Mill City 7/8/18 Mill City 7/8/18

How the Gospel Gives Us Rest

Transcript

Good morning. My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. We are in the fourth week of our Hammer and Hammock series where we're talking about work and rest. Two things that take up the majority of our time that we're going to either be working or we're going to be not working. And we've got to figure out how to do that well.

We've got to figure out how to have a healthy balance. And so what we did was we started off the first week talking about that God has designed us to have a rhythm of six days of work and one day of rest. So this is actually how God created the world, that he worked, that he began the world by laboring, and then he rested. And if you think about that, for a cosmic being who is beyond time, beyond energy, like he's who can create everything in an instant, to take six days to create everything and then to take a day where he does nothing, is a crazy concept. But God designed it that way and worked that way so that we might follow his pattern.

And he instituted this into the world. And it says that he blessed the seventh day and he made it holy, meaning the seventh day, the Sabbath, is set apart from the rest of the week. And that it's blessed so that those who befriend the Sabbath will be blessed. Those who take part in it will be blessed, will receive the goodness of that day. And so what we're talking about is how do we work for six days and rest for one. And I love the little video we have because we're on different sides of this.

There are some of you who love work. You love being busy. You love the energy. And there's some of you who love rest. And so what we've talked about is that some of you who want to rest four days a week and kind of work three need to change your lifestyle. You need to work six and rest one.

And some of you who are like resting one day a week sounds ridiculous. You're watching the first half of that video and you're like, yes, chopping things, hammering things. Yes. Being a mom, doing yes. And then it goes boop, doop, doop, doop, boop. And then you start seeing people in a hammock and you're like, oh, that sounds so stupid.

I hate the second half of that. And some of you are like, the first half seemed awful. But when that dog started like trotting through the field, that was amazing. And your little spirit wakes up. And so what we're trying to do is figure out how to have a healthy pattern here. There's a first century Stoic philosopher.

His name was Seneca. And he was looking at the Jewish people who practiced the Sabbath, who one day a week did nothing. They had a day of preparation for it where they would get ready to do nothing the next day. And he says that it was absurd. He looked at the Jewish people and said they spend almost a seventh of their life in inactivity. And so as we start today, what we're going to be talking to is the person who kind of agrees with Seneca.

We're talking to the person who is just consistently busy. And I think that there's two types of this person. There's one person who says, look, I get it. The Bible tells us we're supposed to rest. It's in the Ten Commandments. I'm aware that those ten are pretty important.

But you tell me how on earth I'm going to do that. I have like 17 children. I don't think it's actually 17, but it feels like it. I have three jobs. I have you're looking and going. There's no way like I would love to take one day off a week.

That would be amazing. But I'm not going to ride a unicorn to work. And this also isn't going to happen. Like unless that magical thing happens, this magical thing isn't happening. Some of you are just looking and going like, look, sounds great, but there's no way to do that. And on the other side of that, there's someone else who just goes, that doesn't even sound great.

But taking a day, one day a week to do nothing sounds excruciating. And if I'm honest, stupid. And I don't want to. And there's some of you who feel that way. It's just like, no. I mean, I get that it's good and people should rest or whatever.

But like I got a vacation coming up later. Plus, I got some leagues and stuff I'm in. And I just said, I'm not really going to do it. And so we're talking to you today. We spent the past couple of weeks talking to the person who wants to sleep most of their life. And we tried to say, here's why work is important.

Here's why work is valuable. But today we're talking to the person who doesn't ever want to stop or feels like they can't. And we're actually going to spend the next two weeks. So today we're going to talk kind of more big picture, heart level stuff. And next week we're going to talk about all the practical things. So hopefully today you'll leave with a lot of practical questions of like, okay, I'm on board.

But I still need to know how on earth to do that and what to do in a Sabbath. That's next week. So if you get a little annoyed and feel like a lot of your questions aren't answered today, then I did my job because they're not supposed to be. So here's the thing. I read a book called Switch. And what Switch talks about is how to make a change in your life.

And the big kind of example they give is that they say everybody, functions like a person riding on an elephant. That there's an elephant and there's a rider. And the rider is intelligent. The rider understands facts and figures. The rider likes PowerPoints. And the elephant doesn't.

Doesn't care. The elephant is your emotions. It's your heart level desires. And so what the point of the book was is that if you just talk to the rider, but you don't get a hold of the elephant, nothing will change. And we know this to be true. Some of you are like, I'm going to quit smoking.

I know that it's bad. I've seen the little pictures they put on the cartons. I get it. I know that there's a general who became a surgeon. And he has some warnings for me. I get it.

And you're like, I'm going to stop. And the elephant's like, that's cute. Because you're not like the elephant heading in on board with the facts and figures. Some of you are like, this is it. I'm going to start working out. I'm going to start eating right.

I'm going to start tomorrow. And the elephant's laughing at you and then takes you to McDonald's like you. Some of you are like, I'm really, this is the semester when I'm really going to study. I'm going to get ahead on my stuff. I won't show up to class and be like, wait, we have a paper due today. I'm going to already know about it.

I'll have already written it. And your elephant is playing Xbox. It already left the room. It wasn't even paying attention to your PowerPoint. You showed it. And that's what's happening here is that some of us are going, okay, I'm on board with the idea of a Sabbath.

I'm on board with the idea of rest. But we've got to actually untie the soul level, heart level knot. Otherwise, we won't ever actually be able to rest. So I want to talk to all the elephants in the room a little bit today. Grab your Bibles. Go to Hebrews chapter 3.

Here's what I want us to understand as we go to Hebrews chapter 3. It's on page 581 if you have one of the blue Bibles. If you don't own a Bible, take our blue Bible. That's our gift to you. You were not made to endlessly strive. You were not designed by God to endlessly strive.

You were designed by God to do good work, to carry weight, but not ceaselessly. God commands that we rest. And if we don't, all you will have is joyless toil without rest. And eventually, you will burn out. If we don't rest, all you will have is joyless toil. All of life will lose color.

All of life will lose joy and hope and happiness. And all you'll have is just ceaseless toil. And then eventually, you'll die. Or you'll throw off everything in life that holds you down, that weighs on you. And you'll try to escape. You'll derail everything.

So we have to figure out how to do this. And we have to overcome what's stopping us. Let's pray and then we'll look at the text. God, we thank you for this time we get to spend together. And we pray that in these moments for the person who does not know how to rest. Who does not know how to stop.

Who does not know how to sit still. Who does not know how to enjoy moments of quiet and peacefulness. We pray that you would help us to see you in all your glory today. And that the cross might set us free and invite us into rest. In Jesus' name, amen. So in the book of Hebrews, the author, we don't really know who the author is.

Some people think it may be somebody writing some stuff that Paul taught. Some people think that it might be Luke. But we really don't know. In the book of Hebrews, the author is going through and systematically saying, See this? Jesus is better. See angels?

Jesus is better. See Moses? Jesus is better. And he's just consistently saying, Here, let me show you how Jesus is better than this. How Jesus is the fulfillment of this. Let me show you the temple.

Let me show you how Jesus is better than that. And he just consistently does that. And so we're going to pick up in Hebrews 3, verse 14, where he's begun to talk about Moses and the law. And what he said earlier was, Jesus is better than Moses. And that if we're not careful, we'll join with the people who are following Moses and we'll run away from Jesus. So let's pick up in 14.

For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our confidence firm to the end. So he's saying we belong to Christ, we share in Christ, if we keep it, if we keep our confidence, if we keep walking with Christ. As it is written, and he's going to quote from the Old Testament, he says, Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion. So now he's going to talk about what that rebellion is. He says, For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses?

And with whom was he provoked for 40 years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. All right, so here's what he's saying there.

He's saying that Moses led a group of people out of Egypt. The Israelites were slaves in Egypt, and then God sent Moses to go lead them out of Egypt, to go declare, Let my people go. And the Pharaoh was like, No, I will not let them go. And he's like, Let them go. And they were like, I will not let them go. Let them go.

Like that. And that's what happened. And then God sends plagues. And then the Pharaoh decides to finally let them go. And then when they come to the Red Sea, God parts the Red Sea. And there's all this miraculous stuff that takes place to get the Israelites out of Egypt, the slaves to be set free.

And then God gives them his Ten Commandments. And God declares, I'm going to bring you into a rest. I'm going to bring you into the promised land. I'm going to bless you. And you'll get to be my people. And he institutes the Sabbath at this point.

He says that your value doesn't come from your work. You're no longer slaves. You don't have to endlessly, ceaselessly toil. You're going to work six days. You're going to rest one. So this is what God does.

But then the people rebelled, which is terrifying, by the way, that they could see so clearly who God was and what he had done and that he could rescue them from slavery and they could still reject him. That's what the author of Hebrews is saying. Don't do that. Don't be invited into something so beautiful. Don't see so clearly who God is and then reject that. He says if they did it, we're in danger of doing it.

Because you would look and say, if God sent plagues and if he parted the Red Sea, if these people walked on dry land with two sides of water on the side of them, like I think I would get to the other side and go, you know what? I think God's real and I think he's good. And then they walk around in the wilderness for a little while and they're like, I want something else. And he says, that's terrifying. Don't do that. And so his point is, they, because they did not believe, did not get to enter into the rest that God was offering.

He was inviting them into the promised land. He was inviting them into the rest, but they had unbelief that kept them from the rest he had welcomed them into. Let's keep going. Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them because they were not united by faith with those who listened. For we who have believed entered that rest, as he has said.

As I swore my wrath, they shall not enter my rest. So what he's saying is, those who believe enter into the rest of God, enter into the salvation of God, enter into the promised land of God, and those who disbelieve, who have unbelief, are not welcomed in. That's the major point he's making here. And he's talking about metaphysical rest. Beyond just our physical life, beyond just what we can touch, it's this eternal rest. He's not talking about the Sabbath yet.

What he's saying is that those who believe are welcome into a rest that is offered by God through salvation. And those who have unbelief do not get the rest. Do not get the eternal rest offered by God. Then he says, although his works were finished from the foundation of the world, he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way. And God rested on the seventh day from all his works. And again, in this passage, he said, they shall not enter my rest.

Here's what we need to understand. He says, those who believe get to enter the rest, just like God worked and rested. And those who have unbelief do not get to enter the rest. And this is mirrored. It is pictured in our lives so that if you have an inability to rest, I want to argue with you today that that means you have a practical, functional unbelief in the gospel at work in your life. That if you're a Christian, but you can't sit still, if you're a Christian, but you can't stop, if you're a Christian, but you can't rest, I want to argue with you that you have a functional unbelief.

That you might say, no, I really believe in Christ. I really know who he is. I really, but the problem is those who know Christ are marked their entire life. Even their work is marked by a rest because we're not having to strive to prove ourselves. That we're welcomed into a rest that only comes through salvation. That we're actually, if we're unable to rest, we're looking to something else to satisfy us, to assure us that we're okay. to give us our value, to give us our worth, that we have unbelief.

That God has invited us to rest from our works, to rest from our labor. And we are, like them in the rebellion, hardening our hearts and saying, I want something else. I need something else to validate me. I need something else to give me my worth. I need something else. So I can't stop.

I can't rest. I can't do nothing. I can't have inactivity because I need it to tell me I'm okay. And that is a practical unbelief. I want to read a quote by Judith Shulovich. She was writing for a New York Times.

She, she's a New York Times author. She is, grew up Jewish and then she kind of, as she got older, she just rejected her practicing Jewish faith. And then she realized that she started really, really struggling and about every weekend around Friday night, she said she just got depressed. And the point of the article is she realized that she needed the Sabbath. That she had practiced it religiously growing up and that it was very aggressively enforced and that she just kind of rejected all of that. But then she was striving endlessly and exhausted.

And so every Friday night she would get depressed and she realized I need to rest. And that's the point of her article. Now she's writing from the standpoint of a Jewish person, but I think that she gives some very clear pictures of what it feels like and what it's like for us to not be able to rest. She refers to our neurotic drive to achieve. That there's something wrong with us, but we have to constantly have something that we're marking off, that we're checking off, that we're achieving, that we're adding to our list of who we are. She says, I love this quote, she says, oddly, one of the few times a parent can truly, not that quote, I'm reading a different one.

I'm going to get to that one in a second. Oddly, one of the few times a parent can truly relax is when lingering on the sidelines of a child's baseball or soccer game. There's nothing like being forced to be somewhere and do very little for an hour and a half to declench the muscles of the mind. I love that phrase, declench the muscles of the mind. So what she's saying is that there has to be this time that we rest and she keeps going and I like this quote as well that uses bigger words so it's going to be up here.

So when she's talking about the Sabbath, she's talking about this time where we specifically stop to take a long period of rest. Not just a little bit of time, not just time that's forced on us, but it's actually we force it into our schedule. She says this, not only did drudgery give way to festivity and family gatherings and occasionally worship, but the machinery of self-censorship shut down too, stilling the eternal inner murmur of self-reproach. She says, this is the purpose of the Sabbath. I think her argument is helpful, the words that she uses here, that there's this self-censorship, there's this eternal inner murmur that by forcing ourselves to stop, we're forced to face and this is why some of us loathe having nothing to do.

Because what happens is when everything ceases, when our activity ceases, when we no longer have something that we're being productive, it's as if a maestro walks to the stand in our mind and just starts making all of this stuff, starts singing and crying, yelling at us. Like some of you, you go to rest, you go to sit down, you're like, finally, I'm going to take a nap and you lay down and it's this immediate, you really should be doing something else. You're being kind of lazy right now. There are other things that you could do that are more important with your time that you actually could, maybe you should actually get some of this work done you've been saying you were going to do so that you can spend some time with your children later.

Maybe like immediately like lists and tasks and so I don't know how long you can stand it, five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes and then you're up. You got stuff to do. Maybe some of you lay down and finally you're exhausted and you're like, I'm going to go to sleep and you lay down in bed at night and your brain's like, hey, you want to replay everything that happened today and judge yourself? And you're like, no. And your brain's like, it's going to be fun. And you reevaluate your entire day and you start trying to figure out how you're going to do better the next day.

That you have this inability to stop. You have something to prove, something to earn. You've got an inner murmur, this self-censorship, this self-correction that is constant. Maybe some of you, your brain's consistently telling you, rest is for weak people and you're not weak. Rest is for the unimportant, but you're important. That there's something about you getting called in on your day off, there's something about you having to do work on your day off that confirms for you in your soul that I matter and I'm valuable and I have worth.

Other people can take time off, I can't, and that means that I'm worth something. That I'm accomplishing something. That I'm doing something. You work through lunch and it's a badge of honor because of how important you are and how much you matter. For some of you, you've brought this into your relationship with Jesus. So the stuff that the Bible talks about, about walking with Jesus where Jesus says things like, come to me all you who are weary and I'll give you rest, doesn't feel like your relationship to Jesus.

You don't feel like a weary person who got to go rest with Jesus. You don't feel like someone who's drinking deeply from a cool well or an unending river. You actually feel like someone who's accomplishing a lot of tasks and presenting Jesus with your checklist of all the good things you've done. So that your Bible reading has become, I'm going to read this much, I'm going to memorize this much, I'm going to do this much and it's become this, I'm going to labor for you Jesus and then I'll present to you what I have accomplished. And so even in walking with Jesus, you've brought in this idea of I have to be active and I have to be purposeful and I have to display to you what I've done.

And it's not restful and it's not joyous. Some of you feel like anytime you rest you've just pushed off the important things. If I rest now, I'm just going to have more to do later. If I stop now, I'll just complicate all next week. There's no way I could take an entire day off because it's just going to ruin everything and so that you consistently just never take time off. You never really stop.

You kind of rest and you kind of, I know some of you are like, well it's kind of rest but I also like it'll be more restful if I just get all the laundry done and then I'll really feel good if I can just get the grass cut and that'll be restful. And one of the ways that I'm going to rest this week is I'm going to invite five people over to my house and that'll be restful even though you hate people and you're just going to bring them over because you're kind of supposed to and then you'll feel better about yourself if you can and you've added in all this activity when you were designed for some inactivity so that you might actually have to face the maestro. You might actually have to take the time it takes to steal the inner murmur. That we were designed to stop so that we might come face to face with some things that God actually wants us to face.

This is why I think one of the helpful things that Adam Gibson who from Midtown came and spoke to us the other day, two weeks ago, said that there's a difference between rest and entertainment. There's a difference between rest and just kind of numbing our minds with watching television and that sort of thing. that some of that is us turning up the television so that we can drown out the course of the inner murmur but rather than actually facing it, unclenching it, walking in it and figuring out how to have true rest in Christ. I was talking with Nadine Pabone. She's one of our group leaders and she serves a lot in our church in a couple different areas and we were talking about this and just how busy she is and she said one of the reasons she doesn't like resting, she doesn't like taking time off is that she became a mom when she was 17 and that she actually doesn't know who she is apart from being a mom, being a wife and doing ministry and that when she rests she comes face to face with the fact that she has placed her identity in her activity so that if you looked at her and said, hey, take the day off, go do something you enjoy, her response is, I actually don't really know what I enjoy.

I watch a lot of children's programs. I fold a lot of laundry. I've got four children but I don't really know what I like. I don't really know what refreshes me and what she realizes when she comes to those moments of your whole day is cleared and you can rest, she comes to the face to face with the fact that I don't really know who I am outside of the things that I do and for some of you, you've placed all of your identity in work, you've placed all of your identity in your activities, you've placed all of your identity in who you are and what you do so that when you have a day off, you come face to face with the fact that you actually don't know who you are and it's excruciating.

So your inability to stop tells on you. Your inability to pause your life declares to you, it snitches. Your inability to stop tells on you that you actually have an internal issue with knowing who you are and being able to rest in the salvation that's offered in Christ. That you have an inability to stop because you have an inability to rest in the fact that Jesus has done all the work on your behalf and you still have something to prove and you still have something to achieve and you still have something you need to assure you that you have value. So how do we fight this?

That's offered in Christ. That you have an inability to stop because you have an inability to rest in the fact that Jesus has done all the work on your behalf and you still have something to prove and you still have something to achieve and you still have something you need to assure you that you have value. So how do we fight this? How do we silence the inner murmur? How do we learn

How to rest? How do we learn how to quiet ourselves so that we might be able to enjoy what Christ has offered? verse 8 I love this verse for if Joshua had given them rest God would not have spoken of another day later on so then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his now again

This is beyond our weekly rest this is beyond the regular Sabbath but he talks about this Sabbath rest and what he says is if Joshua had given them rest then God wouldn't have kept talking about this idea now we got to understand who Joshua is for this to be really encouraging because if you don't know who Joshua is you're just like neat Joshua he failed I don't know him but he dropped the ball here's who Joshua

Is Joshua is the person who took over after Moses died and Joshua actually led the people into the promised land so he delivers them into God's promised land and he begins to set up them following the Lord and practicing the laws and so here's what it just said the promised land and obedience to the law will not provide for you rest and some of you have convinced yourself it will some of you have said if I can just achieve enough if I can just work hard enough if I can finally

I'll just finally feel okay I'll finally reach this moment where I'll tell myself I've done enough you've convinced yourself that if you're good enough if you behave well enough then finally your soul will be at rest and it won't and some of you have said if I can just get to the promised land and I don't know what your promised land is certain amount of money certain Job title kids out of your house I don't know what you think the promised land is but you keep telling yourself if I can just get there if I can just get there

If I can just get there I'll get rest and let me tell you something Joshua fails every time but there is a Sabbath rest for the people of God and it is found in Christ that we actually get to cease our striving our endless desire to prove our value our worth to assure ourselves that we're okay because of Christ I want to read from Galatians chapter 2 verse 16 and verse 21 he says yet we know that a person is not justified that means made right

That means that you won't ever actually be able to stand and say I'm perfect I've done it I've achieved it I can rest he says you're not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ so we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law because by works of the law no one will be justified to use the language of Hebrews by works of the law no one will find rest 21

I do not nullify the grace of God for if righteousness were through the law then Christ Jesus died for no purpose so here's what he's saying in Galatians he's saying that if we consistently have to work to prove that our value comes from our work that we're going to present to God something amazing that he'll finally accept us that what we're doing is we're looking at the cross and saying no thank you we're hardening our hearts towards it we're nullifying the grace of God

And we're rejecting the offer of free salvation to actually lay down our work so here's what I want to say if you're in Christ and your faith is in Christ you've been given rest that is beyond any rest the world can ever offer and therefore you actually can rest here you've been given an eternal rest and therefore are free to rest here because you have nothing to prove

And you have nothing to earn it's all been carried out in Christ and if we're unable to rest here I believe it tells on us that we actually don't believe that we've been assured what we've been assured and given what we've been given in Christ you see our actions show what we believe that through as Christians we show what we believe

When we face adversity we show the hope that we have when we face loss we show what we believe by the way we spend our money we show what we believe by how we rest every week that you ought to be able to shut everything down and be fine and here's the thing that you need to know if you're in Christ you have value you have worth you have been given everything you need verse 11

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience so what he's saying is let us work really hard to believe this truth to find Christ and so here's what I want you to understand in order for you to Sabbath in order for you to rest in order for you to enjoy this you actually have

To put in effort some of you say I don't know how on earth I'm going to take an entire day off and the truth is the way your schedule is set up right now you're not that's why there was a day of preparation for the Jewish people you actually have a lot of work to do the day before you

Rest but then you actually get to shut everything down to declench your mind to silence the inner murmur and rest so let me let me tell you this it's the gospel that allows you to actually rest and it's actually resting that helps you believe the gospel that you're actually going to have to fit this into your

Schedule so that you can come face to face with the maestro and Jesus can stand up risen from the grave and tell them all to shut it and sit down that Jesus is able to do that but we actually have to come face to face with all of the inner murmur and we have to take the time it takes to sit and listen and face it

And hear it so that we might actually begin to silence it we have to work to rest and you can't rest as long as your activity saves you as long as your movement and work and effort validates your existence so it's rest that helps us believe this it's actually practicing this rest that proves to us

That this is true and gives us the time to rest in Christ and the salvation that he offers there's a movie called Chariots of Fire it came out in late when did it come out in the 70s it's about two guys in England that both run track one's name's Eric one's name's Harold one of them is Jewish and one of them is a Christian they're both very fast

They're going to get to go to the Olympics it's based off of a true story some of you haven't seen this movie but you've heard the song boom boom boom boom ka ka ka ka ka ka ka ka bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum and I don't care what it's put to the back of you get excited it's like ba da da da da da da da da da and you're like I can accomplish anything I ever wanted to

That's that song okay I think some of y'all should put that as your ringtone that wakes you up in the morning or whatever you just hear boom boom boom ka ka ka ka you just pop out of bed so anyway it's about these guys that are in the Olympics and they find out on the way to the Olympics that one of the events is going to be on a Sunday and so Eric who is a world class runner and this is his event

Says I don't do things on Sundays that's my Sabbath that's the Sabbath and I'm taking it off and so the whole movie is about this guy who could go win a gold medal and like the kings and the people over at Britain are coming to him and saying you should do this and he actually looks at him at one point and says I know y'all are in charge of this country but I have a bigger king who's in charge of everything and he raises kingdoms and he lowers kingdoms

And I'm going to do what he says and even if you don't believe you're just like that was amazing I'd love to say that to a king and he doesn't run now Harold has run his entire life facing anti-Semitism that people just dislike Jewish people and he's run running has actually allowed him to enter into society running has actually allowed him to have people value him running has been his thing that he's used to show that he has value that he has worth

There's this line in the movie where he actually says when that gun goes off I have 10 seconds to prove my existence I've got 10 seconds to prove my existence I've got 10 seconds to show that I have value now Eric doesn't run not because he's trapped not because he's hemmed in by God's rules he doesn't run because he's free he doesn't have to prove that he has worth he's been given worth in Christ he's free to run

Or not run one of the lines that he has in the movie is he says that God's made me fast and when I run I feel his pleasure see running for him was just a way to worship God to honor God to enjoy God and if it came down to it he could rest or not rest run or not run because he he was free and for some of us our work is us saying I've got 40 hours I've got 50 hours

I've got 60 hours to prove my worth I've got this project to earn my right to exist I've got these children that'll prove that I should have been here and you're free because Christ has given you his worth he's given you his value it's sealed in the cross and the empty tomb and you are free it is unassailable it will not be taken from you that when he says come to me

You who are weary and I'll give you rest it's a promise for eternity and it's practiced now that we get to cease our labors we get to rest and we get to practice practically reminding ourselves that I have my value in Christ and I can spend a seventh of my life in inactivity and unproductiveness and walk in front of the king and be saved by his work that's why God

Takes slaves out of Egypt and says you will practice the Sabbath this is how your week works now because slaves only have value as far as they're able to work they only have value in their productivity and he's looked at us and declared in Christ you are not slaves your value does not come from you or what you have done it comes from Christ and you are free to feel his pleasure in your work and to stop

And accomplish nothing and know that he ceased from his labors that he rose from the grave that he left the cross that your fate is sealed and you have freedom and value and hope in him so the Sabbath the taking a day off every week helps us untie that knot it helps us actively practice and remind ourselves of that truth and it's that truth that allows us

To consistently take that time to rest Matt's going to come back up we're going to sing so we're going to practice the Sabbath to rebel against the notion that our value comes from our labor that our identity comes from our activity that we're going to rebel against that idea that we're going to practice rest because we know that in Christ our value has been carried out our identity has been sealed and we're going to do this so that we might remember who Jesus is and what he's done

Because our work and our activity is cluttering our view of him and it's lying to us in our inability to rest our work has lied to us and told us that we need it in order to be okay and all we need is Christ the way we're going to end today is we're going to sing a song here in a minute but we're going to take communion before we do that communion is a practice that has been given to the church it was instituted the night before Jesus went to the cross where he took bread and he broke it and he said this is my body broken for you

And he took a cup and he shared it with his disciples and he says this is the new covenant of my blood poured out for you and as we go from here learning how to practice the Sabbath and learning how to rest so that we might have Jesus silence the inner murmur of self-censorship and self-reproach before we do that we're going to practice communion which is a reminder of why we get to rest that Jesus Christ went to a cross that he did the work for us that our value is carried out in him and that he has accomplished for us all that we need for salvation

And for rest that there's a better rest that Joshua couldn't give us that hard work couldn't give us that the promised land wouldn't give us but that Christ did so in a moment I encourage you to take some time to pray to reflect to repent where you need to and if you're a Christian we invite you to take communion if you're not a Christian this is something given to the church so you're welcome to to stay seated and then in a moment stand and sing with us let's pray God I pray that everyone here would know true rest

That's found only in surrender to you that's found only in faith in Christ and then I pray that that would practically be carried out as we become some hard working well resting people I pray that we would be able to cease from our labors and have inactivity so that we might come face to face with you and watch you silence the chorus of accusation of doubt the burden of proving our value we love you

And we praise you in Jesus name Amen

Mill City 7/1/18 Mill City 7/1/18

All Good Work is God's Work

Transcript

Good morning. My name is Spencer Carey. I'm a pastor in training here with Mill City Church. We're going to be in Genesis 1 today, which is in page 1 of your Bible, so you can go ahead and flip there. We're going to work through that. We'll get to that in a moment.

Recently, my wife and I, we got to go on vacation. A couple weeks ago, we had to go to the beach. Going to the beach and getting on the beach used to be this relaxing experience. You'd take a book. You'd see the ocean. You'd just take it all in.

It was not that, and it will not be that for a very long time for us. We have a daughter who turns three tomorrow. We have a son that turns one in a few weeks. Getting out on the beach first was getting an umbrella in the ground. That took a total of about two hours because at one point, wind carried it. It almost impaled a lady.

We had to get that in the ground. I'm kind of putting a foot on that, trying to put dirt, sand on that. Then my wife brought this blow-up pool that theoretically our children would have played in once it got blown up. We did not bring a pump, so I had to do it all by the power of my lungs, which don't have maximum capacity at all. It took about 45 minutes to watch them plan it for three. So a different experience at the beach, not as much relaxing, but I did get to do one fun activity that I've been wanting to do with my daughter.

Growing up, my brother and I used to go to the beach, and we used to play. As the tide was coming in, we used to build these sand forts. The whole goal was you'd build this massive sand fort. You'd build a moat. You'd get it going. So when the waves came in, it was just kind of a challenge.

How long can we go up against the ocean until the ocean winds? It was just fun. I was like, all right, I'm going to get to do this with Ellie, my daughter. So I get her out there, and we start building this fort and start digging it out. She's kind of getting into it, and we start kind of building the fort and kind of got the moat going and getting everything ready. Then I was like, well, you want to decorate it, which we didn't do when we were growing up because we were two boys.

But she started to get more into it. She started picking out shells and kind of placing them in on there. If I had like a big bucket of pink paint and just throw it on there, she would have been overjoyed. And we kept going, and as this is happening, I'm like, Ellie, look, the waves are coming. So we've got to get this strong because when the waves get here, it's going to be a challenge.

And finally the first wave came in, and it came up, and it kind of took some of the sand away. And she saw it, and I was like, see? And then she really started to get into the ocean. Like she was adamant about facing off against the ocean. And she kind of forgot about the fort and started going. She would run up to the waves and go, no.

And she'd be screaming at him. And she says gibberish sometimes. And she's just like, no, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then she started like kicking the water. And I was like, okay, you're getting really into this. I didn't really see this coming.

And she had gotten so lost in going up against the ocean that she at one point goes to the fort. She grabs a hunk of the fort in sand and starts pelting the ocean. And I was like, whoa, kid, like that. We won't be here five more minutes if you keep this up. She got so lost in the activity, so lost in what was happening. She lost sight of the purpose of what we were actually there to do.

And I feel like work, that happens in how we approach work. And that's why we spent this period of time, six weeks going through the hammer and the hammock, going through work and rest that we might have a better theology, a better understanding of what work and rest are supposed to be. And today we're going to focus on what the purpose of work is. Because I feel like when we're getting pummeled by waves, when we're getting owned by the different problems at work, challenges at work, different things that we face, that oftentimes I feel like we lose the purpose of what work is supposed to be. So what work very clearly is in the Bible is this.

It is a good gift that God has given us that we might glorify Him. That is what the Scriptures teach. That is a good gift that God has given us that we might glorify and worship Him. And oftentimes I feel like if we're honest, we don't really functionally believe that. I don't think we actually functionally believe that. I think that there are three main views of work that we fall into that are fallen, that are corrupted by sin.

I think the first view of work that many of us have in our culture is that many of us view work as a mere necessity. It's just necessary. It's a necessary means. You might hear common phrasing with this that says, I don't live to work. I work to live. And the mindset is that work is just an exchange.

I exchange my time. It's a commodity. I exchange my time, my effort, and you give me a paycheck. And that's how I pay to live. So that's one common aspect we'll get to in a little bit that has fallen, that does not capture what work is supposed to be.

The second is that work is an enemy. And this is a little bit what Adam from Midtown, when he came and preached last week, which if you were not here, I encourage you, please go back and listen to it. It was a very helpful, a ton of wisdom as he preached through Proverbs on laziness, on the sluggard. And many people fall into this view that work is an enemy. It is an enemy of my recreation, of my fun, of my joy. It impedes on my life, and I will do whatever it takes not to work.

And the third kind of fallen way I see in culture is that work becomes an idol. It becomes something that we worship, whether it's the success it brings, the productivity it brings, whatever. We place that in the place of God, and we give it our affection, our devotion, all of our thoughts, till we elevate it to the point of worship. So we'll get to those three fallen perspectives in a little bit. But we have to reclaim what work actually is, that it is a good gift that God has given us that we might glorify him.

And in order to do that, we're going to be in Genesis 1, verses 27 through 31. And as we work through this, we're going to see a few things. We're going to see that we are made in the image of a worker God. We're going to see the calling to work, which is a call to subdue and bring dominion. And then as we work through that, as we establish what the purpose of work is supposed to be, then we will be able to tackle those three fallen worldviews. So I'm going to read from Genesis 1, verses 27.

So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And hear this, subdue it and have dominion.

Over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, Behold, I've given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth. And every tree with seed and its fruit, you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth and everything that has the breath of life, I've given you every green plant for food. And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made.

And behold, it was very good. I'll pray and then we'll dive in. God, thank you so much that you have given us a picture of what work is supposed to be. I pray that you would help us be present this morning. That you would help us listen to your word. That you would speak powerfully to us.

And you would reshape our understanding that we might have a better perspective on what work is supposed to be. Amen. Alright, so it's important to note this very last part of this verse. That he said it was very good. That's important because of where we are in the story. This is before the fall.

This is before in chapter 3 when Adam and Eve sin against God bringing sin in the world. This is a picture of what work was in its original design uncorrupted by sin. So in order to understand work, that's why we're in Genesis 1. We're getting back to the original design of what it's supposed to be. In the same way, I feel like we need to reclaim the original design of what macaroni and cheese is supposed to be. I feel like we've lost it.

I would say that we originated what mac and cheese in its purest form was supposed to be. We made it. And then the rest of culture saw it and said, oh, let's give our spin on it. And people started putting vegetables in it. Y'all, I put one time my fork into what I thought might be mac and cheese. And it came out and I found out it was cauliflower and cheese.

And I was like, that's an abomination. That's not what mac and cheese is supposed to be. We need to, as a culture, reclaim that. Get back to the original design for our own good. And that's what we're doing with work. We're getting back to the original design.

It starts off in verse 27 when it says that, so God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them. Now, I don't have a ton of space to get into. This is one of the biggest doctrines we have in the Bible, being made in the image of God. We are going to spend a good long while in the book of Genesis coming up starting in August.

