Discernment Radar Wk. 1
Colossians 2:1-7
Transcript
Okay, so we're in chapter 2. Here's the thing. Our culture is confused when it comes to a lot of stuff. Like, we're all over the place. I think some of it has to do with we have the internet now, and so we have all this access to information. I saw a thing that said, if you met somebody from 100 years ago, the most difficult thing to explain to them would be that you have a device in your pocket that gives you access to all the information in the world, and you use it to watch videos of cats and to get into arguments with strangers.
So, like, that's what we have access to. We got a phone book was sent to our house the other day, and my wife was like, do you want this? And I was like, no, I know where the internet is. Like, I can get there, so I don't need a phone book. But the truth is, we've got a lot of information, and not a really good way to sort it.
We have a lot of information. We have access to studies. We have access to what scientists are learning. We have access to what great minds in the world think, but we don't have a really good way to filter it. And so I even got to just thinking about simple things. I remember when I was growing up, milk was, like, super good for you.
And then for a while it was like, well, we're not so sure it's good for you. Like, it doesn't help your bones as much as we thought, and it might be the reason you're fat. Like, there was just like, so now you can have skim milk, which is basically white water. It's just lying to you. It's not actually milk. And so, like, there was, and then it came back, and it was like, no, milk's good.
And they had the big advertising. And so I was just, so I just got on Google and started typing in why blank is, and then Google fills it in for you. So I did milk first. Why milk is, and immediately my options are bad for you, because Google fills in related searches. So why milk is bad for you, why milk is good for you, why milk isn't good for you, which is the same as the one above it.
It's just trickier. Why milk is white and why milk is bad for cats. Those are the things you can search when it comes to milk. So I could get on Google, and I could stand up here and give you reasons why milk is bad or why milk is good just as easily. So I started thinking, okay, if milk has this, what else do we have that's pretty baseline stuff that Google's going to help me either fight for or fight against.
The next one is water. Why water is important. Why water is good for you. Why water is so important. Why water is bad for you. Why water is important for life.
At least bad for you is further down the line than on milk. But there's probably some sort of a study that proves that water is bad for you that scientists did. Just for the record, water is not bad for you, unless we're in one of the boil water things that Columbia does constantly, because we can't apparently not need to boil our water on a regular basis. So water, I did eating. So eating, pretty baseline thing.
Why eating is important. Why eating is good. Why eating is important for weight loss. I need to check that one later. Why eating is bad for you. Here to tell you, there's two things you need to stay away from.
It's water and eating. The internet says they're bad for you. I did sleeping, because I thought if people had a problem with eating, why sleeping is good, important to your health, healthy, so important, why sleeping is awesome. The internet agrees. Nobody's making an argument against sleeping. Sleeping is great.
It just got better. As you went, ends in awesome. Nobody's like why sleeping is bad for you. The internet would get rid of them. That person would be wrong. So we have people willing to argue that you shouldn't eat, but nobody's against sleeping.
Then I started doing some things that are really important to me. Bacon. Why bacon is bad for you. Why bacon is healthy. Why bacon is amazing. Why bacon is called bacon.
Why bacon is the best food ever. Which really doesn't even need to be on the internet. If you've had bacon, you know why it's the best food ever. And then I checked another one that really means a lot to me. It's fried chicken. Why fried chicken is bad.
Bad for you. Unhealthy, good for you. But right there in the middle, why fried chicken is racist. And I'll tell you, that made me feel so good about fried chicken. Because you know how people would be like, meat is murder and stuff. This fried chicken is racist.
I'm glad we killed it. People would be like, you shouldn't eat so many chickens. What about a chicken? I'd be like, you want this racist chicken to live? This chicken hated Filipinos. And I'm glad that it died.
It deserved it. Now pass me the hot sauce. So just so you know, fried chicken deserves to die. It's racist. All of us should eat fried chicken and get rid of racism. Because those racist fried chickens.
