NATIONAL COMMUNITY CHURCH July 26, 2020 Unshaken_ Daniel Chapter 7_The Long Game Dr. Mark Batterson In 1884, Edwin Abbott wrote a brilliant little book 'Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions', it looks like this. I read it about 20 years ago. The entire book is an extra dimensional thought experiment. Abbott calls, one dimension, line land. All you can conceive of is one dimension called length and you can only move in one direction - forward. He calls two dimensions - flatland and you can now move sideways because you add breath to length. Then Abbot introduces this mystical, magical place called 'space land'. But it's very hard for line landers and flatlanders to conceive of anything above them, because they have never looked up. Why would they? They have never conceived of this thing called height, this third-dimension. Now they sense this mysterious presence, but all they do is look around them and wonder what it could be. That's when this extra dimensional being appropriately named 'Sphere' enters the equation. Abbot calls him a fit apostle for the gospel of three dimensions. He reveals himself to the lion landers and flatlanders. He says, "You do not know what space is. You think it is of two-dimensions only, but I have come to announce to you a third dimension." Hold that thought. In physics, every dimension of space time is called a degree of freedom. In one dimensional line land you have the freedom to move forward. In two dimensional flatland you have the freedom to move forward and sideways. In three dimensional space land you have the freedom to maneuver forward, sideways and upwards. Every dimension adds a degree of freedom, allowing you to maneuver in a new way, and every degree of freedom redefines what is and what is not possible. Casey Cole says it this way, "You can leap over a four dimensional barrier in five dimensional space, you can untie an eight dimensional knot in nine dimensional space. Magical things are possible by a mere change in the dimensions of space." In Luke's Gospel, Jesus gives his inaugural address, he is in his hometown of Nazareth, he goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath. The scroll is open to the book of Isaiah and Jesus says, "I have come to set captives free." Now we tend to think of that in legal terms, this is our get out of jail free card. And listen, that is one dimension of the freedom that we find in Christ. We are justified by faith - 'just as if I had never sinned' our sin is forgiven and forgotten by virtue of what Christ accomplished on the cross. But I want us to think of this in terms of physics. Listen to me, Jesus came to add a degree of freedom to your life, to add an extra dimensional reality to your life. He enables us to escape the space time limitations and maneuver in a new way with the help of the Holy Spirit. That's what the gifts of the Spirit are all about. And when we exercise those gifts, healing and faith and prophecy, words of wisdom, words of knowledge, heaven invades Earth, eternity invades time, God moves in miraculous ways in ways that, well, they're just impossible in four dimensions of space time. - 1 - Now, let me juxtapose that with this 2 Peter 3:8, "With the Lord a day is like thousand years and a thousand years, are like a day." That makes no sense in four dimensions of space time. Newsflash, God does not exist within the space time dimensions he created. God is the eternal now. To borrow a phrase from theologian Paul Tillich; 'the challenge is this, all we've ever known is four dimensions of space time so it's very difficult for us to conceive of anything else.' We sense this mysterious presence, don't we? And then we look all around but we don't have a category and so we often explain it away, or we anthropomorphize God, we create God in our image, we put God in our four dimensional box and what we end up with in the words of A. W. Tozer is a God who can never surprise, us never astonish us, never overwhelm us, never transcend us. How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be said G. K. Chesterton, if the hammer of a higher God would smash your small cosmos. That is my prayer for you this weekend. Two big ideas up front. One, God is bigger than big. The technical term is transcendence, "As the heavens are higher than the Earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts declares the Lord." Isaiah 55:9. Astrophysicists estimate the commoving distance of the universe from one side to the other 93 billion light years. That distance is immeasurable and that's the point. "He is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine according to his power that's at work within us." Your best thought on your best day falls 93 billion light years short of how great and how good God really is. God - bigger than big which is amazing but let's be honest, a little intimidating too. So here's some good news. God is also closer than close; technical term imminence. He is not just God most high He is God most nigh and you see this in Psalm 36. God's love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic, his purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic yet in his largeness in his transcendence nothing gets lost, not a man, not a mouse slips through the cracks. God is great, not too because nothing is too big God is great because nothing is too small. He is God most high. He is God most nigh. Well, what does any of that have to do with the book of Daniel? I'm glad you asked. Let me connect some extra dimensional dots and we're gonna pick up right where we left off last weekend, Daniel in the lion's den. According to the Talmud along with everything God spoke into existence during these six days of creation, God made certain provisions. He commanded the Red Sea to split apart for Israel. He commanded the sun and moon to stand still for Joshua. He commanded the Baltimore Ravens to feed Elijah, the fish to spit out Jonah, the fire not to burn Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and he commanded that the lions would shut their mouths. All of this God declared made provision for during those six days of creation. Now the Talmud much of which was compiled during this Babylonian exile by the way, it's not on par with Scripture. This is rabbinic tradition for better for worse but I find this fascinating and I think it's in keeping with the way God works. If you're taking notes jot this down when God gives a vision he makes provision. We have seen this so many times and so many ways as a church, this is Ephesians 2:10, my life verse. "We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works prepared for us in advance." Now we exist - 2 - within this construct called time so we think, forwards. God exists outside of these dimensions he created, and he actually works in the opposite direction. So we think forwards but God is working backwards. What we call history is teleology. It's a Greek word often translated perfect or complete. It's Philippians 1:6, "He began a good work and you will carry it to completion", teleos in the Greek. Imagine a giant jigsaw puzzle to teleos is the final piece of that puzzle. It's every piece perfectly in place. God begins with the end in mind, not just the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And if you want to understand prophecy, I think we start right here. Now with that as a backdrop, we're gonna jump right into Daniel seven, considered by many Jewish scribes to be the greatest chapter in the Hebrew Scriptures. The first half is biographical. We've got six court tales; we've been talking about it over the last six weeks. The second half is apocalyptic. We take a hard right turn in chapter seven we transition from history to prophecy. It's almost like we go from flatland to space land. Daniel puts on his prophetic hat, pulls back the curtain a time, peers into the future and reveals what he sees. Four visions, we're going to talk about it over the next six weeks. We're going to talk some eschatology a theology of the end times, we'll talk angelology more angelic activity in the book of Daniel than any other book of the Bible. Ready or not here we go. Verse one, "In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and saw visions as he lay on his bed. He wrote down the dream, and this is what he saw." So we flashback to the first year Belshazzar this predates the lion's den, predates handwriting on the wall best guess, right around 653 BC two footnotes, right here. There are some who would argue for a second century authorship, which of course means Daniel could not have written this book and I understand those arguments. I would hold to a sixth century authorship, in large part because Jesus seems to attribute authorship to Daniel in Matthew 24:15. I also think it's noteworthy that we transition from third person history in these first six chapters to more of a first person prophecy in chapter seven. Honestly, I think some higher critics have a hard time believing that Daniel could have prophesied what would happen in subsequent centuries with such precision. I think that's where we fall back on 2 Peter 2:21 prophecy never had its origin in the will of man. But prophets, though human spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. One more footnote, first half and second half of Daniel form this fascinating chiasm. Chapter two and chapter seven both contain a vision of four kingdoms with one distinction. In Daniel two Daniel is the interpreter of dreams in Daniel seven Daniel is the dreamer of dreams. And it says he wrote down the dream. We're going to talk about that in our post message Q & A. Verse two, “In my vision that night, I, Daniel, saw a great storm churning the surface of a great sea, with strong winds blowing in every direction. - 3 - To the ancient reader the mention of the sea would have conjured up images of impending evil. A battle is brewing between right and wrong, between good and evil, political and social agitations are stirring up the nations of the world that hits pretty close to home. What do we do? What do we do when political winds blow when social wind storm what do we do as followers of Christ? To me book a Daniel is all about dual citizenship. Most of us citizens of the United States of America and I believe we have a civic duty to exercise our rights and responsibilities as Americans. That said, we are a non partisan church in other words, we don't affiliate with party or candidate; lots of people on both sides of the aisle at NCC. But non partisan doesn't mean we don't care. It doesn't mean that the political process is unimportant, so many of you have devoted your lives to public service just like Daniel. Listen, we honor you. We pray for you. And we won't always agree on absolutely everything. And that's where we flip the coin, as followers of Christ and we remind ourselves that our primary citizenship is in this thing called the kingdom of God. We don't put our hope in hash