So we'll spend a whole week working on the image of God. But the overview is this, that we are made in the image of God, which means we bear his likeness, his creativity, we have value, that we are made different from any other aspect of creation. We look like him. And in this context, it means that we are made in the image of a worker God. A God who created everything out of nothing. Who made all of the raw material that we have.

Who made metals. Who made water. Who made coffee beans and agriculture. He made everything. And we are made in the image of that God. A God who made everything out of nothing and who brings order to chaos.

So we're made in the image of him. And then it continues. It says in verse 28, and God blessed them. And he said, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. And have dominion over the fish of the sea. And then he keeps going with a long description.

The birds of the heavens. Every living creature. Every plant that yields seed. Every fruit. All the beasts of the field. All of it.

That we've been given dominion and called to subdue that. Now before that he says, be fruitful and multiply. Which we don't have time to get that this week either. But that is make babies. That is form families. That is making societies.

And we'll get to that when we tackle Genesis. And then he gets to these two unique commands that we have attached to work. To subdue it and have dominion over it. Now he's talking about all of creation. And he could have just said everything. That's what I think is unique here.

He could have just said, subdue it and have dominion over everything. And that's it. But he doesn't. He says, he gives this long description of everything that humanity has been given. And I think that's helpful for us. I think it's helpful for that to be longer.

So that we might understand the responsibility of what we've been given. That Adam and Eve in the garden were given all of this. And I'll have to wonder how they would have reacted to that. And looking at everything that God had given them. That they're looking at things like a tree that has these beautiful fruits on it. That's not quite orange.

It's not quite yellow. It's peach. And then we get to cultivate peaches. That are so good that we get a harvest of right now in this season. They would have peaches. And they would have dominion.

They would be able to subdue bears. That we have dominion over the wildest creatures. That we have responsibility over waterfalls. And rivers. And dogs. And even cats.

Which I know in theory are good because of what the Bible says. But that's debatable. If you're a cat person, I'm sorry. Kind of. We get dominion over all of that. And the picture is that God gave the keys to the kingdom.

He gave the keys to the business empire to his kids. And he said, run with it. This is your responsibility now. Subdue it. And have dominion over it. Now, subdue is an interesting word choice here.

It's actually a little bit of a violent word. In the Hebrew and the Aramaic. Which are similar words that is being used here. The idea is conveyed as beating down a wild growth into a path. Or in other ways, it's being used as subduing. Bringing into submission someone or something that is wild or chaotic.

He could have just said, take care of everything. But he intentionally uses the word subdue for a reason. Because the earth, in its original form, its essence is wild. It is need. It is chaotic. It's a need to be subdued.

And that's... My common perspective of this before walking through this was that the world was... When God brought order to chaos, he did almost all of the work. But the picture is, is he did most of the work. The rest he has given to us. And I've applied that.

I've started to think through, okay, that makes sense. I have two dogs. I have one that is bigger. She's a puppy. She's going to be a great dog. And I have another dog that's been with us for a long time.

I know I've talked about him before. He's just not a great dog. He has bitten me countless times. He's bitten my wife. He has attempted to bite our children. He's just not a good dog.

And for the longest time, I've thought, it's because of the fall. It's because this dog is uniquely affected by sin. And he's jacked up. Which is true. But it's also, he has a wild streak in him that goes all the way back to creation.

And I have done, at times, a poor Job of subduing him. So I get to share in the blame a little bit when it comes to him. We're called to subdue what is wild. And we're called to bring dominion to what is chaos. The word dominion is another interesting word that is used here. It is commonly used in the context of kings or in ruling.

And that kings would come in. They'd bring in their dominion, their rule, their order. And we hear that commonly now when it comes to presidential cycles. That every, well, it used to be every four years. Now it just never ends.

It's always campaigning. One side saying, we're going to come in and do it better. You see how they're messing it up? We're going to come in and bring our order to the chaos. And the other side, when they're not in power, says, no, we're going to bring our order. They're doing it wrong.

Dominion, the word that is being used here, is a word of power. And God has given us power that we might bring order to what is chaotic, to what is wild. And with all of creation, we get to share because each of us, hear this, each of us are made in the image of God. And each of us has a share of dominion. Each of us has a calling to bring order to society, order to this world. Which means that every single person in this room and in this world shares in this.

That your job, your work, it matters. Your job matters. I can make a case for 99.9% of jobs and how each of them are good and each of them matter. Let me go through a couple that will catch a wide range of our church family. If you work on air conditioning units, if you work on HVAC units, you matter. Like I've felt that so clearly this week.

This week, our HVAC unit went out and we didn't have air conditioning for a day. So my parents were generous enough to take us in for a night. And I slept in a room with our son who knew we were in the room and decided that he wanted to basically keep us up all night because of that. So I got very little sleep and had a 14-hour work day the next day. And I was exhausted. And my wife also felt the burden of that.

Having the kids and having to keep them out of the house and having to keep them entertained away from it all. And then finally, a man came. A knight in shining armor came into our house and went to the magical machine that takes 100-degree oppressive Columbia heat and magically changes it into 70-degree bliss. And we were so thankful because our whole work week, our whole everything could function now. We could be home. That job and so many other blue-collar jobs matter because it brings order to what is chaotic and to what is broken.

If you work in the service industry, whether you serve coffee or you bartend or you are a chef, like you bring creativity, you take raw materials and order them in a way. I can go to a coffee shop where someone has obsessed so much over coffee. I'm so thankful for hipsters because of all the investment they've done in that industry. And we get to be the benefits of it. I can go to a pub and I can order a drink that someone has intentionally thought about. I can go to a restaurant where someone has spent so much training and time and energy and has made this great dish that we can eat and enjoy because that is helpful for us.

That gives us joy in the things that God has created. You bring order. You bring value. If you are an accountant and you work with Numbers, your job matters. Man, this week I was in a meeting with a couple of other pastors, Matt Chet and Razz and were talking and they pulled out this graph with statistics and probability and Numbers. And they started explaining and I think they finally saw me at one point and they saw the confused look at my face.

And they finally started to explain it. And I was like, I think I understood half of what they were saying. But in the inside I was dying because I hate Numbers. I'm so bad at them. I made a D in college trigonometry. And I was a pretty decent student.

I was okay. And I said, you know what, D's equal degrees. I'm out because I never want to see math again. But if you're gifted in that and God has given you that, you work with Numbers and you make it, you order the world and our finances. You bring value to what is chaotic. I could keep going on and on.

If you work at a call center and do customer service, you deal with difficult people, you help us solve problems, you matter. If you are a mom or just a parent in general, if you're a parent that works a job away and then comes home and clocks in, you and your work matters because children are forces of chaos and destruction. They just are. Every night my wife and I, we clean up the downstairs. And I didn't used to care about having a clean living area. But now I do because she's installed that in me.

And we go to bed and we come back and we bring our children down. And they start to eat breakfast and they smear all kinds of food everywhere. Then they go in and they don't pull out one toy. They pull out all the toys and they spread them around. And my daughter, she does crafts and makes messes and all over the place. And we get to, as parents, help order that.

We get to, as parents, help bring discipline. Have you ever met an adult who was never told no as a kid? Who did not receive any form of discipline? They're the worst. They're adult babies. You get to help bring value to society because you are a parent and you do the hard work at bringing order to what is chaos in families.

I could go through a ton of different jobs. Unless you're selling your body as a prostitute or you're writing blogs to help other parents feel bad about the way that they parent. Unless you're not doing something that's inherently evil and wrong. Like you bring value and order. Because the world is an uncultivated garden and you get to own your share in cultivating it. You get to share in bringing order to it.

Because here's the deal. If you don't do that. If you don't carry the weight that you're supposed to. Somebody else will. Somebody else has to help pay your bills. Somebody else has to help pick up a shovel.

And I know there's I'm not talking about extenuating circumstances when you're temporarily unemployed when you're going through disability. I'm not I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the general call to pick up a shovel and to use what God has gifted you with to help carry weight. It affects other people when you don't do that. And it affects you. Because you were designed to carry weight.

And I get it man. Work is difficult sometimes. And I really I used to think it was difficult because of the fall. Like I love productivity and getting stuff done. I love efficiency. I love writing a sermon that lands.

I love I do real estate. So I love doing deals that actually get done. I love having a finished day work. I think all of us value that. And I think oftentimes when that happens at least from my perspective it has been well thorns and thistles. Because work has been corrupted.

And that's partly true. That comes from Genesis 3. When the curse is handed down we see how it affects work. In Genesis 3 it says cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.

And you shall eat of the plants of the field. Meaning that you sometimes you will cultivate a garden. You will work hard and it will be fruitless. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground. So yes work has been cursed.

And it is sometimes fruitless. But it's also difficult. And it's difficult because that's how it was originally designed to be. That sometimes as a real estate agent I will spend months and months and months on a deal to watch it just vanish into thin air. It's just gone. That sometimes I can put 30 plus hours into writing a sermon and preparing it to make sure because we care about the word of God and it being taught accurately and helpfully in our church.

That I can rock up here. I can let it rip. I can walk off the stage. And I can be like man I thought that I think that felt pretty good. And I go and talk to my wife and she goes well it was okay. And I'm like really?

And it's like man my often perspective has been well because thorns and thistles. And that's not actually the full picture. That as I've worked more through this I've actually started to see this goes all the way back to the garden. That work was meant to be difficult. It's a part of the fabric of creation. Because the earth is chaotic and because we're called to subdue it sometimes that's going to take longer.

Sometimes that's going to be difficult. It's almost as if we have an infinite God who could have in Genesis 1 could have been he created the world. Boom everything existed. That's what it could have been. But God chose over a six day work week to slowly form everything out of nothing.

It's almost as if God is trying to teach us something. That if the infinite God of power of all of the universe took a six day period to actually make everything out of nothing. That maybe work is sometimes meant to be slow. That maybe sometimes work is meant to be difficult. Because in the slowness and the difficulty you get to grow into Christ likeness. You get to grow into the character of God.

That the work of subduing is sometimes slow and difficult and long term. But ultimately it points us to what the end of work is supposed to be. That the end of work, the purpose of work is not productivity. It's not results. It's God. That is the end result of our work.

That it's growing in the character of God. That as we work slowly and through the difficulty and through the challenges of work. God would grow us in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness. All of his fruit. All of his character would be forming us and shaping us through the slow and sometimes difficult, sometimes repetitive work. That's why I love Adam when he came last week and preached.

He said, We become the people we are by what we choose to do again. I love that. That through the repetitive, through the monotonous, through the slow work. We are being formed and shaped. That there's a vertical change that happens. That we are growing into Christ likeness.

That we are being shaped by him. But there's also a horizontal effect where we affect other people. Not just with what we make and what we bring order to. But by the character that we show in our work. That we might model the gospel to those we work with. That they would see the very character of God in how we work.

And when we start to understand that. We start to understand that good work is actually a gift that God has given us that we might glorify him. Once we've owned that. Then we can start to fully understand how we can repent of the fallenness that we fall into. And those three perspectives I mentioned earlier. So my first question is are you prone to seeing work simply as necessary?

Is that you? Do you just see it as a necessary exchange? That you put in the work. That you put in the time. And you put that in to get a paycheck. And that's all it is.

It is a transferal of goods. Now sometimes that is an explicitly fallen mindset. That all of your decisions. That all of your decisions in work. And how you're going to move. And how you're going to advance.

Is always based on money. I want to maximize the amount of money I can get. Because I want to maximize the stuff I can buy. That some of us have fallen for the American dream. And we want to have it all. And that's all that work becomes.

It becomes a necessary means to that end. And we've talked about as a church family. That that is a fallen mindset. That we don't need to fall for that kind of materialism. But sometimes this is a little more subtle.

And sometimes this actually looks a little more holy on its face. Now I've heard some people that say. You know I work. And I work this job. And I want to earn more. So that I can give more to the church.

So that I can give more to the mission. Because I want to see God advance the kingdom. And I hear that attached sometimes to. Man you know what. You're doing the real work in ministry. I just do.

I do this nine to five. It's not. We don't talk about that. You actually. Your job actually matters. I want to help invest in that.

And there's so much. So much good in that. I love hearing people that have been. That have been transformed by generosity. That understand. The generosity that God calls it to.

And I want to uphold that as good. But what's underneath all of that. Is that what I do doesn't matter. It's just necessary. I put my time in. I get my paycheck.

And I can be generous. And when you have that mindset. You are missing out on what work can be. That is a good transformative gift. That can grow you. And shape you.

That you can have a profound effect. On the people that you work alongside of. On your employees. On the people that you get to model the gospel to. So we need to grab hold of that.

That work is not just necessary. It is a good gift that God has given us. The second mindset we need to repent of. Is if you have the mindset that says that work is simply an enemy. Is that you? Is work an enemy of joy?

Is it an enemy of your recreation? Is it an enemy of what you could be doing? Like do you put the minimal amount of effort in. In your job? Like I can do just enough. I am going to count down the clock.

Until I can clock out. And then I will be on. And be able to do what I actually want to do. Here is the deal. Hard work is valuable. And it is powerful.

Because it can actually grow character in you. But man. A lack of hard work will reveal a lack of character in you. That needs to be formed. That needs to be shaped. So is that your perspective?

Do you avoid as many jobs when you get called to do the extra stuff at work? Do you avoid that? Because I don't want to deal with that. Do you avoid work at home? Like if you have a family that you go home to. Do you avoid the different work that you could be carrying weight in.

Because you have better things to do. That applies to the church too. Do you have the mindset? Nah. I know I am being asked to serve in Kid City. I know I am being asked to serve in Host Team.

But there is about a thousand other things I would rather be doing. So I need to come up with some very honorable looking excuses that I can get out of. Because I don't want to carry weight. Colossians 3.23 says, Work heartily as for the Lord and not for men. That is the calling in work. To work hard as to the Lord.

Because ultimately He is the end of our work. And when you do this. If you'll grab hold of this. What's going to happen is God is going to tap into some potential. He's going to grow you and shape you. You're going to see more of the character of God growing in you.

And that is going to have a profound effect on everyone who gets to be around you. So some of you, if you're honest with yourself. And you heard last week's sermon. And you start to feel the conviction of that. And it's time to grab hold of the good gift that God has given us and repent of that mindset. Lastly, are you prone to seeing work as an idol?

As something that takes your affection, your devotion, your mental energy. Whether that's success that is attached to work. Whether that's productivity that is attached to work. Is that you? Because if I'm honest, that's me. That this is where I fall in.

And I love my jobs. I love being a real estate agent. There's two real estate agents. Mary Beth and I in our church. And I love what I do. But it is always on the clock.

At any moment, I get texts sometimes at 12 o'clock at night about houses. And I'm consistently thinking about listings. I'm thinking about showings. I'm thinking about inspections. I'm thinking about appraisals. I'm thinking about marketing.

I'm thinking about exposure. I'm thinking about all of that. And I love it. And I'm starting to think through how I can get more results. How I can move and shake. How I can make all these things happen.

And as a pastor, I'm consistently thinking about sermons. And how the sermons are shaping me. And how we're crafting them. And I'm thinking about our community groups. I'm thinking about our community group leaders. And every week, I love that we as pastors get to sit down and pray for our groups.

That we pray for you. That we pray for the people in our groups. And I'm thinking about counseling. I'm thinking about all the different things. And what happens in the midst of all of this is that I start to think about results. That my end goal is I want to see deals done.

I want to see people changed by Christ. And I get so caught up in success. I get so caught up in the results of getting stuff done that I miss the thread. I miss the purpose. Like a child taking a handful of sand and chucking out the waves. I've completely lost the purpose of what work is supposed to be.

That it is a good, transformative gift that God has given me. That I might grow in worshiping Him. And not the things that it brings. Not the success that it brings. Not the results that it brings. So that's my question for you.

Is that you idolize work? Like is your joy attached to success in work? So that when you're doing well at work. Whether it's sales. Whether it's admin. Whatever.

When you're doing well in work. You're happy. Things are great. But when work nosedives. And it's hard. How many of you are plagued by anxiety?

How many of you can't sleep? How many of you are quick to be prone to depression? And it's a roller coaster. Of productivity. That when you are doing great in work. You are great.

And when you are not. You are low. If that's the case. You are probably. You probably have made work an idol. You have worshipped something.

You have worshipped creation. Rather than the creator. Do you idolize work? Do you have trouble shutting off? Can you be as a. Can you.

If you have a nine to five Job. Can you actually be present? When you come home. Are you consistently thinking about things at work? And if you're a stay at home mom. Can you actually go on a date.

And not think about your kids. And not talk about your kids. Can you get coffee with a friend. And not think. And talk. And obsess.

And I know that's a little bit different. Because it's our children involved. I get that. But maybe. Just maybe. Underneath all of that.

Is idolatry. Not just of work. But of children. That sometimes. You need to. Clock out.

And not be consumed. With your job. Because you have idolized. And made an idol. Out of work. And the reason why.

We've got to take that seriously. I think this is probably. One of the more dangerous ones. Because what happens is. Is you go. And you grind.

And you work. And you hustle. And then. Eventually. A season comes. Where burnout happens.

In the midst of burnout. In the midst of midlife crises. Man. People make. Really bad decisions. People walk away from the church.

Because they've gone. And they've gone. And they've gone. And they make a bunch of terrible decisions. And they're out. And if you think you're above that.

Take heed. Because you might fall. We need to take that. Seriously. And I say it bluntly. We need to burn that idol.

To the ground. And we need to repent of that mindset. And grab hold. Of the good gift. That God has given us. In work.

That we might put it. In its proper perspective. In worshiping him.

Mill City 6/24/18 Mill City 6/24/18

Sluggard

Transcript

All right, well, good morning. As Chet said a little bit ago, my name is Adam Gibson. I am one of the pastors at Midtown Fellowship. We're in downtown Columbia. We started, I guess, about 12 years ago almost now, getting close to there. We started meeting weekly in January 2007.

We were, at the time, we planted almost all college students, and so it was a nightmare, as you can imagine. We had no wisdom, no money, and lots of energy, and no clue what to do with it. And one of my favorite memories is one Sunday we were passing around the offering basket, and somebody, and this is not a joke, someone put a pack of Skittles in the offering plate, and that was their contribution. And it's like, thank you. I do like Skittles, so I appreciate that. So we have grown since then, and we've got some families and some kids, and we've planted a few churches, and we're now a family of churches in the Columbia area.

And then in, I guess it was 2012, I met Chet. We went to lunch at Monterey's in downtown. He said he wanted to plant a church. We said, that's great, you should do that. And so we just sort of sent him out. Our church planting process has gotten a little more beefy since then, that was what it was back in the day.

And Raz was a part of Midtown, and we happily sent him, and they got to meet Matt. I really like Matt and Raz, still deciding about Chet. I'm grateful for the invitation this morning. I think I'm not qualified to be a pastor here. I can't grow facial hair. And it seems like maybe that's one of those unspoken pastor qualifications at Mill City.

So I'll have to remain at Midtown with our underdeveloped facial hair. But I'm glad to be here today. So pretend like I have a nice man beard, and maybe you'll be more willing to listen to what I have to say. It'll sound more authoritative. So last summer, we did a study in the book of Proverbs.

Our church did. And I came across sloth or the sluggard. I don't know if you're familiar with the book of Proverbs. It comes up a lot, and it wasn't something that I had studied before. Up until that point, I thought sloth or slothfulness or someone who was a sluggard. I just thought it was laziness.

That was all that I had heard of it. I'd heard of sloth as one of the seven deadly sins. I don't know if you're familiar with that or the movie Seven. Not that I would recommend it, but it is a great movie. But they talk about sloth in that movie.

And the Latin word that sometimes gets used as part of the seven deadly sins is acedia. That's the Latin term for sloth or sluggard. And as part of what you guys are studying over the summer, the hammer in the hammock, which is a brilliant series name. I don't know who came up with that, but that's gold right there. This fits really, really well. And so Chet invited me to come and share some of this.

And honestly, what I'm doing is just I had to do some research on it and heard some people teaching on it. And I basically am just taking what they taught and would love to share it with you guys today. And I think you'll find that it is helpful and fits right in with your summer series. And so if you want, you grab a Bible because we'll look at the book of Proverbs together. We'll start in chapter 24. So if you want to grab a Bible, it looks like there's some on seats around you.

If you didn't bring a Bible, you can use one of those and flip. Proverbs chapter 24 is where we'll start. Proverbs is almost dead in the middle of your Bible. And so if you just want to almost try to cut it by 50 percent, you're probably pretty close to Proverbs. And then you can navigate from there. So if you're familiar with the book of Proverbs, you know that it's not written linearly.

It's a collection of wisdom and sayings, most of them from a father to a son. And so it's a little bit scattershot. And so we won't necessarily work straight through a passage this morning because that's not how Proverbs is written necessarily to be done. What we'll do is read a few different places in the book of Proverbs that talk about the issue. And then we'll draw some points out of that. So let's look at Proverbs chapter 24 first.

And then we'll flip to chapter 26. And we'll read both of these. And that will sort of launch us in. So Proverbs 24. We'll read 30 through 34. Here's what it says.

I passed by the field of a sluggard. So that's the way that Proverbs describes a person who is slothful, called a sluggard. By the vineyard of a man lacking sense. And behold, it was all overgrown with thorns. The ground was covered with nettles. Its stone wall was broken down.

Then I saw and considered it. I looked and received instruction. A little sleep. A little slumber. A little folding of the hands to rest. And poverty will come upon you like a robber.

And want like an armed man. Alright, flip over to chapter 26. Proverbs chapter 26. And look at verses 13 through 16 with me. The sluggard says, There is a lion in the road. There's a lion in the streets.

As a door turns on its hinges, so does a sluggard on his bed. The sluggard buries his hand in the dish. It wears him out to bring it back to his mouth. The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly. Proverbs actually says some really funny things about sloth, slothfulness. Someone who is a sluggard says that this person makes up these silly excuses.

There's a lion. I can't do my job today. I can't be responsible. I can't get up. There's a lion that might get me. It's quite obviously not what's going on.

It's a silly excuse for not doing what he should be doing. It says that he turns in his bed as though he's hinged to it. Like a door is hinged to its frame. He just rotates back and forward. A very funny picture about someone unmotivated to get up and get to work. He buries his hand in the dish.

It's like I've got this nacho in my hand. But it just sounds exhausting to lift up my hand. I have to bring it all the way to my mouth. Then I'm going to have to chew it if I do all that work. There's just still more work to be done. Just a silly, ridiculous excuse, ridiculous picture that's being painted.

This is an image of someone who starts things and doesn't finish them because it's too much of a burden. Proverbs presents the sluggard as a person who makes excuses, who can't finish tasks, who leaves work undone. But it's not just laziness. So I was reading from a book by an Eastern University professor named R.J. Snell. He wrote a book called Ascedia and its Discontents, Metaphysical Boredom in an Empire of Desire.

As you can tell from the title, it's a real page turner. But here's what he said. It's really helpful. Let me just read a little excerpt here. This is from R.J. Snell.

He says, It is a mistake to think that sloth is laziness. More than indolence or apathy, sloth rejects the burden of order, choosing instead the breezy lightness of freedom, loving self more than relation or relationships, and autonomy more than the good. In sloth, one rejects the weight and density of living in an ordered creation. In sloth, we abhor what is there. We abhor what is. We abhor limits and place and order and being.

Our misguided addiction to freedom without truth is a revolt of the self against any charged world, which might demand attention, care, obligation, or respect, and certainly against any mandate of working to fill God's beautiful kingdom. They are seen as insufferable demands, as illegitimate restrictions on our unbridled freedom. And so we find ourselves hating the place God has provided, the work God has given to us, and the proper ways of laboring. He says that underneath all of what might appear to be laziness, that slothfulness or someone who is a sluggard, this is a refusal and a rejection of purpose.

That's what's actually happening in the heart of a sluggard. That really what's going on is that they've rejected God's purposes for their life. It's the rejection of being created and designed for a purpose or a particular end. The thought that I would have expectations or demands on me is too burdensome. This is a rejection of responsibility because it encroaches on my freedom. Responsibility and having a particular purpose introduces into my life restraints, and I don't want those.

I don't want to be designed for it. This is what philosophers would call a telos, a designed purpose, an end, an intended end, an aim for our lives. And slothfulness is a rejection of being designed for a purpose with a particular end in mind. So in other words, this idea is not the absence of activity. You could be filled with activity and yet still be eaten up with slothfulness in your life. God has designed us for some particular reasons with particular intentions.

So for example, God has made us in such a way that we are to relate to him. I'll give you three. God's designed purposes for our lives. He's given us this higher purpose, this higher calling, and slothfulness is a rejection of, number one, the fact that we're made to relate to God. But God has made us to know him, to glorify him, to enjoy him forever, to worship him, to submit our lives to him, to love him with all of our heart and our mind and our strength, all of our energy to be given in pursuit of God.

And slothful people reject this purpose. They don't see their life as meant to relate to God. They don't pursue God with zeal and energy and effort. They don't exert energy in glorifying God with their lives. That's too burdensome. That's too, I'm tired.

That's too constricting. Too much restraint is brought into my life to love God with all my heart and soul and mind and strength. I'd rather just lay here. It's a rejection of purpose. Speaking of the slugger turning on his bed like he's hinged, commentator Matthew Henry says, this is an elegant hyperpoly, showing how his sin is his punishment. Those that are slothful in the business of religion will not be at the pains to feed their own souls with the word of God, the bread of life, nor to fetch in promised blessings by prayer, though they might have them for the fetching.

That in being slothful, we're rejecting our purpose that we were made to relate to God. We're also, number two, made to relate to each other. This is part of God's created order for all people. If you think about back to the garden, that Adam and Eve are made to love one another just as God has loved them. That they're designed to pour out their lives for one another. But slothfulness rejects this as a purpose because relationships are hard.

People are so exhausting and they never stop sinning, especially in the annoying ways that they sin. Those are the ones they just can't ever stop. People require things of me. They want me to talk. They want me to help. Right?

Slothful person says, Oh my gosh, I don't want to be obligated. I don't want to have responsibilities. I don't want you to need my help. No, I can't have you with my phone number because you might text me or heaven forbid call me. I don't want to have to answer the phone and talk. It's hard work relationships are.

Self-donating love infringes on our autonomy and a sluggard resists relationships, particularly difficult ones. Number three, created purpose. We're made to have dominion. Dominion. We're to harness the earth's resources to create culture. For the good of humanity.

We're supposed to take the raw materials of creation and rework them in such a way that people are blessed. In a way that makes others' lives better. We're to fill the earth with beauty and goodness. To be a help to other people. So educators work to fill the earth with people who have knowledge.

It's part of our calling. Artists take raw materials and they draw out beauty from those raw materials. Accountants take the chaos of Numbers and they bring about order. And we could just go on and on and on with whatever your field or profession is. You're designed to have dominion. But a sluggard rejects this because that takes a lot of work.

Proverbs says, The land of the sluggard was filled with thorns and thistles. The walls are in disarray. The earth itself is languishing under the failed dominion of the sluggard. That he or she is contributing nothing to creation. Nothing to humanity. No one is helped.

No one is nourished. This is failed dominion. He's turned inward on himself. Instead of being turned outward towards God and to the people that were called to love and bless, the sluggard is turned inward on himself. He's folded his hands. He sleeps.

He slumbers. His personal comfort and freedom and rest and pleasure are his only pursuits. He prefers to be left alone with no responsibilities, no demands. It's actually a picture of anti-love. This idea of slothfulness. It is anti-love.

No restraints. No expectations. No demands. No obligations. Just leave me alone. Stop bothering me.

Stop needing things from me. It's an abhorrence, sloth is, of place and calling. It's a rejection of the idea that God has put me in this place, in this marriage, in this family, in this job, in this church, in this town, in this school. And I don't like those restrictions and I don't like the obligations that come with them. I actually think this is part of why Americans, statistically speaking, are more and more delaying marriage and delaying having kids. And there could be some reasons for that.

It's not necessarily wrong to do that. But if you actually look at the trends, we are pushing marriage and children further and further and further off into our lives and getting older and older and older. And I think part of the reason why that's happening is because of sloth. We understand that to be married is to be obligated to someone else. And we don't want that kind of restriction. That to have kids is to be obligated to these little humans who will constantly need you at all times, in all ways.

And we don't want anything to do with that. And so we just push it off. I think this is what happens when someone has what we call a midlife crisis. I think this is what happens when someone just all of a sudden it's like they just explode and they're gone. They're running away. They're off, you know, in the convertible with the secretary or whatever.

It's actually a slothfulness explosion. And I realize that term doesn't just roll off the tongue. So I'm not trying to like change the phrasing of midlife crisis. I think what's happening though is it's this sort of I have all these restrictions and I've built my life a certain way and now I realize I can't change it. My life is the one that I have. And I've done it long enough now where I realize I can't get out of this and I've got all these restrictions and all these obligations and people just snap because they don't want it anymore.

I'll tell you that this idea shows up in some smaller ways as well for me in particular. I've got a five-year-old, a three-year-old, and a three-month-old right now. Made a huge mistake. We had way too many kids. And if I'm not careful, that was a joke. I realize you don't know me so you don't know when I'm joking and when I'm not.

I've got to be more careful with folks who I don't know. If I'm not careful, the mentality that will sneak in is I am just counting down the clock until I finally get to put them in bed. And at the end of the day, when their day is over is when my life begins. And that is a broken, busted way to lead your family and to be a dad. And it's sloth. It's, this is tiring, this is exhausting.

When you're awake, there's things I have to do. But when you're asleep, I get to do what I want to do. So whether it's these big extreme ways or these maybe smaller and more subtle ways, I would argue that all of us have some level, some degree of slothfulness going on and we need some help. So I'll continue to investigate a little bit here and give you some consequences of slothfulness. I'll just give you three consequences of slothfulness. Here's the first one.

Metaphysical boredom. I'm trying to use big words to impress you. Metaphysical boredom. Let me think about for a second how much time we spend trying to cure our boredom. Like how much entertainment and social media we just flock to. Those things are fine.

There's nothing wrong with those things. But we just flock to them. Americans check their social media accounts on average 17 times per day. One seven times per day. We spend an hour and 40 minutes per day on social media. Adults actually spend more time on social media than teenagers do in case you were about to blame the teens for skewing the data.

7.5 Hours per day teenagers spend engaging media. Just all types of media. YouTube, Netflix, whatever is cool. We're just inundated with media to cure our boredom. And I'm not... When I say boredom this is why I said metaphysical boredom I'm not saying the problem is I don't know what to do right now.

That's not what I'm... I don't have anything to do right now. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about bigger than that. I'm saying we are now plagued with I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing. I don't know why I'm here.

I don't know the purpose for which I exist. That's a different kind of boredom. That's a metaphysical boredom. Not just I don't have anything to do it's I don't know what I'm meant to do. So I have nothing to give myself to.

This boredom is a result of being unhinged from our purpose and design. So this is something people don't realize. Purpose is meaning you have to do this. To have purpose in your life you have to say this is what I exist for. This is why I'm here. I'm not here for all these other things.

Purpose. So if you want to have purpose in your life you are going to have to cut off some options. You're going to have to say this is not for me. These are not why I'm here. These are not why I exist. And if you demand that you keep all of your options open and that you are never obligated and you're never committed you can do that but you cannot also have purpose.

You will have to pick one or the other. You can either have obligation and commitment and purpose or you can have none of them. But you don't get to have it both ways. Purpose requires limiting yourself restraining yourself restricting yourself. And you know this in all kinds of smaller ways. If you want to be a world class musician you're going to have to spend a lot of time practicing.

Right? You have to cut yourself off from other options and say this is what I'm going to do because this is my purpose. If you want to be a world class athlete you have to spend a lot of time refining your skills and working out and all sorts of things you could be doing that you now cannot spend your time doing. You're going to be limited. To have a purpose means other things are not for you. And right now in America we don't know why we exist we just instinctively reject any answer that actually places limits on us.

So as soon as somebody starts talking about this is our purpose and this is what we should do and these are the things we should not do people start freaking out because we don't want to have any sense of commitment or obligation or restriction but it's coming at the cost of our purpose. If you're not gripped with something bigger than yourself to give your life to you're going to struggle. We aren't gripped with purpose we've not let anything great capture our imagination and therefore nothing is bigger in our lives than our own convenience and comfort and pleasure and desires. And I'll just tell you when you're not pouring yourself out you're going to try to find something to fill yourself up with and so we just consume social media celebrity gossip inner workings of sports teams TV show after TV show shopping whatever it is for you I've got a friend who says you can tell how he's doing spiritually just by looking at his smartphone data usage for the month.