I guess if you bake it, it's not racist. They only take the racist ones and fry them, I guess. I don't know how that works. But here's the thing. We have access to an inordinate amount of information. We have access to studies and all of this kind of stuff.
And people would back these things up with facts and reasons why. And you'll hear all the time, well, studies have shown or doctors say. And we've got all of this coming in. And we don't have a really good way to sort it out. We have a constant flow of information. But we don't have a good way of filtering what's good and what's bad and what's healthy and what's right.
And I'm not even just talking about, those are just fun examples. I'm not talking about when it just comes to food. But in more important life issues, we are constantly bombarded with ways to think, ways to feel. And we just don't have a good framework in America for how we handle that. How we process what's good and healthy, right, wrong, or otherwise. And so we're in the sixth week of Colossians.
And Paul is writing this book to the Colossian church. And a lot of times Paul would write a letter to a church and he'd have a specific thing that he was mad about. Like that he was angry about or that he was fighting against. In 1 and 2 Corinthians, he's answering specific questions. There are even times where you can tell he's like quoting them in response. Like you said this, let me respond to that.
In the book of Galatians, he's arguing against people that said you needed to be good Jewish people in order to be good Christians. And so Paul doesn't beat around the bush. He starts off with like, hey, my name's Paul. What the heck is wrong with y'all? And like he says some really mean things in the book of Galatians. That's why it's one of my favorite books.
He just goes after them when it comes to adding religion to Jesus. And so in the book of Colossians, he doesn't really do that. He talks about, you can see that he's talking about different concepts. And so it seems as if more he's combating just culture around them and culture inside the church that was slowly pulling them away from Jesus. And so it wasn't a big thing. It wasn't this one specific area, but it was just this constant onslaught.
And so it actually is helpful for us because we're in the same situation. I saw a statistic that said, because studies have shown, that the average American is going to see 2,000 to 5,000 advertisements a day. 2,000 to 5,000 advertisements a day. So thousands of times a day, we're going to be told, you need this to be happy. You need this to be complete. You need this to have fun.
You need seven razors to shave your face and not just four. Loser. Like we're going to be told over and over again that we need something else to make us happy, to make us complete, to fulfill us. I saw a statistic that said the average American watches 34 hours of television a week. Now in some places, that's a full-time job.
Definitely a part-time job. 34 hours a week. That's average. So some people in this room probably watch a little more, some people a little less. But here's the thing.
Each of us for hours a week are having worldview pumped into our brain. How we should think about romance. How we should think about finances. How we should look at success. How we should know what masculinity and femininity is. Like what makes a man a man and what's to be honored in females.
Like we're having that pumped into our brains. And how do we sort out what's helpful, what's right, what's good, and what's not. So that's what Paul is going to point them to. And so what we're working to do for the next two times that we get together is to build a discernment radar. We just want to have something. Discernment just means to make a good decision, to judge rightly.
And so Paul's giving them, he's equipping them in chapter two to discern well, to judge rightly. And so radar just means something that, you know, the little, when you're watching a movie and the little thing's spinning around and they're like watching for an enemy aircraft or something and it's just the little green thing. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, radar, yeah. And then it goes, boop, boop. You know, they can see it or whatever.
That's what we're talking about. So we're talking about we all have some sort of a system to gauge what's coming in and whether it's healthy, good, or right. And so some people in this room, we all have one. You all have some way that you gauge what's coming in. Some of us, super intense, like we're way over here. We believe like stuff our grandmother said and maybe some things Billy Graham said.
And if you're the president of the United States, but it depends on which team you're on. We'll listen to you a little bit. Like that's it. Like we have like a very tight amount of who we'll listen to. And then some people more in the middle. Well, we have some gauge for how we what we believe and what we won't believe.
And then some people just pretty much we don't have a system at all. If it just sounds good. It's like, cool, that's true. And so here's the thing. We've gotten to where we're so used to having information pumped in that we've stopped sorting it. We've stopped thinking through what's good and right.