tags. We don't put our faith in political ideologies. I am in Christ, Christ is in me. That, my friends is the hope of glory and this is the prayer that we pray. “Our Father who art Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We pray that prayer and when we do, we are praying that an extra dimensional reality called heaven would invade Earth that an extra dimensional reality called eternity would invade time. And that is precisely what's going to happen in verse 18. We'll get there. We'll get there. Verse three, Daniel has a vision of four beasts coming up out of the sea in succession. And then in verse eight, a little horn comes out of 10 horns, toots his horn, speaks with tremendous arrogance. Verse 24, says that He will speak words against the Most High God and that he will wear out the saints. And we're gonna unpack some of that eschatology in week nine. In fact, we'll identify who that little horn is. And so come back in two weeks. Here's the bottom line. Daniel is giving a forecast of these four kingdoms that come out of the sea. And it's not a great forecast, difficult days are ahead. This is not what the prophet wants to speak. This is not what the people want to hear. It's bad and it's going to get worse. But just when it seems like all is lost, Daniel has another vision that totally flips the script. In verse nine it's almost like a set change in theater. We transition from these four beasts coming up out of the sea, to a courtroom to a throne room, and it's a change of characters. It's a change of perspective. “As I looked, “thrones were set in place, and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool. His throne was flaming with fire, and its wheels were all ablaze." You know what this sounds like? To me this sounds like a prophet in four dimensions of space time who was having a hard time describing a God who is omni-dimensional. This is the only place in all of scripture where God is called the Ancient of Days. I want you to notice where he is. Where is the Ancient of Days in the midst of all these earthly uprisings? Where is he in the midst of all of this - 4 - rebellion against everything that is good and right and just? I will tell you where he is. God is still on his throne. And it gets better. Verse 13, "Behold, on the clouds of heaven came one, like a son of man." In Hebrew, ben-'adam, that designation used 107 times in the Old Testament, found 81 times in the gospels. Three primary titles given to Jesus in the Gospels, he is the son of David which references his royalty. He is the Son of God which delineates his divinity and he is the Son of Man, which underscores his humanity but there is so much more to it than that. When Jesus self identifies as the Son of man, and he does it 14 times in Mark's Gospel alone, he is saying, I am who Daniel saw, I am the fulfillment of this prophecy, I am the one who serves the cloud. I am the one who saves the day I am the one who writes every wrong. It's almost like Jesus raises his hand, all dominion, all glory, all authority read it in verse 14, all peoples all nations, all languages will serve me my dominion is an everlasting dominion. And so here's Daniel he finds himself living between these two alternate realities, these two visions. You've got this earthly reality of political uprisings and social unrest. I mean, it feels like the world is falling apart feels like evil has the upper hand. Houston, we have a problem. But then there is this vision of an extra dimensional reality. This heavenly vision, the Ancient of Days seated on his throne and the Son of Man surfing the clouds. Simply put, God's got this and God's got you. Now, is it just me? Or does it feel like we find ourselves with a similar tension right now? We feel this tension between our earthly reality and our heavenly theology. We are politically polarized and we're headed into an election. We are spatially distant. And honestly, this COVID curve is headed in the wrong direction. Tremendous tension around racism feels like our nation in a sense is being pulled apart at the seams, one third of Americans struggling with anxiety or depression. I want you to know if you're part of that one third, you are not alone. Listen, even prophets like Daniel, struggle with anxiety. Check this out in verse 15, "My spirit was grieved and anxious within me, the visions in my head alarmed me and agitated me." If you aren't a little alarmed if you aren't a little agitated, are you paying attention to what's happening right now? That doesn't mean that we don't have the peace of God that passes all understanding guarding our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, we do. The question is what is God up to? Listen, I think God is waking us up. I think God is shaking us up. I think God is shaking, our false sense of security and our false sense of identity. I think God is shaking our false assumptions and false narratives. I think God is shaking our false idols and false ideologies. Guess what? That's not fun. But we find ourselves in a critical cultural moment. We find ourselves at a critical juncture as a nation. And I'll come back to that. Daniel says, My spirit was grieved within me. Even prophets grieve. In fact, they might grieve a little bit more than the rest of us. "To the prophet" said, Abraham Heschel, "even a minor injustice assumes cosmic proportion." Here's the key. And this is a word for someone this weekend; you cannot get stuck in the stages of grief. Now, please hear me grief is as unique as your fingerprint. And we've got to give allowance to one - 5 - another to process grief in a personal way. And listen, if you try to shortcut grief, you will short circuit your soul. You have to walk through the process but you can't get stuck in denial or in anger or in bargaining or in depression. Listen If you feel like you're stuck, we want to help you we want to come alongside you NCC.re/COVIDcare. And right now if you're at our online campus our prayer team ready and waiting to pray with you and for you. This week Jo Carmichael, a part of our team at NCC shared an amazing devotional on our upper zoom about moving through the stages of grief. And she mentioned a sixth stage I didn't realize that a six stage had been added by David Kessler. Stage five is acceptance but stage six is meaning. Let me share a testimony with you. Oh man. 20 years ago today July 23, 2000, I was standing right here, not here but I was preaching at movie theaters that Union Station. I got up behind that pulpit about five minutes into the message this intense abdominal pain. I literally had to walk out doubled over. Pastor Joel popped up and pinched hit for me. 12 hours later an MRI revealed ruptured intestines. Sepsis had been setting in; doctors said we got to do emergency surgery. I spent two days on a respirator. I lost 25 pounds in a week. I could have, I should have died at Washington Hospital Center 20 years ago today. Worst day of my life, hardest year of my life, surgery, another surgery. I mean my whole life revolved around trying to recuperate, a lot of scars to remind me of the pain and suffering. I would never want to go through it again. I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world, best day of my life. Pastor Mark what are you talking about? You take very few things for granted when you have a near death experience. And you're grateful for just about everything especially your wife, kids. I love this church too. I don't know what you're walking through and I do not want to make light of it. These stages of grief they're hard to move through but somehow someway, with God's grace, as you confront the brutal facts of maybe what was done to you that was so wrong that it makes me mad. You gotta approach it with unwavering faith and believe that there is a God, who can heal, and a God who can deliver and a God who can redeem. In Jesus name. Amen. Verse 18, "The saints have the most high God shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever." We don't believe in happily ever after we believe in happily forever after. The question is, what do we do in the meantime, what do we do with all of this uncertainty with all of this anxiety? Listen, I don't have all the answers, but I know a good place to start. You pray like it depends on God and your work like it depends on you. The purpose of eschatology, and we'll dig deeper in two weeks but the purpose of eschatology is not figuring out plot lines and timelines. The goal is preparing ourselves for the second coming of Jesus Christ. Eschatology is a great reminder - get ready for the part that God wants you to play. Do everything within your power to see his kingdom come, his will be done right here, right now. - 6 - Let me use this COVID crisis as a case study, lots of prognosticators, estimating death tolls, timing of a vaccination, giving us best case, worst case. Listen, we have no idea how long this is going to last. We're not sure what the ripple effect will be on society or economy or the church for that matter. But I want to push this envelope a little bit. I think uncertainty can be crippling if you aren't careful all you do is watch the news. We are not a people who let things happen we are a people who make things happen. We are a people who pray like it depends on God and work like it depends on us. And so listen, I think we take all the recommended precautions. I think we wear masks, we spatially distance, and we do it for the most vulnerable amongst us. That's how we love our neighbor. But I would take it a step further. Don't take it sitting down. Listen, I think we do everything within our power to prepare ourselves in case we get it. I started running several months ago to get my lungs into shape. I ran a marathon last week over seven days, not one day. Why? Well, I'm not training for a marathon. All the marathons are canceled. What I'm doing is trying to get my lungs as strong as they can be just in case I get COVID-19. I went on a diet this week to optimize my immune system. Listen, sleep is a huge deal - it releases proteins that help your body heal stress. If you don't manage it, it will disarm your immune system. Exercise, it boosts our immuno surveillance. All of these things are critical. I guess the question is, what does any of that have to do with eschatology? Right? Well, I think we take the same approach. Listen, I can't tell you when Jesus is going to return, I have no idea. And that isn't the issue. The issue is this. Are you ready? Are you ready? Listen, I have never felt more daily dependence upon the Holy Spirit in my life. We need to be Spirit filled and Spirit led every single day. We need to get into God's word, get God's word into us. We need to get into prayer. Pray like it depends on God and we need to love like it depends on us. Verse 28, we're going to close with this. "Here is the end of the matter." And can I just remind us don't lose faith in the end of the story. "As for me, Daniel, my [waking] thoughts