How he's doing spiritually just by looking at his smartphone data usage for the month. That if he's doing really well spiritually that he's way less addicted to his phone and his data usage goes down he said a couple of months ago he had the worst month he can remember having and he over tripled his data for the month. He's just constantly something to fill up something to distract

Something to numb it's consumption without contentment so there's no deep peace there's no lasting joy because we're not fulfilling our purpose for which we are created we're meant to love God to love people and to do good work for the good of humanity here's how Proverbs 13 4 says it the sluggard craves and gets nothing but the soul of the diligent is content the sluggard craves

It's this constant consuming but there is no contentment because the sluggard does not embrace his purpose of giving himself in love and contributing something consuming is easier but it's also emptier it's the first consequence of slothfulness number two second consequence of slothfulness is that we lie about God that to be slothful is to speak

Lies about God we were made to be thrilled with God to be enamored with him to be caught up in how incredible he is and how beautiful he is and how smart he is and how wise he is that how somehow he's always working all things for the good of those who love him these are the kind of things that are supposed to fill us

With energy and joy and be thrilled by him but the bored sluggard says God is boring to me there's nothing about God that would make me want to put this remote down there's nothing about God that would make me want to close this app and think about him for a minute there's nothing

About God that would make me want to pursue him with everything that I have he's not worthy of my awe and attention and service his words are irrelevant to me see our misuse of time says something about our view of God and living in a persistent state of sloth and boredom is actually a denial of God's worthiness

What if just like every now and then when you were bored you prayed instead of picking up your phone not like all the time just every now and then what if you picked up a Bible instead of picking up the Netflix marathon where you left it when you had some

Time on your hands not every now and then let's still let's still do some Netflix I'm not being ridiculous here Netflix is great it's just not as good as God is right we're saying with our time and energy God TV and media and

Clothes and whatever is better than you so we get bored we start looking at pictures of other people's vacations and we look up and it's been three hours and that got the head nods because y'all do it too huh okay number three

Third consequence of softfulness is brokenness brokenness like things just fall apart things just fall apart around you and that's the language of the Proverbs is that surrounding this sluggard is just sort of disarray it's just overgrown it's broken things aren't what they're supposed to be because God gave this person this person who's being spoken to in Proverbs he gave him things to do

And without him doing those things they left they're left undone so there's just brokenness where sloth reigns you will find brokenness where people shrug off the work of of cultivating relationships then you'll find people around them who are hurting and lonely and struggling where people shrug off the work that's been given to them you're just gonna find life breaking down

My wife and I have a good friend who just decided she wanted to leave her husband he's great he's a sinner but he's great I mean he's done nothing that would necessarily you would think cause this sort of reaction they've got two kids and she just said I don't want to be obligated anymore I feel tied down I feel restricted I don't want to do it anymore and so she's out with no concern for how this is

Gonna affect her former husband or these children and so now because of her slothfulness there's this breakdown in their family and there's all this brokenness and now each of the three of them are in counseling to try to work through some of this stuff if you've been through these situations you know that these kids are now blaming themselves and thinking what should I have done so

That mommy would stay this is what happens where slothfulness reigns in rules where people reject the good purposes that God's given to them is that there's gonna be brokenness there's always collateral damage and the slothful person leaves a wake of hurting frustrated people in her wake in his wake so we gotta ask how do we break free like what do we do to reject slothfulness and

Embrace our good design I'll give you three three answers how do we break free number one carry your load carry your load that's language from Galatians chapter six verse five in that passage it says that that God has given each of us a load to carry particular things that we're supposed to carry work to do that's contrasted in Galatians chapter six with burdens burdens are unusually heavy things that we all need help with

That we need the community of faith to come around us to help us with that's a burden the language here though is is load these are the normal regular things of life that God gives each of us it's work to do and we're supposed to carry those things your your load is the work that God has given to you it's a demand and expectation and that we're called to reject false freedom and embrace our design to carry the load of the work and the people that God has given to us to embrace the call

To give ourselves to God to others our spouses our kids our roommates our neighbors RJ Snell whom I quoted earlier speaks about carrying our load and here's how he talks about it he says we do this in concrete ways finishing the report paying our bills wiping away childish tears washing the car caring for our tools doing the dishes staying in mundane ordinary work while perhaps unromantic allows for virtue since natural virtue requires repetition

There is no virtue without repetition and so we stay put we sink our roots deep parents can confirm this exhausting yes but a new character forms with every nap meal diaper wet bed and smile we become the people we are by what we choose to do again isn't that a good last line we become the people we are by what we choose to do again so carry your load carry your load in your work

And we all have work if you're a student if you're in school if you're in middle or high school part of your work is to honor your father and mother in school you get the report done like on time you read the assignment right you carry your load at your job you be on time you get your work done on time you be reliable you follow up with the client you put the finishing

Touches on the painting you keep setting the alarm and you keep getting to work on time you don't be late you take care of your tools you see the project through if you primarily stay at home with children then your work your load is to build into them to draw out their potential to nurture and come alongside of them we carry the load in our jobs we carry the load

In our relationships you allow yourself to be inconvenienced by others you do the the hard work of pursuing difficult people including your difficult weird roommate have you guys picked up on the fact that you always have one weird roommate you know this is how life works there will always be one weird roommate if you don't have a weird roommate I have horrible news you are the weird

Roommate I'm sorry to be the one to tell you that when I was in college there was a group of us that stayed at a house that we rented and one of our roommates he was downstairs and there were some mice that were sneaking in and so he went and bought a mouse trap caught a mouse

Took the mouse out of the trap cut its head off put the head on a stick put the stick in the ground he said as a warning to all the other mice of what would happen if they came around so we all saw that and we were like just I'm going to slowly back away with no

Comment you always have a weird roommate and part of carrying the load is to continue to serve and love and be a blessing even to difficult people even to weird roommates you carry the load in your marriage in a room this size

I would bet some amounts of money that someone is thinking about leaving their spouse stay do the hard work of staying of pursuing you carry the load and God will bless it he will use it in your life your persistence your commitment

You stay you serve your spouse you carry the load with your kids especially if you have younger kids they're exhausting but you do the baths you do the bedtime routines you explain the same thing

For the 100,000th time without losing your patience you carry the load with your kids carry the load in your community group I know some of you are in a group and you have difficult

People that are killing you and it would be so easy to just begin to distance yourself from that person some of you have been distancing yourself from your group because they want more for you than you

Want for yourself right now if we're honest but you haven't said anything like you haven't said hey guys I'm just going to drop out of the group I think because you knew they would actually confront you and come after you and pursue

You so you've just gotten more and more creative with your excuses don't reject your purpose don't reject your design stay stick it out God will use it we become

The people we are by the things that we do again we carry the load in our relationship with God some Christians lack any sort

Of discipline and energy in their pursuit of God that's a shirking of responsibility to pursue God with all your heart and I've heard people who I swear they sound like the

Dude in the book of Proverbs with their excuses as to why they're not getting any quality time with Jesus why they're getting no time in prayer it's like oh gosh I was going to but there's a lion outside you were made to relate to

God to pursue him with all your heart and mind and strength and when you carry the load that God has given to you over time you develop virtue your character develops over time but the more that you give yourself in love to others

You're formed and to say it more strongly you cannot become the person God is shaping you to be if you refuse to carry the load that he has given to you when you serve your roommate again you are taking yet another step in the direction

Of becoming a servant hearted person that's how it works but to get there you got to stay you got to carry what's been given to you and a lot of life is doing the same things over and over like I can't clean a room in

My house without one of my kids running behind me just knocking everything back onto the floor right after I just picked it up my kids don't want to play with a toy they want to play with the toys they just throw them all on the

Floor and do snow angels in the toys it doesn't this the type of toy is irrelevant it just needs to be a pile so I'm just constantly doing the same stuff over and over and over your character is shaped with every single load

Of laundry because we become the people we are by what we choose to do again the big moments in life are not going to be what ends up shaping you the most we have some false beliefs as Christians sometimes that these mountaintop experiences

Are the life defining life altering moments and I'm not taking away from those they can be really powerful but what I'm telling you is the things that are going to make you the person you become are the things you do a thousand

Times not the things you do once very rarely is it one single thing going to dictate the direction of your life but the things that you do over and over and over again will absolutely dictate the direction of your life you're formed by the things you do

Again here's how Proverbs 21 talks about all this he says the desires of the sluggard kills him for his hands refuse to labor all day long he craves and craves but the righteous man gives and does not hold back

The righteous man has he has become the kind of person who gives who invests who labors who stays and does I can't read this stuff and not think about my dad he's such a good example for me he's

Been a real estate agent for 30 years and he is just so faithful he does a good Job he's honest he has integrity his clients love him one of the pleasures of my adult life has been growing up and meeting

People that my dad has worked with through the years and hearing how they brag about my dad it brings tears to my eyes how proud I am that this is my dad who is faithful with the work that God gave him growing up when I would ask my dad

To play I have this is a true story I have no memory of him saying no I won't play with you now he had to have said that right like there's no way he just always did but I'm just telling you I have no memory of that because more often

Than not the answer was either yes I would love to or give me ten minutes let me finish what I'm doing and then I'm outside let's play basketball so all I remember is my dad being faithful with what God entrusted to him it's him serving and blessing and

My entire family and everyone that my dad has worked with all through the years would say they've been blessed by being around him and being associated with him simply because he carried the load that God had given him you're becoming a certain kind of person by

Staying under the weight and continuing to carry the load that God gives you and the demands on your life will form you into the person God has called you to be that's number one number two way that we break free we gotta distinguish between rest and escape

We gotta distinguish between rest and escape I think this is important and I'm glad you guys are studying it over the summer this idea of rest or the hammock rest is not escape those are different rest is when I'm recharging in a God in a Godward way so that afterwards I am ready to get back to work that's rest

I'm recharging in a Godward way so that now I'm ready to get back to killing things I gotta go to work I gotta get to hunting that's rest escape is a false substitute that we often turn to when we're tired just to turn our brains off so I don't know if you've

Ever been to the end of the day and you think I literally I'm so tired I can't do anything but watch TV my counsel to you would be no if that's all you can do then just don't do anything go to bed you need to rest if all you can do is watch TV

That's that's your body saying it's time to go to sleep right rest is not escape and you can watch TV but that's not rest because if you're anything like me you know that watching a show does not make you want to next get up and go out

To work it makes me want to watch more shows right escape begets more escape rest leads to work and we gotta learn what's restful for us and distinguish where are we inclined to just go towards escape I just don't want

To have to think about this anymore I just want to shut down I want to turn my brain off that's escape now what's restful for you might not be what's restful for me and that's fine so there's going to need to be

Some self awareness here and you got to know how you're wired so my Job as a pastor is lots of reading lots of talking and I'm never done people just keep sinning myself included so I'm never ever finished so what's restful

For me is something that is mindless I don't want to have to read I don't want to have to talk to people because that's what I do all the time and I want it to be something that when I'm done it's over and I never have to think about it

Again so sometimes yard work is actually restful for me because it's the opposite of my day Job sometimes cooking is restful for me it's just working with my hands I don't have to think about it too much it's done we ate the meal glad you

Liked it I'll never think about this ever again but now if you're a chef or if you're on a landscape company then probably those things aren't going to be restful for you so you got to know where you're coming from

And what actually is restful for you and some self-awareness is needed but if you don't know you need to learn otherwise you're just going to escape and find that you're never recharged to get back to work

So we got to distinguish between rest and escape lest we be tired and exhausted all the time and then number three and as I'm saying this I'll invite the band to come back up because we'll

Prepare to sing and respond a little bit number three look to Jesus we got to look to Jesus we break free from slothfulness by looking to Jesus Jesus carried the load that was given to him he was obedient to his parents Jesus spent

Most of his life as a carpenter think about this now the God of the universe incarnated and spent most of his time here doing work with his hands think about how honoring that is to labor and to work and Jesus did good work as a carpenter

He did not make bad tables Jesus made good tables like if you bought a table from Jesus it wouldn't wobble and you wouldn't have to fold up a napkin and put under one of the legs to get it to

Be balanced right he did a good Job he carried the load he said my food is to do the will of him who sent me and ultimately Jesus carried the load of the cross he stayed on the cross embracing the demands

And the responsibilities he could have saved himself or he could save us and he chose to save us we ultimately break free from slothfulness when we look to Jesus for our example when we realize that Jesus was our substitute that he carried

The load that he bore the price of our sin so that we might be free and through him we can renounce slothfulness and through the spirit's power we can embrace our purpose and embrace our design and find that God actually shapes

And blesses us through it let me pray for us Jesus thank you that you have embraced your load that you with joy set before you move to the cross scorning the shame Lord that you could have chosen to save yourself or to save us and that you saved us

As we want to look to your example we want to receive your righteousness and Jesus we want to reject sloth we want to repent where sloth has taken root in our lives and my assumption is for all of us we have some responding

And some confessing and some repenting to do so Lord would you send your spirit to help us see ourselves clearly to be aware to realize the places in our lives where we're pushing off the obligations and responsibilities

That you have lovingly given to us both for our good for the people around us good and for your glory and so would you help us as believers to embrace the load the restriction the responsibilities that you have given us that we would

Pursue you with all our heart soul mind and strength that we would serve and bless and pour out for others and we would do the good work that you've called us to do and the places

That you've put us now that our whole city our whole area would be blessed that's ultimately what we're after so we ask all this for your glory and for our good amen amen

Mill City 6/18/18 Mill City 6/18/18

Rhythms of Life

Transcript

Good morning. Happy Father's Day. Good to see you all this morning. We are going to be beginning a series today called The Hammer in the Hammock. It's going to last six weeks where we're going to spend some time talking about work and rest, the rhythm of life that God's placed in the world. So there was an economist.

His name was John Maynard Keynes. In 1930, he had a quote where he said, Our grandchildren will only work about three hours a day and probably only by choice. So I wanted to ask, how is your three-hour workdays going, your voluntary three-hour workdays? Have they been nice? His prediction didn't quite come true, did it? What he was doing was he was seeing how life and work was being able to – we were able to get more done because of the increases in technology and machinery.

And so what he was saying was all that was going to do to life was we were going to be more productive in a shorter amount of time, and then we'd have more time for rest. But that is not what happened. We did become more productive in a shorter amount of time, but all it has done is increase the pace at which life moves. Being able to travel long distances faster just means that you have more to do more quickly, that being able to get projects done quicker means that we just have more to do, more production, more, more, more. And the pace of life has increased. And if we're honest, most of us are very, very busy.

That's kind of the American mantra is just that I'm busy. I have so much going on. For many of us, we have – technology has made it to where we can work anywhere. But what ends up happening is we end up working everywhere, that most of us have work in our pockets, that we use our phones, we're receiving phone calls, we're sending messages, we're getting emails that need to be answered within 24 hours, and it's better if you do it sooner. And that for many of us, work never stops, and our busyness never stops, and we're constantly going. And in America, we are busy.

Life feels too full. We are overstressed, overworked, overanxious. And the increasing – the rates of depression are consistently increasing. I read an article in the magazine called The Economist. It's stationed in London. It says that ever since a clock was first used to synchronize labor in the 18th century, time has been understood in relation to money.

Our hours are financially quantified. So what I'm saying was that prior to this, there was – time was understood as separate from finances. But you might think about a day's worth of labor. But for many of us, when we began working, we started thinking of hourly wages. And so it's all of life now feels monetized, that you worry about wasting time or spending time wisely or saving time, that we've kind of connected these ideas together, and so that our time and our money are tied together. And so what it says was is when economies grow and incomes rise, everyone's time becomes more valuable.

And the more valuable something becomes, the scarcer it seems. So it says the U.S. has grown in wealth. Everybody feels busier. They go on to talk specifically about America. Like I said, this was written in London. But they say American workers toil some of the longest hours in the industrial world.

Employers are not required to offer their employees proper holidays. That's just how they say vacation. But even when they do, their workers rarely use them all. The average employee takes only half of what is allotted, and 15% don't take any holiday at all. Nowhere is the value of work higher and the value of leisure lower. This is the country that invented takeaway coffee after all.

So what it's saying is that in the United States, we overvalue work. We undervalue leisure. And then it takes a shot. It says, you know, coffee used to be something you sat and enjoyed at a cafe. You had conversations. But that's not what we do.

We roll up to a drive-thru window. And we're like, please inject caffeine directly into my neck. I've got things to do. That in general, we are busy. We are moving at a fast pace. And we are exhausted.

It goes on to talk about women in the workforce. It says, So what it's saying is that as more women went into the workforce, they also began to fell a greater pressure to be better moms. And that as many moms, as they watched other women in the workforce, began to say, no, being a mom matters so immensely. And they began to up the ante on what it meant to be a mom. And so overall, this rise in the pressures of motherhood. This article went on to say that parents today are spending more time with their children than any other generation.

That they're spending more time specifically devoted to their children than previous generations in these countries. But they feel worse about it. Feel more like they are failing. That fathers and mothers are more at home doing work. And so it is Father's Day. I didn't want to say that that was one of the statistics was that fathers have begun to do more at home.

So good Job, y'all. But it did say that dads do more of the fun jobs, like they play with the children. Or they said they do more of the kind of task-oriented. This job gets finished. So like some fixing things around the house, some repairs, or some yard work.

But it said that moms tend to do the unending jobs. Feeding children, cooking for the family, cleaning, doing laundry. They have unending tasks that it never stops. I know for many of you that you come in here this morning and we're supposed to be here. We're supposed to be worshiping. We're supposed to be praying.

We're supposed to be studying the Word together. We're supposed to be taking a deep breath and kind of relaxing for just a moment. And you can't. As soon as you sit down, as soon as you get a pen, as soon as you get a paper, you start taking, when you're going to take notes, you start writing down a to-do list and grocery list. You thought, you thought I didn't know. The reason I know this, you just thought I thought you were paying attention.

But the reason I know this is I looked over before while I'm preaching and seen my wife and thought, man, this must be a good sermon. She's taking some diligent notes. And then I come down and she's like, hey, can we get this stuff at the grocery store later? But that's the way my wife is. When a pen touches a paper for her, she begins to write out lists because she feels like she lives in a world of unending things to do. Jeffrey Godby says, working mothers with young children.

He's a time-use expert at Penn State. That's helpful to know. Jeffrey Godby, a time-use expert at Penn State. It says that working mothers with young children are the most time-scarce segment of society. That for all of us, we are busy. Now, one of the ways we've reacted to this is we've just said, this is what life's like.

We've just kind of owned it. Some of you are like, yeah, I'm busy. Yeah, I'm exhausted. But this is just a season. This is just for now. For some reason, we all kind of think that future us is going to rest.

Like, I don't know about y'all, but future me gets to sleep in. Future me gets to take days off. Future me is well rested. He's not as irritable as present me. And for many of us, we're doing that. We're like, I'll get through this.

I just got to get through this. As soon as the holidays are over, as soon as this is over, as soon as this, you know, the summer's kind of busy. As soon as I can, then I'll be able to stop. But that's not how it works. Many of us are like, well, I'm in a season. It's like, well, it's a 12-year season for you, and you need to figure out a new pace of life.

And so what has been – what has happened as a kind of a response to this over-business in our culture is that we have begun to place a lot of pressure on the time off that we do have so that we anxiously approach it. We have a vacation planned later in the year, and that's going to be our big vacation. We're going to have all of our family memories, and everything's going to be special and magic, and we've got to get everything done in that one week, and we come back more exhausted than when we left. And then there's a whole other segment of our culture, of our society right now that's just kind of rejected this.

They're extending adolescence. They're trying to avoid this type of work, this type of – They feel like it imposes on their life to take on this weight, to take on this responsibility, is going to rob them of everything that is good. And so they spend their time – I mean, they're working really hard right now to find a part-time job that pays full-time pay so they can keep up with playing Frisbee golf. And for some of us in this room, you are busy, and you're the busy type of person who can't sit still. And for others of us, we're kind of pushing back on that and being like, really, if I could do nothing and survive, I would.

If I could do nothing and get away with it, I would. And so there's some of you that have full-time jobs, but when you go to work, you're not really trying to be productive. You're not really trying to pour into what you're doing. You're really just there to get a paycheck so that you can look forward to the time off that you do have. And we've begun to push back on this idea of being too busy and life moving too fast. Now, I know that for many of our older generations, they're going to look at the younger generations and say, you don't know how to work.

Look at how lazy they are. And there's some truth to that. There's some truth to some of these younger generations right now kind of pushing back on this. But I've seen documentaries on the 60s. I know that a whole generation of people just quit their jobs, moved away from their homes, went out into the woods and rolled around in the mud wearing nothing but a guitar. I don't think this is new to this generation.

I think there's a consistent inner turmoil when it comes to work and to rest, when it comes to laziness and busyness. And we've got to figure out a better pace of life. Many of us oscillate between the two. We're busy, busy, busy, and then we're just exhausted and we crash and we're lazy. And some of us just – you'll see somebody go, this is it. It's just too much, too much.

I can't be a part of a community group anymore. I can't be a part of this church anymore. I volunteer for too much. I got too much going on with the kids. We've just got to – I'm going to quit my job. We're just going to move to a new city.

And they almost just – they freak out and they need to just reset life. But the problem is we don't have a healthy pattern. So as soon as they move, as soon as they get another church, as soon as they do all of that, they just begin to rebuild the same problems they had before. And we've got to have a better way to work and to rest and a better rhythm for it. So grab your Bible and go to Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus chapter 20. This is where God gives the Israelites the Ten Commandments. And the Ten Commandments are the primary framework of the law given in the Old Testament. So what had happened was God had taken the Israelites. They had been his covenant people, and they had been enslaved in Egypt for 400 years. And so God shows up, and through Moses and through the plagues and through the parting of the Red Sea, he pulls the Israelites out.

And then on Mount Sinai, he gives them the Ten Commandments and says, This is how you will worship me. This is how you will know me. This is the beginnings of me showing you what I'm like. And so as we read the Ten Commandments, they're the framework, kind of the foundation of the law, that many of them say a major idea or concept, and then much of the law is then going to be explaining how to do that. So he's saying, have no other gods but me.

And then there's going to be whole sections of the law on how to worship. He'll say, do not commit murder. Do not commit adultery. But then there's whole sections on the law on how to relate to others and how to walk through life together. But in the Ten Commandments, we're going to pick up in verse 8.

We're going to read 8 through 11. And then we're going to spend some time talking through it. So God says, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work. You or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates.

For in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. So this is in one of the Ten Commandments. And what we see is that God says, Remember the Sabbath. Remember means practice it. Hold it in front of you.

Keep it going. The word Sabbath just means rest. So he's saying remember the rest. Remember this. He says to keep it holy. Holy means to be set apart.

Many of you, maybe your mothers or grandmothers have china or they have like special Christmas dishes, and they're set apart. They're used for special occasions. You don't go to your grandma's house and get out her fine china or get out her Christmas dishes and just start eating your lucky charms in them. That's not acceptable. She'd look at you like bugs are crawling out of your ears. She might strike you.

I don't know what your grandmother's like. But you don't do that. It's set apart. It has a special purpose. And so that's what he's saying is that there is one day in your week. Your week will be six days long and all six of the other days will look very similar.

And then there's one day that's set apart. There's one day that's holy. It's different. Just a bit of history. The Israelites practiced this. They had the Sabbath, which was the seventh day in the week.

So that was Saturday. Later, as Jesus comes and Jesus goes to the cross and he dies and he rises from the grave on Sunday. It's the first day of the week. The Christians began to worship on Sunday. They called it the Lord's Day. We see that referenced in Acts and in the book of Revelation.

And then as the Emperor Constantine becomes a Christian later, I mean, there's some speculation over whether or not he's actually a Christian, but as the Roman Empire moved in that direction, he declares that Sunday will be a Sabbath. The Romans prior to this had not practiced the day of rest, but he declares that Sunday will be a Sabbath. And then push on down into the future. When the U.S. gets started, we had a kind of a debate over whether or not we would have Saturday as a Sabbath. We would do the Jewish one or we would do the Sunday one. So we just took both.

And that's why many of us have a five-day work week or five-day school work week, a two-day weekend. Now, with retail and service industries, a lot of us do work seven days a week, but this is where that began. So here's what it says. This is in the Ten Commandments. And so what we gotta understand is that as we approach the Ten Commandments, we hold these up as these are helpful, these are binding, these are the weight of these is still present. When the Bible says to not commit adultery, to not commit murder, but I want us to play a little game.

Which one of these is not like the others? So the Bible says in the Ten Commandments, it says you should not have any other gods but me. You should not create a graven image. You wanna have no other handmade idols. You will not commit adultery. You will not commit murder.

Hey, one day a week, take a day off. Rest. It just strikes us as different, but we wouldn't. So what we kind of treat this as, a lot of times, is nine commandments and one suggestion that we act as if, of course you can't murder, of course that's evil, of course that's heinous, and then someone's like, what about the Sabbath? And we're like, well, you know, I mean, not if you're busy or have something else to do. You see, when we come to the law, we have to understand how we as Christians ought to understand this, how we ought to approach it.

We believe that Jesus Christ fulfilled the law on our behalf, that the weight of the law, see, the law given in the Old Testament was designed to really do two things. It was designed to show us our inability to live to God's standards, our inability to live up to what we were meant to be. And secondly, it was to teach us, to train us what God was like. It was to prepare us, to build into us a pursuit of his holiness. And so Jesus comes and Jesus does not abolish the law. He does not throw this out.

He fulfills it. That Jesus Christ accomplishes the law on our behalf. What he does is he lives a perfect sinless life. He perfectly fulfills the law. The heart behind the law and the regulations are fulfilled in Christ and then Christ is cursed for us. That he takes the curse of the law on himself and he dies on a cross.

That's what Galatians tells us. That Jesus takes the curse for us so that we might have his, he takes our failing report card and gives us his perfect score. That he graduates and gives us his diploma. That he swaps places with us and takes our curse so that we might be free. And so that when we come to texts like this, the weight of the law does not bear down on us. This does not crush us.

It shows us our inability and it drives us towards Christ and we ought to take it as the good gift that it is. That it does help us that the Ten Commandments are life-giving because of Christ. And so as we read this, we should not easily set aside the Sabbath. So let's pick back up in verse eight and let's try to understand this a little better. I mean verse nine. So he says, six days you shall labor and do all your work.

Now this specific commandment is for training these Israelites who had been slaves to rest. They were slaves. Their value came from their productivity. That they were useful only in as far as they were producing. And when they ceased to produce, when they ceased to be healthy, when they ceased to be strong, when they ceased to be able to do work, they were useless. And so he takes these slaves and he says, that's not how your value works anymore.

One day I want you to rest. I want you to sit like I sat. See, God wove this pattern into the world that he created for six days. The Bible and the world began with God working. With him creating and cultivating. And so he creates, he cultivates, he works, and then it says that after six days he rested.

So that on the seventh day, God doesn't create anything. He doesn't make anything. He doesn't, he just rests. He enjoys his good work. And so what this says is, six days you shall labor and do all your work. Now many of us in this room lean towards busyness, but some of us lean towards laziness.

You've been waking up at the crack of noon. And you are too valuable to be lazy. Too valuable to throw off, to reject the weight of existence that God has given you. That God has poured intelligence and strength, ability into you. And that we were designed for good work. That we were meant to do what God did in creation, which was to work and to look at our work and see that it was good.

It's one of the things that Ecclesiastes says. It's one of the few joys given to us is that we would work and enjoy the work of our hands. It's Father's Day. I want to speak specifically to men for just a second. We are seeing right now in our culture a prolonged adolescence specifically for men. We're seeing men push responsibility further down, further back, further along the timeline.

They're living with their parents longer. They're pushing off getting married. They're using Tinder rather than truly trying to pursue somebody. They're pushing this all further down the line. And we even have kind of a consistent cultural push towards this idea that some forms of masculinity, traditional forms of masculinity, are simply evil. Now, not all forms of masculinity as we've been taught are biblical and beautiful, but there is a lot of weight and beauty given to masculinity and good godly masculinity is to be celebrated.

But there are currently some, it seems, that as if they would lay the idea of toxic masculinity directly on top of just any form of masculinity and they are anti the idea. And so what they have done is what you have done when you've removed the good weight placed on men for self-discipline and self-sacrifice, what you end up getting is only toxic masculinity because you have guys filled with testosterone and no real way to use it. So they end up depressed and angry and violent. Men, you were meant to carry weight. I see articles a lot that are saying, why aren't there any more female CEOs? Why aren't there more females this?

And honestly, I celebrate the idea of females doing things. God poured value and worth into you as well, but I'm not mad at male CEOs. Men are supposed to be carrying weight. even currently with watching kind of the movies that are out with my son, there's a lot of areas right now, women, where it feels like our society is just behind you just clapping, just celebrating what you're doing and we ought to. That's a good shift from some of the ways that things have been done in the past because God, ladies, has poured a lot of weight, poured a lot of his value, his energy, his design into you that you were made in the image of God.

But watching stuff with my son, every time I watch a movie with a leading lady, she's smart and capable and strong and every time there's one with a little boy in it, he's like awkward and confusing and weird. I have to work really hard to find movies that I can show him where it's like, yeah, be like that guy. Men, you were meant to carry weight, you were meant to work. Same for women. But it seems as if in our culture right now, there are many women who are flourishing and many men who are floundering and we were designed to be tethered, designed to have discipline, designed for sacrifice, designed for good labor.

You are too valuable. God has put too much into you for you to be lazy, to reject the good design God has. So six days you are to labor. forever. But then it continues, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it, you shall not do any work. On it, you shall not do any work.

You have six days to get all your work done and on the seventh day and on the seventh day, you're not to do any work. You see, you're too valuable to be lazy, but you are not indispensable. The world continues to run even when you are taking a day off. See, God looks at the Israelites and says, your value no longer comes from your work. You can sleep in. You can rest.

You can simply worship. You can sit and remember that you used to be slaves and know now that you are set free because there's going to be a day every week where every bit of productivity stops and you remember. You remember me and you remember what I've done. You see, it's a day of rest that we're meant to stop, slow down. So many of us don't know how to rest.

Our current kind of cultural cycle is that we wake up in the morning and we're tired so we grab a cup of coffee. Some of you are like, well, I don't drink coffee. Okay, Mountain Dew. Monster. We pour some caffeine into our face. Some of us go to a coffee shop and we're like, please, I'd like a cup with caffeine in it and then I'd like a smaller, more concentrated bit of caffeine poured down in that and I'd like some whipped cream and I'd like some chocolate.

I need some simple carbohydrates. Then we go to work. We get to work. We start to slow down at some point. Maybe we start just taking in simple carbohydrates. We start eating just some candy.

Maybe some of you have M&Ms on your desk. We begin to just kind of fuel ourselves with garbage and then we go to lunch. We eat. Come back from lunch. We get back to work. At some point, you start to slow down.

You begin to, three or four in the afternoon, your body's like, well, I'm done. You're like, oh, no, you're not. If you're like me, you drink more coffee. Some of you, it's another Mountain Dew. Some of you all go get a Diet Coke from a gas station that's the size of my newborn infant. We go home.

We're wired. We're kind of exhausted from the day, but we can't calm down. We can't slow our minds. We can't stop thinking about things. Our phone's still going off. Work's still hanging over our heads.

We've got all these issues that are going in our minds, and so the best thing we can come up with is we'll turn the TV up loud enough to drown out the noise. We think maybe watching TV will calm us down, but it doesn't because it's just a bunch of stressful stuff shining in our face, so then maybe we decide we're going to lay in bed. We'll go to sleep, but some of us can't sleep, so we're using our phone to flip through Twitter or Facebook, and have you ever noticed if you do this long enough, you don't even read. You just start kind of looking at the pictures, and your brain, you start going faster and faster, and you're only reading half of a sentence, and then you're just moving on, and we wonder why we all have ADHD, and we're twitchy.

We're sticking iPads in the hands of two-year-olds and being like, here, pay attention to this, and every single one of us is losing our minds, so you've been laying in bed with a phone in your hand, which is the equivalent of shining a flashlight in your eyes. Like, that's going to help you sleep, and then eventually we take an Ambien, drink some Zequil, fall asleep, so we can get up and start again. We are over-busy, over-anxious. We don't know how to rest. I talk with a lot of pastors, and I know that even for really committed Christians, many of them, not all of them, but many of them, only gathering at the church one to two times a month, even though they would say they're devout, they love Jesus, and some of that has to do with the fact that we've lost the Sabbath.

We've lost this day of rest, and it's not just a day of rest, but he says that this is a, the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God, that it's a rest towards God. That we're supposed to stop and aim ourselves towards God. You see, without work, you'll only be able to achieve unfulfilling frivolity, unfulfilling fun, unfulfilling leisure. It'll be like eating a bag of potato chips for dinner. It's salty, it's sweet, but then it doesn't feel right. It's not weighty enough.

And so that for those of us who have rejected the idea of work, existence is too light, and it's unfulfilling. But without rest, all you'll have is unending toil. Joy and color will drain from life. You see, we were designed for life-giving labor and soul-satisfying rest. Both a rejection of work into laziness and slothfulness, which we'll talk about next week, or a rejection of rest is a form of self-sufficiency and self-glorification. We are, in our pattern of work and rest, sinning and in need of repentance.

And some of us have so self-glorified and so grown into self-sufficiency that we claim to be Christians, but we practice as if we are not because we are unable to rest in the finished work of Christ and in the fact that He rules sovereignly over the universe so that you can go lay down, you can take a nap, you can put your feet up, you can close your computer, and the world will continue to move. And some of us have begun to live as if the whole point of existence is our own comfort, our own enjoyment, that everything is meant to terminate on us, that our satisfaction, our fun, is the point of everything so that we have rejected the weight that God has placed on us to serve those around us and help keep the world moving and to reign and have dominion over the world as He taught us in Genesis so that we've rejected this idea and we have glorified ourselves well beyond our position. And when it comes to our approach to work and to rest, we're sinners who need to repent. But we need to repent and enjoy Christ.

You see, this is a Sabbath. It's a rest to the Lord. We have labor unto the Lord and we have rest unto the Lord. You see, Jesus used to get into it with the Pharisees all the time. They would argue with Him all the time. If you read the New Testament, you'll see a lot of places where it goes on a Sabbath day and it tells a story and then it says on another Sabbath and it tells a story and it says on another Sabbath.