And the truth is, it's the same way that water can run over a rock and and bore out a channel. And it's happened slowly and it happens over time. But eventually, a river running over rock will dig its own hole. And for some of us, that's what culture is doing to us. We have constant cultural onslaught of information and ways that we should believe. And we don't notice it.
But it's happening slowly and slowly and slowly to where we're drifting and how we think and what we believe. And so that's what we're going to be looking at in Colossians. We'll be in chapter two. And so I'm going to go ahead and start reading. Verse one. For I want you to know.
This is Paul writing to the church. For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea. And for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the fullness of assurance and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. And so he says, I want you to know how much I struggle for you, how much I'm fighting for this, that you may be encouraged being knit together in love.
So he says that y'all would be together. Being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom, in Jesus, are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible argument. So he says, I want you to be knit together so that you can grow in Christ. And I'm telling you this so people won't delude you, trick you with things that sound smart. That's what he's talking about.
So here's the thing. Paul's going to say that what our discernment radar is, and that's all we're talking about tonight is what it is. The next time we get together, we'll talk specifically about how it functions and how we kind of catch things. But what he's talking about tonight is what it is. And he says this. It's submission to Jesus in the context of community.
So we hold things up to Jesus in the context of community, that we were knit together so that we can grow in the fullness of understanding of Christ. You can go ahead and skip to the Colossians slide. Don't show the one with the other. Yeah, there you go. We'll get to the other one later. There you go.
Yeah. That we would be together and we would submit things to Christ. So here's what happens. We constantly have a lot of viewpoints pumped into our brains. And so I think sometimes as Christians, we like run into the bookstore and we run over to the Christian living section and we feel like we're at home base or something like safe. That sign says Christian.
Or we flip it through the channels and we cut it to like, oh, TV preacher, we're good. He's going to talk about good Bible things. That's not actually always the case. We have to submit everything to Jesus. We have to submit everything to Christ. It's about him.
And so what's the criteria for how we do this? Like what's the criteria for even with Christian things? Like they have cool hair. Is that like what we're shooting for? They have a TV show. So obviously, I know what they're talking about.
That they pastor something. I wish that was true. I wish that if someone was pastoring a church, that meant that they were pointing people to Jesus. But that's not always true. What is it? They seem trustworthy.
Like they wrote a book. They have a doctor in front of their name or a PhD after it. See, a lot of times we have information being sold to us, given to us, we're reading books about, and it actually isn't pointing us to Jesus. And so what Paul says is it's got to be in submission to Christ. It's got to point us to Jesus. It's got to be about him.
So you heard about blood moons? Anybody? Not in a long, some people have heard about blood moons. People, a guy wrote a book about blood moons, because there's going to be blood moons this year, which a blood moon is a way that Jewish people describe a certain type of lunar eclipse, I think, or solar eclipse, but I think it's a lunar eclipse. And so they're freaking out because there are blood moons, which is a type of lunar eclipse, landing on major Jewish holidays. There's a big book written about it.
And it's a Christian book about how we as Christians should be thinking about, worried about blood moons and what they mean for us. Okay, first of all, it's not a super big deal that blood moons land on Jewish holidays, because Jewish holidays follow a lunar calendar. So if there's ever going to be a blood moon, it's going to be on a Jewish holiday, just for the record. So that's how that works. Secondly, the Bible mentions a few things about prophetic, the moon will turn to blood, but it does not camp out there, and it's not a major thing, and it's not super described. And so for us to run off into some sideline small issue that doesn't point us to Jesus is actually not appropriate.
Because Paul says, the understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So if we have any Christian teacher standing up and pointing us to some hidden treasure, some hidden mystery, and it's not in Jesus, they're actually pointing us in the wrong direction. And so I've actually gotten into conversations with people before, Christians who are telling me, oh, but these blood moons. Somebody said, but Jewish scholars say, and I let them just talk for a while, and then I said, yeah, Jewish scholars miss Jesus when they're studying the Old Testament.