troubled and alarmed me and my cheerfulness of countenance was changed within me; but I kept the matter in my heart and mind." Listen, I am concerned about our countenance as a country. We need an extra measure of grace right now. We need an extra measure of wisdom right now. We need an extra measure of courage right now. This is not a moment for us to bury our head in the sand. This is a moment to stand in the gap. The word priest means bridge builder. We are the peacemakers. We are the reconciler. We are the repairers of the breach, Isaiah 58; If you have lost your courage, lost your faith, lost your cheerfulness of countenance. How do you get it back? How do you get that back? I know the place to start. I want to pronounce a blessing on your life. I want you to listen to these words. "May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you." And here it is. "May the Lord turn his countenance towards you and give you the peace that passes, all understanding." That is our confidence. That is how we don't lose faith. That is how we prepare for his coming. That is how we live our lives every single day. - 7 - If you're at our online campus right now, and you have never surrendered your life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, I want to challenge you to do it. You're in your car, you're at home, you're at the gym I want you to mark this moment because I want you to know, if you would surrender all of you to all of him it will change your life forever. If's that you would you just raise a hand right now? Would you take that step of faith? And we're going to sing a song; our band is coming right now. We're going to sing a song and it is going to be our declaration of faith. Maybe you're in one of those stages of grief; I believe that God is going to take you to the next stage. Maybe you feel like a line lander or flatlander God, where are you? Would you look up today? I believe that his healing and his deliverance want to invade the reality of your life right now. In Jesus name, Amen - 8 - We think forwards, but God is working backwards. God begins with the end in mind. Occasionally, he pulls back the curtain of time and reveals His plans and His purposes to His prophets. The goal of prophecy isn’t figuring out timelines. It’s a reminder that GOD’S GOT THIS. It’s a reminder not to lose hope, not to lose heart. It’s a reminder to GET READY for the part God wants you to play!

The Giant of Apathy Transcription The Giant of Apathy - Nehemiah 2:1-9 - Skip Heitzig [MUSIC PLAYING] We're going to have you singing that song before the series is done. Turn in your Bibles, please, to the Book of Nehemiah, chapter to. Nehemiah, in the Old Testament, chapter 2. We have been talking about Hunting Giants in the last few weeks. And today, we look at defeating The Giant of Apathy. There was once a professor who asked his college class, philosophy class, which do you think is a bigger problem in America right now, ignorance or apathy? And one young student said, I don't know, and I don't care. [LAUGHTER] So pretty much, that was going on right then and there. Albert Einstein-- who you all know his name. You know he was the father of modern physics. When he was alive, Europe was being ravaged by a couple of philosophical systems that was going from country to country, communism and fascism. And he saw what was going on, and he made a very powerful statement. Einstein said, "The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on evil and do nothing." There comes a time when, as we've already seen in this series, it's time to speak up and to move out. Speaking of evil in Europe during Nazi Germany, a pastor by the name of Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran pastor, saw what was going on with Adolf Hitler. And he made a stand against him eventually that cost his freedom. He was put in a concentration camp, himself. Martin Niemoller said this famous little statement, "First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a communist. Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me." Did you know that as you look at the scripture through the Old and New Testament, apathy among God's people was a problem? Here's a couple of examples. One prophet by the name of Haggai was raised up to deal with the apathetic, indifferent behavior of the Jewish people in Jerusalem. They had started to rebuild the temple. They sort of got discouraged from doing it. They eventually said, it's not time to build the Lord's temple. Haggai the prophet came on the scene and said, you say it's not time to build the Lord's temple, is it time for you to dwell in your nice homes while the work of God is undone? Another prophet by the name of Amos confronted the people of the land who were indifferent to the enemy that was around them. And he said, woe to those who are at ease in Zion. In the New Testament, Jesus gave a parable. You know it as the parable of the foolish virgins or bridesmaids. They didn't tend to their lamps. They didn't trim their wicks. They didn't care much about when the bridegroom was coming. And so he spoke that parable to them. And perhaps, the classic example of spiritual apathy are there religious leaders at the birth of Christ. They knew the Messiah was going to be born in Bethlehem. In fact, when magi came from the East following that star, and they were going through Jerusalem, they said, we're looking for the one who was going to be born King of the Jews. That rattled Herod's cage. Herod went to his religious leaders and said, where is the Messiah going to be born? And they immediately said, in Bethlehem of Judea, for it is written in the prophet. And they quoted Micah chapter 5 verse 2, which predicted his birth in Bethlehem. But that's all they did. They knew what the scripture said. They could quote it verbatim, but they didn't go check it out. I mean, think of this. The magi had traveled 1,600 miles because somebody was born called the King of the Jews. These religious leaders, whose King it was, wouldn't travel five miles to Bethlehem to verify it. That's the height of apathy. In Romans 13, Paul said, it is high time to awake out of sleep. In other words, can't you hear the alarm clock? It's time to wake up. It's time to get out of the bed of complacency. It is time to make our lives count for God because the night is coming fast. Darkness is falling fast, and people are moving toward the judgment of God fast. So it's time to toss out our pillow and pick up our sword and march into battle. We need, on a constant basis, to deal with the tendency toward apathy. How do we do that? Well, I've had to turn to Nehemiah chapter 2, and we're going to look at several verses in chapter 2 as well as in chapter 1. And I want to give you five steps to counteract the giant of apathy. First is information. We need to know the facts. We need to know what's happening. So let's begin with verse 1. It cam to pass in the month of Nisan-- that is not the automobile. That is the month, the Jewish month of Nisan, which is around April. In the twentieth year of the King Artaxerxes, when the wine was before him, that I took the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had never been sad in his presence before. Therefore the King said to me, why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart. So I became dreadfully afraid, and said to the king, may the king live forever. Why should my face not be sad when the city, the place of my fathers' tombs, lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire? Now, you need to know what is going on historically, very briefly. Nehemiah is in Persia. He's in Iran, modern day Iran, ancient Persia. He is there because the Babylonians took the Jews captive for 70 years. But after the Babylonians, the Medo-Persian Empire came and took over everything, including the captives, including the Jewish people. Nehemiah is one of those who remained in that captive situation. But about a hundred years before chapter 2 of Nehemiah, the Jews had gone back to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. So they've already been there for about a century. And he finds out the condition of what's going on. Now, if you go back to chapter 1, in verse 11, you'll notice that Nehemiah said he was the king's cup bearer. And you need to know his occupation because this is when the King had the wine brought before him. That was his job. Nehemiah was the cup bearer. I know that doesn't sound like a great occupation. You might think it's like a glorified busboy. I assure you it is not. A cup bearer to a Persian King was the most trusted official. Perhaps, the King trusted no one more than the cup bearer, next to his wife. And that's perhaps, maybe even more, depending on their relationship-- another story. So Nehemiah was like the personal secretary. He had to be conversant in political matters and affairs of state. He was the one who tasted the wine and then gave it to the King to make sure it wasn't poisoned. The King, by the way, is King Artaxerxes. King Artaxerxes-- this one is Artaxerxes Longimanus-- who was the stepson of somebody you are familiar with, Queen Esther. Queen Esther married Ahasuerus. Ahasuerus had a son named Artaxerxes, and that is the king that is in question here. I just want you to get the picture that you have a Jewish man named Nehemiah occupying a very important political position in a Persian court. And I just want to take the opportunity to say, we need more of that. We need people who are willing to get involved like Nehemiah in a variety of different structures in our country. We need Christians in palaces. We need Christians in politics. We need Christians who are active in secular affairs, in secular society. We need Christians in courthouses and in roundhouses and in White Houses. We need them everywhere because the Bible says Jesus said, you are the salt of the Earth. [APPLAUSE] And the purpose of salt in ancient times was to keep the meat from rotting. And I would say that we need salt more than ever before in our culture. Here we are in the saltshaker. It's a great place to be. It's where we ought to be. But at some point you've got to turn the saltshaker over and get the salt into the culture, into the society, and let it do its job. So he was there on site in a government position before King Artaxerxes. Now, I think it goes without saying, given a position like this of importance, Nehemiah had it made. He had a great job. He was in a luxurious environment, a comfortable lifestyle. But he was a Jew. And one day as a Jew, because he was a Jew, he hears reports about what is going on in his homeland. He had never been to his homeland. He had never been to Israel. He'd never been to Jerusalem. But he hears a report about what's going on in Jerusalem, and it shakes him to the core. It has been said that a Jew never forgets Jerusalem. The psalm is said in Psalm 137, if I forget you, oh Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. That's