And the reason it jumps from Sabbath to Sabbath to Sabbath is that these were some of the times that Jesus was butting heads with the Pharisees. The Pharisees were a strict sect of those who practiced Judaism and they were very strict when it came to Sabbath regulations. They were very strict as to what it meant to practice the Sabbath. What was work? What wasn't work? How far could you walk?

How much could you do? And Jesus is constantly getting into it with them because they're trying to over practice the legality of the law and they're missing the point of it. So in this conversation with them, and this will be up on the screen, it's found in Mark 2, verse 27 and 28. Jesus says this. He's in an argument with them over the Sabbath and he said to them, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. This idea of a weekly rest, this idea of you taking time to stop is a gift. It does not rule over you to hem you in, to cause you harm. It is a gift. It was made for you. We were not designed to be able to move at the pace we're moving.

If we were to right now, if everybody just had to stand up and we all just had to run, just run as far as you can go. I know some of us, we'd make it to the parking lot and you'd be like, okay, I'm done. You might light up a cigarette and just have a seat. Other of us would go a little bit further. Some of you that are like, oh, I think right now I could probably run a marathon. We're so proud of you.

We saw your sticker. But all of us eventually would shut down. Our bodies would force us to stop. And for many of us, we are higher capacity. You feel like you can handle the weight of this. You feel like you can go without rest and you feel like you can just muscle through.

And the truth is, at some point, your body will shut you down. And the Sabbath was made for you. And the Sabbath was made for me. That it's a gift from God to us that we might rest because he is good and he is sovereign. He has set the slaves free. Jesus doesn't just say the Sabbath was made for man.

He says, I am the Lord of the Sabbath. He calls himself the Son of Man. He says, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. So what it means is that as we find the Sabbath, we find the Lord of the Sabbath, Christ. That in the Sabbath, we not only receive this good gift, but we received Christ. That we run to Jesus.

That we get more of Jesus in resting because he's the Lord of it. He doesn't say he's gotten rid of it. He says he's all about it. He's the king over it. You see, we believe that Jesus Christ came and that he did the work. That we are saved by good works, but it's Christ's works, not ours.

That when he was on the cross and he said, it is finished, that meant that forever the slaves have been set free and that we can rest. That we've been set free from our eternal slavery to our sin and our guilt and the weight of the law that bears down on us. So that in Christ, we can be free. That's why he says, all you who are weary and heavy laden, come to me and I will give you rest. You see, Jesus is the Lord of rest and our hope is that in this series, as we begin to learn about work, we learn how to work unto him that we might enjoy him, but then we begin to have a good balance of work followed by healthy rest that we would work hard and rest well, that we would have life-giving work and soul-satisfying rest.

You see, many of us have downtime, but it's not rest. The best we muster is laziness, distraction, escape, when we lost the ability to rest in the Lord and unto the Lord that we might be soul-satisfied. That we might be filled back up. So our hope in this series is that we would learn how to work and we would learn how to rest and that we would all have a healthy pattern of joy-filled life in Christ. We believe that Christians ought to be some of the hardest working and some of the best resting. That we ought to know more than anybody how to rest, how to enjoy life, and that we might get a lot of life and joy out of our work knowing that all of our labor is to the Lord.

As for today, the question is, where do I need to work then? Have I rejected God's good design for me that I might labor, that I might work, that I might be productive? Have I thrown that off? Have I glorified myself in my comfort that you might run to Christ asking for forgiveness and asking for His help? Have you so over-elevated your self-sufficiency so as to lose Christ? So overvalued your productivity, your work, so as to push Him away, so as to reject God that you've lost the ability to rest?

We ask that you would repent. I run to Jesus, the Lord of rest, that He might give you rest in the gospel.

Mill City 6/10/18 Mill City 6/10/18

Salutations

Transcript

Good morning. My name is Spencer Carey. I'm a pastor in training here with Mill City Church. We are in our final week in Ephesians. We made it. Nine months later, we are closing out Ephesians.

We're going to be in Ephesians 6, verses 18 through 24, which is on page 570. If you have a blue Bible around you, if you don't have a Bible, please take that home. That is our gift to you. Next week, we will start our Hammer and Hammock series, which is a six-week series on work and rest. But for today, we're going to close out Ephesians.

It's going to be in 6, verses 18 through 24. Something I've realized recently in parenting, I have almost three and almost one-year-old, is they're not very coordinated. They struggle with doing two things at once. Let me give you a few examples. My son, Bridgers, he just learned how to crawl a couple months ago, and he struggled. He struggled out of the gate.

We put him in the middle of the room, and we'd walk away, and we'd come back, and he would be all the way backing up into the couch. He knew he could back circles around anybody, but getting the coordination of arms and legs to go forward was a little bit difficult for him. He would finally get to the point where he'd do this standing push-up. His butt would be in the air, and then he would just sit there. He didn't know what to do. And eventually he would just faceplant into the ground, which was funny when he didn't bruise his face.

My daughter also isn't super coordinated. I think long-term she's not going to be super coordinated. She's going to be great at a lot of things. I just don't think she's going to be super coordinated. And recently, I've got this, like I rode bikes growing up. It was a big deal to me.

So I want her to learn how to ride a bike. So this weekend, I was at my parents' house, and we got a tricycle out that she typically can be pushed on. But her legs are now long enough to reach the pedals. I wanted to show her this is how it works. So I put her feet in the pedals, and I took one leg and pushed it down and showed her how that kind of moved it forward.

And I took the other leg and tried to do the motion for her. And she was just fine with that. I was like, no, no, no, you can do this. If you just push equal weight on both sides, distribute it, you're going to be going forward. And she's like, no, I'll just let you push me. Like she was completely content with that.

And I was like, we'll get there. Because eventually, I want her to get on a bike. And when she gets on a bike without training wheels, she's going to have to figure that out. Because if you want to take a bike forward, you need equal distribution weight on both sides, pushing both pedals down. Because if you do too far to the right, you're going to fall off to the end. If you're going to do too far to the left, you're going to fall off to the left.

In order to move the bike forward, she's going to have to figure out coordinating both those things together. And Paul is teaching a little bit of this as we close out Ephesians. In fact, most of his letters show two main aspects of ministry that need equal weight on both sides. He talks a lot about the mission of God, seeing the loss be reached. And he also emphasizes care for the church. That both of those, mission and care for the church, need equal weight on both sides.

Because if you're high mission, like if you have a community group and you guys are really good at reaching people, and you're inviting people in, you're getting to know neighbors, but you don't do a good job of caring for one another. You don't do a good job of addressing sin. If you don't do a good job of that, what happens is, is that you're going, going, going, and you will burn out and sin will creep up and take you down one by one. On the other end of the spectrum, if you are really good at care, if you're really good at building each other up, like maybe you have really good theological deep discussions, maybe you wade through really tough sins, which is good, you should push for that, but you're low mission.

You're never reaching people, you're never inviting people. What you turn into is a holy huddle. You don't advance the kingdom. Both need equal weight. And that's what we're going to look at this morning as we close out Ephesians 6, and we see the two main aspects for the ministry of the church. So he picks up in the middle of verse 18 where Chet left off last week.

To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel for which I'm an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak, so that you may also know how I am doing, how I am and what I am doing. Tychicus, the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, will tell you everything. I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts. Peace be to the brothers in love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible. I'll pray and we'll dive into this. Father, I thank you so much for this season of Ephesians. God, I pray that you would help us see your heart for mission and your heart for care for the church and that we might be encouraged by this and walk this out as a church. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right, so he starts out where Chet left off last week. He says, To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication. That's prayers. Offering up prayers for all the saints and also for me, that words may be given to me and opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel. So we pick up where we left off last week, that we are in a spiritual war.

If you didn't listen to last week's sermon, I encourage you to go back and listen to it. Because if you are called in Christ, you enter into a war against not flesh and blood, but the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers of this present darkness like we read last week. We are in a war. And in the midst of that war, we are called to advance the gospel. So Paul, in the midst of this, is asking for prayer because he understands the power as a weapon against the enemy.

And in high school, I played a lot of video games growing up. But when I went to college, I realized something. That if I would have taken my video game console to college, I would have not done well. I would have not made the grades. My whole life is taking an ounce of talent and maximizing it through hard work. So I knew if I went to college, this wasn't going to end well if I took my video game console.

So I left it behind. But what I realized was, is when I got to college, that if you wanted to actually hang out with other guys at some point, you're going to play video games. That's just what it was. So we, in college, tried to reach, we were part of a ministry to try to reach people. And I wanted to spend time getting to know guys in our dorm. And the one game that everybody played that came out when I was in college was Call of Duty.

Man, people loved Call of Duty. They played it. And I wasn't out when I was in high school, so I didn't really play it. And I would get roped into playing some of these games. And they would immediately regret their decision. Because I was terrible.

Like, I just, I wasn't very good. And we'd be playing. I'd be trying to figure out kind of how to move around, how to shoot. And I played some shooter games growing up, so I kind of figured out the basics. But I was terrible.

I was a drag on the team. And eventually, I would sit on weapons that I didn't know how to use. And eventually, someone pointed out, Hey, man, you know what an airstrike is? I was like, no, what's that? It's like, you know all those, every now and then we have bombs that are just being dropped and people are dying? I'm like, yeah, that sounds great.

What is that? You have one. And if you just press this button, it's like the cheat code. You're just going to do work. I was like, oh, that's a really good idea. Maybe next game that will work out.

I was like, no, not my team. And it's like, I was sitting on this powerful weapon that I had. I didn't know how to use it. I didn't even try. In the same way in the church, we sit on a powerful weapon that stands against the enemy in prayer. We've been given this air support from God that we can tap into and we choose not to use it.

Rather than cultivate a consistent pattern of prayer to push the enemy back, we remain silent. Billy Graham once said that a prayerless Christian is a powerless Christian. And what he was getting at was that we have this unreal power from our God to go to work through us and reaching other people to grow us into Christlikeness. And we remain silent. We were missing out on that power. Another pastor named John Piper, he said, One of the greatest uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the last day that prayerlessness was not from a lack of time.

You can insert Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, whatever app you have on your phone. That on the last day when we are standing before our Savior, we look back at all those who could have been reached, all those who could have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, if we would have spent time praying for their boldness within us to reach them, it won't be for a lack of time. That we are called to pray. And Paul, he wanted the prayers of this church. Because he understood its power. And he understood what was at stake.

That eternity was on the line. And he understood that the pattern of prayers that God has ordained, he has chosen beforehand that prayer is the means by which he advances his kingdom and his purposes. That we get to tap into that kind of power. Let me show you what that looks like. A year ago, I'm a bivocational, I do real estate. And I was in a real estate office, a different one than I am now.

And there was a woman in my real estate office, another agent, who came up to me and said, Hey, did you know that my daughter works for one of the attorneys that we do closings at? I said, No, I didn't. She said, Yeah, her name is Kaylin. And it would be, you know, she just jumped in the workforce. She didn't go to school yet. So a lot of her friends went off to college.

And it would be great if you would connect with her and just invite her into what you're doing at your church. I said, Girl, you're a team player. Absolutely. So I went. And at the next closing, I saw her. I said, Hey, I heard that you were looking to hang out with some people.

There's some people close to your age. We have this community group from our church that meets. And it would be great if you came. And what was brilliant was what she heard. That's what I said. What she heard was, Oh, a young networking group for professionals.

Great. I'm going to come to that. And she did. And it was not a networking group. She quickly picked up on that. But she came back.

And she kept coming back. And here's something we picked up on pretty quickly. We picked up on the fact that she had been around church, but she never actually clearly heard the gospel of grace. That she heard some kind of works-based righteousness, but she actually hadn't heard about Jesus and the grace that he offers. So we started praying for her.

And we started journeying with her. And then one day she came up to us and she said, Hey, this is the last time I'm coming to group. And I was like, What's up? She's like, I'm starting night classes on Tuesdays, and I can no longer come. And I was like, This is not how this ends. So I went to a different group.

I went to the Flagstone group, which is led by Jesse and Tony Ando. And I said, Hey, we have this awesome girl in our community group. I would love to get her plugged in with you guys. And, of course, they took her in. And we kept praying as we sent her off. And I know for a fact that they kept praying too.

And over time, it finally clicked. It made sense. And this spring, she stood in this room and gave one of the most powerful testimonies I've ever heard of baptism. Because people prayed and God went to work in redeeming her. We tapped into that power. And Paul, he understood this.

That's why he asked for prayer, that words may be given to me and opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel. That he might have the boldness to go out and proclaim this beautiful mystery that he's been tapping into for six chapters. And Ephesians. This mystery that flipped entire cities over for the gospel. Because it ignited a flame within believers and it ignited a flame in other people. Growing up, my stepdad taught me how to build fires.

We had this fireplace in my parents' house. And he finally taught me how to build one. He set up the logs. And I looked to the right and I saw this beautiful, rugged, cast iron tool set. And I was like, I'm going to use those. I like that.

I'm going to grab this poker. I'm going to jab this thing into submission. It's going to be great. And to the right of that rugged set was this fire bellow. This antique fire bellow. Fire bellow is just this little pump.

You simply just push and it pushes out air. I was like, that's cute. I don't need that. Well, he lit the fire and he got the fire bellow out. And he started just to push down just effortlessly. And it brought out air.

And fire needs air, which I didn't really realize. And it engulfed the whole logs and fire. And I was like, oh, that's actually a pretty useful tool. And I still was stubborn. Because I was like, man, I think I can do this on my own. I would build a fire.

I'd get face to face with the flames. I'd be huffing and puffing and going for it. And there's a tool right there I just could have used effortlessly. Pumping up the air. Getting the fire going. And that's what prayer gets to be.

It stirs a fire up within us. A boldness within us. It stirs a fire up in other people. And you can strong our mission. You can get face to face with the fire. You can huff.

You can puff. You can go for it. Or you can take what God has given us in prayer. And use it. And prayerfully pray for those who need Jesus. Pray for a boldness within you to stir up.

That you might actually go and proclaim the gospel. And in order for Paul to continue in this boldness. He desired the prayers of this church. To fan those flames of boldness. And as a church we need that same prayerfulness. And how we approach mission together.

Because if we're going to be a gospel centered community on mission. We need this. Because here's the deal. We are actually really good as a church. At building relationships. At throwing parties.

At inviting people in. We crush that. And that's good. I don't want to diminish that at all. That's in our culture. That is how you reach people.

Is relationally. You can do a ton of good in doing that. So I want to uphold that. But hear this clearly. You can't friend people into the kingdom. You can't.

You can friend them into listening. But you can't friend them into the kingdom. At some point. You're going to actually have to say words. You're going to have to speak words. Because the gospel is a message.

And those words are going to take boldness. It's going to take boldness for you to declare the grace of our Lord. That we were once dead in sin. That through faith in Jesus we're alive in Christ. And that you can have that same relationship with him. Because you've been separated by sin.

It's going to take boldness. And it's going to take words to say that. And when you do that. At times. It's going to get weird. At times.

It's going to be awkward. You're going to say things. And people are going to look at you like. Nah. Like you're going to have friends that you actually share Jesus with. And they're going to say.

I don't want that. And if that's what you believe. I don't want you either. And that's going to be painful. You're going to be socially cast out in some situations. You might share with your neighbor.

And then you go out and take the trash out at the same time. And you'll look at each other. And it'll be awkward. It's going to happen. Because there is a cost to sharing words. There's a cost to being an ambassador.

Which is what Paul picks up on in verse 20. He says. For which I am an ambassador in chains. That I might declare it boldly as I ought to speak. An ambassador is simply a representative. We have those today.

And in their day it would have been a royal ambassador. Who spoke on behalf of the king. And declaring his good news. So we get to be that in Christ. That we get to be ambassadors of our kingdom. Proclaiming the good news.

But he puts a caveat on it. In chains. Noting that there will be suffering that comes with it. That you will suffer for declaring the gospel. Paul was put in prison. We'll be in social situations where we are cast out.

Where we are set aside. But here's the deal. In 10,000 years from now. Is that going to matter? Is it going to matter that you may have cost some friendships. Because you valued their eternity.

Over your friendship or your comfort with them. No. In 10,000 years you'll be thinking of the people that you risked it with. That are standing beside you. In the presence of Jesus. That's what's going to matter.

So with all of that in mind. I have a few questions for us as a church family. As we try to walk this out as a church family. Who are you currently trying to reach? We did this a little bit at our family meeting this week. Who are you trying to reach?

Have you been praying for them? I don't mean like have you prayed. I mean are you regularly praying for them? Have you invited other people in our church family. Other people in your community group. To pray for them.

Do they even know who you are trying to reach? Do you know who the other people in your community group are trying to reach? Have you been praying for those people? And at the front end of this. You're like I can't think of anybody that I'm trying to reach. Who doesn't know Jesus.

Have you prayed that God would break you. Of the apathy. Or the fear. Or the busyness. Or whatever you insert there. That keeps you from actually going out.

And seeing others be changed by the gospel. Church family. We got to grow in our missional hustle. And we do that by praying. And putting weight on that pedal. That we might drive the church forward.

And in the midst of doing that. In the midst of putting weight on that pedal. We got to evenly distribute to the other side. And caring for one another. As a church family. So Paul picks up on that.

He says in verse 21. So that you also may know how I am. And what I am doing. Tychicus. The beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord. Will tell you everything.

I have sent him to you for this very purpose. That you may know how we are. And that he may encourage your hearts. So the other pedal that needs weight. Is caring for one another. And I feel like when I read this sometimes from Paul.

It's hard for me to actually visualize this. Because when I think of Paul. Sometimes I think of this weighty theologian. He's got thick glasses. He's got a loud voice. He got called up into the seventh heaven at some point.

He has all kinds of big things he has to say. He talks about mission. And it's hard for me to picture. That he intimately and deeply cared. For the churches that he was reaching. And for us to capture a picture of this.

In Ephesians. We have to go back to week one. Of our sermon series. As we talked about his time. In Ephesus. In the book of Acts.

In the book of Acts. He spent time with. He came. He was one of the people that helped planted. The church at Ephesus. For three years.

They labored there. They saw that city. Start to be changed by Jesus. And then he left. To go and plant other churches. And he kept ministering to them.

And then we pick up in Acts 20. This is where we really see his relationship. With the church at Ephesus. And how he cared. And at this point in Acts 20. He is traveling through.

He wants to meet with the Ephesian elders. One more time. Because at this point he realizes. He is going to Rome. And he is going to die. This is the last time he is going to see them.

And they pick up on. This is the last time they are going to see him. So in Acts 20. He gives this speech. And in this speech. He kind of gives the highlights.

Of the sufferings that they went through together. Of the people that were reached. And all the time that he spent there. And then he says this verse. He says remembering that for three years. I did not cease night or day.

To admonish. Which means correct. Everyone with tears. That for three years. He invested in these people. He corrected them.

With tears. Pouring over them. That they might grow into Christ likeness. And then he continues in this speech. To encourage them. And the final scene we see here.

Is they start hugging him. And everyone is in tears. And what we catch a glimpse of. Is how much they love him. And how much he loved them. It is like a father.

Who is being dropped off. To go off to battle. And it is a war. That he is probably not going to come back from. It is a powerful scene. And it is because they loved each other deeply.

And they cared for one another. And he was going off to die. This kind of care. This aspect of ministry. That we see in his ministry. Is because he wanted them to mature.

In Christ. He wanted them to grow. In knowing the gospel. And in the midst of that. In this letter. Back to Ephesians.

He knows. He cares for this church. And he wants them to be encouraged. So in wanting them to be encouraged. He knows it is going to be hard to capture. In this letter.

His emotional state. I mean it is hard to capture a letter nowadays. You write an email or a text message. It is hard to capture. How you were doing. I know they gave us emojis.

But I don't think they are all that helpful at times. So it is good to actually have someone who can communicate that. And he does. He sends Tychicus. Which side note. We don't really know.

There is no consensus on how to say this guy's name. I have called him Tychicus for a year. I listened to some audio bibles this week. They called him Tychicus. And I was like come on. And then I went back to the Greek.

And it literally reads as Tychicus. And I knew if I started this off by calling him Tychicus. You would not have recovered. You would not have been able to pay attention. So we will call him Tychicus.

They send Tychicus so that he might encourage them. And we do not know a whole lot about Tychicus. But here is what we can tell from this passage. He has been with Paul. He has been ministering to Paul while he is in prison. And Paul he needed that.

You see in his other letters that he cares. He wants people to come and minister to him. So he ministered to him. And he calls him a brother. He sees him as family. That this would have been a really hard thing to send him out.

Because he would be losing family for a season. And he sends him out knowing how valuable he is. Knowing that he is going to be an encouragement to this church. Because encouragement is what they needed as a church. The word for encouragement when it is read literally is call near. That is the idea.

That you be in the presence of someone and you be encouraged. And it is often translated as encouraged. Or comfort. Or built up. And the picture of what is happening here. Is like a fighter.

Who at the end of a round. Goes back to his corner. Whether you. This is boxing. I know some of you all like UFC. The picture is that he would be going back to his corner.

And what you do not see in boxing or in UFC. Is when they go back to their corner. They sit down by themselves. And they. You know. They guide themselves.

They drink some water. They take it to Owl. They wipe off some sweat. You do not see that. In boxing. What you see.

Is when you go back to your corner. That is where we get the phrase. I have people in my corner. Is you have a whole team that is waiting on you. And that team. As soon as you sit down on the stool.

Is going to start going to work. They are going to start mending wounds. They are going to take sticks. And stick them up your nose. And plug and cuts. They are going to start putting ointment on your face.

They are going to be putting ice on you. They are going to start mending wounds. And then what you see in boxing. Is you have the coach come in. And he starts coaching them up. He starts saying bro.

You got to watch out for his right hooks. He has been tearing you up. All round. With those kind of punches. You got to put up a defense. You got to change your strategy here.

So once they mend them. And they start coaching them up. Then they start building them up. You see that. Man. You are going to get this.

We are going to go in for another round. You are going to get it. You are going to get your licks in. You are going to come back. We are going to do this again. And we are going to finish this fight.

And the bell rings. And they send them back out. And that is what we get to be as the church. That as we fight sin. As we battle against this world. And the cosmic powers of this present darkness.

Over Satan. As we battle and go to work. We get to come back to our corner. You get sometimes to stagger back into your corner. And you have people in your community group. Who are there to mend wounds with the gospel.

Who are there to coach you up. Who are there to tell you. You got to watch out for right hooks. You got to watch out for what you click on the internet. You got to be mindful of the bitterness that is stirring up within you. And they coach you up.

And they start building you up in Christ. To send you back out. That is encouragement. That is the encouragement that Tychicus would have done. That is why we as a church say. That we give good news before good advice.

Because when you come in staggering into group. And often times this is me. I come staggering into group. I want someone to build me up and remind me who I am. That I am a son of the king. When you come stumbling in after a rough week.

I will remind you that you are a daughter. That you have been adopted in this family. And that when Jesus sees you. He does not see your sin. Or your suffering. Or your pain.

He sees the finished work of Christ. I want to remind you that you are part of a church family. I want to remind you that you did not save you. Some of you are struggling every week. Because you still think I have got to earn God's favor. I got to clean myself up.

And you are going to come in. I am going to say no. It wasn't you that saved you. It was Christ that saved you. You might come in weak. And just struggling.

And I am going to look at you and say no. Do you realize you have the God of the universe. The God who formed everything out of nothing. Is living inside of you. The Holy Spirit is working through you. And he is not going to let you go.

I am going to remind you how this thing ends. That at the end of it all. It is you and the presence of God forever. Because of what he has done for you. He is going to carry you home. And we are going to build you up.

We are going to encourage you in the gospel. And we are going to send you out for another round. And it might be every week. If you are going out to fight sin. And coming back and it is building you up. That is what it is going to look like every week.

Because that is what encouragement looks like in church family. And in our church family. There are people that are struggling physically with ailments. Struggling with sin. Struggling emotionally. And they are hurting.

And I get it. As a church family we walk together. And sometimes that gets tiring. Sometimes that gets hard bearing burdens. But I just want to clearly say something.

We see no place in the New Testament that says. That because it is hard we stop. That because it is hard we stop encouraging one another. There is wisdom and teaming up. And not getting burnt out. I hear that.

But we lean into. We are called to encourage. No matter if it is a season. Or if it is a lifetime. As a church family. We strive to encourage one another in the gospel.

There are others who are in here. That are struggling. And you haven't said anything. You have remained quiet. You haven't told people what you are going through. Because you feel like you need to bear this all alone.

I want you to hear this clearly. You are not meant to take the hits alone. That is not how this is supposed to be. You are not meant to take the hits alone. You have a corner of people in this church family. Who are ready to receive you.

Who are ready to build you up. You might be thinking. I don't have a corner. And that is why every week. We make a push.

Mill City 6/3/18 Mill City 6/3/18

Spiritual Warfare and the Armor of God

Transcript

Good morning. My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. Do you mind grabbing your Bibles and go to Ephesians chapter 6? We've been walking through the book of Ephesians. We've got this week and next week.

And we'll be moving on to another series. And so we're going to pick up in Ephesians chapter 6, starting in verse 10. One, my great uncle, my dad's uncle, was a minor league baseball player in 1941. And he was pretty good. He was doing well in 1941. He was getting close to and looking like he was going to be called up to the majors.

And then December 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor. On December 8, Franklin Delano Roosevelt stood before a joint session of Congress and declared that he wanted Congress to make it clear that war had begun the day before and that we were officially at war with the Empire of China. And on that same day, my great uncle signed up and joined the Marines. Within a year, he was in the Guadalcanal. And in no uncertain terms, in a moment, the United States was at war and everything changed. For my uncle, for my granddad, for many of your relatives, for our entire nation, we were plunged into war.

And because we were at war, everything was different. And the way we had to approach life and the way that the world would be from then on was different. And as we read this text today, we're going to see that Paul, to the Ephesian church, says, we are at war. He declares the same way that Franklin Roosevelt did. We are at war. We have an enemy and we have to act and think and work and live accordingly.

So we're going to pick up in verse 10. Let's pray before we do that. And let's see what Paul is talking about and how we can learn and grow from that. God, we ask that your word would speak powerfully today. And that your Holy Spirit would be actively present. That we might feel you at work.

We pray specifically that as we learn about and speak about our enemy, that we would approach the subject appropriately, not flippantly, in giving all the glory to you. In Jesus' name, amen. So Paul, as he's finishing up his letter to the church in Ephesus, in verse 10 of chapter 6, he says, finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God. Okay. So he says, be strong and put on the armor.

Get geared up. Now, if I burst into your house and said, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, I need you to eat a good meal tonight. I need you to go to bed early. I need you to be well rested tomorrow. I need you to wake up early. I need you to put on some good clothes, some shoes you can run in or some boots or something.

I need you to load every weapon you have. And I don't care if that's just a stick. I need you to sharpen it up and be ready in the morning. Now, your immediate next question is, why? Like, Paul just looked at us and said, you need to be strong and you need to be wearing armor. And I think our next question is, but why?

Like, what are we needing to be strong wearing armor for? It feels like this just got intense. And it did. So let's see what he says. Verse 11, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. So Paul said, you need to be prepared to stand against the devil.

That we actually, as Christians, believe that there is a devil, a real spiritual being that is at work for harm, at work for evil. He keeps going. He says, you may be able to stand against the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. So he says, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood.

That word wrestle means hand to hand combat to the death. It is if you were in a fight and you got all the way down to the end, no one had a weapon anymore, but somebody is still going to walk away and somebody is going to be laying in the dirt. That's the word he uses there. So it's not a kind word. It's not play wrestling. He's saying our battle, our war, our fight to the death is not with flesh and blood.

When you became a Christian, if you are a Christian, when you became a Christian, you were not commissioned to what Christians don't band together to get a bunch of guns and go conquer nations and make them follow Christ. That's not what happened. We were transitioned from a kingdom of darkness that belongs to the enemy. The devil into a transferred into the kingdom of Christ, into his beloved son, a kingdom of light that we might live out our days following Jesus in his kingdom. And it is a spiritual war, a spiritual battle that we have been called into. That's what Paul just said.

Now we believe that this is true. That we fight a cosmic battle against cosmic, powerful enemies. That's the story of the Bible. That God created the world and he created heavenly beings. And he made them powerful and beautiful and gave them jobs and poured a lot of himself into them. A lot of goodness.

And that there was a spiritual being that rebelled against God, that led other angels astray. And that he has been actively at work to fight against God since before creation. We know that when we were created and God created the earth and Adam and Eve and he placed them in a garden that a serpent came along and began to whisper to Eve. To try to sow dissension and make her doubt God. And that we're told is that serpent is the devil. That that is Satan.

That he's a real being who has been at work since the beginning of humanity to draw us away from God. We're told in the book of Revelation that he's a great dragon that actively opposes God and his people. We see him at work throughout the scriptures. I think one of the questions that immediately arises, and we don't have full answers to this, but if God created the devil, how is he evil? Why would God create something that was evil? But see, God created humans and he created angelic beings and he poured a lot of good things in them.

And the more God put in you, the more beauty he put in you, the more strength he put in you, the more capable of good or evil you are because we have free choice. Let me give you an example. My brother has a saltwater fish tank. And it's pretty cool. It's got saltwater fish in it, if you didn't pick up on that. And here's the thing.

If there's a fish in there, if you looked at his fish tank and you picked the kindest, most loyal, most loving fish in that fish tank that defended my brother's honor and looked forward to seeing his distorted face through the glass every day. And then you took the other fish, the most evil, conniving, sneaky fish in the tank, who hates my brother and his evil, distorted, creepy face, and actively seeks to destroy my brother. The difference between those two fish is very, very small. I think this one can bite this one. That's about it. They're not staging an uprising.

They're fish. They can only be so good or so bad because they're not so much poured into them. They're not that big. They're not that smart. Now, he has two dogs. If one of them was perfectly loyal and one of them was sneaky and evil and was attempting to overthrow the household, now I'd actually watch this movie.

This sounds interesting. Because there's a little more to a dog. They're a little smarter. They can bite. They can do these different things. And we know that when God pours a lot into someone, into a creature, it has more capabilities for good and for evil.

That the more intelligent a human, the more in place they have, the more power they have, the more money they have, the more evil they can do. And so he took a spiritual being and he poured a lot of power and a lot of energy and a lot of beauty and that spiritual being decided that he wanted to rebel against God, that he wanted to fight against God, and he's very powerful. He's existed for a long time and he's actively at work for evil in the world. Now, I realize that some of you want to go. Time out. Real quick.

Did you for real just say the devil was real? In 2018, in the United States? You know they just said that stuff because they didn't know science, right? Like someone would be sick and they would just be like, he's puking out demons. And we now know, no, he's got strep. He's going to be okay if we give him some medicine.

Like there's, some of us want to say, like, I just don't, like are you really saying there's like a red person who you can't see, but he's red, and he's got like a pitchfork and like comes along to you and is like, you should drink more alcohol. Is that what we're talking about? This exists? It's actually a lot worse and a lot more scary and a lot more fearful than that. And I will say that we've gathered this morning because we believe, and I would say maybe you're here because you believe or you want to believe or you're interested in the idea that there is a good spiritual being that you can't see, that loves you and is at work for your good.

And it's not that far-fetched or unreasonable to think that if there are good spiritual beings that we can't see that are working for our good, that there would be evil spiritual beings that are fighting for our harm. C.S. Lewis, who's a thinker from the last century, said there is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan. That Satan is at work to lead people away from God, to lead people to hell. The Bible tells us that hell was created for Satan and his demons, and Satan knows his fate, that he will one day be judged for all of his actions and his rebellion against God.

And so he is actively trying to lead as many people astray as possible. One of the things that I've had people say to me on a regular basis when we talk about this stuff, they go, you believe in a real devil? And I'm like, yeah, I believe in a real devil. I believe Satan's real. And they say, okay, well, if he's real, why don't he just show himself? And it's like, because he's not stupid.

Y'all ever watched a horror movie? As soon as they find out there's a ghost, who's the first person that shows up at the house? A priest. He never does well because the horror movie isn't going to end with the priest. Usually. But if Satan showed up at your house and was like, I'm Satan, worship me.

You'd be like, that doesn't sound good. And if you're real, then maybe, let me look, what's this say? Oh, it says Jesus wins. Let me follow him. And he might immediately make a whole bunch of people run to Christ rather than being fine with heading to hell and not knowing it. The truth is, there are a lot of people who are going to hell and they're going to hell because they're very comfortable.

They have enough money. They're enjoying life just fine. They don't know they need grace. They haven't seen their sin and the enemy's fine with that. He's playing the long game. You're only here for a little bit and then there's an eternity.

He's fine with you being comfortable now. Everything working on him just fine now. Having no need for Christ now because there's an eternity you'll get to spend in punishment where you are separated from the love of Christ and where you don't get to enjoy all the good things that Jesus died for. We have an actual enemy who is actively at work to destroy, to harm. So he says this, verse 13.

I'm going to read 12 again. He says, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. So we know they have force. We know that they have power. We know that they have authority. We know that they rule and we know that they're evil and that we're in a death match with them.

Therefore, because that's true, take up the whole armor of God. So he's saying completely cover yourself with what he's about to talk about. That we would be completely covered with the armor of God. That we would take all of this together. That you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand firm. So that was verse 13.

Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand firm. I want to talk about that phrase, the evil day. I think it means this general time where evil is at work. I also think it means specific times when you are under attack. that you would actually be able to stand firm when the enemy begins to attack you. See, if you believe, if you're a Christian in the room and you believe basic Christian doctrine, you believe that God created the world good and that the enemy came in and led us astray into sin. And therefore, all humanity had fallen away from God and deserves because we joined the rebellion with Satan to have his same fate.