And the Old Testament's about Jesus, so I'm glad they found this blood moon stuff, but I'm not sure they're hitting on much when it comes to how we're supposed to grow and know and what we understand to be true. Harold Camping, anybody know who this cat is? He had a radio program. He did Bible math. Numerology, I think is what they call it. It's where you take random Numbers in the Bible, and then you do math, which sounds horrible.
And then he figured out when Jesus was coming back, when the world was going to end, I think is how he did it. And so there was a bunch of, like, billboards. This was a big thing up in Lynchburg, where I was at the time, but, like, it was a thing. And he said the world was going to end at 6 p.m. Which time zone, bro? Like, how's that going to work?
Is it Eastern Standard Time? And some people asked him, because he said that, and people asked him, and he was like, at 6 p.m., wherever you are. Which means that the world's going to end until it hits a time zone and wait. No, no, no, wait for it. Wait for it. There we go.
It doesn't make any sense. And what he's saying is he's found secrets, he's found mysteries, he's found knowledge, he's found understanding, and it's not in Jesus, it's in something else. And so what Paul's going to say is that if anybody comes with mystery, secret, knowledge, wisdom, and they're pointing you to something other than Jesus, it's not right. Now, those examples are a little bit easier, although they are big mainstream Christian things. But how do we do this in a very simple day-to-day basis?
How do we know if the information that our aunt or our best friend just told us over coffee points us to Jesus or doesn't? How do we have a functioning radar for when people are talking to us that we grow in our knowledge of the gospel, that we grow in following Jesus or something else? So I'll give you a few examples. You're a dude, and you're wanting to get married. You have a desire to meet a lady and to get married. And so you're talking to someone about this, and it's like your aunt, and she's super nice and has really cool blue hair, and so she's talking to you about how to meet a lady.
She's Christian, you know, in church, and her advice to you is make yourself a good gift, that God gives good gifts, and so you need to make yourself a good gift. So you need to get your finances in order. You need to have a job. You need to, you know, if you're a little bit overweight, like you need to get healthy. Like her advice is make yourself a good gift, and then God will give you as a good gift to someone else. And that's the advice.
Okay. That's actually not bad advice, but does that point us to Jesus? Is that what the gospel says? That we work on ourselves, that we make ourselves good, and then he owes us? Is that the gospel? That you do good religious things, and then God owes you something?
No. It's that we're completely messed up, that we don't deserve anything, and that in his grace he grants us things. That in his grace he gives us things. So yes, good advice. Take a shower. Yes, use shampoo.
Get a job. Sure. Quit eating things that end in Edo. Absolutely. But God doesn't owe you anything on the back end of that.
You don't earn a spouse from God that way. That's not how that works, and that actually doesn't point you to Jesus. It points you to legalism. It points you to moralism. It points you to hard work, and then he owes you something. And so nice advice, but wisdom, knowledge, mystery wasn't found in it because it didn't point you to Jesus.
Okay. You're a, um, you're female, and you've gone from guy to guy. She's gone from guy to guy, and she's constantly just needs a man to be in relationship with, to have a relationship with, to know that she's okay. She has to have a man, and so this has been a problem. It's kind of derailed some things in her life, and so she's sitting with a counselor, and the counselor tells her, here's what you need. You need to get a job.
You need to be successful. You need to be able to stand on your own two feet, and then you won't need a man. You'll be your own person. That's the counsel that's been given. Okay. Is that good advice?
Does that point us to Jesus, or does that point us to something else? Where, where are we trying to grow? Do we, as we take in advice, as people say these things to us, we have to submit it and see, how does this fit with the gospel? How does this fit with what we know about Jesus? Okay. The truth is, she does need a man, and his name is Jesus.
She's not complete by herself. She doesn't need to be self-sufficient. Getting a job is fine, if she needs to be able to operate on her own, but the goal isn't to be a successful, self-made woman, to be empowered. She actually needs to find rest, and hope, and life, and be a complete person because of Jesus. And then, yeah. Have a man, don't have a man.