embedded into the heart of a Jewish person. So evidently, he comes before King Artaxerxes. His face is sad. He knows that his city is still in ruins because he mentions that to the King. But let's go back, if you don't mind, to chapter 1 to find out where he gets the information. So turn back to Nehemiah chapter 1. It says in verse 1, the words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. It came to pass in the month of Chislev-- that's around December-- in the twentieth year, I was in Shushan the citadel-- he's in the palace-- Hanani one of my brethren came with men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who had survived the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem. It's just a conversation. Hey, what's going on in Jerusalem? I heard you were there. Well, give me the skinny, give me the lowdown. What's going on? Maybe he expected them to say, oh, everything's great, everybody's happy. But that wasn't the report. Verse 3, they said to me, the survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are there in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire. Now, Nehemiah knew the history. Nehemiah knew that the city had been destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC. He knew all that. He grew up hearing about that. He had also known that 50,000 Jews had returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the city. He was aware of that. But I think he must have thought that it was successful, things were going well there. So he says, so what's the report? They say, not good. The city is still in ruins. The gates are still burned with fire. But the point I want to make is that he is asking the questions to get the right information. That is always the first step in conquering the giant of apathy-- find out the situation, find out the facts. Some people won't ask questions because they don't want to know the answer, because if they get the questions they have answered and they get the information, they might have now a sense of obligation. You've got to do something about it. So it's like, don't tell me. I don't want to know. There's an old proverb that says, he who asks a question remains a fool for five minutes. He who does not ask a question remains a fool forever. So he asks the questions. He gets the information. In our day and age, it's important that we get information. However, I think it's safe to say, though-- we live in the information age-- it's harder to get accurate information today more than ever before because you're going to get not true journalism anymore. You're going to get an opinion journalism. You're going to get spin put on it. And that's why today it's so easy to curate your own news feed. You just, sort of, follow on Twitter those news feeds or those people that you agree with or agree with you, and you just get your stream of thought that you want reinforced. And news agencies pump out, according to algorithms, certain information. So it's difficult to get a real accurate read on a situation. It's possible, but it's, I think, much harder than ever. But that's the first step, information, get the facts. Second step, reaction. Once you hear the facts, you need to let the facts that you hear motivate you, stir you. So back in verse 2, the King said to me, why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart. So the king notices that there is a reaction taking place in Nehemiah, that he's feeling a certain way. Now, again, I want you to go back to chapter 1. And look at verse 4. He has just had a conversation asking about Jerusalem. They tell him the gates are burned with fire, the city's in ruins. Verse 4 of chapter 1, so it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept. Now, just pause there for a minute. It'll be so easy for Nehemiah in hearing about a city he has never visited, he has just learned about, when he hears that Jerusalem is burned with fire it would be so easy for him to go, oh, well, that's sad, but it's lunchtime. I mean, he has a very strong reaction. The facts of the situation motivate him, move him. He said, I sat down, and I wept and mourned for many days. I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. I hope you're seeing that Nehemiah let the information become his motivation. He is stirred by the facts that he hears. He knows what it means. He knows that a city that's broken down, the walls are broken down, the gates are burned with fire, is vulnerable. It is not safe. It is open to attack. The security system is not optimal. Now, let's apply that. Whenever we hear a need, and there's plenty of need to hear. There's always something going on that seems so desperate in our world. Our reaction to that need is vital. Our reaction to the information that we hear is what should, at some point, stimulate us to action. Now, it doesn't always do it, but it should. So here's an easy example. Let's say, you have two roommates. They're renting a house. They're very different personalities. One is sort of a "Mr. Clean," fastidious freak, everything's in order, and everything must be just so. But the roommate is like a passive slob. It's like, as long as I got a floor to lie on, I'm good. OK, so if problems come to that house, if the roof begins to leak or there's problems in that house, which one do you think will be on at first to get it remedied? "Mr. Clean freak," not slob guy. He's not going to do it. He doesn't care. But the one who cares is the one who's going to do something about it. So unless you see the problem and are affected by the problem, you're not going to fix the problem. Nehemiah hears the problem. He wants something done about it. It broke his heart. It broke his heart because Jerusalem isn't just a city. It's God's city. It's the covenant city. It's the city of God's plan upon the Earth and so he weeps over what he hears by the way, he's not the only one to weep over Jerusalem. Jeremiah the prophet also wept over Jerusalem. And somebody else that we know very well wept over Jerusalem, named Jesus. He saw the same city Nehemiah had. These three men had that in common. They wept over the city, knowing it could have been so much more than it was. This begs the question, what makes you cry? What do you hear that brings you strong reaction or emotion? I mean, we hear so much bad stuff in this day and age in which we live. It's sort of easy to get compassion fatigue. But I am convinced that God at some point wants to break our hearts with the things that break His, to get moved by it. So two steps to get out of apathy-- information followed by reaction. Let the facts stir you. The third is intersession. Once you know something and then you feel something, you need to talk to somebody about that something. And that is God, first. And that's what he does. In verse 4 of chapter 2, the king said to me, after he said, look, how can I not be sad? My city's busted up, broken down. The king said, what do you want? What do you request? Notice this, so I prayed to the God of heaven. So I prayed to the God of heaven. Now, I can only guess that this was a pretty quick prayer. I don't think-- I don't imagine Nehemiah said, can you give me a half an hour, king? I got to go have a prayer meeting with my buddies. I think he shot up a quick prayer to God. When the king said, what can I do for you, how can I help, he saw this as an opportunity. But immediately he had to take it to prayer. But I think it was like, oh, God, give me wisdom now. It was quick. I hope you know that prayers don't have to be long to be effective. It says the fervent effective prayer of a righteous man avails much. He's speaking about Elijah. Elijah didn't have a really long prayer when he saw great results. I think it was just quick. Peter was walking on the Sea of Galilee. Remember the story? He saw that he could believe in Jesus and he could walk on the water, and he did temporarily until the thought must have overcome him, hey, men can't walk on water. And he started going down. And he cried out in that moment. Do you think it was a long prayer? Do you think, oh, Thou mighty God of the universe? He'd be dead. I think it was like, help! Amen. [LAUGHTER] I think it was one of these kind of prayers. So I pray to the God of heaven. But now, if you don't mind, go back again to chapter 1, for just a moment because this is how it begins. He asked about Jerusalem. They tell him how it's broken down, burned with fire. Look at verse 4 of chapter 1. So it was when I heard these words, I sat down and wept, mourned for many days, fasting and praying before the God of heaven. And I said-- now, here's this prayer-- I pray, Lord God of heaven, O great and awesome God. So this is a longer prayer than the quick prayer in chapter 2 later on. I pray, Lord God of heaven, great and awesome God, You who keep your covenant and mercy with those who love You and observe Your commandments, please let Your ear be attentive and Your eyes open, that You may hear the prayer of Your servant which I pray before You now day and night, for the children of Israel Your servants, and confess the sin of the children of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both my father's house and I have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against You, and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses. Here's what I want you to know about the Book of Nehemiah really quickly. It's filled with prayer. The book opens with prayer. We just read it. The book closes with a prayer. And 12 times throughout the book, Nehemiah prays. It's part of his life. And in chapter 1, the prayer that we just read, there's some things I want you to make a note of about this prayer. First of all, when he prays in chapter 1, he prays with perspective. Notice that he says, I pray, Lord God of heaven, O great and awesome God. You know the most important thing about prayer is the address? Is that you recognize who it is you are talking to because sometimes we rush into the presence of God and our problems are so large and we're overwhelmed and it's like our problems are so big and our God is so small. It's important that you gain the perspective by realizing who it is you're addressing your prayer to. You're the God of heaven. You've got the best seat in the house. You see everything going on the Earth. Nothing escapes your view. And you are a great and awesome God. That is, you have all and ultimate power to do anything. And when you start praying with perspective, your problem becomes smaller as your God becomes bigger. Otherwise, your God is very small and your problem is so big. And so often you hear it in our prayers, oh, God, this is a really big thing I'm going to ask. Big? You're talking to God. There's nothing too hard for him. Amen! So he prays with perspective. [APPLAUSE] Also, notice in this prayer that it includes a promise. That is, it's in reference to a promise God has made. Verse 5, I pray, Lord God of heaven, great and awesome God, You who keep Your