To be cast into hell for our unwillingness to love and follow God who deserves all love and worship. But that God loved us enough that he did not leave us there but he came in the person of Christ that we might know him and that we might have our sin paid for. That if you believe that, that you've placed your faith in Jesus because you knew you were going to go to hell, you knew that you were going to pay for your sin and you knew that there was no way that you could be good enough or holy enough or beautiful enough to stand before him and say, judge me on my account, I'm great. But that you knew you would stand before him and that he would see all that was vile and sick and twisted in you and that you would have to be held accountable for your rebellion against him.

So you placed your faith in Christ that he might die for you and that he might rise for you and that you might be clothed in him. If you believe that, then you signed on in the midst of this conflict because you were in the midst of this conflict. If you and I joined the military, we went to basic training. We had some people yell at us. We had them teach us the schemes of the enemy. We had them give us weapons that were designed to harm others.

We had them teach us how to fight. We had them teach us how to swim, how to handle emotional, mental stress while they shouted at us and almost drowned us. And then they said, okay, time for y'all to go. You're headed to Afghanistan. And we showed up and we went on our first patrol wearing our helmets, riding in our tank or our Humvee or whatever. And we rode around and then we came back and you and I came back and we're just in a tizzy.

We're flustered, you guys. Our little hearts are pounding. And we said, we need to talk to the commander. And we just bust up in his office or whatever he's got and we say, hey, excuse me, sir, buddy. We need to talk, right? Right, we need to talk.

We just went on patrol like you told us. And there are people out there, I'm not kidding. Don't forget my kid. No, they shot at us with missed rockets and guns. And we got the distinct impression that they did not like us. And I'm sorry.

This is not what we signed up for. We would like to go home. Now, your commanding officer would look at you like bugs had just crawled out of your ears because there's something wrong with you. How on earth had you not picked up on that's what was going on? And one of the problems is that we as Christians, specifically Western Christians, have this idea that spiritual realm stuff doesn't affect us, it has nothing to do with us, that we signed on for something different. That we have no category whatsoever for being attacked.

It's bizarre to us. We have no way to handle it. So what we usually do is we medicate or we hide. I believe wholeheartedly because I've been a pastor for long enough and it's not very long but I've been a pastor for long enough to know that some of you are under spiritual attack and you have told no one because you're ashamed and you're believing lies that the enemy's telling you. Because you have no category for a healthy conflict that we've been invited into. Maybe you think you're going crazy.

Maybe you think you need different or new medication. Maybe you think you need to change your scenario. Maybe some of you think it's just your job or it's just you need to move and maybe some of that is true. We're going to get to some of that in a minute. But maybe it's not.

Maybe you have a real enemy who's attacking you. Some of you will acknowledge that it's a real attack and this terrifies you as if something crazy has happened but Paul says it's not crazy. We're in a war. If you lace up your boots and you head out there it's not crazy that they attack. If you actively join a community group and you say we're going to be on a mission to see more people meet Jesus which means that we're going to walk with Jesus to confront the kingdom of darkness and snatch people out of the enemy's hands so that they might know Christ and they might spend an eternity in Him of course you're going to face opposition.

Some of you became a Christian and you suddenly felt like I thought this was going to be good and now life is way worse. It's like right because the enemy was fine with you when you were headed to hell. Now he's got a problem because you've joined the conflict. While you were pretending that you had flat feet and stayed home wasn't a big issue. When you geared up put a helmet on there was a reason for it. You have a real enemy who's actively at work.

So Paul tells us what to do. Verse 14 He says Stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and as shoes for your feet having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. All the words he uses here in the Greek are specific words that have to do with armor. So the belt was a big leather belt that had like leather strap things that covered your thighs so if someone tried to hit you it would block that. The breastplate is a piece of armor that would cover your back and your front and would guard your heart that would shield you from attack and the shoes he uses are a specific type of cleat that had big spikes that were designed for the people who had the largest shields to plant their feet and not go anywhere.

So what he just said was put on truth to guard yourself. Put on righteousness to guard yourself and plant your feet firmly in the gospel. And I think the best way to understand what he means by truth and righteousness and standing firm in the gospel is to think about what he said at the beginning of this when he says be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. That's an interesting command. He says be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might and I think that applies to how we understand the rest of this text which is that you would be strong you would actually be strong but you would be strong in Christ and in his might.

Meaning that the strength is both your strength in truth that you know the truth your strength in righteousness that you repent of sin that you follow Christ your strength in the gospel that you know and believe the gospel but it's also his strength that you're strong in him in his strength. That it's not just that you're honest but it's that you know that Christ is the truth and you've clothed yourself with him. We're going to keep going because he pulls all this together. There's an interesting thing I want us to see. 16. In all circumstances take up.

So he changed he said put on earlier having fastened he uses a verb that means dress and then he changes the verb to pick up to hold. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith. They had two words for shield one was a small one one was a big one this is a big one. You don't necessarily need to know that but I thought our faith is a big shield you might want to know that. With which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. What he means is there were times when they would shoot flaming arrows they had big shields that they would soak with stuff so that even when the arrow stuck in the shield eventually the shield would put it out.

With which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. You have an evil one there is an evil one who shoots at you and you can take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is the word of God. So what he says is that we would hide behind our faith that our faith is in Christ and that is our shield that we would place on our head salvation to guard our minds and that we would take up in our hand the sword which is the only offensive weapon here the only thing that we can use to actually attack which is the sword of the spirit which is the word of God. That we would know the word that we would know the Bible and that when we were under attack we would wield it but the truth is he says it's the spirit's sword so that when we were under attack we would know the Bible and we would watch the spirit wield it.

That we can use to actually attack which is the sword of the spirit which is the word of God. That we would know the word that we would know the Bible and that when we were under attack we would wield it but the truth is he says it's the spirit's sword so that when we were under attack we would know the Bible and we would watch the spirit wield it. This is what Jesus does when he's tempted by Satan at the beginning of his ministry

He quotes Deuteronomy three times that we would know the Bible run to the Bible when things got bad we would grab the Bible we would read it out loud we would quote it out loud that we would trust in it that we would believe it that we would soak in it and here's what I want you to see in this passage that I think is so encouraging he says stand therefore having fastened on the belt of truth having put on the breastplate of righteousness and as shoes for your feet having put on

The readiness given by the gospel of peace in the circumstances in all circumstances take up the shield of faith the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is the word of God there is not an item here that is not connected directly to Christ in the scriptures that Jesus is the truth that he is our righteousness that the gospel is brought to us only through Christ that he is our faith that he is our salvation and that he is the word of God what he says is

That when the enemy attacks stand firmly in Christ and that's the other thing he says he says stand stand withstand that you may be able to stand that our job our role the way we defend ourselves against the enemy is that we plant ourselves in Christ in his gospel and we don't move that this is what guards us against attack because here is the thing we are told in scriptures that the enemy is a liar we are told that he is an accuser we are told that he is an attempter

We are told that he is a murderer so let me tell you things he does he shows up to you and begins to convince you that sin will bring you joy begins to convince you that sin will give you happiness he begins to convince you that the reason God has told you no to that is because he is not really trustworthy he is not really loving he does not want what is good for you what is great for you and he begins to convince you that you ought to chase after something he begins to tempt do this do this

Chase this you will love this this will be good for you you will enjoy this everybody else is doing this he begins to attempt and then he accuses see he has schemes so once he tempts you and once you sin then he says you are not a Christian look at you you make God sick you don't actually believe this he begins to draw you away from if you are in a community group or walking with church family or you have Christian friends he begins to draw you away from them he begins to say you can't be around them acting like this do you know how ashamed

They would be of you if they knew this was true you know none of them struggle with this you know that they will see you are a fake if they find out you are a sinner he is accusing you are the worst he lies nobody loves you nobody wants you around if you quit hanging out with your group you know what it will do if your group does not contact you well they will say see they do not even notice you are there they do not even notice you are gone nobody cares about you

You might as well just go back to your old friends you might as well just go back to your old ways you are not really a Christian anyway this is what brings you most joy anyway and he will go back and forth he will go back and forth on this is what will make you happy and he will use it to accuse you if your group does a good job of contacting you you know what it will say they are just doing that because they have to they don't really care about you or they are just doing that because they are legalistic and you can't show back up now because they are holding it against you that you haven't been there and if you go back and confess this

You can't tell anybody this you are going to have to take this with you to the grave and it is all lies how did you become a Christian in the first place you were the worst and if you don't know that you are not a Christian if you think you became a Christian by being moral and standing in your own righteousness you don't have Christ but if you know that you came saying I am a sinner who needs Jesus because all I have ever done is messed this up and all I can ever bring is what nailed him to the cross and I have nothing to offer and if you show back up to your group and say hey guys I have been running after

All sin that I have ever chased before and I need Jesus again do you know what your group says yes we need Jesus too do you know how good he is do you know how much he forgives do you know how much hope is in him it is a lie nobody loves you a lie Jesus Christ died for you you were purchased with blood we have a breastplate of righteousness when he comes to you and says you did this it pings off our chest you're right I did that but I'm covered by Christ his righteousness for me when I stand before Christ when I stand before God I am clothed in righteousness not my own but Christ

Tell me some more stuff I did that was messed up let's keep talking about how good Jesus is I'm glad you brought this up let's spend the rest of the day praising him what else did I do come on tell me I did do that Jesus is good he forgave me of that that's like a scene from Oh Brother Where Art Thou where he goes and gets baptized and he comes out and he says he forgave me of all my sins even that piggly wiggly I knocked over in Yazoo and looked at him and said I thought you said you were innocent of those charges

Well I lied and that's forgiven too the enemy comes along and tries to accuse you of something if you're in Christ it's forgiven there's hope there's freedom there's truth there's salvation that guards your head you stand firmly behind faith you plant your feet in the gospel and you're not going anywhere and you grab a hold of the Bible because that's what moves and works and fights and defends that you might know the truth and you might know Christ and you might have him dwell in you and you might be saved now his children

This is why so often we say and we so often forget we want to talk about good news before we talk about good advice and we want to talk about Jesus before we talk about you what that means is that when you're in the middle of sin I don't want to come and say well here's a good way to stop looking at porn or here's a good way to I got over my addiction to that here's how like we don't want to do that what we want to come along and say is Jesus is good because the truth is we stand firm in the gospel and in nothing else our hope is Jesus

And nothing else and in the midst of attack we plant ourselves in Christ and his righteousness and his goodness and his salvation and his truth and we don't go anywhere so often even as a pastor I'll be talking to somebody specifically when I've been walking with somebody for a couple weeks or months and something and I just am like I just want something so good to say to them I really want to help them and the truth is what I ought to help them with is knowing the truth knowing their salvation knowing where their righteousness comes from

Knowing that they don't have to go anywhere they can plant in the gospel and they can't be uprooted that I would point them to Christ and nothing else and no one else so we believe this church we believe that we have a real enemy throughout the new testament if you'll read the gospels you'll see that Jesus interacts with demons that demons actively harm people he interacts with sick people and there are actually just sick people there are people that it says are epileptic which means they have seizures all the time and he heals them but then there's also a time

Where he heals a boy who has seizures and the seizures are caused by a demon I know this messes with us but if we believe it and know that this is what we got called into we got to realize this is true that in the new testament we'll see that demons cause mental issues emotional issues self harm issues physical issues and we believe as a church that you're a whole person and if you're struggling with any of this here's what we think let's address the whole person so if you came to me

And said I'm really struggling with depression what we would do is we'd ask some questions because you're a whole person what's your sleep like what's your diet like what's your exercise like because those affect you depression makes you want to do none of the things that would help you not be depressed we ask questions has the sun seen your face in a while but then we also ask if you've seen the sun's face in a while have you gotten in your bible are you looking at Jesus are you running to him we ask questions about I had somebody come in

And say I think maybe I'm dealing with some spiritual warfare every time I try to read my bible I fall asleep I said okay where do you read when do you read your bible at night where do you read your bible in my bed okay we'll pray about the spiritual warfare because it could be that also read it at your kitchen table during the middle of the day and see how that goes or at least read it at your table before you go get in your bed at night you're a whole person we also had someone say when every time I try

To read my bible I'm just overwhelmed at like cussing at Jesus like I just can't think clearly because all I'm doing is cussing Jesus if I close my bible it stops okay let's pray about that because that sounds spiritual so let me just throw some things out there for us to start thinking through this and be aware do you deal with consistent nightmares as a normal part of life that most of these things you have been told by the enemy if he's attacking you to just accept this

This is how life's going to work for you consistent nightmares specifically where you see similar characters that do weird things sometimes you'll wake up and go I think that was a demon in my dream consistent unexplained anxiety anger sadness riding along normal day sad riding along normal day panic attack in a conversation and suddenly your heart rate's way above

Where it should be again we believe you're a whole person this can be caused by different things but we also believe the enemy can do stuff one of the ones that we've seen a good bit of is that you have consistent negative thoughts about you or others sometimes in your brain is not even if you were to be honest and really think about it it's not exactly really even your voice it's inside your head but it's not your voice

It's not really you talking one of the ways to know this is you are telling it to shut up and it won't stop I don't want to think about this stop stop stop shut up and it's accusing you it's saying things to you that maybe your parents said to you it's saying things to you that maybe you heard in middle school it's saying things to you repeatedly about how no one loves you Jesus doesn't love you nobody wants you around

You come in here on a Sunday and it sits and says you don't belong here nobody wants to talk to you you ought to just leave you can hang out with your group you can't even hang out with them because you just feel overwhelmed and feel anxious and as soon as you leave you feel better that sounds like a scheme I'm going to let you be happy as long as you're away from all the things that God loves and all the people that love you and all the things

Where Jesus is at work and I'm going to mess you up when you get around so that I can trick you into thinking the best place for you to be is away from these people that sounds like a scheme and we believe that the enemy actively does that we know that the enemy actively does that and it's not weird and you shouldn't be ashamed here's one of the things that he comes along and does some of you right now are talking yourself out of telling anybody this stuff and here's for a few reasons

Why consistently he comes along and says no no no you're in your head going no no that's not it that's not it the reason I talk bad about myself is just something I've done forever can I just pause you for a second if you sit and consistently say negative things about yourself who cares where it comes from let's stop that it's not true it's not true in the gospel

You have been redeemed you are a beloved child of God you are welcomed into his kingdom you belong to this family you've been purchased with blood you have new blood pumping in your veins you will have an eternal kingdom that you exist with Jesus in don't sit and tell yourself lies some of you are going to say no no no that's not it and you're going to try to defend not having to pray about this

Not having to walk through this some of you are going to think maybe this was spiritual maybe the enemy is at work and you're going to immediately feel this shh that's one I've dealt with something weird will happen I'll get in an argument and suddenly be way too angry I'm a sinner and if I'm going to be something

It's going to be too angry just so y'all know I'm way too angry I'll think I need to pray about this and then I'll immediately think no no shh don't pray about this that'd be weird don't do that and let me tell you something

Holy Spirit has never come along and told me not to pray about something enemy might my sin might but all I know is when that comes along oh it's praying time another one that we've seen is the enemy tells you you're crazy you can't tell anybody this and here's the thing from Grecian

Times on up until like the 1800s doctors used to do a practice called bloodletting which was you would go to them and say you were sick and they would drain some of your blood it was not a helpful practice if you went to a doctor now and they were

Like what's going on I have anxiety and I've been throwing up and they were like hmm probably too much blood let's just pop a hole in you squeeze some of that out and you'll be fine you would say you know what I'm gonna go get a new doctor and check out

Yelp later can you Yelp doctors because I'm gonna I'm going to here's the thing if you're dealing with spiritual issues Jesus is the only doctor there's only hope in Christ if you're under attack by an

Enemy he's the only one who defeats it so you can go to a psychologist you can go to a psychiatrist we recommend some different counseling centers because we believe you're a whole person there may

Be some things you need to talk through but we also want to pray with you we also want to walk with you and what's true in the gospel we also remind you

Who Christ is because the best thing that our culture can give you is medication because they can't do this if they don't have Christ because only Christ does this so here's what Paul says 18 praying at all times in the spirit with all prayer and

Supplication to that end keep alert with all perseverance making supplication for all the saints so what he just said was put on all this armor be very strong and immediately we want to think okay we're going to fight and what's

He say get geared up be really strong put on the armor of God stand firm in the gospel and let's pray one of the quotes from one of the commentaries I was reading on this text said nuclear wars cannot be won with rifles likewise

Satanic wars cannot be won by human energy you can't be strong enough you can't be good enough you can't be smart enough so you stand in Jesus and you pray we ask Jesus to go

To work and can I tell y'all something about Jesus if you read your Bibles something is imminently predominantly beautifully clear Jesus is terrifying let me tell you about someone who's terrifying if you're behind him and he stands in front of you

That's beautiful and amazing and if you're in front of him and he's coming at you it's terrifying there's a story that's told in all three of the synoptic gospels it's in Mark Luke and Matthew Jesus and his disciples show up on a boat and they go to an area where there are tombs it's this whole kind of cliffside

Area near this town where they bury all the people which was weird Jewish people shouldn't be hanging around tombs that's where they land their boat and they show up and while they're there there is a crazy naked guy we're told in the Bible that he's a demon possessed or demon afflicted

One of the questions that comes along with that sometimes is like can they completely take over you like the Bible doesn't really make all that clear we know that as Christians you belong to Jesus so they can't but let me tag

This real quick you ever had a really terrible friend who just when you got around them made you depressed or sad or angry or whatever like every time you hung out with them they just made you feel bad about yourself

It's a bad friend you guys they talked you into doing stupid things it's a bad friend imagine demonic activity sometimes is like having a bad friend you can't see and since you can't see him you don't ever tell him to

Go away but in Christ you can't so anyway there's this guy who's got demonic stuff going on so much so that he is naked he's withdrawn from society he cuts himself with rocks so he's got mental issues he's got social issues he's got self harm issues he cuts

Himself at different times this part of the city has gone out and sent men to get him they capture him they chain him up they put guards on him he breaks the chains and busts out and stays naked and lives in the tombs so he may

Have shackles still on him he may have broken them off we know he's naked we know he cuts himself this guy looks scary they get out of the boat they start walking we're told that he like runs towards Jesus he's yelling he falls on his knees before Jesus now if you're one of the

Disciples you just got off the boat you're in a tomb area maybe you're one of the disciples that was a little bit creeped out by tombs but you weren't going to tell anybody we don't know which one this was or if any of

Maybe they were all really brave but I'm thinking one of them was like I don't really like graveyards you guess there's a naked guy so now you're a little more uncomfortable he's yelling he's running and I think there was this moment where the disciples are like we fighting

We running we can get back on the boat I'm gonna go over here just in case like I'll sneak around him Jesus just stands there he falls on his face before Jesus and he begs for mercy and all

Jesus did was show up Jesus is terrifying at the end of scriptures he rides in on a horse he uses his sword which comes out of his mouth it's the word of God and he slays his enemies at some point the enemy

Satan holds another uprising and we're told he's just snatched up and killed tossed into the lake of fire at some point God's had enough and let me explain something to you the reason why we're

Told in this text to stand firm in Christ is because if we're in Christ nothing can assail us nothing can get to us nothing can harm us we don't stand firm in ourself and our own strength we stand firm in Christ and Jesus is terrifying

But if he's the shield in front of you the helmet on your head he's guarding your heart then you in Christ are terrified and have nothing to fear we have a real enemy who actively works to harm so we remember the gospel

And we pray and if you are struggling with any of this do not get talked out of it grab some Christians and say we need to pray then he's tricked me he's blinded me he's led me astray I've bought into his lies I believe

I'm not welcome I believe I'm not loved he's been telling me lies about y'all and what y'all are thinking that's one of the best ways to know the enemies at work he's reading other

People's thoughts and telling them to you it's nonsense here's why she looked at you like that here's why he said that you were unintentionally they on purpose didn't invite you to that they don't want you around you don't belong here

They wish you weren't here you make everybody uncomfortable nonsense we belong to Jesus so we belong to each other we walk in the hope that he offers Matt's gonna come back up here and we're gonna do that as a group of people

Who stand firm in the gospel that Jesus Christ is our righteousness that he alone is truth and that truth shatters the lies of the

Enemy and we're going to as we belong to him we're going to stand up in a moment we're going to take communion which is that his blood was poured out for us his body was broken for us

And that we hide behind that the enemy has no claim on us Colossians 2 says that the enemy was disarmed when Jesus was nailed to the cross because the only claim he had on us was our sin and Jesus paid for

Our sin the only power he had over us was sin and Jesus paid for our sin and we have an eternal hope in Christ we'd love to talk with you we'd love to set up some pastoral stuff we'd love for you to go

Talk to your group leaders we'd love for you to talk to some other people in your group if they're uncomfortable or don't know quite keep walking until you find somebody who says yeah let's pray about this let's walk

Through this we're gonna take communion Matt's gonna play give us a little bit of time to pray you need to move around the room right now and just grab someone you can go grab him right now and say I just need to not chicken out later I need you to

Pursue me later so that we can talk about some stuff I don't want to talk about it right now but I know if I don't talk about it right now I won't talk about it ever and I need as redeemed victorious

People who are covered by Christ let's pray God we thank you that in Jesus we have nothing to fear but we have everything to be ready and guarded up against that you have given us the full armor and that we might put it on I pray

That we would be a people that know the truth that are clothed in righteousness that are guarded by your salvation that stand firm in our faith in the gospel and that love and know the word of God we ask that the gospel

Would cover us and that we would actively pursue being strong in you that we would cease to be strong and all the other things that we've put a lot of time in and we would start being strong in Christ that we might stand firm and that we might be

Actively a part of your mission to see more people come to know you and the freedom and the hope and the life that's in you so that there would be fewer people that live in Columbia South Carolina that go to hell that Columbia would start

Looking a little more like heaven and heaven would start looking a little more like Columbia that you'd be actively at work in us we pray for those that are struggling with enemy attack that they would not feel weird that they would not believe the lies of the enemy that they're

Crazy or that they can't talk about this that they would cease today to be attacked and not fight back standing firm in the gospel this would be a place of freedom and joy and life because all of those are given to us in Jesus Amen he Oo dangers

As if they do everything in that participate we have a too essa come in to me います to them to me come in os

Mill City 5/20/18 Mill City 5/20/18

Children and Parents

Transcript

At some point, you found out you were going to have a baby. And there was excitement and there was fear. Maybe you read some books. Maybe you just watched YouTube videos because your books aren't your thing. Maybe you just asked some people. Maybe you read mom blogs or dad blogs.

And then, as scary as it was, at some point you headed in to have this baby. And this experience, which you had been told was going to be beautiful and natural and lovely, the best word to describe it was traumatic, terrifying, seems very unnatural. You have this child and this process took anywhere from 10 to like 150 hours. You have not slept. Then they hand it to you and they say, best of luck, you'll never sleep again.

You head home, you've got this child now and it is for some reason, and mostly the reason is that God has tricked you. You love this thing. But it gives no objective lovability other than it is kind of cute when it is asleep, but not even for the first couple of weeks. They don't look right when they come out, you guys. Mostly it yells at you and is actively trying to destroy the relationship you have with your spouse because it makes you have a lot of discussions at 3 a.m., which don't seem to go well. But you love this thing and then it begins to grow.

And somewhere around, maybe it's eight months, maybe it's 18 months, you have this moment with this child when you look at it and you think, are you trying to start something with me? I think you're doing this on purpose. Like you can't even speak English, but that was malicious. Like you actually understand what I want you to do and you're actively doing the opposite of it. And welcome. It's begun.

Now you have maybe a two-year-old who's laying on the ground crying because you won't let him or her eat toothpaste or because you wouldn't let them sleep in a snow jacket. And you're sitting here going, we live in South Carolina, why do I even own a snow jacket? I could have avoided this altogether. Then at some point they go to elementary school and you think, finally, you're out of my house. We're going to get back into kind of a normal rhythm. I'm going to miss them, but also not that much.

And then all of a sudden, you've got to go to the school all the time because you're now learning what the stress is like for a child who's having behavioral issues at school or who's having issues with keeping their grades up. And so elementary school becomes more difficult than you thought it was going to be. And then you hit middle school. Maybe you've kind of gotten in a rhythm of school and this is going well. You hit middle school. And suddenly this child cares more about what their friends think than you think.

And you're finding they also care a lot about what the Internet thinks and you think that's not great. Then they hit high school and you start beginning to watch them carry out behaviors that you had. You begin to watch them make mistakes that you made. And this process is increasingly difficult. When they used to talk to you and confide in you, now they just head into their room. They seem embarrassed by you.

At some point, it's time to send them away. And if you're like my mom, you believe that God intentionally made teenagers annoying so that you wouldn't mind that they left. But you send them away to get married, to go to work, to go to school, to join the military. And there's this moment in that where this is, I'm ready for you to go. This is what we've worked towards and I don't know if I'm ready for you to go and I don't know if we've done enough work and I don't know how this is going to work out. And then as they continue to grow, you still find that you have anxiety and struggle and fear and how life's going and how them beginning to raise children is going and it just never seems to stop.

And for some of you, you don't have children. You're still in the category of child or growing out of being a child. And you have found that living with your parents and relating to them is extremely difficult. And maybe you figured it out when you were two and they wouldn't let you eat toothpaste. It was that moment when you realized their job was going to be to destroy you and your job was going to be to return the favor. We're picking up in Ephesians today in chapter six where Paul is specifically addressing children and parents.

So in this section, he's doing household code and what he's basically saying is, okay, as people who believe the gospel, as people who follow Jesus, that affects how we live our lives. And so he begins to address major relationships in our lives. How children relate to their parents, how parents relate to their children, what that looks like and how we walk that out. So I'm going to pray and then we're going to begin to read the text together. God, as all of us most likely are in a situation where we are children, we have parents that we need to relate well to, and many of us are parents or about to be parents, we just ask that you give us help as we study this, that your wisdom would sink in and that we would apply well your word this morning.

And we thank you for it in Jesus' name. Amen. It begins, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. All right, so that word children, for many of you, there may be this, okay, where do I fit? I don't have children. Am I a child?

And for a lot of you, you're saying, no, I'm not. I used to be, but I'm not anymore. So I'm going to help you out. That word in the Greek, children, refers to those who are dependent on their parents. So if you live in their house, if they're paying for your stuff, if you're driving their car on their insurance, if they're paying for your schooling, you're in gold or brown or whatever color that is.

You fit the category. And so it says, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. When we talked to husbands and wives, we specifically said, husbands, don't elbow your wife. Wife, don't side-eye your husband. Parents, that does not apply to you. You can snap and point.

You can do whatever you want. You can hit them in the leg. They have to obey you. That's the zone they're in. And so, children, this is, I don't know, many of you are going, wait a second, I'm 18, I'm 19, I'm about to be. It's like, yeah, about to be isn't.

It means dependent. It's not a derogatory term. It just means, do you still kind of belong to your parents? And the role that you have is to obey your parents. It says, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Now, I know, for many of you, this feels really difficult, because your parents seem mostly clueless.

They don't seem to understand how technology works. For some of you who are younger, and like maybe, you know, it was embarrassing that they didn't know what dabbing was, and then it was worse when they learned what it was. Like, I don't know. I don't know the zone you're in with your parents, but, but your role, your biblical role, if you are a Christian, is to obey them. It says, obey your parents in the Lord. So, I want you to see that that phrase, in the Lord, means that, that your submission to your parents is worship.

It is through them to, to the Lord, to Christ. That's who the Lord is. So that you, as a Christian, are saying, no, my role is to obey my parents, because I, I still live here, because they still pay for things, because I still kind of, I'm under their umbrella. I'm to obey them. I'm to follow their instruction. I'm to, even if I disagree.

So here's what that means. There's some freedom in that, and some restraint in that. The freedom is this. You don't have to agree with them. That's not what obedience means. The restraint is, you still have to do what they said.

But there is some freedom, and they don't have to win you over. This doesn't have to be a long conversation. You don't have to be completely sold. You can decide, I will obey you right now, but I'm not doing this forever. And it says, for this is right, and it says, in the Lord. So I do think this does specifically apply, the same way we talk to husbands and wives, that your obedience to your parents, is ultimately to Jesus, so that Jesus is above them, and if your parents are actively calling on you to sin, that you can say no, as you follow Christ.

That your goal would be, as we said to wives, to say yes to your parents, while saying no to sin. And so if your dad comes to you, and he says, hey, I've drawn up in an awesome heist, and we're going to rob a bank. You can say, I'm sorry, but I won't be able to partake in this one. But if you want to open a lemonade stand, or a hot dog truck, I'm in, I'm on board, I can't do this one. If you want to join the circus, I'm in, I'm on board, I can't do this one. It says, for this is right.

Then it says, honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise. And then he says, here's the promise, that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land. Okay, so, children, who are dependent on their parents, obey. All children, who have, doesn't matter how old you are, honor. So you're supposed to obey while honoring, and then later, as you are an adult, who is handling, carrying your own, caring for your own family, you are out of the zone.

And some of you are kind of half and half, because it's like, well, I'm at school, and I'm paying for most of my stuff. They're paying for school, so it's this kind of, I'm in the zone where I'm transitioning from, just obey, to just honor. But this means, that it doesn't matter how old you are. You're to be respectful to your parents, you're to be kind to them, you're to answer their phone calls, you're to think about them, you're to care for them, you're to check in on them, you're to hold them with high regard. And then he says, there's a promise here. It says that you may live long, it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land.

This is a promise that was given, in Exodus 20, this is one of the Ten Commandments, it was given to the people of Israel, and basically it was saying, this is how society ought to work, and as people honor their parents, and hold their parents in high regard, then everybody lives long, everything goes well, like this is a general principle, it's not a specific thing to where, if you honor your parents, you'll get to live to 85, and if you dishonor your parents, you make it to 20, like that's not how it works. Sometimes your parents tell you, that's how it will work. If you dishonor me again, I will end you. But that's not the specific promise, it's not to every individual, but in general, what it is saying is, honoring your parents, it's kind of a sign saying, this way to life, this way to things going well.

That in general, much of your goodness, and health, and joy in life, begins with your healthy relationship, to your parents. One of the things my dad used to say, was he would say, boy, ain't nobody who's worth anything, disrespects his mama. He said, you can join the mafia, you can go to the penitentiary, those people still love their mamas. The only people who don't love their mamas, are messed up. That's what he would say, like this is my dad's wisdom here, but his point was, that in general, this is where baseline life health comes from, is honoring, appreciating, loving, respecting, your parents.

Now, some of you are parents, and that's not what's happening with your children, and I'm sorry, that's painful. And some of you are children, who have parents, who you were looking at this, and going, and I hate this text, I hate this commandment, because my parents do not deserve honor. I was abused, I was neglected. They did anything, but be honorable. And I want to let you know, that that is extremely painful, and I am sorry. But you're free, from having to have honorable parents.

This is in line with, when Jesus says, that we ought to love our enemies. That it's about who you are, and who you belong to, rather than who they are, and how they've acted. Now, you may not be able to be around them, for safety reasons, but there's a way to still speak of them honorably, even if you're being honest about their behavior, to treat them well, to not run them through, the mud. But we're called to, honor, our parents. Then he goes on, he says, fathers, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up, in the discipline, and instruction, of the Lord.

Oh, real quick. Some of you, maybe while you're at school, because I know we've got some college students here, maybe while you're at school, you're just in the honor your parents is on. So you don't need to do things, that are openly, flagrantly disrespectful to them. And then some of you go home, during the summer, and you move back into the obey zone. So, you're 23, you're 22, you've been living on your own, and your parents say, you have to go to bed at 10 o'clock. Well, I am sorry, but as you worship Jesus, you go to bed at 10 o'clock.

And some of you have parents, who have more restrictive attitudes, and I'm sorry, you have more restrictions. And some of you have parents, who have very little restrictions, and when you show up, they're like, some of you, they looked at you and said, you're 17, you're an adult, do what you want. And I don't know how well that worked out for you, maybe you handled that fine. Some of you, when you were 17, needed parents to not say that to you. But it is based off of who your parents are, not what other parents do, not what you think parents ought to do.

It is based off of who your parents are. And so, the situation that you're in is, in Christ, obey them, and realize that there is a time limit on that. At some point, you just get to move into honoring, and you won't have a 9 o'clock bedtime, like I had my entire life. And then you'll find, that because you went to bed at 9 o'clock, for your entire life, you still impose that on yourself. And you don't make many friends in college, because you're asleep. It is what it is, you guys.

I am friends with the people who were my roommates, because they saw me during the day. Alright. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction, of the Lord. I want to point out, that it begins with fathers. Okay, so this has to do with, the understanding, the biblical understanding, that husbands are the head of the household. So, husband is head of his wife, that's what we just learned in Ephesians, and therefore is head of the household, and is responsible for the household.

This is not meant, to say anything negatively, about mothers, or to exclude mothers. It is meant to, pin fathers to the wall. So, it's not meant to be, because the truth is, the Bible upholds mothers. You'll notice earlier, it says, children obey your parents. It doesn't say, obey your fathers. And it says, honor your father and mother.

It doesn't say, honor your fathers. This parenting is upheld, motherhood is upheld in the Bible. If you'll read the Old Testament, it's like a highlight reel, of mothers being amazing. There are so many stories, where a mom is on her face, praying, and her husband, is in the vicinity. And she is actively involved, with her children. And her husband, was mentioned at the beginning, because he's the father, of that child.