Be successful in a job. Don't be successful in a job. But the goal isn't to find something outside of herself on earth to make herself complete, but to find Jesus, to rest in him, to find fulfillment and satisfaction in him, so that what she's looking for in a man, she finds in Jesus. So, yeah. Get a job. Don't have to have a man.
Sure. But realize that hope and life is found in Jesus. All right. Here's one. I've seen this a good bit. Hanging out with some people, Christian people.
Somebody's, like, super depressed. Just, maybe not even depressed isn't the word, but, like, just feels, unworthy feels, like there's no, there's no way God loves me. They have this guilt. And so what I've seen people do is they'll sit around them and start telling them why they're special, why they're good, why they're loved. Here's all the great things about you. And so it could be a spouse, sit down and say, here's why you're wonderful.
Here's why you're good. Here's why you should feel good about yourself. Or it could be a group of guys in, like, a community group, and one of them is just like, man, I just feel, every time I mess up, I mess up so much, and I just don't feel like God could love me. And everybody says, no, you're doing great. You're trying really hard, and you did that nice thing for that kid two months ago. Remember?
Remember that? You pumped up his basketball. Like, God wrote that down, and he loves you. And, like, they do this, like, you should feel good about yourself. And the truth is, that's encouraging. That's nice to say to someone.
But if my standing before God is based off of how I feel about myself and how good I feel like I'm being at the moment, you're not pointing me to Jesus. You're pointing me to me. And as soon as I stop feeling good about myself, I bottom out again because my rest and my hope is in something other than Jesus. And so what they ought to say is, hey, man, be encouraged for these things. This is where Jesus is at work in you. And know this.
You don't have to feel good about yourself. Jesus loves you regardless. And you don't have to have it together. Jesus died for you because you don't and because you never will. And then we get to point to Jesus and we get to grow in the gospel and we get to find riches of knowledge and wisdom and mystery because we submit everything to Jesus. And so we have to have a functioning radar for how we do that so that when someone says something to us, we can gauge, is this gospel?
Does this help me grow closer to Jesus? Are you pointing me to Jesus or is this something else? Are you pointing me to me? Are you pointing me to something outside of me? Do I need a job or a man? Like, what are you pointing me to?
And just for the record, don't point me to a man. I'm not going to take the bait. We have to have something, some way that we functionally walk that out. And so Paul says this. He says he's praying that their hearts would be knit together in love, their hearts be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the fullness of assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this, that no one may delude you with plausible argument.
He says, I want you to be together and I want you to know that everything's found in Jesus. And I'm telling you that so that you won't be led astray by plausible arguments. He doesn't say dumb things. He says stuff that sounds smart. Plausible argument. Yeah, actually sounds pretty good.
That's what leads us astray. Not when someone tells us something blatantly stupid. But when someone says something that sounds pretty good. So he says, I want you to be together. And so that's our discernment radar. Submission to Jesus in the context of community.
That we actually have people around us that we're knit together in love. So that we can reach the fullness, the full assurance of the gospel and that we won't be led astray. So really practically, we're going to land on a few things that we just need to know. Here's what we do. Here's how this happens. Oh, sorry.
I already went to my last page and then I hid it for myself. Anyway, here's practically how this happens. Somebody tells you something, you hear something, you read something, you don't just accept it, you think. Does this line up with the gospel? Does this line up with Jesus? And then when you've thought about it, you take it to a team, you've got a team, and you say, hey, other believers who know me, this is what I think this is saying.
Is this smart? This is what my aunt told me. Didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, although I did take a shower. Like, is this, is this, does this line up with the gospel? And then your teammate gets to say, well, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that?
Like, this doesn't really line up. And this passage says this, and we get a team. We get to do this in community. So practically, just a few things this means for us. It has to be Bible, not just books. We have to have Bible, not just books.
What I mean by that is this, we have to know what this says about Jesus. We can't just read what other people say this says about Jesus. So in college, I used to work out a good bit. I worked out a good bit in high school, playing football, and different times I was trying to put on weight. And I would take supplements like protein powder and creatine and, you know, Explode, some different supplements. And so there's stores at the mall that sell just straight up supplements.