covenant and mercy with those who love You and observe Your commandments. You know what he's referring to? Covenants, or deals, arrangements-- a covenant is something God and man make together, a covenant. So throughout the Old Testament, God made covenants. And the covenant he is referring to is the land covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that the children of Israel would occupy a piece of real estate today we know as the state of Israel, that of all the people on the face of the Earth that would be their land in perpetuity as an everlasting covenant. So that's important. He is coming to God in prayer, reminding God of a promise that he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the covenant. And I think that when we talk to God, our prayers should include the promises of God. In fact, I think it's good even in prayer to quote promises that God has made in the scripture, not because God needs to be reminded of what he said, but you need to be reminded of what he said. So it's like, Lord, it's in the contract. It's in the covenant. This is what you promised. So it's with perspective. It includes a promise. Something else about this prayer in chapter 1, do you notice that it ends with a confession? And he personalizes it. Notice in verse 6, he says we have sinned against You, both my father's house and I have sinned. Verse 7, we have acted very corruptly against You. Now, help me understand that because Nehemiah wasn't part of the original group of people that sinned against God. I mean, they have been back in the land 100 years. About 170 years before, 150 years, let's say, was when that sinful generation was judged by God and taken into Babylonian captivity. Nehemiah wasn't even born yet. Nehemiah grew up in Persia. He wasn't part of that nation that was judged by God. Yet, here he says, we have sinned. I and my father's house have sinned. He identifies himself with those people that he had never met before. You know, we are so quick to point fingers at people, especially in this divided age in which we live. It's their fault. They're the problem. And you know when you pointer finger at somebody, there's always three pointing back at you. And Nehemiah believed that he should identify himself. He saw himself as part of the problem so that he might become part of the solution. It's easy to say, our country is in such a mess today because those sinners out there and those people-- can I just say, I added to that sin. There was a time that I didn't walk with Christ. Before my conversion, I added to the filth and corruption that this country is guilty of. So I'm just as guilty. When you pray, you get clarity. You're allowing God to move and God to speak. And so, in this prayer he gets clarity, kind of sizes up the whole situation, sees himself as part of both the problem and the solution. So we have information, reaction, intersession-- three concrete steps in battling apathy. There's a couple more. The fourth one is action. There comes a point where once you hear about what's going on, and once you feel deeply about that, and once you pray to God, there comes a point where you have to now engage. You have to take a step. So back to our chapter, chapter 2 verse 5. The king just said, what can I do for you? And I said to the king-- here it is-- if it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' tombs, that I may rebuild it. And the king said to me, the queen also sitting beside him, how long will your journey be? When will you return? So it pleased the king to send me, and I set a time. Furthermore I said to the king, if it pleases the king, let letters be given to me for the governor of the region beyond the Jordan, that they must permit me to pass through until I come to Judah. It's hundreds of miles that he is traveling. And a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he must give me timber to make beams for the gate of the citadel which pertains to the temple, for the city wall, and for the house that I will occupy. And the king granted them to me according to the good hand of my God upon me. Now, do you notice the flow so far in the story? First of all, Nehemiah sat down and wept. Then he knelt down and prayed. Now he stands up to work. That's the final step. It's like, boy, I'm hearing all this information. Man, I just-- I'm so deeply distressed by it, and I've prayed about it. Great. What's the next concrete action step to take? So Nehemiah says, here I am, Lord, send me, basically. Here I am, king, send me. You know, that's what Isaiah the prophet said. When God said, whom shall I send, Isaiah said, here I am, send me. A lot of times you say, here I am, send them. [LAUGHTER] I mean, why should Nehemiah leave? He's got a cushy job. He's got a comfortable environment. Let others go. He had influence. He could dispatch people to go, but he said, send me. I will rebuild it. He does something. It's the Romans 12 principle. You know how Romans is written. He gives lots of doctrinal information, and then in chapter 12 is the application chapter. He says, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. That's what Nehemiah is doing. He's presenting himself, makes himself available to fix the problem. God is always looking for volunteers, willing volunteers. If you ever think thoughts like this, man OK, I got to serve because this church always tells me you need to serve somewhere, so, OK, I'll do something, please don't. We only want willing volunteers. We want happy volunteers. We want those who say, I want to do something because the Lord has put that in my heart, and I'll do it with joy. The Bible says the eyes of the Lord go to and fro throughout the entire Earth to show himself strong on behalf of those whose hearts are loyal to him. God is just looking for people to use. And so Nehemiah presents himself willingly. I was at a grocery store, a while back, and I was in line having a conversation with somebody who recognized me. Hi, Skip. I go to church, and had a little conversation. There was a woman in line who was watching this exchange. And she turned to me and she goes, are you a minister? And I think she looked at me kind of odd because I think I had shorts and a t-shirt. I didn't have like a little white collar, so she had to ask. She goes, are you a minister? I said, yes, I am. And then she looked at me and she goes, why? I mean, it was like she was incredulous that I would want to do that. And I said, well, I have to assure you ma'am that I do it willingly. Nobody's twisting my arm. It's something I feel joyfully compelled to do by God. [APPLAUSE] When Saul of Tarsus had his encounter with Jesus Christ on the Damascus road, when he was knocked off midday, with the bright sun shining on him and a light from heaven, and he's on his back, he asked two questions. The first question every human being must have answered. The first question was, who are you, Lord? The second question is something every Christian should ask. The second question he asked is, what do you want me to do? You know, so many Christian believers lived their whole lives without ever getting around to saying, God, what do you want me to do? They spent a lot of time telling God what they want God to do for them but little time saying, Lord, what do you want me to do. What have you called me to do? And I assure you, the most fulfilling life you can ever live is to go on an adventure with God, where God uses your life, where you look around at the need, you're move by what you see, you pray about what you see and learn, and then you take a step and watch God use you-- nothing more adventurous and fulfilling than that. So information, reaction, intersession, and now action. He engages. He's ready to go on a trip. He goes from cup bearer to contractor. He's going to put on his hard hat and go to work in Jerusalem. There's a final element I want to add, and that is collaboration. I can't pass this one up. It takes us to verse 9. It's the last verse we look at and then we close. Then I went to the governors in the region beyond the River, and gave them the king's letters. Now watch this. Now the king had sent captains of the army and horsemen with me. So he's traveling with a military accompaniment. So this is collaboration-- allow the help of others. I mean, think about it. Nehemiah gets funding from the government, supplies from King Artaxerxes, needed documentation, and a military backup. Once he gets to Jerusalem, he's going to enlist the help of others in the city that is broken down and gates burned with fire. By the time we get to chapter 3 of Nehemiah, which we won't do in the series, but if you read ahead, you'll discover 38 individuals are named as helpers of Nehemiah. Over 40 different groups with different occupations all get together and build the city in cooperation with each other. So that's the collaboration that I'm talking about. The giant of apathy is best overcome with a likeminded group, never alone. We need people. This is why Christian fellowship is so important. This is why we stress what it says in Hebrews, that we should not forsake the assembly of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but we should be getting together all the more as you see the day approaching because when you're together like this, you see God at work in His people. You see the life of Christ in a very, very dynamic way. And it's what build you up. It's what builds others up around you. You cannot build community with a computer screen. I mean, it's good, and it was good for a brief period of time during that lockdown when nobody understood what was going on. Now we understand what's going on. Those days are gone. Those days are over. It's time to get back with each other. [APPLAUSE] And, listen, the easiest thing to do is not to do that. I've had a lot of people say, you know what? I kind of like getting up in my PJs with a cup of coffee and turning into a TV show, and it's like, life is good. I don't have to do anything. You can't sustain that. Your spiritual walk-- you can't have community with a computer. You can't hug your iPhone. You could, but you'd be weird if you did that. [LAUGHTER] Isolation is fuel for apathy. We need the collaboration of others, the help of others, because when you're alone, you know what you're alone with? Your thoughts, and that ain't good on any day. Your thoughts, which aren't always wholesome and healthy and biblical, need to be counteracted with truth, not just from a pulpit, not just from a computer screen, but from the lives of dynamic Christians around you to balance out any faults that you might be carrying. And I've heard from hundreds of you in the last few weeks who said, gosh, we've been isolated for a year. We've watched online, but we didn't know what this was. But we're back now, and I just got to tell you to be able to gather together and to sing together and to hear other Christians around me, it's so transformative. Yeah. That's how we are designed. [APPLAUSE] Now, perhaps