There are so many stories, like that in the Bible. And so many places, where motherhood is upheld. And here's an area, where the Bible is specifically saying, hey fathers, we gotta talk for a second. So fathers, we gotta talk for a second. What this means, is that parenting, is not outsourced, to mothers. And this is easy to happen.

And here's one of the reasons, why I think this is easy to happen. When my wife and I first had a child, I knew, zero things about children. I had practiced for having a child, caring for a child, in my life, zero percent of the time. My wife, when she was a child, they gave her, fake children. And she rocked them, and fed them, and pushed them around, and I've seen home videos, where there was a, they gave her a doll, and she said, oh, open it up, I just wanna hug it. Okay, so she trained, since she was like two, for this moment. all I ever trained in, all I ever trained in, was like how to kick things, how to throw things, how to break things, how to shoot at things, none of that applied, to having a child.

I was like, if something comes at the child, I'm ready. You tend to that, I'm gonna face it this way. Like that was, like that, so what happens, a lot of times, is forefathers, as soon as the child is born, you're just like, I don't know, and the mom, seems to just, no. And I don't know, if she's faking, I don't know, if she has like, hormones, that have just kicked in, and like, I had no hormonal changes at all, when we were having the, like I was the person, who was like, are you still like Taco Bell, magically all of a sudden? But like, I always liked Taco Bell, that wasn't a new thing, my hormones weren't doing anything weird, I was the same, I still like Taco Bell, she doesn't anymore, but whatever, I'm sad, it's okay.

That have just kicked in, and like, I had no hormonal changes at all, when we were having the, like I was the person, who was like, are you still like Taco Bell, magically all of a sudden? But like, I always liked Taco Bell, that wasn't a new thing, my hormones weren't doing anything weird, I was the same, I still like Taco Bell, she doesn't anymore, but whatever, I'm sad, it's okay. I don't know, like my wife at one point, after our first child said, you know those videos, she's holding her baby, you know those videos,

Of like, a mom cat, that like adopts a duck, I think I would do that, because I think I just love, all children now, like there's just something in me, that makes me like all, like I would just adopt anything, right now, in this moment, she's past that, she likes our kids, she's not adopting ducks, but, there's like, she just knew what she was doing, and there was so much of like, I don't, I've never, I don't know what I'm doing, so I think what happens often, is husbands, fathers,

Begin to just slowly, step back, and very early on, begin the practice of, I'm deferring to you, and so that grows, into, ah, moms kind of tend to the kids, moms are in charge of parenting, what do you think's best, how do you think this ought to go, and what he's specifically saying, in Ephesians is, no dads, you're supposed to be in on that, because ultimately, the weight of the family, and the flourishing of the family, is going to be on your shoulders, and so you have to be involved, in the parenting, it's not outsourced, not to say that moms,

Aren't good, it just means that fathers, are supposed to be active, present, and leading, um, fatherhood statistics, this was, I was looking at some of this earlier, but fatherhood statistics, surpass any other factor, when it comes to negative statistics, in life, so having a father present, or not having a father present, surpasses race, surpasses wealth level, surpasses economic class, surpasses poverty, or not poverty, whether your father was there, it matters immensely, and so fathers are supposed, to be active and present,

In raising their children, so then he says, fathers, do not provoke, your children to anger, but bring them up, in the discipline and instruction, of the Lord, okay so, I think this means, one specific thing, and then like, something that grows out of that, like a big hole, so do not provoke, your children to anger, I think it's one of the specific reasons, why he says fathers don't do this, is because he's talking about, overall how to think about parenting, but I also think, this issue is specific to fathers, so, for some reason,

And I don't know why, I care deeply about my children, but I want to provoke him, he is three, and I consistently want to provoke him, I don't know, he'll ask, where's my blanket, and my wife wants to say, it's in the dryer, and I want to say, oh I carried it out in the backyard, and the falcon swooned by, and grabbed it, and flew off towards the sunset, and I could just barely hear, as he was getting away, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, I don't know why that's in me, but that is how I want to respond to him, like all the time, and so here's what happens, fathers for some reason, seem to want to torment their children,

But now you're in a big problem, have you seen those videos, the Jimmy Kimmel, I ate your candy videos, have you seen those, they're hilarious, and you're not supposed to do it, what they would do, is the videos, Jimmy Kimmel, he's on late at night, I've seen him on the internet, I'm asleep, remember, he tells parents, after Halloween, when your kids go to sleep, and they wake up, empty out all their stuff, open up the wrappers, just kind of say, hey we ate all your candy, film them, and see how it goes,

And it's really funny, because children lose their minds, or meltdown, or whatever, and it's funny, but not if it's your kid, and not if you're responsible, for raising them, to honor their parents, and to live in a healthy situation, because, if I provoke my son, which I do, instinctively, for some reason, and then he responds poorly, now I'm in a bad spot, because the truth is, my son ought to, if I tell him, I ate all of your Halloween candy, go, yes sir, like that's an appropriate,

Honoring response, I hope you enjoyed it, like it's a messed up situation, but he's supposed to, he can't throw a fit, he can't tell me, I'm a terrible person, he can't yell at me, and if he does, if he says, well I hate you, and I suddenly am now, in a weird spot, where it's like a no, under no circumstance, should he ever yell that at me, but also, I made up a circumstance, that pressured, like made it harder for him, to respond appropriately, and here's what happens, I think that what grows out of this, is a whole form of parenting,

Which is, parenting by provocation, and I think mothers and fathers do this, which is that, in order to get you to behave, the way I want you to, I stand on the back end, of your behavior, and I provoke you, I chide, I mock, in order to get you, in the right zone, I'll give you an example of this, I'm going to talk about my dad, a good bit, because I think he did some things, really well, but I want to give you an example, of parenting by provocation, this wasn't his main form of parenting, but he did do it some, he's very good at it, I got in trouble in middle school,

For talking too much in class, and they sent home a little thing, and I had to take it, and my parents had to sign it, because apparently, I think I'm funny, and that people should hear, what I have to say, so then, I told my dad, and he was like, oh, you can't, you can't be quiet in class, well I can, apparently not, says here, they told you to be quiet, but you weren't, well I, but I can, no you can't, no, you're cute,

You're chatty, you're a Kathy chatty doll, and yes, my whole life, he said it backwards, I didn't even grow up, in the era of these dolls, but they are most assuredly, chatty Kathy dolls, not Kathy chatty dolls, he said, you're a little Kathy chatty doll, said I'm not a Kathy chatty, yeah you are, say it, sir, say I'm a Kathy chatty doll, say it, and that meant, this was going to get worse, if I didn't, so I have, stared my dad straight in the face, and said,

I'm a Kathy chatty doll, and he said, handed me the slip, walked away, I didn't bring one of those home again, I don't think I got them again, now, what he did, was provoke me, to anger, he provoked me, to correct behavior, and you absolutely can do this, and this can be your main form of parenting, they, I saw a thing, where a guy took some coaches, and he was just trying to prove to them, that this is how this works, he took some coaches, who had coached basketball, and he said, I want you to pretend, that a child just made a terrible shot,

And I want you to come up with the, most hilarious, mean things that you can say to them, and he said, this practice, it was across a bunch of coaches, in a whole region, and they were great at it, they knew how to belittle 12 year olds, like nobody's business, like they had the most creative, it was, he said it was hilarious, and great, and then he said, okay, now, I want you to pretend, that a child just missed a shot, and I want you to say something encouraging, and the room was like, he said he got like one feeble, nice try, get it next time,

And his point was, it's a lot easier, to be on the other side of things, than it is to be on the front side of things, and so what Paul says here, he says, do not provoke your children to wrath, but, so in contrast to that, but, bring them up, in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, that phrase bring them up, means, nurture, it's the same, the same Greek word that was in verse 29, when it says that you love and nurture your body, so what it's saying is, don't be on the back end, just provoking, get on the front end, and have a picture for what they ought to look like, that you're bringing them along,

That you have something in mind, that they're supposed to turn into, that if you have sons, you have a picture of biblical masculinity, that you are molding them into, that if you have daughters, you have a picture of biblical femininity, that you are building them up into, that you are walking them along into, it is so easy as a parent, to parent based off of today, off of how I'm feeling, what's going on, whether or not you're annoying me, whether or not I'm okay with this behavior, it's easy to parent based off of, I just want us to have a nice dinner, so I'm going to try to appease this child, I'm going to try to do what you want, so that you'll just calm down, but the problem is, that doesn't build up, it's also easy to belittle, it's also easy to name call,

It's also easy to, and that doesn't build up, the truth is, if you belittle, or you nurture, you can get some of the same behaviors, but you're building into your child, something completely different, that you can get your child, to not talk, to not misbehave, to not by belittling, by chiding, by aggression, but you can also get it, by having a front end picture of, and my dad was great at that, he would consistently tie, current behavior, to future us, for example, you'd be scared, kind of freaking out about, having to get on a roller coaster,

And you're like, I just, I just, I just don't think I can do it, my dad would look at you, and be like, boy you better straighten up, because you're acting silly, and you need to get in control, of your emotions, he said because one day, you're going to be 40, and you're going to hear, glass shatter in your house, in the middle of the night, and it's going to be go time, because you've got two children, and a wife, that you've got to save, and you can't let your emotions, rule the day, you've got work to do, and suddenly, my father had tied,

Riding a roller coaster, to protecting my family, when I'm 40, and I'm 12, and I'm like, my kids ain't going to die, and I locked it up, and I got on a roller coaster, and I rode with him, and all I was doing, was proving, that if my house caught on fire, I wasn't going to hyperventilate, and he did that all the time, he tied work to the future, he tied who you were going to be, toughness, he tied caring for somebody, he tied everything, was not just this moment, but where we were going, that in some ways, if you think about like a trellis, and a vine,

I was a vine, and he was consistently telling me, where the trellis was headed, and it makes an extreme difference, and Paul is saying, don't just be doing provocation, but bring them up, take them somewhere, have a picture in your mind, of what you're building, and begin building it, that's for fathers, and mothers, and some of y'all need to sit down, and have a discussion, about where are we taking this child, what are they going to look like, also, in the, the weight, of the flourishing, of the family, being placed on the father, I want you to understand,

Many of us have, are young, just having children, some of us, you have older children, you're still walking through this, fathers, you have to lead here, you were designed differently, than your wife, and you are meant, to be engaged here, and you are meant, to be active here, one of the things, that I have found, and this is particular, to my wife and I, and this may not apply, across the board, but this is an example, of what I'm talking about, my wife, is in the moment,

With our child, all the time, I'm not always, in the moment, with our child, she's in the moment, one of the things, I am better suited for, is being further ahead, in where we're going, she'll consistently say, he's three, it's okay for him, to act that way, and I will respond, it certainly is, but not when he's four, and if we don't begin, working that direction, he'll be doing it, when he's four, so this amount of, there are times, where you're going,

To disagree, and the idea, of wives submitting, to husbands, plays a role here, in how things work, and how things work out, and so that your wife, absolutely understands, things you don't understand, and knows things, about your child, you don't know, and you would be a fool, to just blast into this, but you are also a fool, to back out of it, and to abdicate your role, because one day, you will stand accountable, before the Lord, in how you raised your family, and that's going to be, really tough,

It's about to get tougher, in some of the stuff, that Paul says, and let's keep moving, oh, you're bringing them up, towards a goal, we have a current, cultural climate, of let your kids, figure out who they're going to be, and that is stupid, do not let them do that, Proverbs 22, 15 says this, is it 22, 15? Yeah, folly is bound up, in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline, drives it far from them, we're going to talk about, the rod of discipline,

In a second, but I just want you to see, that folly is bound up, in the heart of your child, folly is foolishness, your child, the Lord loves them, you love them, they are a fool, go back and look, at pictures of you, from middle school, put one on your refrigerator, remind yourself, that child, did not need to make, all the big life decisions, I needed my parents, telling me stuff, that I didn't want to hear, and your job as a parent, is to parent, God gave your children, parents on purpose,

There is a reason why, in the wild, those little lizards, can run just as fast, as anything, right when they're born, and there's a reason, why your child, can't do anything, for a long time, because God intended, for you to be there, helping, guiding, leading, training, and driving folly, away from them, alright so Paul says, bring them up, in, now he's going to tell us, what we're bringing them up in, so we're bringing them up,

We're nurturing them, we have a goal, he's bringing them up in, the discipline, and the instruction, of the Lord, so we're going to take, all those phrases separately, the discipline, and instruction of the Lord, so discipline means, that in the goal, that you have set, you have boundaries, that are not crossable, that you have fences up, sometimes I feel like, that's all I'm doing, with my three year old, I'm just a fence, and he can run into me, all day long, and at some point, he'll realize,

There's a fence here, and when I was, one of the movies, that was my first movies, I saw in theater, and it really had an impact on me, was Jurassic Park, and in Jurassic Park, they're talking about, how smart the velociraptors are, and the little guy, who's talking about it goes, he says they're testing the fences, to see if there's a weak spot, and some of you feel like, we gave birth to a velociraptor, because all it is doing, is testing the fences, to see if there's a weak spot, and the truth is, to discipline your children, you have to be disciplined, the fences can't move, the fence can't be here one day,

Because you're in a bad move, and over there one day, because you're not, y'all know Pavlov's dogs, they rang a bell, and the dogs would salivate, and it was a really cute test, that's not what they did, they didn't ring a bell, they shaved the spot, on the dog's arm, they put an electrode on it, and they electrocuted the dogs, and then fed them, just bell sounds nicer, they would take these dogs, they would walk them down the hall, they would set them up on a table, they would stick an electrode on their arm, they would shock them, and then they would feed them, so they were giving them, negative reinforcement, prior to getting to eat,

And then, what they started doing, was they had some dogs, that every time they shocked them, they fed them, and they had some dogs, that they would shock sometimes, and they would feed them, or not feed them, or whatever, so the dogs that got shocked, and fed, when they started heading down that hall, would run down the hall, would jump on the table, would hold their arm out, they didn't mind getting electrocuted, they knew they were about to get fed, I don't think they shocked the fool out of them, but I don't know, I wasn't there, the dogs that they shocked, all the time, and fed sometimes,

Lost their minds, they were psychotic, they wouldn't go down the hall, they were fighting, they couldn't handle, the rules changing, now, your child is smarter than a dog, after it's about two years old, all I'm saying is, there is something to, if you're going to discipline your children well, you have to be disciplined, so that the fences don't move all the time, so that the system doesn't change all the time, it also means that you and your spouse, have to be on the same page, because it can't be one way with one of you, and another way with another one of you, because that makes room for children, not knowing where they are, not knowing how things work, if you're going to count to three, when you get to three,

Something needs to happen, whatever you decide that thing is, and then it needs to happen, every time you hit three, if you count to three, and sometimes it happens, and sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes you count to five, or if you count to three, and nothing ever happens, you just counted, like that's, I'm going to count again, go for it, that'll double the time, I'm doing the thing, you didn't want me to do, like I, you got to pick, you're the parent, you're going to stand, accountable for him, but discipline means, that you have to be disciplined,

And this has to stay, I want to show you, something though, specifically, specific to the idea of spanking, and to the idea of discipline, and these are in the Proverbs, I want to show you two things, Proverbs 13, 24, whoever spares the rod, hates his son, but he who loves him, is diligent to discipline him, we're told in Hebrews, that God disciplines his children, if he doesn't discipline, you don't belong to him, the Bible says, that you are a bastard, if you were not disciplined, by the Lord, so that you have children, it is your role,

As a parent, to discipline them, to figure out, what that looks like, in your household, and how that works, now the rod, in your household, may not be a rod, it may be time out, if it works, it may be removing things, that they appreciate, if it works, it just has to function, like a rod, the rod, the rod, in your household, may be a rod, or as Spencer said, one of his professors, called it a wisdom wand, there's driving folly away,

Via magic, on your rear end, here's the thing, discipline, comes from love, one of the reasons, why culture responds, so negatively, to spanking, to, is that we've seen, a lot of discipline, that didn't come from love, came from annoyance, it came from frustration, it came from anger, it came from a place of evil, it came from a place of sin, it came from a place of drunkenness, and that has no place, in parenting, and it has no place, in the church, but loving consistent discipline,

Does, and it is beautiful, and good for your child, and here's, another proverb, that helps paint this picture, do not withhold, discipline from a child, so you are wrong, to do that, you need to repent, if you are, if you strike him, with a rod, he will not die, I quoted this to my wife, as a joke, because whenever I would, spank my child, all she could see, was a 30 year old, hitting a 2 year old, even though I wasn't, hitting him that hard,

She was like, you are crazy, and it is like, I am not crazy, and then I would say, he is not going to die, the Bible says it, I was taking that out of context, that is not what that means, I do not think, that is what it means, I think what it means is, the purpose of striking, with a rod, is for life, it is a life giving rod, here is what I mean, my dad used to spank us, when we would play, in the road, he would sit us down, he would explain to us, why it was wrong, and then we would get,

A certain number of licks, with a belt, the reason he spanked us, while we played in the road, was because, we did not have the concept, an understanding, of what getting hit, by a vehicle was, but his belt was very real, and so one of the things, that happens at my house, is that we are consistently, creating negative consequences, because the negative consequences, are too slow to come, my son, hopped up off the couch, took his little sippy cup, walked over to me, said, get me some milk, and threw it at me, walked back over,

Hop back up on the couch, now, parenting is not about, what he does, parenting is about, what I do, so I threw it back, he said, get your own milk, I didn't, I took a deep breath, so that I wouldn't, here's the thing, I want him to have milk, I want him to drink milk, all the time, especially if he wants milk, but he can't act like that, but the consequences, for him are delayed, because I can go get him milk, and all he has learned, is negative behavior, gets a positive result,

Same with like, when he melts down, and cries over something, if he starts crying, all the fun in the world, ceases to exist, we have removed everything good, if you throw a fit, if you whine, nothing good happens, because if he cries, and then we give him a good thing, all we have taught him, is the way to be happy, is to cry, and that's nonsense, and that's a terrible thing, to learn, and your children, will turn into terrorists, and they'll continue it, 12 year olds do this, they learn this, when they're three,

They terrorize you, at a dinner table, so you'll appease them, because you just want to have, a nice night out, when really you should spend, the time outside, disciplining your child, you just do whatever, they want you to do, and then they learn, so parenting, disciplining is, creating negative results, because the real negative results, are too far coming, here's the real negative result, if my son can throw, a milk bottle at me, and I have to go get him milk, I begin to not like my son, my wife begins to not like our son, she can't take him to Walmart, we can't do anything fun with him,

Because he ruins everything, and so now, our child is in a situation, where we actually kind of dislike him, we don't want to be around him, and that is not his fault, that's our fault, he goes to school, he can't sit still, he can't be quiet, he can't control himself, and that's not his fault, that's our fault, he had folly, bound up in his heart, and we refused to drive it away, because we were being unloving, he goes to middle school, he goes to high school, he can't now, now when he grows up, he can't keep a job, he doesn't know how to handle relationships, and it began,

Because he had a father and mother, that refused to make him honor them, and refused to love him well enough, to discipline him, and that's ridiculous, we're called to it, but the negative effects, of poor behavior, and a small child, are too far in coming, and so you begin to make, the negative effects immediate, so that they'll learn, a belt is real, a time out is real, whatever, all removal of good happy things, is real, and that's because, his action is going to lead, to the removal of all good happy things, he just doesn't know it, and so I have to play act it with him, and that's,

I'm giving him life, that's discipline, that's the biblical picture of it, all right, then he says, bring them up, so we're moving them in a direction, we have a picture, of what we want, out of a son, we have a picture, of what we want, out of a daughter, we have a picture, of what a well-grown, well-adjusted adult looks like, if you didn't see that, in your parents, if you didn't see it, go talk to people, who've parented well, go ask them questions, go look at the people, who you think are well-adjusted,

Who work hard, who do things, ask them questions, how did you learn, begin to paint a picture, you got a place you're taking them, and we're doing this, in discipline, and instruction, instruction here, the word brings to mind, kind of head training, so you're giving them information, you're explaining things to them, you're walking them through, you're teaching them, not only what to think, but also how to think, I can remember, telling my dad stories, about, hey a buddy of mine, he was at his uncle's house, and I would tell him,

This big long story, and my dad would go, that didn't happen, no it did, he said he saw it, he didn't see that, your friend lied to you, and he was consistently, training me, on how to think, how to gauge things, he would make me come sit, and listen, and look at something, he would teach me, how to think, and that's one of the things, that instruction means, is that you're, not just teaching them, what to think, but you're also, training their brains, you have a picture,

Of where you're growing, and you're training them, and then it says, discipline and instruction, of the Lord, we're going to spend, the rest of our time there, one of the things, this means is parents, your role, with your children, is to discipline, and train them, in the Lord, in Christ, and what it looks like, to follow Jesus, this is a letter, written to the church, and it places parenting, on the parents, not the church, it's one of the reasons, why we are very careful,

With how we do things, with children, with students, because it, parenting doesn't get, outsourced to the church, it doesn't belong to us, it belongs to the parents, now where parenting, is lacking, and where students, don't have parents, that love Jesus, we try to step in, we try to walk with them, in that, it's one of the reasons, why we put them, in community groups, because we think, that's better, than just putting them, around peers, we put them around,

Like if you don't know Jesus, if your parents don't know Jesus, we're going to stick you, in a group, okay, you're 15, you're going to get, have a lot of parents, that love Jesus, they're going to begin, to pour into you, they're going to begin, to take you places, begin to try to train you, and instruct you, and discipline you, and walk with you, through life, but if you have parents, and if you are parents, it isn't the church's role, to raise your children, in the Lord, it is your role,

To raise your children, in the Lord, this is an atmosphere, in which this takes place, Deuteronomy, when it's training parents, how to teach their children, it says do it when you wake up, do it when you walk around, do it when you're sitting at the table, do it before you go to bed, that this is how, all of life belongs to Jesus, and so you begin to train, in all of life, how to think, that when your child comes to you, and says how do we think about money, that you so know the Lord, and you so know the Bible, that you go, here's why we think about that way, here's why we approach money that way, that you so know the truth,

Of the gospel, that when they say why, why do we as Christians, say we're not supposed to have sex, before we're married, you say well here's why, it's not just a rule, but you have a big picture, of why it's beautiful, and why it's good, that you know the Lord well, so that you can do this well, here's the other thing, you need to understand as parents, that you are a stand in for God, with your children, you're a stand in for God, some of you understand this so clearly, because when you became a Christian, it was so difficult to relate to God, because he calls himself a father, and your father was terrible, so you feel like God is distant, you feel like God only cares about you,

If you're successful, you feel like God is consistently disappointed in you, you feel like God is waiting, to strike you down, waiting for you to mess up, and that's because your father, your parents painted a very poor picture, but parents, you get to paint a really beautiful picture, so one of the things that happens, is you raise your children in discipline, when it says of the Lord, do you know how much joy is in the Lord, do you know how much time at your house, needs to be spent laughing, and playing, and celebrating, do you know how much joy is in the house of the Lord, that you're painting a picture, for what God looks like, which means, he's terrible, when you're in sin, he has wrath for sin,

But he also has grace, and love for repentance, and there's joy in his house, that when you're outside of his will, it's awful, but when you're under his roof, it's beautiful, and his parents, we're getting to paint that picture, that the household is a household, that you actually get to walk your children down the aisle, and at some point hand them off to God, and that's seamless, because they already have a good picture, of what he's like, but you have to have a good picture, of what he's like, and you have to walk that out, that my son should be afraid of me, in a healthy way, and that my son also should think, I'm the most fun person, that has ever existed, and that's how I ought to think about God,

And you get to be a stand in for that, specifically parents, one last thing I want to point out, for many of you, you're just beginning this, for many of you, you're already on the other side of it, there's a good bit of us in the middle of it, and you are failing, in so many ways, I am failing in so many ways, I can't tell you how many conversations, I have with my wife, where I put my son to bed, and I come back in, and she's like, you did not handle that right, and I'm like, you're telling me, he just got going, I was just, I went for it, and that was awful, what do we need to do next time,

He threw me a curve ball, I wasn't ready for it, I dodged it, I wasn't ready for it, you're going to fail, but Jesus saves sinners, and he saves failures, and when you've taken your fifth trip, up to the school in five weeks, to talk to a teacher again, and when you worked, and worked, and worked, and worked, and they still brought home F's, and when they've left, and you don't even know where they went, but prior to leaving, they said the most hurtful things, that anyone could possibly ever say to you, and you responded, with some of the most hurtful things, you've ever said to anybody, you get to repent,

And you get to trust, that Jesus saves sinners, that one day, you'll stand before him, and yes, you'll be held accountable, for your actions, and you'll be held accountable, for how your children, what you did with your children, but you'll also stand, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, that he paid for your sin, so that you can walk free, that's the hope of the gospel, and that as you lean into Jesus, you get to trust, that some of you right now, you look back on parenting, you have so much regret, and you just get to trust, that Jesus covers you, and pays for you, and brings you hope,

That you won't stand held accountable, for your own sin, but you'll get to walk in the freedom, that's offered to you, around this room, we need to repent, some of you are children, who are actively disobeying, or dishonoring your parents, and you need to repent, because you're in sin, but there's a lot of grace, for sinners who repent, maybe you need to call your parents, or have a conversation with them today, where you tell them you're wrong, you shouldn't have said those things, you shouldn't have acted that way, you need to change your attitude, that you get to trust, that Jesus redeems sinners, saves sinners, forgives sinners, some of you are parents,

Who need to repent, your fathers who have abdicated, your fathers who have just deferred, to your wife, even though you think she's wrong, because you feel like, she feels more comfortable, or she feels more adamantly about it, or you feel like, she makes it difficult, chapter three of the Bible, Adam says, but my wife, and God doesn't take it, as a legitimate excuse, we don't get to do that, we have to lead, some of you are wives, who are actively, not being, following the leadership, of your husband, or who have actively, abdicated from parenting well,

Or who have begun, treating your children, in a way that's just about today, that's just about your own happiness, that's not about theirs, we need to repent, but we run to a God, who has open arms, and an open house, and who loves us, the way a parent loves his children, and so when we show back up, he's not mad at us, and he's not ready to chastise us, he's ready to open the door, and start cooking a meal, and say sit down, I was waiting for you to come, because there's a lot of joy, in the house of the Lord, and there's a beautiful welcome, for sinners who repent, band's going to come back up, and we're going to sing,

And sing, but I would invite us all, to take a moment, to just pray, to reflect, to rest in the hope of the gospel, to run to Christ, in the midst of difficulty, let's pray, God we thank you for your grace, we thank you that you are, a good father who loves us, and redeems the picture, of so many messed up fathers, that we had, we thank you and praise you, for the good fathers and mothers, that we did have, and we pray that you would, bless this church, to be a place of, of good parenting, and we pray that you would, bless those who are still,

Dependent on their parents, to be obedient, as obedience to you, that you would help us all, to honor our parents well, because it trains us, in how to honor you, and how to live a life of joy, we thank you, and we praise you in Jesus name, amen. Amen. Amen.

Mill City 5/13/18 Mill City 5/13/18

Marriage and Singleness Q&A

Transcript

Good morning. My name is Spencer Carey. I'm a pastor in training here with Mill City Church. I am an optimistic person. I try to tackle any given workday, like tomorrow is a workday for me, and I do real estate and also serve here. And I try to tackle as much as I can, so tomorrow I'm going to wake up and I'm going to have this huge plan and I'm going to tackle getting my daughter to preschool.

I'm going to tackle writing contracts and doing stuff, and then I'm going to tackle preparing for sermons over the next couple of weeks. And I try to do all these things. My wife, she finds out about these plans regularly, and she just kind of smiles. Because she's like, you continuously bite off more than you can chew. And I do. And what's good to know is that I'm not the only one.

That Chet Phillips also does the same thing. That as we were planning this section of Ephesians months ago, we had planned that we're going to spend some time in marriage, and that we're going to have a Q&A that we're going to do, and we're going to tack that into one of the sermons, and it's going to be great. And then your questions started to come in. And we realized, oh, I don't think we're going to be able to just take 15 minutes to answer all these questions. I think that we're going to actually have to spend some more time doing this. So this morning is going to be a little bit different.

Typically, we'd open up the Bible. We'd read through a passage, and we'd preach from the text, and that's what we'd do. And we had planned originally for this Sunday to be kind of in line with Mother's Day, that we were going to have parenting starting Ephesians 6, and it was going to coincide with Mother's Day, and it's going to be awesome. And then once we saw kind of we were running out of space to do that, it's like we actually really need to take some time and address these questions. And they didn't line up so well. So sorry for Mother's Day that we couldn't have the Mother's Day sermon that we wanted.

You get to listen to questions and answers, which I'm sure you guys were gearing up for. So we're going to spend what's going on this morning. I'm going to quickly walk through where we've been in Ephesians, and then I'm going to answer one of the questions we have first. I'm going to teach you that because it's a little bit more nuanced. Sometimes it takes a little more time, a little more space, but ultimately this question that will come up first will kind of set the framework for how we answer the rest of these questions. And then once I work through that, I'm going to have Katie Freeman, who's one of our community group leaders, and Chet Phillips, one of our pastors, come up, and we're going to work through the rest of these questions.

I'm going to pray, and then we'll start. God, thank you for today. God, I pray that you would bless this time, that it would be beneficial, that as we walk through these, you would show us your will. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so summarizing where we've been, we've been in Ephesians for the last like six months, and we've been in this section of Ephesians 5 for over a month now, walking through the picture of marriage, and it's couched in the context of Ephesians.

In the first three chapters, Paul walks through the picture of the gospel, that God chose the church, that he came to redeem the church, that while we were dead in sin, he died for us and made us alive, that by grace we have been saved. And he extends this picture of the gospel for three chapters, then he pivots into chapter 4, and starts doing coaching and correction with the church, applying the gospel. Then we get to Ephesians 5, and we get to this section on marriage. And we see here, as Paul lays it out, that just as Jesus is the head of the church, the body, so the husband should be the head of his wife.

That he should lead, that he should sacrificially love. We walked through that a few weeks back. And that wives should respect and follow and submit to their husbands. And when this cycle of love and respect is happening, we are showing a beautiful picture of the gospel in marriage. So we spent some time walking through that.

And as we've been walking through that, we also walked through singleness last week, how God has, how our culture says you need someone to be complete. And we come in with the Bible and say, no, we walked through 1 Corinthians 7, on how you don't need someone else to be completed. You need Christ to be completed. And as we've been working through this, these questions came in. And one question in particular, which takes a little more time, was this. Why has the leadership chosen to espouse complementarianism over egalitarianism?

All right, a lot of big words there. So why have we chosen, as a church, we uphold the position of complementarianism? So why have we chosen that over egalitarianism? So these are two positions on gender roles in the church. Egalitarianism coming from the French word égal, which means equal. And what ultimately that position is advocating for is equality in roles, that wives could be the heads of their husbands and that women could ultimately be pastors and preach with authority.

That's kind of the overarching position of egalitarianism. And we come alongside as complementarians and say, that's not what the Bible teaches, that the Bible teaches that our roles are complementary. So I'll walk through that in a moment. But I want to say out the gate that there are Jesus-loving, Bible-believing Christians in both sides of this debate. One of my mentors for the past 10, 15 years, someone I love deeply, who is, he married my wife and I. He continually checks in on me.

He's a pastor in Houston. I became a Christian in a Methodist church, and he's a Methodist pastor now in Houston. I love this dude, and he loves me, and we don't agree on this. He comes from the egalitarian side, and I come from the complementarian side, and gender roles debate. But both of us love Jesus, and we love the mission of the church, and I pray that he would reach people in Houston.

But we differ on this. Now, there are two extremes that get pushed out of this that are not biblically based. And I'll have a slide that comes up that will show this. That on one end of the spectrum, when you push egalitarianism to its extreme, you get feminism, specifically Christian feminism. And when you push complementarianism to an extreme, you get patriarchy. And those two positions do not find a place in the Bible.

So let me tackle this first one, patriarchy. This is not necessarily the term for patriarchs in the Old Testament. That's not what it's going for. It's more of a term that has been used to describe that men rule in the house, that men rule in general over women. That's the position of patriarchy. And it comes from the idea that though Genesis 1 says that men and women are made in the image of God, they have taken that, and they say, No, actually, women are made in the image of men.

And men are made in the image of God. Therefore, any language about headship gets extended out of that logic. And what happens and what flows out of that is a ton of unhelpful teaching and really some abuse. And I kind of thought that this position had faded away a little bit, but I was reminded about a month or two ago in California, this family of 13 kids was rescued from a family. And the oldest was 27. She was like 90 pounds and had been systematically abused for all of her life based off of this guy's understanding of patriarchy in the Bible.

And that finds no weight in the Bible. That is out. You cannot be a consistent Christian and uphold that position. So that's one extreme. The next extreme on the other end of the spectrum is Christian feminism. At its core, feminism did some really awesome things.

In the 1800s, when the feminist movement started, the whole core of the position is equal rights for men and women. And the fact that women can vote, the fact that there has been a pushback against systematic sexual harassment and abuse in our culture is good. But man, where that has extended and what has been the overarching theme of feminism and what it is today has been extremely unhelpful. And if you look at it from a position of Christian feminism, what has happened is a response to patriarchy by saying, we're going to view the Bible skeptically. That if the Bible says things, we're going to question the Bible as a basis even for this debate.