And so, they are to help you put on weight or bulk or whatever. They tell you they do all kinds of things. Some of them, I think, are more helpful than others. But they're supplements to you exercising, to you lifting weights, working out. They're supplements. If somebody asked me, hey man, what kind of workout program are you on?
I was like, I eat creatine three times a day. Yeah, but what kind of workout program? I just told you the creatine plan. It's like, you know, you've got to lift weights and run. There's got to be, that supplements what you're doing. The truth is, books, commentaries, devotionals, they supplement us spending time with Jesus.
Now, here's the thing. One of the pushbacks a lot of times for reading the Bible is a couple of things. One is, I don't know where to start. Start in the book of John. Or if you're walking with us, start in the book of Colossians. Study it along with us.
Read it ahead of us and be studying in it. I don't know where to start. I don't know what Bible version to use. There's a bunch of them. We can have conversations about that. And some people will be like, well, the Bible's confusing.
Yes, sometimes it is. But here's the thing. The disciples who hung out with Jesus all the time were constantly confused by him. Because he'd be like, here's the gospel. It's like a tree. You plant that tree in your garden.
And he would talk and then he'd walk off and they'd be like, I don't know who he's talking about. What kind of tree did he say it was? Like, constantly confused. He would look at them and say just straight up, I'm going to die. They're going to deliver me over into the hands of men. They're going to kill me and three days later, I'm going to come back.
And then it would say that he left and it would be like, none of them knew what he meant, but they didn't ask him. So you know they were having conversations. No, no, John, you ask him. I ain't asking him. I asked him last time. See the look he gave me?
So, here's the thing. Study this. Catch 60% of it. And grow and grow and grow in your understanding of the Bible. You should rather be confused by Jesus than to understand completely the nonsense that someone else tells you. You should rather that happen.
We need to be Bible people. It has to be Bible, then books, then movies. All right. They made the TV show The Bible miniseries. Okay. Then, the show did well.
Then they wrote a book about the show. So they took the Bible and they made a show about it. And then the show did well, so they took the Bible show and wrote a book about it. Which is great, because now we have all our favorite Bible stories in book form, which we already had. And here's the thing. Some of us are, we grow, we learn by watching Bible shows and by reading the Bible stories, Bible show, miniseries, book thing, which it says, based off of the Bible miniseries.
And I wanted to say, that was based off of the Bible. We've got to read the Bible first. We've got to grow in that. And that way, when somebody tells us something, we have a framework for, uh, not, because I read this. And here's the thing. We say the Bible's confusing.
We get to do this in community. So we read the Bible and then we go talk to other people. I was reading this. I think this is what it's saying. Is that what it's saying? Is that what he means here?
The other thing is this, and you need to realize this as a Christian. For those of us in this room who've placed our faith in Jesus, the Holy Spirit of God actually dwells in us, which we talked about. Paul says this is a profound mystery, that Christ is in us. The Holy Spirit authored Scripture. So he knows what it means and can teach us.
So there are times, this happens probably about once a week. I'll be reading Scripture and I'll read something and I'll just be like, I don't fully know what that, what you're trying to say, like what I'm supposed to take from that, what that's supposed to mean. It just seems like it's a story or just, and so I'll pray, God, if you want me to understand this, tell me. He wrote it. It'd be like if you had the author of the book with you and you could say, what was this whole thing about? Chapter three was weird.
Like you get to do that and so I just ask, tell me. And then I'll read it again and if I still don't get it, I just assume he didn't want me to know and I move on. I don't let it stress me out. I understand enough of the Bible to stress me out. Like I understand enough of it to know where I ought to be doing and how I ought to be walking and the things that I don't get, I just assume he'll teach me later. We get to do that.
