed you and is continuing to grow you… recognize that God has CHOSEN YOU.”

 

You used to be standing against the chain link fence, but God has called your name and chosen you for his team, for his family. And he’s made you holy, which means to be set apart. To be consecrated for a special task.

 

And he calls you his beloved. His cherished one.

 

[SLIDE 5] v12b

“Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, consecrated and cherished by God, here’s what you’re supposed to do now: CLOTHE yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.”

 

And I like Paul’s choice of the word “clothe” here. Because we get clothed every day! And I would assume that most of you get dressed in the morning, before you’ve interacted with anyone outside your house. At least, I hope that’s the case.

 

[SLIDE 6] lower third blank

But what would it look like if we chose to begin each day getting dressed with these things Paul lists? Because God has chosen us for his family and his mission, we choose to put on the appropriate uniform each day.

 

What would it look like for us, as we were putting on actual clothes, we also thought about getting dressed in compassion for the people we will run into? How would it change our outlook if we chose to put on kindness at the beginning of the day?

 

How would it affect our desire to listen to God’s guidance if we were clothed in humility before the day began? Or meekness? How would it affect the way we interact with others if we intentionally got dressed in patience and asked for God’s help with those things for the day ahead?

 

I bet it would be similar to getting dressed for a specialized job or a fancy event. You’d be intentionally putting on a uniform or a fancy outfit, and the process of getting dressed in that also gets you in the proper mindset for what lies ahead.

 

That’s what Paul is saying: You’ve been chosen by God. He’s picked you to be adopted into his family, and we have a family dress code. He’s chosen you for his work laid out for this day, and you’re going to need some special parts of your outfit.

 

You’ve been set apart because of his love for you, and that changes how you can interact with each other.

 

[SLIDE 7] v13

So bear with one another in the family of God, have patience with each other. Why? Because THEY have been chosen by God too! They have been set apart because they are cherished by God too! And so are you, so have patience with each other, and forgive each other if there is any complaint between you, just as the Lord forgave you!

 

Paul’s letter to the Romans reminds us that it was “while we were still sinners, while we were still in rebellion against God, while we were still acting like enemies to God’s way of life, EVEN THEN Christ CHOSE to die for us so that we could be raised to life and brought into God’s kingdom way of life.

 

And what does it look like to forgive each other just as the Lord forgave us? Well, it takes love for the other person, for one. But I also love the reminder in our Prayer Guide when it breaks down the part of the Lord’s Prayer about being forgiven and forgiving others.

 

[SLIDE 8] blank

Here’s what it says, “When we turn…” So “Ask God to check your heart…”

“We can even choose to forgive people in advance!”

 

Because of God’s love for us, and the grace we’ve received through his forgiveness, we can choose to pre-forgive someone, knowing that they have, and they will continue to wrong us.

 

[SLIDE 9] vv14-15

And like we’ve mentioned already, this is really only possible because of Love. God’s love that he gives us to wear intentionally every day is what leads to unity. Wholeness. Shalom.

 

And we’ve been CALLED to peace (Shalom) as a unified (made one) body of Christ. We’re all separate and unique, but God is continually forming us TOGETHER.

 

[SLIDE 10]

That’s why we talk about the fact that we’re all on a journey of being transformed by Jesus, TOGETHER, for the sake of others. Because God has CHOSEN us to be a part of his family, and he’s leading the way for us to be a part of his mission.

 

[SLIDE 11]

This is sometimes difficult to stick with as followers of Jesus, because everything around us tells us that WE should be choosing things that WE like individually.

 

So we often spend our time and focus choosing what WE want to do. I spend time focused on what I want to accomplish. Or what I want to buy. Or what I want to experience.

 

And sometimes, our choices lead to good things in life. Sometimes, we’re dealt a situation we wouldn’t have chosen. And sometimes, our choices get us in hot water.

 

But the main issue is that if we go through life only focused on OUR choices and desires, we’re limited to what WE can accomplish.

 

But as we’ve said already, God is calling us to DREAM BIGGER. He’s chosen us, consecrated us for his plan, and cherishes us as his children.

 

We’re TOGETHER set apart for his mission, and we’re TOGETHER cherished as his family. And we’re CALLED to operate as a family, TOGETHER.

 

[SLIDE 12] v16

And we see that in the last few parts of our passage. Paul tells us to teach each other and admonish each other. The word translated for teach means to be instructed on what to DO. So we’re supposed to help each other learn what to DO as followers of Jesus. That’s not just the pastor’s job, or the Leadership Team, or the Bible study leader.

 

We’re ALL called to teach each other, and help each other learn what to DO, how to participate in the good works that God has set out in front of us in advance, just like we talked about the last few weeks.

 

AND, we’re called to admonish each other. This word means to warn or counsel each other on what is not wise, what to STOP.

 

In other words, ALL of us are supposed to be helping each other on this journey of learning to follow Jesus with our whole lives.

 

[SLIDE 13]

That’s why we have as one of our core values as a church “We, not Me.” Because we know that following Jesus isn’t done alone. It’s a JOY to be transformed together for others. And we show this through love and care and teaching and helping each other, and by honoring one another to glorify God.