some of you have been battling spiritual apathy. Spiritual lethargy, that your heart-- you've noticed your heart growing colder over time. You know you're not alone. There is a church in the New Testament that struggled with this. It was the Church of Ephesus. And the Church of Ephesus was, well, of all the New Testament churches, it was one of the best-- had great leadership. It was pastored by Paul the apostle. Then it was pastored by Timothy. Then it was pastored by John the apostle. It was ministered to buy Aquila and Priscilla. It was preached to by Apollos. Even Jesus gave a special message to the church and revelation, too, and commended them for their discernment, for their perseverance, for their enduring hardship, for their sound doctrine. But do you remember? Jesus said, I've got something against you. You have left your first love. I have this against you. You have left your first love. Another way of putting that is, you don't love me like you loved me at first. Your love has grown cold. Interesting, here's one of the great churches of the New Testament. They didn't have a moral scandal. Nobody's running off with the church secretary. Nobody's stealing money from the church coffers. There's not one deacon lording it over another deacon. None of that. The scandal was inward. It was invisible, like a cancer that takes the life of a patient. There was apathy that was settling into the marrow and the joints and the bloodstream of that church. And Jesus said, that's what I have against you. It's an inward scandal where you don't love me like you did at first. Every woman has a fear, when she marries a man, that his love for her would grow cold and formal and not remain intimate. And every man has a fear that that could happen to his wife. That can happen spiritually. And so Jesus speaks to a church where that has happened, and he goes, I have the solution for that. You've left her first love. Therefore, he said, remember-- that's the first step. Remember from where you have fallen. Think back to how good it used to be, how close you used to be to your Lord. Remember those days. Do you miss those days? If so, then, he said, take this second step. Remember from where you have fallen, repent. That is, turnaround, change, confess your apathy to God, and then number three, renew, for He said, do your first works again. A renewed commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a giant we all face. And if you are sensing, yes, I'm dealing with that right now, you're in the right place, on the right day. All of that changes right now. Ready for that? Let's stand to our feet. Let's make a public renewed commitment to our Lord. Father, as we close this service, we, right now, present our bodies before you as living sacrifices. Like Paul said in Romans 12, we are presenting ourselves to you. First of all, we want to love you deeply and intimately. Some of us remember back to a time when our trust was really good, and we miss the assurance that we lived with, the joy that marked us, the spring in our step when we got up in the morning because a new life with Christ had begun. We remember that. And today, on this day, we decide we're going to confess our apathy and make a turn. We're going to repent of allowing life to get the better of us where we slip and slide away from that position of abiding in Christ. And we renew that commitment to You just now. We pray that you will forgive us. We pray that you will use us. We pray that you will show us what steps to take as we learn information about needs around us according to the callings and gifts you have given us. We want to be engaged in Your kingdom, Your work upon this Earth for Your glory. We hope you enjoyed this special service from Calvary Church. We'd love to know how this message impacted you. Email us at mystory@calvarynm.church. And just a reminder, you can support this ministry with a financial gift at calvarynm.church/give. Thank you for joining us for this teaching from Calvary Church. The Oxford Dictionary defines  apathy  as “lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern.” It’s the state of being indifferent to something that should otherwise arouse, provoke, or motivate you. It has been noted that cooling down a fanatic is easier than warming up a corpse. When a person ceases to care, that person ceases to attempt change. Though Nehemiah had it made in terms of his earthly status, the condition in his homeland wouldn’t let him stay silent and inactive. Let’s explore the five steps he took to overcome the giant of apathy. www, connectwithskip.com .obedierevival

Levi Lusko David I have a message from the Baby Monster series that really shows clearly how baby monsters were responsible for taking down one of the most powerful, prolific, anointed, gifted, charismatic leaders the world has ever seen. His name is David. And this is his story. It comes to us courtesy of 2 Samuel 11. We're going to read a passage of scripture that condenses an entire year down to just 30 verses or so. And as we go through it, you're going to feel like, maybe, this is a lot of scripture. But it's really important because it allows us to get up in an airplane and look at this episode from his life from, sort of, 30,000 feet and gives us the perspective over this year-period to watch the baby monsters grow into the full-blown monsters because he failed to take them out when they were small. So here's 2 Samuel chapter 11, starting in verse 1. The verses are going up right about there. "It happened in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the people of Ammon and besieged Rabbah". But notice, David stayed at Jerusalem. "Then it happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king's house. And from the roof he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to behold. So David sent and inquired about the woman. And someone said, 'is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?' Then David sent messengers, and took her; and she came to him, and he lay with her, for she was cleansed from her impurity". That means she had just finished her period before this day. "And she returned to her house. And the woman conceived; so she sent and told David, and said, 'I am with child.' In the morning it happened that David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. And he wrote in the letter, saying, 'Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle and, retreat from him, that he may be struck down and die.' So it was, while Joab besieged the city, that he assigned Uriah to a place where he knew there were valiant men. Then the men of the city came out and fought with Joab, and some of the servants of David fell; and Uriah the Hittite died also. When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah her husband was dead, she mourned for her husband. And when her mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. Then the Lord sent Nathan to David, and he came to him and said to him; 'there were two men in one city. One was rich and one was poor. The rich man had exceedingly many flocks and herds. But the poor man had nothing, except one little ewe lamb which he had bought and nourished; and it grew up together with him and with his children. It ate of his own food and drank from his own cup'", that's just adorable, a little sheep drinking from a cup, "'And lay in his bosom'", stop it. This thing's cuddly, too? "'It was like a daughter to him. And a traveler came to the rich man, who refused to take from his own flock and from his own herd to prepare one for the wayfaring man who had come to him; but he took the poor man's lamb, and he prepared it for the man who had come to him.'" Hoo, "David's anger was aroused greatly against the man, and he said to Nathan, 'as the Lord lives, the man who has done this shall surely die! And he shall restore fourfold for the lamb, because he did this thing and because he had no pity.' Then Nathan said to David, 'you are the man!'" And Father we pray that as we just consider for a moment these words, these scary words, these strong words, these words that are meant to be for us, a warning. Thank you so much that when you present the stories of men and women in scripture, you don't gloss over their failures. You present them for us because the point of the scriptures is not that we would think a lot of the heroes, but that we would see that you are the God who uses weak people and who sent your son to save us, who are all vulnerable, who are all able to fall, who are all weak at the end of the day. So we thank you that you are a great God who is merciful and full of compassion and that you died for us to save us from ourselves. And so we pray that in these moments you would stir in us, God, fear where there needs to be fear, hope, God, where there can be hope. And we pray, above all things, that if anyone has come in today listening to this message who doesn't know you as Savior that you would draw them to yourself, to salvation, so that they wouldn't be without God and without hope in this world. And we pray this in Jesus' name. amen. One of my favorite things to do is to read to my kids. And it's a fun tradition. We've worked through a lot of different books, and they have their favorites. And some of them they know by heart, and some of them I know by heart. And you can tell the ones that you know by heart. The other day my wife caught me, I had fallen asleep while reading a book to my kids but was still reading. Like, I was out, my eyes were closed, but my lips were still, somehow, saying the words to this book. But one of my favorites in recent history is this book There's No Such thing as a Dragon. I don't know if you've read this book, but it's great. It's about a kid named Billy Bixbee. The author is Jack Kent. And in the book, Billy wakes up one day and there's a little dragon sitting on his bed, just a little, tiny, little thing. It's, like, the size of a kitten, just an itty bitty little dragon. He's surprised, so he comes downstairs. The dragon follows him. And he tells his mom there's a dragon in my room. And his mom, of course, tells Billy, before she sees the dragon, there's no such thing as dragons. And Billy's like, well, that's strange because there's one right there. And the mom, now she sees the dragon, too, but she can't go back on her word. She had said there's no dragons, so she pretends like she can't see the dragon. And as she does, the dragon begins to grow. Soon it's eating Billy's pancakes. Billy is frustrated because he's hungry, breakfast being the most important meal of the day, and all. But she makes more pancakes. And she continues to try and persuade her son there's no such things as dragons while the dragon continues to get bigger and bigger and bigger and more of a problem and making more of a mess. And soon it is so big, it is filling up the hallway, filling up the living room. Its scaly wings are sticking out of windows. This thing is enormous. It's