So we get to be Bible first so that we get to know Jesus, so that we know if things submit to him. It has to be community, not just crowd. So Bible, not just books, community, not just the crowd. What I mean by that is don't take, oh yeah, I talked to other Christians because I read a review online. You actually have to, if we're going to process what's coming in and what we're being taught and what we're trying to believe and how we're trying to function, we actually have to have people around us. He says be knit together.
It should almost be awkward if we're doing things on our own because we're so used to being in community. It has to be people that are actually around you, that actually know how you walk in life because the truth is this. The people in my community group know that approval isn't a big thing for me. I don't super struggle with approval. It's more success. I don't care if you like me, I just want you to think I'm awesome.
That's a thing for me. And so I talk to my community group about this. And so when I have a life decision coming in, something I've got to think through, I get to bring them in on it and they already know me so they can actually give me helpful advice. They can see where I'm chasing after wrong things. They can say, well this isn't really something that you're pursuing for wrong reasons because we know you, we've been around you. And you want actual community because you need people to say hard things to you sometimes.
You need people that care enough about you to say real stuff and that know enough about you to be able to do that accurately. So it's got to be community. It's got to be actual people around. Here's the difference between me watching somebody I don't know about to do something stupid and me watching someone I do know about to do something stupid. Someone I don't know. That fool's about to hurt himself.
And then you just watch. You just, I think this is going to be really bad. So I'm watching this. Like this is what I'm doing at the party now. I'm going to watch this guy hurt himself. And then if I know them, I'd be like, hey fool, you about to hurt yourself.
And then you still get to watch. And that honestly is some of the difference between community and just people that are around. You need people around you enough to call you out, to talk to you, to say real things with you and to know you well enough to be able to do that accurately. You need people around you. The thing about blind spots is that you can't see them. And so if you're processing things and there's a giant blind spot in your life and you just don't realize it, you may make some poor decisions or you may not line things up well.
But if you've got people around you, just say, hey, you don't realize this about yourself, but I see this pattern and actually be helpful. And it makes life way easier and way better. That's what Paul says he struggles for. He says, this I'm struggling for, that you'd be knit together in love. I want you to be community. I want you to actually care about each other.
Okay. We've got to study the Bible. We've got to know the Bible. It's got to be Bible, then other things. And then we can actually decide whether those other things are helpful. And it's got to be community, not just a crowd of people, not just people around that we every once in a while sit down and say, hey, here's the situation.
I'm going to give you the gist of it. Is this smart? Because all you did was give them the stuff you're seeing. So of course they'll agree with you most often. But if you've got people around you who say, actually, yeah, but don't you know this is how you're pursuing this and this is what's going on with you?
It's actually more helpful. So it's got to be community, actually people around. We get to have faith. So don't freak out. We get to have faith. I've gotten to go out of the country a couple of times.
Not a lot, and I hope to do it some more, but it's always funny to me when you're leaving the country and coming back into the country because there's customs. And customs is like when you come in or out of the country as a foreign person or coming back into the country and they have to check your passport and they ask you questions and stuff. And it takes a super long time to walk through. But like I've been in four and you walk up and they're like, are you checking anything into the country that you should not bring with you? Like do you have anything that is illegal? They just ask you.
And you're like, nope. No ma'am, I am not. And then she looks at you and she's like, checks out. And like they don't check at all. Like they don't look at your bags. They just ask you.
And you're like, okay. Like I could have smuggled all kinds of things in here. And so some of us, that's been our radar. Is this bad for me? No. Seems legit.
Like that's how, that's our customs process. This person said it with their mouth so it's got to be true. Read it on the internet. Like that commercial with that guy. It's like everything on the internet is true and he shows up and she's like, he's French. And he's like, oh yeah, bonjour.
Like that. Like that's our, that's our process. We just believe it because we read it or because someone said it. And then, all right, so, but don't, don't freak out. We get to have faith and so sometimes you're somewhere and they've got like the drug dogs. So it's like an armed officer.
Got one on the side. Maybe he's holding one. He's got a, an intense looking dog. Like a scary, pointy ear. No nonsense. Like you don't see that dog and think, I need to pat his head.