 

[SLIDE 14] v17

And that’s actually where Paul ends the passage as well. “Whatever you do, through speaking or acting, let it be done in the name of Jesus, pointing back to Jesus and his work, so that we can give thanks to God the Father through him.” – to give him glory.

 

Doing everything in the NAME of Jesus is just like any time a team gives a team cheer. When our football team is about to come back and score, we do it in the name of “Da Bears!”

 

William Wallace in Braveheart pumped up his men to fight “For Freedom!”

 

King Leonidas made sure all his soldiers knew they were fighting “For Sparta!”

 

And as followers of Jesus, Paul is encouraging us to do everything we do, everything we say, in the name of Jesus.

 

[SLIDE 15] blank

How would that influence our actions and behaviors? If we sat down and said we were “Eating lunch in the name of Jesus.” Would we be more mindful of how the food in front of us is a gift from God? Would we be more mindful and kind with waiters?

 

What if we made a phone call in the name of Jesus? Would that change how we speak to the other person, realizing they bear the image of God as well … that Jesus died to save them as well?

 

God chose you for THIS…he has chosen you to be a part of his family for his mission.

 

And we can CHOOSE to say “No, thank you.” We can choose to disobey and walk away from the life he is offering to us. But then we’re back to trying to figure out how to make life work for us, constantly unsure what our next step is and whether we’ll be able to take care of ourselves or the ones we love.

 

But if we accept God’s call, if we say YES to the fact that God has chosen us, then we get to grow in our obedience one small step at a time.

 

[SLIDE 16]

And every single time we get together, we always try and ask ourselves two of the most important questions for every Jesus follower: What is God saying to me and what is he inviting me to DO about it?

 

And if you’re paying attention, my sermons are normally my way of sharing MY answers to those two questions. I talk about the main theme that stands out to me from the passage, and then I give ideas for how we might respond to God’s invitation.

 

And this isn’t just for our own personal growth, but it helps us grow TOGETHER as a whole church family, because we were made for community like that. God actually designed us to learn and be formed by others, and to help others grow in the process.

 

And if the past few years taught us anything, it’s that we can’t go back to a life of sticking to ourselves. The pandemic and social unrest in our nation has taught us how much we NEED others.

 

And Jesus invites us into a FAMILY, TOGETHER.

 

[SLIDE 17] blank

We’re all invited to take next steps in our faith TOGETHER. Each of us, no matter where we are in our journey of following Jesus, each of us have a next step that he’s inviting us to take so that we can learn to trust him more, to be more bold for him, or even to learn how to participate in his work.

 

So I can’t tell you what YOUR next step is, but I do want to offer this as an idea for all of us. If it’s true that God has chosen us to be a part of his family and he’s inviting us to join him in his work of reconciling and redeeming everyone around us, then I would suggest we try and DO what the last verse says:

 

[SLIDE 18] v17

Whatever you do, in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Whatever you DO, do it in a way that points to Jesus. Do it in a way that highlights Jesus. Do it in a way that give thanks to God and lifts Jesus high.

 

[SLIDE 19]

How can I point one person to Jesus this week?

I don’t need to figure out how to save them, or lead them to Christ for the first time. I don’t need to mandate a huge long prayer. I don’t need to convince them to memorize a Bible verse. But what could I do that just points back to Jesus?

 

Because God has chosen us for this. He’s chosen us for his mission. And he’s calling us to Dream Bigger about the impact of our actions, especially when we join what Jesus is already up to around us.

 

[SLIDE 20] blank

When we join what Jesus is doing, he’s able to work through our actions in ways that are far more abundant than we could have imagined. He’s able to bring glory to God through our lives through even the simplest of things.

 

And this isn’t something that is put on us as a burden. This is isn’t Mission Impossible, where he gives us a mission, should we choose to accept it, and then says that if we fail, he’s going to disavow any knowledge of us.

 

God has already chosen us. He’s already forgiven us. And he’s already prepared in advance the ways we can join him in his work.

 

So don’t get lost in a big or HEAVY call…just ask Jesus which ONE person he’s inviting you to point to him this week. What name just popped into your head?

 

If it’s a member of God’s family already, someone who believes in Jesus, then maybe God is inviting you to point them to Jesus through encouragement or wisdom.

 

If it’s a stranger, maybe you can point them to Jesus by offering kindness and compassion.

 

If it’s a friend who isn’t a follower of Jesus, or doesn’t have a strong faith, maybe God is inviting you to point them to Jesus by just sharing patient love with them.

 

And if anyone presses in and asks why you’re acting in that way, you get to just say something like, “Because I’ve received love from Jesus, and I wanted to share that with you…”

 

This isn’t something to fear, or feel like its a heavy burden. Jesus’ yoke is easy, his burden is light. He’s prepared in advance the good works he’s called us to join him in.

 

We GET to let our words and actions be done in the name of Jesus, and that’s how we give thanks and glory to God.

 

[REFLECTION]

So what is God saying to you? What is standing out?

How is he inviting you to take a next step in obeying him? What is he inviting you to DO?

Let’s take this next minute or so to reflect on that so that we can join Jesus in his work this week.