grown to catastrophic proportions. And Billy is frustrated. He's trying to tell his mom there's a dragon. She doesn't believe there is one, so he's like, well, maybe there isn't one. Well, now, eventually, the dragon picks up the entire house. It's wearing the house like a little backpack, and, eventually, just kind of starts cruising down the street. He's just knocking stuff over because he saw an ice cream truck go by, so he's trying to get the ice cream and, you know, it's based on a true story. Billy's dad shows up from work, and he's surprised to find no home where his house normally is. His neighbors were good enough to point to the dragon going down the street wearing the house like a backpack. And so he starts chasing it down. He sees Billy and his mom up in the window, and he's like, what's going on? And then Billy's like, it's the dragon. His mom's like, there's no such thing as dragons, son. His dad says, that's true, there is, technically, no such things as dragons. And Billy gets so frustrated with his parents that he finally shouts out at the top of his lungs, there is such a thing as a dragon. There's one right there, and it's huge. And at that exact moment, the dragon, now that it's noticed and they're all acknowledging it's there, it begins to shrink back down to its normal size. And of course, the moral of this story, and the moral of the story that we just read, is that when you deny something that's clearly there is actually there, all it does is get bigger and create more problems. Here in David's life, we're reading a chapter of his story that, quite frankly, I would be fine with not being in the Bible. I don't know about you. This is not how I want to remember David. Now, anybody ever feel like David and Goliath is, like, one of those great inspiring stories we often come to? Anybody ever been encouraged reading from the book of Psalms? Anybody love that David, when he had a terrible boss trying to throw spears at him, David would just duck and keep serving the cruel king? And just, like, it encourages us, you know. We've all had that boss and it's like, I'm going to be like David, I'm going to be like David, I'm going to be like David. And there's so much from David's life that's encouraging: David the shepherd, David the King, David the poet, David the man after God's own heart. What is this? Here, in one fell swoop, he breaks half the 10 commandments on one day. It's like, what? He's coveting, committing adultery, committing murder, covering it up. It's like, this is not the David that I fell in love with in Sunday school. But what we need to pay attention to is the fact that these sins that eventually reached Costco-sized proportions started out small. They started out benign. They started out innocent enough. They started out as kitten-sized dragons, as baby monsters, if there ever were one. What do you mean? I mean, David's seeds that led to these enormous deeds actually began with him being lethargic. Would you jot that word down? I see the beginning of this terrible chapter in David's life when he was just chilling when he should have been getting after it. In the first verse that we read, it said this was the time of the year when kings go out to battle. And then it says, but David stayed home. The kings go out to battle, but David sent Joab, his general, and said, you take care of this one. If the kings are going out to battle, the scripture's telling us that not for no reason. It's the time of the year when kings go out to battle. David's the king. David doesn't go out to battle. What is the Bible trying to tell us? David is not where he's supposed to be. The point is he never would have been home to see Bathsheba if he would have been out on the battlefield like he should have been. He was sitting around exposing himself to more temptation than he needed to. He couldn't have been doing what he shouldn't have been doing if he simply would have been doing what he should've been doing. And you're like, thank you Dr. Seuss, but I'm sure David had a good reason. No, you're right. You're thinking David's the king, after all. He probably had things to take care of. He probably needed to send Joab to be his proxy on the battlefield because he had urgent kingly business to take care of. Levi, you don't know him. You can't be judging him like you know him. You're right. Good point. That's true. David did have urgent things to take care of. In fact, if we read this from another translation, it actually shows us what was so busy that would keep David from the battlefield like he should have been as a king. Are you ready for it? Verse 2, it says, "One late afternoon, David got up from taking a nap". Oh, yeah, he was very busy. With a late afternoon nap. And so it was, after his nap was over, he's like, what's on my calendar today? Oh, I think I'll stroll on the roof. Strolling! This is not a man with a full calendar. This is a man who you can almost hear the rustling of his robe in the breeze as he strolls about the palace. Do I feel like taking a shower today? Nah, I really don't feel like taking a shower. It's too busy for a shower. Right? I've got to stroll on the roof of my palace. He never would have been there to see Bathsheba if he'd have been out fighting like he should have been. Now, don't hear this as the anti-vacation sermon because that's not what this is, because it said, clearly in the text, "in the spring of the year when it was battle time". What does that mean? There have been a whole winter when it wasn't battle time. He had just finished a whole season that was, by definition, a time of recuperation, of recalibration, of where they couldn't fight because back in those days the wheels of the chariots couldn't work in the winter because then it would be muddy. And so that was when, after the final rainy season was over, they could, eventually, resume the battles. That was when you could get back down doing what you're supposed to be doing. But David didn't do it. You ask me why, here's why. Because David's now 50, and he had been a king for 20 years. And before that there were 10 years when he acted like king because God called him as king, but he wasn't recognized as king yet. And oftentimes, that's how it works. Our God seems to like to give people callings and, then, all but do everything short of keeping them from doing it to see if they trust him more or they love his plan. You see what I'm saying? A lot of times, God tucks dreams in our hearts for what's going to be but, then, puts us in times of adversity to see if we're out for blessings or out for the blesser, if we trust him to see if we're really capable of handling the kind of blessing that he wants to give us. And so David's anointed as king, and then life gets more complex and more difficult. And that happens again and again and again throughout scripture. And as I look back on our ministry time here at Fresh Life, and, really, my whole life, there's never been a time when there was a great time of blessing without it being, simultaneously, a time of challenge, a time of difficulty, a time of us needing to stay humble. Otherwise, we would get full of ourselves. Otherwise, we would get too big for our britches and our heads would grow. God, oftentimes, allows those thorn-in-the-flesh-type seasons to keep us dependent on him. But we have to always have the perspective to keep going out to battle and keep embracing difficult things because comfort zones don't keep your life safe. They keep your life small. nd so David should have been going out to battle and sleeping on that cot in a tent and with the other soldiers. But he thought, you guys go. I'm staying here in the palace. I got some napping to do. I got some strolling to do. Let me tell you, Church, the moment you shift into a cruise control, you're doing something that's toxic for your soul. Someone told me once, I was talking to an older guy in our church, and I said, what team are you serving on? You can come before and you can start serving to me, serving in the church in some way. And he said to me, no, I used to go to a church, and I was there for a lot of years. I helped out in a big way. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but I helped out in a big way with some building campaigns. And he said, I've paid my dues. I've paid my dues. I said, man, God must be really grateful that you've paid all your dues. I literally, I was just shocked and flabbergasted to hear him speak in such a way. But that's David here. David feels like, I've paid my dues. I've served for 20 years. I was the lead usher. No one ushed like I ushed. I've paid my dues. Thank you, Jesus, for hanging on the cross to buy me from the auction block of sin and purchase me from hell. But now, I've paid my dues because I put in 20 hard, what are we talking about here? 'I've paid my dues.' David's there where he shouldn't be, sauntering around the palace when he should be out on the battlefield. Heaven help us, Fresh Life Church, to keep going out to battle like kings. Help us to keep advancing, to keep beginning the year with a spirit of fasting and dependence on God. Come on. Let's continue to advance. Let's never be content with what God's done. Let's never shift into cruise control. Let's keep fighting for those who don't know Jesus yet. Let's be willing to be uncomfortable. Let's keep risking the ocean. Let's keep stepping out in faith. Let's keep giving big and offering big and trusting God to do more. Let's keep inviting our friends and never just come to church and get our little blessing and then go back to our normal life. Let's keep agitating. Let's keep poking the devil in the eye. Let's keep stretching our faith. And I pray that that's our heart. Why? Because if you're not actively moving forward, you'll automatically start sliding backwards. The Christian life is an uphill battle through the mud. And so we must always be stretching, always be going, always be doing something stupid, in a good way. That's something that people will go, ah, that's crazy. Hudson Taylor once said, "unless there is an element of risk in our exploits for God, there is no need for faith". And when you're living a life where you don't need faith, you're not going to be trusting God, and then you're ripe for temptation to attack. So David was, what was he? Lethargic. Then temptation shows up and he was lenient. He was lenient on the small sin that first popped up. This little temptation, what was it? OK. So he's on the roof now. Shouldn't have been there, but, OK, he's there. Now, he sees this lady. She's bathing. If you go to Jerusalem, and maybe someday we'll take a tour of Israel as a church, and you'll notice that there's hills. And David's palace would've been on the top of the hill. And because the terrace hillside, he would've been able to see onto the roof of where Bathsheba was taking her bath on the roof. And he sees her, and then the text says she was beautiful to behold. Now, there's a difference