Like, you know, that dog's got a job to do. He means business. He's got this look that like scares children and stuff like that. Like he's, he's in the zone and, and they're looking for drugs and it's a serious thing. What I am not saying, when we build a discernment radar, I am not telling you to go live in the woods and be afraid of everything or to start a website where you just look for stuff to argue with. That's not, that's not what we're talking about.
Fruit beagles. That's what we want. When you're coming back into the country, they have fruit beagles, which is a beagle, still an officer, walking around with a dog that is smelling for fruit because it's actually not good for us to go to another country and bring fruit back to the U.S. because it can have bugs that we're not ready for. And it can actually, like, you could bring an apple back and it could decimate crops here. And so, that's what we want. We want something that, we're not always having to be super intense, we're not always having to start pick fights with people, but we have some process for how we bring things in, how we know to check whether or not something's good.
We have the ability to submit it to Jesus in the context of community. I always like it when the fruit beagle comes by because I know he's being helpful. You do look at him and think, I can pet this dog if I wanted to. Like, he's still got a job to do but he's not crazy and I'm never worried because why would I have fruit? Now, if they bring a bacon beagle by, I might be in trouble but it's like, I never have fruit. We're okay.
Me and you, we're okay beagle. And so, we just, we want to have some process. So, you just need to be willing to know that we have to have a process and we get to have faith. Here's the thing, we're not going to always get this right. We're going to believe some stupid things. We're going to not believe some good things.
And we get to walk that out in the context of community and we get to constantly push towards finding hope and depth and wisdom and knowledge in Jesus. And here's how he lands this. This is what he says. We'll start in verse 5. For though I'm absent in body, yet I'm with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ. Therefore, so therefore meaning all this stuff we just talked about, that you would be knit together, you'd have a community, you'd submit everything to Jesus.
Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. We get to rest. We get to have joy. We get to be in community and we get to talk about real stuff and we get to have joy. We get to abound in thanksgiving. We get to, therefore, as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him, established in the faith.
Here's the thing. All of us received Christ Jesus in the same way. We were messed up. We had fallen short. We were not going to fix our lives or get it together. And Jesus came and lived perfectly on our behalf and died for our mistakes, died for our rebellion, died for our errors, died for our inability to fix the situation.
And then he rose again three days later so that he could fix the problem for us. So that he could take care of our errors, so he could take care of our sin, our rebellion, our brokenness, and we place our faith in him. Not our good works, not our intelligence, our faith. That he was good on our behalf and that he gives us life. That he paid for our sins. He paid our penalty and he gives us life.
That's how we receive Christ. That's how we're rooted in him. That's how we're built up. Not in our ability to work really hard. Not in our ability to have a really good discernment radar and not do stupid things. That we get to follow him.
Yeah, we get to have that. We get to follow him in faith. That he's good and that he'll teach us and that he'll train us and that ultimately it's up to him, not up to us. And then we get to do this in community and we get to abound in thanksgiving. We get to have joy in relationship with each other as we try to follow Jesus and we try to point each other to Jesus. That's us.
That's what we get to do. That's our discernment radar. Submission to Jesus in the context of community. Band's going to come back up and we're going to sing. We're going to abound in thanksgiving. We're going to make much of Jesus.
And then we get together next time, not next week, but next time. We're going to talk about specifically things that we need to be on guard for. Specifically why we have a discernment radar. What it is we need to be looking for. What it is we need to be in defense of. But ultimately we get to rest in Jesus and our faith is in him not in anything else.
I'm going to pray and then we're going to sing. God, we thank you for your grace. We thank you that we get to be built up in our faith in you. That in you is found knowledge and wisdom and life. So we praise you and we thank you.
We ask, Lord, that we would submit things to you. That we would be willing to test what comes in. Know what's good and keep it. Know what's bad and get rid of it. We ask for you to lead us in this. Give us community.
Help us to grow closer to you. In Jesus' name. Amen.