So I studied at a college in a religion department that was primarily, it was from a Christian feminist position on gender roles. And they regularly would pray to Mother God. They would change the language of the Bible. They would take any passages that dealt with male leadership or headship and completely chuck them out. All of the Bible is filtered through the position of extreme feminism and not much comes out the other side. And I even have one.

I was one professor. I remember I opened a Bible and I was reading through the ESV, which is the version that we use. And she was yelling at me right in the face that we should never use that version because of how it translates the Bible. When in fact, it's one of the most helpful English translations that we have. And eventually she went to the academic department and got that version banned from our religion department. And that's kind of the flow of Christian feminism.

Everything gets filtered through the extreme position of feminism that is today. And those two extremes, if you look at them, they don't consistently follow the teachings of the Bible. So those two are extremes. I want to just take a moment to walk through the two positions that can be held in the Bible and by Bible-believing Christians. The first position is egalitarianism. Egalitarianism pushes for equal roles for men and women, specifically that wives can be the heads of their husbands and that women can preach with authority in the local church.

That is the push of egalitarianism. And some of what egalitarianism has pointed out has been really beautiful and good. Like the fact that the past hundred years has been a push to say, look at the ferocious, strong women in the Bible who have character and were forces of good. Like they point out Deborah from the Old Testament. They point out Ruth. They point out Mary, mother of Jesus.

And we're like, yeah, we need that correction. Sometimes we focus on some of the male leaders in the Bible and we say, wow, like no, we absolutely should focus on their character, on who they were. So egalitarianism has pointed out some very helpful things over the years. But I want to walk through the root of their argument and how they approach the Bible. Egalitarians approach the Bible from the perspective that male headship, what we've talked about the last month, is rooted in the fall. It's rooted in sin that came into the world in Genesis 3.

And that the rest of the Bible, any type of male headship, is a result of fallenness that happened at the fall. So they go through the Old Testament and really the New Testament, there's one verse that their position is hung on very strongly that they fight for. And it comes out of Galatians 3, verse 28, which says, And what they're saying is, is because of Jesus and because of this verse that gender has been flattened. There's no Jew, there's no Greek, that all of us have the same roles and opportunities in marriage and in the church. And that has been used as the logic for much of egalitarianism today.

Now, before I move on to complementarianism and explain that position and why we hold it, I want to see that verse in its context because that really is the linchpin for much of their arguments. If you look at verse 25, a few verses back, it says, But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ. There's neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free, there's no male and female, for you're all one in Christ Jesus. So when you look at this, what is actually happening here is that faith is what's being upheld here.

And what argument that Paul is making is that in faith, that in Christ, in your redemption that Jesus has done for you, none of you are better than the other. That was a huge problem in the New Testament church that Jews thought they were better than Gentiles, that Gentiles are saying, no, we're better, and that male and female, that there was this argument going, and Paul comes in and says, no, none of you are better, each of you are equally valued because you are one in Christ. So it's not a statement of rule, it's a statement of value. That we are all equally one and valued in Christ. Which brings us to the last position, the position that we hold as a church, which is complementarianism.

That is a big way of saying that men in the Bible were created to lead in marriage, and that men were also created to lead in the church as pastors, and that wives have complementary roles to husbands, and that women have complementary roles to men in the church. And our argument for that starts with male headship and male leadership being rooted not in the fall, but actually being rooted in creation. That when you go back to the garden, in Genesis 1 and 2, before the fall, you're going to see that Adam was created first. That creation order matters. And we're going to see that show up again later in the New Testament.

We see that in the garden, God holds Adam responsible for what happens at the fall. And then we see that before the fall happens, that Eve is called Adam's helper, which is the Hebrew word for hezer. That these were pre-fall realities, a part of the fabric of God's creation, that men were created to lead. And we see that flow throughout the rest of the Old Testament, that the tribal leaders were men, that the priests were men. And usually about that time, when egalitarians, when they hear this, they'll say, but what about women like Deborah? And I'll say, absolutely.

We look at a figure like Deborah in the book of Judges. She was a political leader at the time that stepped up in a time of need when men were failing and helped lead the nation of Israel in a vital period of time, which is why you'll never hear a stay from the sage, don't ever vote for a woman. We're not going to say that because the Bible doesn't hold that position. In the time where men are failing, absolutely, women can be political leaders that help lead, but that's not what happens in the book of Judges. She's not a spiritual leader. And more importantly, the book of Judges and the whole point of the book of Judges is that this is not the way it's supposed to be, that the whole nation of Israel, each judge that came in was failing over and over again.

It's not a picture that we go to. And then when you move to the New Testament, one question that I've asked our egalitarian brothers and sisters in Christ, I've asked if Jesus was so counter-cultural, if he was so revolutionary, and he was, I mean, he stared down the religious leaders like he flipped the whole system on its head. And if this is who Jesus was, then why did he choose 12 men to lead the church as disciples? 11 of whom, and another man who was appointed would become the apostles in the church. And I've never gotten a good answer for that. That Jesus, who is setting up his church, who is flipping the system on its head, he chose men to be the ones who lead.

And then the flowing out of that in the New Testament is that men would lead as pastors. And when we flip to 1 Timothy 2, you look at 1 Timothy 2, Titus 1, 1 Timothy 3, these lay out how men are called as pastors. And then you look at 1 Timothy 2, and it says this, I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. Rather, she is to remain quiet. And I, just being honest, I used to be an egalitarian because I became a Christian in the Methodist church. And when I would hear people quote this passage, my go-to response was, no, you don't understand.

Like, this is culturally different. That the women in the church back then weren't educated. And that's why Paul is putting this there. And I used to hang so much of my arguments on the cultural realities at the time until finally someone said, yeah, but what about verse 13? When he gives the logic for why he says this, when he says, for Adam was formed first, then Eve. There are absolutely cultural elements happening here.

But that's not what Paul's arguing. He's arguing out of creation order. This is why he's designed men to be pastors. Similar things happen when we look at Ephesians 5 and how we've spent time in that. That the order that he has had, that he's established in marriage that we've walked through is actually rooted in something that's eternal. It's rooted in the gospel.

And that's unchanging. And you go to 1 Corinthians 11, 3, which is another passage on headship. And it says, but I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ and the head of the wife is her husband and the head of Christ is God. And the logic that's being played out there is in the same way that the Father is the head of the Trinity. He's the head of Jesus the Son the same way husbands are the heads of their wives. And nobody is going to make the argument from a Christian standpoint that the Father is better than the Son, that Jesus isn't equal to God in value.

If you did, you'd be a heretic. That's heresy that's been condemned for over 1,500 years in the church. But we would say, no, absolutely not. They are equal in value in the same way husbands and wives are equal in value. But we have different roles.

So we take cultural considerations in the New Testament seriously. And we look at them and we look at history and we try to figure out what's going on. But we also know that our truth is rooted in eternal patterns that go back to creation order, that go back to the gospel, that go back to our Trinitarian God. And that is why we as a church we uphold the position of complementarianism. And when we do that and the culture hears that, the culture is going to rage. We're going to be called everything in the book.

We're going to be called backward, archaic, chauvinistic, everything down the line. And I get it. I understand where they're coming from. But we don't let culture dictate our positions as a church. We let the Bible speak for itself. And this is what we think the Bible consistently teaches from Old Testament to New.

And as a church, this is what we believe. But we also, this means we don't value the opinions and the wisdom of women. That's why we as a church we have deacons that are women in our church. We see deacons in the New Testament that are women. Deacon is just the word diakonos in Greek which means servant. We have women who are lead servants who are crushing it in our church.

That's why as a teaching team there are three of us. There's Chet, Bianca McDowell, and myself. And when we craft sermons together, I love having Bianca in the room because she challenges me and Chet. She helps us see the Bible from a different perspective and she speaks wisdom into what happens up here. Over and over again, we are reaching out to women in our church because of the wisdom and the strength they provide. But we order our church in the way that the Bible orders it and that's what we try to follow as a church.

So that is a long way of answering that question but that's going to give you a framework a little bit for the rest of the questions that we have today. I'm going to have Katie and Chet come up and we're going to finish our Q&A. And we've got about eight more questions and I appreciate all of you that sent questions in that were challenging. We spent the last three weeks talking through them, opening up the Bible, praying, debating the works. So with that in mind, let's transition.

I want to tag something real quick on what he was just talking about. I think one of the, we believe in complementarianism. I think one of the things that we've done though before as a church and I know I've done this some is say the word complementarianism and lean patriarchy because it's cleaner. It's easier to draw hard lines than it is to be in the middle of trying to figure out. So like even with Bianca McDowell on teaching team, that Timothy passage says I don't allow women to have authority or teach men but she's in there.

You know, it's like that's a less clean line but we actually want to lean more into the, no, we value women. We value their opinion. We value what God's poured into them and the help that they have and so I just know for us sometimes we've gotten that wrong. We've leaned a little bit too far to a, it's just cleaner to do this when we really need to embrace and lean in. So there can be times where we mess that up one way or the other but we're trying to actively grow in it and walk out with the scriptures we think say on them.

So. Thanks. That's more of a personal confession. So hi, my name's Chad and I'm a sinner. Alright, so. Our first question.

As a wife, how do you submit to your husband and be his sister in Christ especially when dealing with sin? Katie, do you want to take that one? Sure. The first thing we're always going to do here as a church is to direct you towards prayer. We want to go into anything where we have to address sin with a prayerful spirit so I'm going to ask the Lord where's my sin in this? Where do I need to repent?

And that just sets me up with a heart of humility and then I pray over my husband's sin. I can pray that he will be receptive and want to hear that when I do speak to him. But the next thing is just how do I approach my husband in this? That's what I want to consider before I start that conversation and I like to compare it to somebody maybe I respect in my life. So maybe that's somebody, a coach, a teacher, a boss, somebody that I would say yeah, they're getting it right and I respect them and I care about them and so I have an issue I need to address with them.

How am I going to set that up? And so if I was going to do that, I think if it were someone I respected, I'd want to give them some prep. I want to let them know that we're going to have this talk. I want to kind of tell them I need to talk to them about something. I want to go in humble. I want to build up the positive things that I see and then bring in the tougher stuff and then do it in a very respectful and humble way.

And then once you've done that and if you can take that same approach with your husband, then you need to just take a little time to allow him to repent. I think we immediately as women sometimes want to see the results, see the change but this is a goal for the long term is that he's able to overcome this sin and so I think we want to give him time and then as we continue to check in and say, how's this going? Are we growing here? Are we fixing things? Is the Lord working? Then if there is a need, you can bring in some help from your group or from a pastor but let's not rush there.

I think sometimes as a female we can see our other female community group members as somebody we can confide in and talk to but very quickly it can switch over to a little bit of husband bashing and we never want to go there. We always want to build our husbands up and be proud of who they are and put them in that position of respect and so kind of two approaches real quick here when we're talking with our community groups. The first one is females. When you're talking to other females about how to approach sin with your husband don't flaunt his sin. Talk to them and say here's my heart here's where I'm struggling can you can you help me to love my husband and have an appropriate view of his sin?

You don't even have to tell him what the sin is. And so and then the other one is instead of you telling your community group leader about your husband's sin direct him there. Let him go do that. Let him have that ownership. Shows respect. Shows you admire him and love him and hopefully over time with the Holy Spirit in your husband you can trust the Lord to change that in him.

What the sin is. And so and then the other one is instead of you telling your community group leader about your husband's sin direct him there. Let him go do that. Let him have that ownership. Shows respect. Shows you admire him and love him and hopefully over time with the Holy Spirit in your husband you can trust the Lord to change that in him. Thank you. I just want to add that ideally you can't go to your husband and address sin and regardless of your attitude

He's receptive wants to own his own sin wants to be repentant. 1 Peter 3 says what do you kind of speaks into what do you do when he doesn't obey like you don't want to hear it so you go to your husband and you say hey I think you're wrong here and he says the equivalent of well just shut your mouth and leave me alone and that's extremely difficult but Peter says that you win him over more with a gracious attitude a walking through that in the midst of that difficult with kindness with gentleness

Rather than continually trying to be like no I'm going to fix you I'm going to make you change and that's extremely difficult and that's where we would say what Katie was saying which is like at that point start leaning into church families start having other people praying with you start if they're a part of our our church family your husband's in a group or whatever then we can start following up with some church discipline and some different things like that to approach it with them but that can be a very difficult situation

Alright next question is there a line limit to your desire to be married if so what is it and why does it exist ok so we talked about singleness last week and basically just said that kind of do you have the desire do you not have the desire one of the things Paul says is that if you're burning with desire and so I would say that yes there is a line and a limit like you just too much but it's got to be past burning

Because the Bible says like that's that's kind of an ok zone so what I would say is you can desire marriage to a burning desire level like it can be a deep seated like I really want to get married I really feel this I have urges or whatever like I mean however you would put it so there is room for that the only thing that we would add in on that is just we are always careful to not allow something to become idolatrous which just means

It means more to us than Jesus does that we are elevating it to I have to have this to be ok I have to have this to feel loved I have to have this to be saved I have to like we've elevated it to save your position and so one of the tests for that if you're sitting there going like I really desire this and I have some questions is like ok are you willing to sin to get it I so badly want a husband

That I'll just move in with a guy I so badly want a wife that everything else is on the table like that amount of like well you've crossed the line because you've elevated it above Christ and so that would be our question was like no you can absolutely desire it you can absolutely burn with desire but don't allow it to become more valuable to you than Christ and with

Just in general line and limit questions whether it's this or another it takes a ton of leaning into the Holy Spirit of pursuing wisdom and prayerfully doing both of those so just keep that in mind as you're pursuing that as you're thinking through that and processing that next question is when is it ok to not submit as a wife especially if your

Husband is expecting you to follow him and not what the Bible says Katie can you take that when I read this question it was very clear to me that this is a woman who does want to submit to her husband and she's having trouble because he's asking her to sin to do that and so I'm sorry I know that these guys are sorry that you're

In that position we do think the Bible speaks to it and we want to support you in that so again we're going to immediately point you to prayer over it but then if you have specific questions over whether something is ok for you to partake in with your husband and you can't come to that on your own you have people who want to support you in that

Group leaders pastors other Christian believers within our church family so ask for help if you need it and don't be ashamed but then I want to point you to a biblical story that some of you may be familiar with the story of Ananias and Sapphira and basically this is a couple who sells a field they make some money and Ananias goes to take the money to the disciples feet

And when he does this he lies about how much he made and he's immediately struck dead and so then Sapphira comes in a little later and she is asked how much the field was sold for and she also lies and is immediately struck dead so that's just a small example of women we are held accountable to our sin

In these situations and so as Christians we need to know how to handle that and so there's a couple things that I want us to be aware of as a Christian we are called to love and respect and honor our husbands and that's what we want him to know especially if it's a non-believing spouse we want them to know that we are called to that and that's our passion

And our heart we also want them to know that we love Jesus and we do not want to sin and so we want to frame it that we want to follow you we don't want to sin and so ultimately in this situation I want women to think about how can I say yes to my husband right now maybe he's asking me to lie maybe he's asking me to watch porn maybe he's asking me

To cheat on our taxes and you can't say yes to those things and I think most of us know that but we want to know what can we do talk with your husband if he's scared for you to talk about him just losing his job that's real he may ask you to lie and tell people that he didn't lose his job and though you can't do that say what can I do in this situation that both honors God and honors you

And y'all come to a conclusion that unifies you brings you together this doesn't have to be destructive and so just praying that praying over what that can be how can you say yes to your husband and love him well in these challenging situations and we're here to help again group leaders and pastors want to walk with you through that if it's a struggle that's good next question

Outside of unfaithfulness is divorce ever okay okay so church family real quick we have a handful and a few more following this of questions about divorce and remarriage and even as we continue to go and even what we've already talked about this is extremely painful difficult personal stuff and so we want to start by saying

We want to answer these questions and we want to answer them biblically we want to talk to you so if you're walking through some of the situations that Katie was just talking about or some of the situations we're going to cover we want to talk with you we want to open the Bible with you we want to

Talk about your personal situation we want to talk we don't want it to just be like well here's what the Bible says and that be a hammer rather than that being what the Bible intends it to be which is a grace for us and so I want to say before we begin to answer some of these questions

That's our hope is that if you are actually walking through some of these scenarios these situations have more questions don't just leave frustrated let's talk and be frustrated together and so that's our request and if I have to say this I am approachable you can talk to me I know my face says otherwise on a regular basis after talking to me people will say hey this wasn't as bad

As I thought it was going to be and I've learned to just appreciate that and not be offended and so I just want to always tell them go tell other people that you can come talk to me but you can talk to me if you don't want to talk to me you can talk to Spencer or Raz or Matt and so you know you can talk to Spencer and Matt and Raz and I will hang out and y'all can come talk to us if you

Want to outside of unfaithfulness is divorce ever okay okay so the question is assuming automatically that in unfaithfulness divorce is okay and that is a reference they're referring to Matthew 5 or Matthew 19 I'm going to go to Matthew 19 I want to read some of this the overall weight of scripture towards marriage is that you should stay married if you are married that divorce is not okay

So I actually want to read this passage it says and the Pharisees came up to him this is Matthew 19 starting verse 3 the Pharisees came up to him and they tested him by asking is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause now that any cause is actually a phrase they're quoting from Deuteronomy 24 and we know historically there was a big debate in the Jewish in the Jewish approach to this

And one school of thought said it was kind of limited and another school of thought said any cause from Deuteronomy 24 meant she burnt your toast you found a lady that was more attractive I mean it's super like if you read the list it's aggressive at how much you could just divorce a woman for really no reason whatsoever similar to how we approach stuff today is it lawful

To divorce to any wife for any cause and he answered Jesus answered have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh so they are no longer two but one flesh what therefore God has joined

Together let not man separate so his response is a he goes to the Genesis and just says no they shouldn't get a divorce should stay together God put them together he brought them together don't let anybody tear that up and then they said why then

Did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away and he said to them because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives but from the beginning it was not so and I say to you whoever divorces his wife and this is

The phrase that they're getting the except for sexual immorality a lot of translations will say marital unfaithfulness and marries another commits adultery so before we get into that clause I want to say this the Bible upholds a beautiful picture of marriage that a man

And a woman would cling together and it's actually the best bet for a good marriage is that you're not allowed to leave if both husband and wife go in with a this is our marriage and we're going to have to make it good it's the best bet

For a good marriage it's the best bet for a beautiful marriage is that if both of you were in saying there's no way out so if we're going to have a good marriage this is our shot at it whenever there's the back

Doors open and you get to look over your shoulder and get to say well if this one doesn't work out if this doesn't it leads to greater conflict greater difficulty also the Bible holds up that marriage is based off of Christ's

Love for the church it gives us all these beautiful pictures and calls us to so much joy and goodness in it and the Bible steps in it gives so much weight and rights to females that it's crazy given the

Context it was written in it's actually as if God is above culture and has a plan for how men and women should interact with one another and doesn't just let culture decide how that works and it's great

So that when in culture you'll notice can a husband divorce his wife do you know how wives were allowed to divorce their husbands they weren't your husband was terrible you have no real legal right you can run away but you can get yourself in trouble for that but husbands

Could just write a certificate and send you out and so Jesus steps in and says no don't but he does have this phrase except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery so that phrase except he uses the word adultery and he uses the word sexual immorality which is

Pornea and so that's what they're quoting in the case of unfaithfulness and so we would read this I read this and the majority opinion is even the majority opinion among our elders but not all of us opinion is that in the case of sexual immorality sexual sin that you can get a divorce and you can

Remarry because if you take the text as it's written except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery so the assumption would be if it were for sexual immorality when you married another you would not be committing adultery so Jesus holds up this picture for if

You get a divorce for any other reason than this then the question becomes what is sexual immorality what does that word mean it's a broad word that includes incest it includes bestiality it includes it's a whole list of things that

Aren't allowed in the Old Testament it includes fornication prior to marriage it includes and so for their culture when you were getting married to someone you had been betrothed since a young age they were supposed to be a virgin both of

You were and there was this idea that if you got married and soon found wait this person isn't a virgin that would be grounds that's porneia that's why it extends out and our culture is a little bit different so if

Some of y'all just said oh so I can get out if I just know that this person slept around in high school it's like that's not really what it's going for and the great weight of scripture Matthew 10

Luke 16 Matthew 5 1 Corinthians 7 the great weight of scripture is no you don't want to get a divorce you want to make it work you want to forgive that you should work this out the only other instance where the bible kind of says when you ask is it okay to

Get a divorce would be 1 Corinthians 7 and I want to read this passage real quick to the married I give this charge not I but the Lord and all he's saying is I'm quoting Jesus this is what he understood Jesus to be

Saying in the passages we were just reading the wife should not separate from her husband but if she does she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband and the husband

Should not divorce his wife to the rest I say and he says I not the Lord meaning I'm not quoting Jesus that's confusing but if the unbelieving partner separates let it be so

In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved God has called you to peace for how do you know wife whether you will save your husband or how do you

Know husband whether you will save your wife so Paul speaks to a very specific situation where someone becomes a Christian and then the spouse

Says I don't want to be married to you anymore I heard of a case where an instance where this couple had an open marriage and

They were often going to orgies and swinging and that sort of thing and then one of them became a Christian and she was like I can't do that

Anymore and she even was in the position she was like you can't I know that's how we started this I'm going to graciously be here but

I can't and he just said no you're different you're different now and if you're not going to do this and so the Bible steps into

That situation and says if he won't live with you if he divorces you okay you're free you're not having to try to wait

To reconcile you're not having to try to pursue you're not trying to have to so if two Christians get a divorce we're going

To go alongside whoever and say no you need to reconcile you need to work this out you need to pursue you need to wait and he just says

In the situation no you're okay you're not enslaved so I would say the two instances that are clearly addressed sexual immorality if you

Are married to an unbeliever who will not stay married to you you are free to sign that paperwork and accept it rather than

Try to fight it as aggressively as we would say you would fight in all other cases for things to that leaves a lot

Of room that leaves a lot of questions immediately it's like okay what if they attempt to murder me what if they get an

Abortion and don't tell me what if it turns out they're a serial killer and so now they're in jail forever and so to

All of that we would say that the biblical call is stay married as best you can like stay we do believe it says

A wife shouldn't leave her husband if she does so he adds a wife shouldn't leave but if she does she should remain separated

Or else be reconciled to him but she shouldn't get remarried and so we would say that there are times you need to get out of the house

There are times when you need to call the police absolutely there are times when you need to call the but the overall call is to

Stay married and to walk that out and our invitation would be come talk to us don't do that on your own and don't just take

This as a blanket here's the aggressive answer and not let us be church family in the midst of all this and trying to

Figure this out the only thing I add to that is that unfaithfulness is painful it does not with the call the overall call the

New Testament being stay married we want to lean in that as much as possible and see Jesus go to work on us next question

Is remarriage after divorce permissible for a Christian yes when the divorce was permissible so if you read Matthew 19 where it says except for

Sexual immorality marries another commits adultery you would have to read in the case of sexual mean you're free to remarry I think that

Also when he says you're not enslaved in 1 Corinthians 7 he means you're also free to remarry otherwise it would be the case where he

Says in 1 Corinthians where if you're not living together try to seek reconciliation so our hope would be to reconcile or remain unmarried

Which can be very difficult which can be very painful I do think that Jesus in Matthew 19 says Jesus teaching in Matthew 19

Was controversial among his followers two seconds later so if we're still discussing this the first thing out of his disciples mouth was wait what you

Shouldn't get a divorce and they said why would you even get married then that's terrible and Jesus responds you don't have to get married

You can be fine and one of the things that he hints at and Paul specifically says is that God gives grace in the midst of

Singleness so if you were in a situation where you are forcibly singled and you did not want to be but you feel like I'm not free to get remarried that there's grace for that

That God empowers that for you so we would say if you're in a situation where the divorce was permissible then yes you'd be free to remarry

In other situations you ought to be waiting and hoping for reconciliation if your spouse dies you're free to remarry and then we also have questions on okay

Did you wait did you hold out for reconciliation and now they have remarried and so there's just no hope for reconciliation and they are what the Bible would say is committing adultery now in their new marriage also it's a big mess in our relationships and it's a big mess

In all of this and so there's a lot of grace there's a lot of conversations and just for the record so you know if you have been divorced and are remarried this is a marriage to be treated as gloriously and as much as you like to love and serve it is a real marriage

It's always treated like a real marriage in the Bible the Bible never encourages leave this marriage go back to your original spouse it actually discourages that on multiple occasions says that's terrible and heinous and so we would just say if you're in this

Situation and you're already remarried we love you we want to help you have a really beautiful marriage and there is no amount of you should feel shame you should talk with Jesus about whether or not your marriage

Started off poorly and then you get to repent and you just get to walk forward and having a beautiful marriage now next question how do we lovingly hold the other person accountable without causing guilt or shame when it comes to the lack of sexual intimacy

Okay I want to talk first first Corinthians seven I just want to say like so this question is it's not working the way the person who's writing it is saying like I want to have not a lack of sexual intimacy but we do have a lack of sexual

Intimacy how do I approach that I want to say first that if the other person is not your spouse they're doing great y'all should have a complete lack of sexual intimacy we're very proud of them if the other person is your spouse the Bible

Speaks differently there so the Bible says we're going to look in this is first of all first Corinthians seven has a lot to say about this six and seven because Paul was doing this he was just answering questions that people had sent in and so he talks on this as well he

Says now concerning the matters about which you wrote and they wrote to him saying isn't it good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman and he's like sure but because of the temptation to sexual immorality each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband the husband should give to his

Wife her conjugal rights which was crazy for him to say he says that the husband has to give to his wife he's not just in charge of this and likewise the wife to her husband for the wife does not have authority over her own body but the husband

Does likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body but the wife does do not deprive one another except perhaps on agreement for a limited time that you may devote yourselves to prayer but then come together again so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self control

Now he says now as a concession not a command I say this I wish that all were as myself but each one has his own gift from God one of one kind of one another so he says this is a concession that you should get married he's saying it because you deal with sexual temptation I'm saying get married do this he says that's a concession you don't have to

Get married if you can be fine and not burn with desire then no concessions made so we believe the Bible teaches that in marriage you should have active consistent regular sexual intimacy and that you should only not have active regular consistent sexual intimacy if you both agree on it Paul says for the purpose of prayer and then afterwards

You can come back together and I think that's a fair thing where it's like we're so busy that we're having to choose now between like are we going to pursue Jesus are we going to pursue each other and he says sometimes you need to say hey let's just pursue Jesus for a time but then come back together I also have found as a pastor that most marriages are not oh we're both a six on the how our desire for

Intimacy scale we're both a seven like it usually is like a seven marries a three and I also have found that in general it's kind of like when you're driving down the road everyone who drives slower than you is got to be like 95 years old and should not have a license and everyone who drives faster than you is a complete psycho and so usually when a three marries a seven the seven is going what is wrong with you why do you have no desire

For me why don't you love me why is this why I don't understand and the three's going what is wrong with you is this all you think about like quit watching TV like go get a hobby like I don't know what you're probably like leave me alone and the truth is we do have different levels of desire but the Bible says no we ought to try to walk this out so the question is how do I approach my spouse this is this question was asked by a seven who's married to a

Three how do I approach my spouse and try to not just say hey I just like do I just leave first Corinthians seven laying around the house open hope they read it hope it changes their heart it's like no how do you approach your spouse which would be graciously discussing this and trying to help them figure out how to say yes realizing that the desires that this would be healthy that this would be good discussing it and then backing up not just demanding not

Just like realizing that it's going to take a while for them to get used to this and also I would say set the runway out longer than just you you know it's in there we should this should already be working but no set it out to like here's my goal for the next year here's our goal for the next two years like we want this to be healthy eventually and we're going to work towards it specifically from the person who's in the position of I desire this more and don't

Understand I will also just say and this is usually it also has to do with runway is different for different people so in general men are visual so just like wives if you step out of your shower and your husband is there he's paying attention maybe makes you uncomfortable but reverse that a lot of times if a husband steps out of the shower and you're there you're not paying attention like you you're like you know like it's just it's a different approach to how you get excited about things how you think

About things and so I I just know that like if I've had a terrible day and my wife and I have only argued we go to bed I'm like I think we should make out I think that would make this day better I think that would help us feel love for each other and she's like are you crazy we were just yelling at each other I have no desire to kiss you for the next seven years and it has to do with how I feel loved and how I feel close to her and how she feels loved and how she feels close and so I would say don't just assume your spouse

Is the enemy but try to figure out how do we get you to say yes what is fun for you how do we get there so that's all the things though well I'm going to speak from the perspective of a wife who has struggled with this some in my marriage I grew up with a very negative view of sex based on just very strict views from my parents and so I had to overcome a lot of that and so I want to speak to you honestly as a wife whose husband has pursued her in this one of the things that I can encourage you to do from the beginning is to

Just strike away all weirdness and start praying about it and talking about it don't let it be the elephant in the room for a long time it'll just destroy you it'll it'll eat away at both of you and so start talking about it start praying about it then one of the most loving things that my husband's done for me in times where this has been a challenge is he has made this an us problem something we needed to solve not something I needed to fix and because of that attitude I have been much more willing and have enjoyed getting to grow in this area because

It was through love and it was through this is something God has given us as a blessing and he continually pointed me towards that and so it's one of the most loving things he's done in my marriage and I appreciate it and so I'm encouraging you guys if this is you or it could be the opposite I'm sorry it's more the unwilling the one who's pursuing the unwilling spouse just don't give up and be and be loving and be caring and think about this as something you're going to walk together in until the day you die and so a couple practical things when Chet was mentioning

Helping you know your spouse say yes talk to your spouse about what that is what will help them say yes for me one of the things is if my house is a mess and the I have a lot of chores left to do that I'm not it's not the night for me but if my husband helps me put the dishes away and helps get the house clean and get the girls in the bed he's setting the stage for love and we know that a lot of women it's for women there's got to be love and a connection for that to be something you even want to participate in now I'm not disregarding what Chet says sometimes we just need to say yes out of love for our husbands and be ready

To go in five minutes because he is you know it's just one of those things but I think the times where he is showing love by helping us say yes and I am speaking from the women's perspective this could be reversed I realize we you know when when he's helping us say yes we can feel very loved and so kind of in closing I have read through and recommend the book that our church recommends which is intended for pleasure it has you could you could cherry-pick in there information if you needed it but to read the whole thing through even if it doesn't apply to you just gives you such a healthy perspective on this aspect of the Christian marriage and finally just for

Those of you who are busy and that is your excuse or who are too tired or who just don't want to do it the best advice that I can give you right now is to schedule it and I know that sounds very practical and you don't really find it in the Bible but it takes a lot of the pressure and the stress off if you both know it's coming if it's scheduled at a time when you feel like you're going to be relaxed when you feel like you can prepare get your heart there get your mind there so if you want to talk about scheduling I have a planner I love my planner we can talk about all things scheduling but even this as awkward as this topic has been for me in the past it's funny that a six-month period of just pursuing it and pursuing the Lord in it how he's

Opened my heart to be able to talk about it so if you need to talk about this I know that our pastors are there for that I am here for that and we have some great resources we can recommend alongside of it if if your spouse consistently says no that is not an excuse for sin so you cannot say well they forced me to that's not how that works you pursue holiness and you pursue your spouse and then I will say if you're if you are on the lower scale than your spouse and they're consistently coach them up say this that's like that's the hardest thing for me to say yes to like this is the worst approach ever here's how I want to say yes so like go back and try again and I want to say yes to this like I want to say yes I want to say yes in the future to this like that that would help as well so these are really really good

Answers and these are really tough questions we've got a few more we're going to be a little more concise on for the sake of time next question when we sin against our spouse without them knowing is it okay to confess and repent only to God if the sin is never repeated quickly in general no and even the way that question is phrased sounds like my thought process when I used to look at pornography I would tell myself I'll never do this again and that was really just so I wouldn't have to talk to my wife about it also the reason I would not confess my sin to my wife was that she was scarier than Jesus she was bigger than Jesus and so I was willing to talk to Jesus about it but I wasn't willing to talk to her about it and I had to I had to swap that I had to believe in Jesus more than I than I needed her in order for us to get healthy I would also say that's the general answer there may be for

Someone who's not asking about infidelity who's not asking about because sometimes people say well I did this one time I'm not going to cheat on him again and I know it's just going to hurt him it's like no that's not how that works you ought to confess your sin you ought to walk that out into the light because that's actually it's hurting you in ways you don't know but for the person who's saying no it's not that it's like I spent the whole day being mad at them about a thing and then I realized I shouldn't have been acting that way and I changed my attitude and when they get home I don't want to say I need you to sit down and I spent 25 minutes thinking terrible terrible thoughts about you all day it's like maybe maybe that is a different scenario so but in general yes and I agree with that I'm not going to go into

Specific scenarios but basically you and your spouse may need to talk about with sin that is averted and you choose not to go down that path if you want to be told about every little thing when in certain situations I've just directed my husband to some male accountability where it was hurtful to hear about certain things and I gave him permission to talk to some others and repent to them and so maybe worth a conversation if that if you think something you're dealing with may fall in that category and that's not just a husband-spouse rule that's a biblical rule is when you know you've sinned against somebody you're supposed to you should go talk the goal yeah the goal here is just walk in the light and every marriage is case by case I've heard of some accountability partner or some husbands and wives who are like accountability partners and they

Share everything that that's helpful for them that's good that's not helpful for in our marriage my wife is generally when especially when it comes to sexual temptation just wants to know generally are you walking in the light how's it going how can I be praying for you every marriage is different but the goal is walking in light the goal is bearing one another's burdens and that's what we're going for so we're gonna be a little more descriptive as opposed to prescriptiveness next question if you were married and divorced prior to becoming a believer aren't those sins washed clean and you're born again a fresh new start so would remarriage still be a sin if that person's old sin was washed away if you take the first half of that question and don't do the so would remarriage still the answer is yes if you become a Christian all of your sin

Is washed away and not just past sin future sin that you are wiped clean that you not only have you're not given a clean slate that you didn't have to keep together you give Jesus your slate he takes yours you swap names on the tests you turn in and you stand before Christ before God in Christ that his goodness is for you and that his death was for you but specifically the question is how do Christians think about past sin when they become a Christian and I think one of the some of the good examples are what John says the John the Baptist he says bear fruit in keeping with repentance and then when Jesus interacts with Zacchaeus I think that's a good example to try to think about it so Zacchaeus meets Jesus becomes a believer and then says I'm gonna pay back everybody that I ever cheated he doesn't say sweet all the money I stole is now washed clean and if I

Spend it new and afresh it's as if it was mine at the beginning he actually says no I'm gonna try to restore what was broken and so I think that as Christians we walk out the effects of past sin and we try to figure out what's holy now it's the the word Jesus interacts with the lady in adultery and says go and sin no more so it's this idea of okay all my sins clean but how do I move forward in holiness and so I think the question is the same for them as everybody else which is how did that go down what's the situation and what's holiness as we move forward so I would not say that it just automatically means if you were divorced prior to becoming a Christian that that you that's as if that never happened because I don't think that's how the Bible generally treats sin and is this even more we did it you

Guys we did it not concisely but we did it I want to thank Chet and Katie for coming up here answering questions you guys give me a hand applause you

Raz Bradley 5/6/18 Raz Bradley 5/6/18

Singleness and The Gospel

Transcript

Good morning. My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. I have been sick all week, so I'll try not to make gross noises into the microphone. And I'm on some medicine, so either this will be—I'll run out of energy or something, and we'll wrap it up quickly, or this will at some point become incoherent and rambly more so than normal. So we'll just see what happens.

There are some things that are culturally kind of hard to hear. There's some—and not even because of microphones, just like culturally hard to hear. There's some things that just kind of don't mesh well with the larger culture that we have. It's a little bit like every single culture that you're in has its own rhythm, has its own way to process things, has its own way to think about things. This is why we have some of the funny situations we have when someone comes in from another culture and kind of does something that's embarrassing or kind of out of place. I remember one time my brothers and I got to go to Romania on a mission trip, and I got up to—actually, I got to preach, and I was up there, and I looked, and there was an aisle down the middle of the church, and there was a seating section over here and a seating section over here.

And as I got up there, I realized that all the males in the church were on this side of the church, and all the females were on this side of the church except for my two brothers who just sat with all the ladies. And I guess they were like, hey, nice, let's get over here and talk. All those guys are confused. They just didn't know. They went and sat down. And there's just kind of some of that kind of stuff where every culture has its own things they do and own ways to think about things, and there's certain things.

It's almost like every culture is kind of playing double dutch. You know the game that little girls will play and they have two— I can't— Unleash your kingdom's power Reaching the near and far No force of hell can stop Your beauty-changing hearts You made us for much more than this Awake in the kingdom See in us Fill us with the strength and love of Christ We are your church We are the home Oh, my God Oh, my God Oh, my God Oh, my God Build your kingdom Here Let the darkness Show your mind Behind Heal our streets And the lines

Steady our church On fire Witness nation Change the atmosphere Dun allikke Dude Things you got ь Back We dream Build your kingdom here Let the darkness fear Show your mighty hand Heal our streets and land Set your church on fire Win this nation back Change the atmosphere Build your kingdom here We pray What do you call it Give your dragging Hopehésitez These songs are set out Future

How firm a foundation, you saints of the Lord It is laid for your faith in His excellent word What more can He say than to you He has said To you who for refuge to Jesus have pled Feet and I, I am with you, oh be not dismayed For I am your God and will still give you aid I'll strengthen you, help you and cause you to stand Upheld by my righteous omnipotent When through the deep waters I call you to go The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow For I will be with you, your troubles to bless And sanctify to you your deepest distress I will be with you, your troubles to bless And sanctify to you, your troubles to bless And sanctify to you, your troubles to bless And sanctify to you, your troubles to bless But, like, it's like we can't get in the way of that We just, over and over, we're just primed up for And so here's what happens I don't believe that we've oversold marriage If you're single, you might have felt like People are not okay with you being single That you have to be married You might have really felt like that in the church

We're going to get to that in a second We're going to talk to your married friends I'm glad they're here But you might have felt like You have to be married to be okay But the problem is We have an oversold marriage The reason you're being pushed to be married Specifically by your Christian friends Is because they have oversold romance And romantic love The reason I can tell you We have an oversold marriage Is because if you look at ourselves culturally We have high divorce rates That's not an oversell of marriage That's an oversell of romance We have a high rates of people living together Without being married That's not an oversell of marriage That's an oversell of romance We have taken romance And we have put it out of place Now, God and the Bible are pro-love

God is love But that love is well beyond romantic love It's much more deep Much more beautiful And the Bible is very much Highlights and lifts up marriage But it's not just a romantic love in marriage But it's a more beautiful covenant That goes beyond romance And we have elevated romance And so when we start talking about singleness I think we need to understand that Because some of the things the Bible is going to say to us Sound out of rhythm The Bible storms into our double Dutch game And just knocks everything over And says, y'all were doing it wrong And it makes the Bible seem annoying Because we were in the middle of swinging our little ropes here And we had a good thing going, you guys But the truth is The Bible is correcting us And it doesn't view things the way we do So as we talk about singleness today

We're going to hear some things That sound crazy But are actually because the Bible Believes differently than us That we have placed romance out of position My son, I have a son He's three years old And he got to be a ring bearer In a wedding And this is him Prepped Prior to getting to go ring bear Now he actually Didn't get to touch the ring Which is great They were like, you're the ring bearer Can you carry this Bible down there? Because they were just like We don't want you to be in charge of anything Which I thought was a great idea Because he was two Now, I'm a pastor I've gotten to perform weddings Which is

It's stressful To perform a wedding I usually When I get up here I have some notes And then I just kind of talk And I get fussed out all the time Because I said something That wasn't super helpful And sometimes I say things That are kind of dumb Or whatever But mostly I just embarrassed myself Like a couple weeks ago When I said It was hard to look at your wife's face Or whatever Like that was just It was misspoken It was an embarrassing thing for me But at weddings People film those things And remember them forever So what I do

Is I write out Every word that I'm going to say And I just try to read it Because even when I'm doing that I mean hypothetically At your brother's wedding You try to say two words at one time And you say a cuss word And it just And people don't forget But As stressful as that is This was way worse No, no, no Go back, go back, go back Go back This was way worse I was the handler For a two-year-old Who had a job to do And two-year-olds Don't do jobs super well You guys I would rather

Be watching a dog That had to carry the ring down Because at the end of the day You can just be like It was a dog Dogs are idiots But you can't say that About your two-year-old People get offended And they act like You should have had a better Job So we had been practicing And all he had to do Was carry his little Bible down And you know We're excited It's right before He's ready He's practiced multiple times He knows what he's supposed to do He gets ready We get up there And they say Okay, it's time for him to go

And right as I say Alright, go I let him go The wedding's going I mean, they've already done All the prelude And Canon and D And other wedding songs That kind of stuff Right as I let him go The lady says Wait The father of the groom Hasn't been seated yet Now The father of the groom Has one Job at a wedding And it is Go sit down I don't know What this cat was doing But he did not do His one Job But now

He can't go sit down If we start this thing So my son was like The first thing That was like Got the ball rolling And so it couldn't Happen out of order And so This picture The man in the suit Is the guy Who did not do his job That is my son Look at Look at the Look at the Focus in his eyes He's He's never been More prepared To do anything In his life And do you see

What I'm talking about Being stressful You see my face there That's what I looked like All day That wasn't even Alright, so here's What I did Now I've been known To handle situations Poorly Specifically when it comes To like physically Having to do something And so what I did A split second After this My son was laid out On his back Because I tackled him That's all that I did I grabbed his arm And he was taking a step And I just slammed him

To the ground So they were like Don't go yet I wonder how that looked For the wedding lady Who was like in charge She was like Don't let him go And I just grabbed him To the ground You're going nowhere son So he starts screaming Fair enough You got tackled And so I picked him up I sat him down And he was like I want to go He was trying to articulate That he like wanted to go And I was like Get it together You're going to get To carry the Bible

You can't go right now You can't be crying Lock it up Let's go And I spun around I was like go And he quit crying And did it I was so proud of him Now here's the thing Let's say That he wasn't able To lock it up Which would have been reasonable I was like go And then as soon as he went I tackled him And so that was startling And he did hit his head A little bit If he wasn't able To like get it together And go And if I just like

Had to pick him up And just like Like okay The ring bear is done Like he He received an injury At the beginning Of his duties What I couldn't do Is walk into The middle Like say Oh I'm sorry I'm sorry Ring bear went down I guess there's no Shining moment In this wedding anymore I guess there's really No point Can we Can we postpone it Do this on another day Can we just wrap it up

Do we just want to Y'all just want to call it You're dismissed Like I couldn't Do any of those things Because I would have Completely been confused About the role The position That we had in the wedding Like if when they went To cut the cake later I went and stuck him In the middle So he could smoosh Cake on their face I would be really annoying If I gave a toast At the end Like hey I want to give a toast I'm the father Of the child That was it

Like it's out of place And what we have done With the idea Of romance Is we've taken Something that's good And it gets to be a part And when it plays It's part It's really nice When it doesn't Get tackled And just gets to Walk down Like it's a really Cool part But that's it It's not the main thing It's not the goal Of the universe It's not why God designed everything And we can't let it Get out of place

And some of us Want to cancel everything Just can't Just cancel everything Because the romance part Hasn't done What we wanted from it It hasn't worked out The way we wanted it to And so the Bible Steps in and corrects And says it's out of place Let's walk through And see How we can understand this And approach this A little better So we're talking To singles About singleness today We've been studying Through the book of Ephesians So grab your Bibles And go to 1 Corinthians 7

We're going to get To Ephesians today But Ephesians doesn't Say anything directly To single people 1 Corinthians 7 does The reason why The Bible doesn't Talk to single people A whole whole lot Directly Is because The Bible talks To single people All the time In all the general Calls that it gives To Christians And to life And how to think About things It's applied to everybody And then every once In a while

It pauses And specifically says Hey married people And it gives them Specific instructions For some of the things They're going to have to face Everything applies To single people And then every once In a while It just says Hey if you're married Think about this If you have kids Think about this And then what happens Culturally Because we've Over elevated Romance We have a lot Of marriage problems And we also have

A lot of marriage Like it's the goal It's the magic It's the pot of gold At the end of the rainbow Stuff Because we really Are just hyping romance And so Christian churches In the U.S. Talk a lot about marriage And they have a lot Of marriage series And they have a lot Of single series That are like Trying to talk you Into how you can get married And so it gets talked about Not a lot Singleness and the way The Bible approaches It doesn't get talked About a lot

And if you're single In the church It can sometimes feel like You are half a person Until you get to be married And that is not Biblically accurate So let's go to 1 Corinthians 7 We're going to pick up In verse 32 Excuse me I want you to be free From anxieties To Paul's writing To the church He just kind of Got done saying Like you don't have To get married He's going to spell This out a little more I want you to be free From anxieties

The unmarried man Is anxious About the things Of the Lord How to please The Lord But the married man Is anxious About worldly things How to please His wife And his interests Are divided And the unmarried Or betrothed woman Is anxious About the things Of the Lord How to be holy In body and spirit But the married man Is anxious About Married woman

Is anxious About worldly things How to please Her husband I say this For your own benefit Not to lay Any restraint Upon you But to promote Good order And to secure Your undivided Devotion To the Lord So what Paul says Is I don't want you To be overly anxious You're going to have Some anxiety You're going to have Some stress And here he doesn't mean Like just the

Over anxious Worried about everything With no real reason No real cause But he's talking about Like a good healthy Anxiety Good healthy stress level Of this matters So I care about it It's a concern Is more what he's Addressing here And so what he says Is I don't want you To have too much of that So I would just Encourage you To not get married If you're not married Don't get married And his point is You get to give Undivided attention

To the Lord And what he says Here is really true He says the married man His interests are divided The married woman Her interests are divided They're not just worried About how to please the Lord They're worried about How to please their wife Or their husband And that's real I'm a pastor I get phone calls Or texts late at night And people will say Hey can you get over here This is going on Can this happen And I immediately Am like yes I need to do that And also

I have a wife And I have two kids And I got to help Transition this out And I got to talk to her And we got to work this out Like every time When we're hanging out With our community group And people want to talk After they got questions And stuff There's a little bit of like Yes I want to talk to you Yes I want to be able To walk this through with you But also I can't make my wife Put our kids to sleep Every night Because that's difficult Specifically for her Because she's nicer than I am So it's like

There's this There's this Real tension And what he's saying Is single people You don't You wouldn't have that Your anxiety would simply be How do I please The Lord Meaning that If somebody called you And said Hey can you come Can you be at this Can you be a part of this Can you serve here You just think Does it please the Lord Yeah Like there's a real amount of If you get married How much time should you spend Just alone with you and your spouse

If you have children How much time should you spend With your children How much should you spend With your children And just you How much time should you spend Family time How much time should you spend Alone with each of your Individual children That's a real thing To be a healthy father To be a healthy mother To be a healthy husband To be a healthy wife And to walk that out And so what Paul's saying is If you do that Just realize You have divided your attention Not to say that marriage is bad Later he says You can get married

He just says I don't want that for you What I want is for you To just focus on Jesus So I will say this For single people And I don't know How you are single today I don't know If you're single Through death I don't know If you're single Through divorce I don't know If you're single now And you feel like This is a season I'm going to date Or I am dating I'm going to get married I don't know If you're single now And you're saying

No I think this is life for me I think life for me Is singleness But I want to ask If you are currently single What's your anxiety level Over pleasing the Lord Because Paul's assuming That that's present The same that the people Here's what happens We've been taught Kind of in our culture That if you're married You've got to worry a lot About what your spouse thinks And what they like And if you're single You just get to do What you want Not if you're a Christian Christian single people Don't just do what they want They try to figure out

What the Lord wants Try to figure out What pleases Him What is He like What does He want With your life What should your day Look like as you follow Him We have this kind of idea Culturally That when you're single It's a little bit of like I can grow up later I can get it together later You know my budget Only affects me My time only affects me If I mess something up If I'm junky If I'm messy If I'm undisciplined That only affects me And later If I get a wife

If I get a husband Then I'll kind of have to Fix all this And the problem is All of that doesn't Just affect you It affects Jesus And His mission And your life In His church Among His people And are you anxious over What it looks like For you to follow Him And to please Him So I don't It doesn't matter What zone of singleness You're in Do you spend time Do you spend time with Him Do you read Do you pray Do you know Him

Like I've been married For nine years There's things I should just know About my wife Things she likes Doesn't like Things she enjoys Doesn't enjoy Things that are And there's a little bit Of like How long have you Been walking with Jesus Do you know His word Do you know the things That He says please Him Do you know the things That He says He enjoys That He looks for in us That He wants from us Do you know specifically What He wants from you He says that I might

That you might secure Your undivided A devotion To the Lord We have to Don't hear this I think so often We hear it this way Think of all the stuff You can do for Jesus If you're single You can do so much stuff For Jesus Like I'm married I gotta do stuff For my wife But you can do stuff For Jesus The Bible says Think of all the stuff You get to do with Jesus And He says He never Leaves us or forsakes us That you aren't His

Workers that just Punch the clock for Him And get to turn in Like here's what I've accomplished But you actually get to Walk with Him in life When Paul Walked with Jesus Jesus would show up And talk to Him Paul would pray Paul didn't feel this It was a companionship They walked together We have to step up Our belief In the presence of Christ And the fellowship Of the Holy Spirit That singleness Displays the sufficiency Of Christ In a way that Marriage never can

That marriage is Supposed to Display the gospel But there's a part Of singleness That displays The sufficiency Of Christ The fullness That He offers for us In a way that Marriage never can There was a A missionary Named John G. Patton This was a A while back And I think In the 1800s Sometimes And he and his wife Went to the New Hebrides Islands

And soon after Getting there She got sick She gave birth And then she got sick And so she passed away And then the baby Passed away Because there was no way To feed the baby And buried both of them And on the island They were on Was a It was a very savage island There were a lot of cannibals And so he actually Spent many nights Sleeping on their graves So the cannibals Wouldn't dig them up And eat them And then he was there By himself

For a long time Just trying to reach Them with the gospel And there's this story Of he was being chased By some cannibals Who wanted to kill And eat him And a guy That he knew That he was He was a little spotty The guy was a little spotty He wasn't quite sure If the guy was on his team Or not Told him hide in this tree And he was like I don't know if I can Trust this guy But I don't have Like a better option So he hid in the tree And he was like

Maybe he's just Going to bring people To the tree Maybe I can trust him This is a quote From his autobiography But he says Being entirely At the mercy Of such doubtful And vacillating friends I, though perplexed Felt it best to obey I climbed into the tree And was left there Alone in the bush That's how British people say The woods The hours I spent there Live all before me As if it were But of yesterday I heard the frequent

Discharging of muskets And the yells Of the savages Yet I sat there Among the branches As safe As in the arms Of Jesus Never in all my sorrows Did my Lord Draw nearer to me Speak more soothingly In my soul Than when the moonlight Flickered Among those chestnut leaves And the night air Played on my Throbbing brow As I told all my heart To Jesus Alone Yet not alone If it be to glorify

My God I will not grudge To spend Many nights Alone in such a tree To feel again My Savior's Spiritual presence To enjoy His consoling Fellowship If thus thrown Back upon your own soul Alone All alone In the midnight In the bush In the very embrace Of death itself Have you a friend That will not fail you Then One of the things That he kind of continues

And this is one of the Major points in his life Is that he felt So close To Christ So fulfilled By Christ So connected With Christ And what I want us To see And understand Is that when Paul Says things like Don't get married Just get Jesus Just worry about him He doesn't think He's making a bad Exchange for you He doesn't think That Jesus Is a consolation prize That many people

Who deal with Struggle with Being single Or thinking about Lifelong singleness I've had someone Say to me That the fear Isn't that I'm lonely Now It's that I'll be Lonely in the future Someone else said It's not so much That I really want To have sex Or something It's that I want companionship I want someone Who knows me And that I know And that I can Just walk through

Life with And the biblical Truth is That Jesus Is that And I know This answer Just sounds churchy Hey single people You get Jesus But it's It's so Real That we can't Miss that I want to Keep moving In this text 36 If anyone Thinks that he Is not behaving Properly Toward his

Betrothed If his passions Are strong And it has to be Let him do As he wishes Let them marry It is no sin Okay so A lot of times The people ask Does the bible Give like helpful Information for like Dating And how to think About dating And the question Becomes are you Are you in a Are you in an Arranged marriage Do you have A betrothed

Anybody The bible has Some coaching For you Nobody's betrothed Okay it doesn't Say a lot About dating Culturally The bible Doesn't address Dating the way That we date It doesn't Have this There's not A huge Single population That was Free From their Families That there Wasn't dating

The way that We have Where people Lived on their Own and Dated on their Own And men And women Would go Live by Themselves That didn't Really happen So there is Some coaching Here that we Have to pull Out principle Wise From this What paul Says here Is it's

Okay to Get married If you've Never been Married You can Get married He actually Says If his Passions are Strong And it Has to Be Let him Do as He wishes Let them Marry He says If he Doesn't Think he's

Behaving Properly Towards his Betrothed If you're Overcome With a Desire If you Really Want to Be Married That's Okay It's Okay to Want to Be Married He says It's not A sin To get

Married Specifically I want To say That I Think That Some of The things That biblically Apply to Singleness And Dating So there Are Some People Who Are In Singleness Have Already

Been Married Are Divorced We're Going to Talk More Specifically About That Next Week In General The bible's Approach To that We're Doing Q&A Next Week We're

Going to Spend Our Time Doing That Or At At At At A really Large Portion Of Our Time Doing That But the Bible's Approach To Marriage

And Divorce Is Basically If you Are Married You Should Not Get Divorced It Gives A Few Little Bit Of Okay Kind Of In This

Area In This Area Let's Think About This We'll Talk More Nuance About That But the General Answer Is If You're Married Don't Get Divorced

And If You Are Divorced Don't Get Remarried That's The Bible's General Answer It's The Basic Approach And If You're In One Of Those

Zones If You're Married The Bible Is Going To Step In And Just Kind Of Say You Shouldn't Get A Divorce And If You're

Unmarried Because Of The Divorce The Bible Pretty Much Steps In And You You Shouldn't Get Remarried Now Again There's A few Places Where There's

There's Some Allowances Ish And We're Going to Talk Through That More Specifically Next But If You're In If You're A Christian You Date In

Order To Be Married That We Elevate Marriage Over Romance That If You Are Dating And You Try To Think How Should I Think

About Dating Well The Bible Says First Of You Shouldn't Marry A Non-believer So You Shouldn't Date Non-believers Advantage Dating Isn't A Good Idea

And You Should Treat Everyone Who's A Believer Like A Brother Or Sister So That Makes Dating Weird But Think About It Maybe More

Like How Would You Want Someone To Date Your Sister I Don't Have A Sister But I Think I Can Answer That Question I

Would Like For Him To Ask Her Out To Show Some Pursuit And Be Willing To Be Shot Down I Think That's Actually Masculine

You Guys I Think There's Something Masculine About Asking Waiting For Her To Ask You Out And Doing Some Of This Stuff So That

She Has To Risk It So That She Has To Be Rejected Like Some Of That Stuff Is Like Step Your Game Up Let's

Go I Like For Him To Pursue Her A little Bit I'd Like For To Take Her To Nice I'd Like For Him To To

Keep His Hands To Himself How Would You Want Someone To Date Your Brother How Would You Want To Treat Him Like There's Some

Of That That Goes Along With Understanding How Do We Act Towards People In These Situations So If Really The Point There Just To

See This Is That He Says If You Really Want To Get Married You Can It's Not A Sin But Then He Says This

But Whoever Is Verse 37 Whoever Is Firmly Established In His Heart Being Under No Necessity But Having His Desire Under Control And Has

Determined This In His Heart To Keep Her As His Betrothed He Will Do Well So What He Says Is If You Can Control

Yourself If You're Not Burning With Desire If You're In A Situation Where It's Like No I Actually Don't Have To Get Married I

I Been Kind Of Sold On This But I He Says You Do Well Then He Finishes With This So Then He Who Marries

His Betrothed Does Well And He Who Refrains From Marriage Will Do Even Better Y'all See That Y'all Say Even Better Wow We Don't

Do This Often Say Even Better Okay Married People In The Room Let's Talk For A Second Do We Act Like That Verse Is

In The Bible No We Do Not Do You Know How Obnoxious That Is For Our Single Friends And Do You Know How Unbiblical

That Is Here's What Married People You Gotta Stop We Gotta Stop Acting Like If You're Not Married You've Totally Missed Out On Life

We Wouldn't Say Those Words Necessarily But We Do Portray That Idea Oh You're You Are Incomplete You Need You Need Someone Else To

Come In And Make You A Whole Person Y'all Know Where That Idea Came From It Came From Plato In His Symposium He Wrote

A Story About How People Used To Be Four Like There Was Two People Stuck Together They Had Four Arms Two Heads Four Legs

And Then The Gods Got Mad At And Chopped Them In Half And So Everybody Had To Go Around On Earth Feeling Terrible Until

They Found Their Soul Mate You Were Looking For Your Other Half That's Nonsense You're You're Okay You Want to Know What Your Problem Is

You Want to Know Why You're Feeling Complete Sin You're Broken You need A savior Not a Soulmate And Then You're Complete And You Can Marry Another Sinner

Who Also Needs A Savior Or You Can Just Be Someone Who Gets The Savior And You're Fine Married People They Do Even Better

So Stop It Because We Don't Seem Like Christians We Seem Like We Can Double Dutch Fine With American Culture But We Got To

Get On Rhythm With Christ Which Is Hey If You Just Get Jesus You're Going To Be Good Now If Your Single Friend Comes

To You And Says Hey I Really Want To Date Someone I Think What You Need To Ask Him Is Are You Burning With

Desire And If They Say No My Desire Is Under Control Say Well Then Keep It Under Control You'll Do Fine Now You're Married

They Say My Desire Is Out Of Control Then You Say Well Hey I Can Help You Out All Right He Will Do Even

Better Paul Keeps Going I Want To I Didn't Put That We Were Going To Read This But We're Going To 39 A Wife

Is Bound To Her Husband As Long As He Lives But If Her Husband Dies She Is Free To Be Married To Whom She

Wishes Only In The Lord Meaning She Can Marry Whomever If He's A Christian Yet In My Judgment She Is Happier If She Remains

As She Is And I Think That I Too Have The Spirit Of God So What He Says Is She's Actually Happier If She'll

Just Stay Unmarried Now Who In Our Culture Can Say That Without It Sounding Gross And Here's What I Mean Someone Looks At You

And Goes Oh You're Unmarried Stay Unmarried That's The Way To Be Happy Like It Comes Across Weird To Us It's Like Ah Especially

If They're Married If They're Like Oh Please Just Stay Unmarried It's Like Come On Man Like Don't Say That When Paul Says It

Though It's Not Coming From A Place Of Bitter It's Coming From A Place Of Him Knowing What's Better That's What It Is He's

Not Bitter He's Not Upset It's Not Like He He's Saying I'm Telling You You Can Actually Be Happier Freer Walk In More Joy

If You Just Focus On Jesus And He Means It Now How Does Paul Mean That Because It Sounds A Little Bit Crazy To

Us When The Bible Steps In And Tells Someone Who's Been Divorced You Should Not Get Remarried Do You Know How Offensive That Sounds

To Us How Harmful That Sounds It Sounds Like What Just Be Single Forever Don't Marry Someone Of The Same Gender Just Be Single

It Sounds Like All We Have Really Said Is Hey We Want You To Have A Terrible Lonely And Sad Life That's The Way

We Hear It Because We've Been Oversold On Romance Is The Only Way To Fulfillment Romance Is The Only Way To Real Love Romance

Is The Only Way To Companionship Romance Is The Only Way To Be Known And Cherished And Cared For Romance We've Oversold It So

That It's Hard For The Church Even To Say Things The Bible Says With Any Amount Of Credibility Because We're Walking In The Same

Vain With The Rest Of The Culture On What We Believe About Romance But When Paul Says It He Means How How How Can

He Say That Well I Think It's Been In Our Ephesians Passage That We Have Read Over And Over Again So Turn Back To

Ephesians 5 We've Read This For The Past Four Five Weeks And I Think When Paul Says You Don't Have To Get Married I

Think We Can Actually Look At The Section On Marriage And See Why He Says That With Such Credibility Why He Can Look You

In The Face And Not Blink And Say I Think You Should Spend Your Time Worrying About What Jesus Wants And That Will Be

Good And You'll Be Complete So Here's What We've Read Over And Over Again It's Going To Be On The Screen I'm Going To

Read Through It Fairly Quickly Ephesians 5 I Think This Is The Last Time We'll Read This Together As A Church You Guys So

You Should Be Excited We've Read It A lot Okay I Was Super Confused I'm Looking At Galatians I'm Going To Get It Together Here

We Go I Was Like I Don't Know What This Is 22 Wives Submit To Your Own Husbands As To The Lord For The

Husband Is The Head Of The Wife Even As Christ Is The Head Of The Church His Body And Is Himself Its Savior Now

As The Church Submits To Christ So Also Wives Should Submit In Everything To Their Husbands Husbands Love Your Wives As Christ Loved The

Church And Gave Himself Up For Her That He Might Sanctify Her Having Cleansed Her By The Was So That He He Without Spot

Or Wrinkle Or Any Such Thing That She Might Be Holy And Without Blemish In The Same Way Husbands Should Love Their Wives As

Their Bodies He Who Loves His Wife Loves Himself For No One Ever Hated His Own Flesh But Nourishes And Cherishes It If You're

Single You Hear Wives It's It's Easy For That To Happen And Some Of That Is Because The Church Has Oversold This So Much

We've We've Overhyped This So Much I've Been In Sermons Y'all No I'm Going To Talk About I Wasn't In I Saw It On

The Internet I've Interneted Sermons Y'all There We Go Where The Point Of The Sermon Was This Where So Many Sermons Are Hey Are

You Single Would You Like To Hear About The Promised Land That Is Marriage Would You Like To Hear About The Goal Of Life

That Is Marriage I Was In A Sermon That Was God Took The Text That Said God Gives Good Gifts And Then Said God

Only Gives Good Gifts So If You're Not A Good Gift How Would God Give You To Someone Else And The Point Of The

Sermon Was You Should Become A Good Gift And Then You Can Get Married One Of The Points In The Sermon Was You Should

Exercise But What They Set It Up As Was Here's This Weird Like An Actual Promise The Bible Says About God Giving Good Gifts

Let Me Apply It To A Weird text And Let Me Say That If You Do Everything Good If You Work Really Hard At

The End Of It You Can Have Future Perfect Spouse Let Me Tell You Something That Is Not The Gospel That Is Not The

Good News Of The Bible That Also Sets You Up For A Really Messed Up Marriage Because Your Spouse Is Going To Way Worse

Than Jesus And Make A Terrible Savior Here's The Gospel You You Are A Sinner Who Is Broken You Need A Savior And The Promised Land Is

Life With Christ In Eternity That's The Gospel And So I Did On Like A General Regular Basis But What I Did Was I

Took This Passage And I Just Put All The Stuff That Was Talking About Specific Instructions To Husbands And Wives And I Want Us

To See What Paul Hangs It All On Church And So Here Is The Text The Reality Of The Text See Everything Else Is

Just Hanging On This But He Says Christ Is The Head Of The Church His Body And Is Himself Its Savior The Church Submits

To Christ In Everything Christ Loved The Church And Gave Himself Up For Her If You Are A Christian You Belong To The Church

If You Place Your Faith In Christ This Christ Loved The Church And Gave Himself Up For Her That He Might Sanctify Her Having

Cleansed Her By The Washing Of The Water With The Word So That He Might Present The Church To Himself In Splendor Without Spot

Or Wrinkle Or Any Such Thing That She Might Be Holy And Without Blemish Christ Loves The Church As His Own Body Christ Does

Not Hate The Church But Nourishes And Cherishes It Because We Are Members Of His Body What He Said Was Christ So Loved The

Church That He Gave Himself Up For Her That He Sacrificed Everything That He Could Have Her That All All The Beautiful Love Stories

We Have Told Are Just A Hint A Whiff Of What Christ Has Done For The Church Everything We've Ever Loved About A Hero

Riding Into Rescue Is Just A Small Dirty Mirror Pointing At What Christ Has Done For The Church He Says He Nourishes That Means

That Christ Takes Us And He Cares So Much About Us That He Provides Everything We Need And He Takes Everything You Could Ever

Want Everything That You Feel Like You're Lacking Everything That You Feel Like Is Out Of Place And He Just Fills You Up And

Then He Cherishes I Think There's So Much Of Us That Longs To Be Cherished I'm A Grown Man And I Don't Use That

Word A Lot I Want My Wife To Cherish Me I Want Her To House I Want Her To Laugh And Think I Love

That He's Funny But The Truth Is She Doesn't Cherish Me Like Christ Does She Never Will See My Wife And My Marriage It's

Good It Gets To Be A Picture Of The Gospel Gets To Point To It But When We Step Into Eternity She's My Sister

I'm The Bride Of Christ I'm Cherished In a Way That He Desires And Longs For And Knows Intimately Everything Knows All Of My Sin

And Still Died For It That He Loves Us Beyond Compare That He Nourishes And Cherishes It Because We're Members Of His Body Therefore

A Man Shall Leave His Father And Mother And Hold Fast To His Wife And The Two Shall Become One Flesh This Mystery Is

Profound And I'm Saying That It Refers To Christ And The Church We Said This On Our First Week But Marriage Points To The

Gospel So So So So So So Paul Without Blinking Can Look And Say If You Just Get Jesus You Do Better French Not

It Dubai your spouse or you maybe never have a spouse but that person would only have ever been a small arrow pointing to Christ if they did what they were supposed to correctly there's going to be a day when it says that new Jerusalem comes out of heaven adorned like a bride for her husband and that Christ is going to welcome the church and he's going to look at us and be so overwhelmed by love and then we're going to have a wedding feast where he welcomes us to him in a cherishing nourishing love like we've never known and that if you are single you can walk with Jesus your whole life and be full and complete and loved beyond your peers and beyond the people around you it does take work does take some effort to walk with Jesus and to rest in him and to pray and to wrestle this out but it's real the band's going to come back up here the king of the universe if you belong to the church if you belong to Christ the king of the universe loved you pursued you desired you saw your sin and in spite of it died for it to claim you

So that he might love and nourish and cherish you for all eternity and if you are not a Christian you can repent of your sin and it'll mean that the king of the universe loved you saw you pursued you and cherished you claimed you as his own and died for your sin but if we belong to Jesus we haven't missed out on anything we actually get what's better let's pray God we ask that you would help us grow in knowing your love in resting in it and in walking in communion connection with you we might feel you we love you and we praise you in Jesus name amen thank you