in the two Hebrew words that's used. One is to see, like I noticed that. The other is to stare and to gaze and to focus on that. Two different words. He saw her, but then found that she was beautiful to gaze at. Now, check this out. The first thing he did was see her. That wasn't a sin. And the devil always wants you to feel like being tempted is a sin. But it's not. Why does he want you to think that? Because he knows whenever the first domino falls, the second domino falls easier, and the third falls easier, and it gains momentum as it goes. Why? Because, well, the first time you break your diet, that's really hard. All of your willpower is there because you have that good record you don't want to break. But then, once you've done it once, it's easier to do it again, and then you're... That's just me. Anybody else? The fifth donut goes down so smoothly. But the first one I thought about for a long time. All right. So here we are, sorry. All my temptation from fasting. Go away. Go away. Go away. So the devil wants you to think that to be tempted is wrong, but feeling like you could do something wrong is not wrong. It's only wrong when you take that bait. So you need to know that. So every temptation is an intersection, and you always have a choice. So David saw her, could've looked away. Dang, gonna put a hedge there. Got to call the landscaper, get some big trees here. Man. Right? He didn't do that though. He saw her, now he's tempted. And what does he choose to do? He chooses to gaze, chooses to take a second look, chooses to now fantasize, chooses to dwell on this. So to see something, it pops up, it happens. You don't have to choose to stare. At the beach, you don't have to choose to continue, just throw your sunglasses on, no one knows, out of your peripheral vision. Oh, yeah. No, no. Listen, listen, listen. To be tempted is not a sin. To give into that temptation is. So David was lenient on that first temptation. Oh, what does it matter? I would never do anything. I'm a married man. I'm married to 10 women. David had 10 wives, just so we're all clear on this. So we already see about that. And you're going, that's crazy. Well, on that day that would have been nothing for a king to have 10 wives. But God specifically commanded the kings of Israel to not multiply to themselves wives or money or gold, that's the same as money, Levi, or horses, the same way the other kings did because he knew it would became a snare to their heart. So David was already violating that in having wives, multiple, OK? So now, what does that tell you, by the way? That sin never satisfies. You'd think a guy with 10 wives, why would he even care about this unmarried woman? Because sin is always about what you can't have in the moment. So sin will never ever reach a point where it says, that's enough. What do you need to do that for? You've had plenty. Sin will always want more and more. It's like drinking salt water. The more you drink, the thirstier you become. So you'll never be satisfied because there's always going to be forbidden fruit. So if you think while you're single that if you sleep with that girl you'll be happy; if, once you marry her, she won't be the forbidden fruit anymore. There will be new forbidden fruit, and it's the person you're not married to. And if you get her, there will be new forbidden fruit. There's always, always, always, always, always forbidden fruit because there will always be what you can't have in the moment. So David's lenient on the small sin of fascinating and peeping and violating this girl's privacy. And so what happens? It just grows bigger and bigger and bigger until, eventually, he's having sex with her. He calls for her, and, man, all along the way, do you not see God giving him opportunities to stop? He says to his servants, hey, uh, do you know who lives down there in that brown house with the chimney? They're like, do you mean the one with the woman taking a bath on it? And he's like, oh, yeah, who's that? And they go, oh, it's Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, one of David's soldiers, Eliam. Oh, yeah. That's a good point. All right. Have a good day. Back to my nap. Oh, she's the wife of Uriah. Who's Uriah? One of David's most loyal, mighty men who had been risking his life for David since before he was king. Is that not the opportunity, when she's somebody's daughter, when she's somebody's wife, when that man, Uriah, her husband, is out there fighting in the battle that David should be fighting at this moment? But what does David say? You know, I would love to meet her, thank her for her service to her country. Do you want me to have her brought to your office? No, I'll actually have some stuff to hang in my bedroom. Have her brought to my bedroom. And of course, one thing leads to another. David's lenient on it when it's small. And so it just grows and grows and grows and grows and grows. Eugene Peterson, on his book, Leap Over a Wall, on the life of David, puts it this way, how David was able to go from one to another to another to another, he says, David didn't feel like a sinner when he sent for Bathsheba; he felt like a lover. David didn't feel like a sinner when he sent for Uriah; he felt like a king. The subtlety of sin is that it doesn't feel like sin when we're doing it. And that's truth. You should never expect while you're sinning to feel like it's sin. It always feels like you're doing something right in the moment. That's the nature of sin, is that it's deceitful, is that it lies to you and always focuses you on the pleasure and downplays any possible punishment. So now David's done what he's done. He sends her packing, no eggs, no coffee. She's just out of there. But the word soon comes back, I'm pregnant. Well, how do you know it's mine? I had just had my period before I came there. My husband's off at battle right now. It's yours. So what does David do? Does he come clean? Does he call the prophet? Does he tell God, turn to him in prayer, own the consequence, the shoulder, the embarrassment, look his kids in the eyes and his wives in the eyes and tell them that he's committed adultery and done this? No, he doesn't. He shifts into the third phase of this story. That is the phase I'm calling "damage control". Damage control. All right. How do we control the narrative? How do we hide this? How do we cover this up? There's got to be way. I'm a king. I'm a chess player. How do I cover this up? I know. If Uriah comes home and has sex with his wife, he'll think the baby's his. So he sends for Uriah to come home, we didn't read it, but Uriah comes home. David thinks he'll go home and sleep with his wife, think the baby's his. But Uriah's an honorable man. And so when he calls for him, he says, what do you want, your honor? What can I do for you? Oh, I just wanted you to have a couple days off. Go on home. Enjoy. You've been a good soldier. But Uriah is wearing his armor and refuses to take it off. He says, I've got my brothers out there dying on the battlefield. How can I live like it's not war conditions? He sleeps on David's front porch, will not go home and do this. And so David thinks, all right, this guy's tougher than I thought. I'll get him drunk. So he slips something into Uriah's drink, gets him drugged, thinking once he's out of it, he'll for sure go home. But listen to this, Uriah is more honorable drunk than David is sober, here. And even though he's all confused and disoriented, he once again sleeps on the front porch. And so David says, this guy has sealed his fate. So he writes a note to Joab saying, I want you to put him in the hottest part of the battle and make sure that Uriah doesn't come home, seals it with his signet ring, hands it to Uriah. And Uriah's so trustworthy, he doesn't open the letter and carries it to Joab, even though it has his own death sentence on the inside. As you read this story, Uriah comes out sparkling and is just an incredible man of integrity and character and honor. And so now Uriah is killed. Why? Because David is creating so much damage as he's trying to do damage control. And so it always is. And now Uriah is dead, David marries Bathsheba, and the baby is born "premature," and David thinks he has got away with it completely. But what was this year like for David, this year before this confrontation with Nathan? What was this year like for him? It was absolute misery. In fact, he, later on, opened up about what the year of hiding was like in Psalm 32 when he said that this period of time his inner life dried up like a spiritual drought within his soul. Psalm 51, the deed he had done, he said, it haunts me day and night. So it always is because sin, which lies to us, always, when it pays, it pays in death. Proverbs 20 verse 7 says, "food gained by cheating tastes sweet to a man. But he will end up with a mouth full of sand". And tragically, in David's story, as in so many situations, it's his kids that suffer the most. He will be forgiven because God is a God of forgiveness and grace. And at the end of the day, our standing before him is not about our deeds. It's about the deeds of Jesus Christ. But the consequences that must be lived out of and dealt with, oftentimes, it shows up worst in the successive generations. And so it is in David's life. But that's not the end, the damage-control era, because then David enters into the most poisonous, the most dangerous period of his life, and that's where he becomes pious. Pious. And what does pious mean? Pious means inflated self-righteousness. It means smug. It means holier-than-thou. It's where you're really, on the inside, full of deceit, but the veneer you put up to project to the world is everything's fine. I'm perfect. David was still doing this year showing up at the temple, doing all the sacrifices, all the things everybody would accept. So he was going through the motions of religion, but he had a wall barricaded between him and God. There was no sweetness. There was no intimacy. There was no friendship. All of that inner life had dried up through his choosing. He wasn't drawing near to God. And as a result, during this time, what happened? What happens to all of us? We become Pharisees. When there's no inward life but you're still going through the motions, it's so easy to have this great sense of piousness. What does that mean? I'm saying this, that often those who are the most openly judgmental are actually, secretly, hypocritical. There is a connection between being openly judgmental, denouncing sin. I've read some Facebook pages. It's just, like, everyday, what sin are you there to denounce? How wicked and vile is the world? But a lot of times there's a link between being openly judgmental and being secretly hypocritical. Jesus put it this way. He said, usually it's the person who has a plank sticking out of their eye. Right? They were working in the shop and a little splinter came off the wood. Now they have a two-by-four, Jesus is the best. You read his stuff and it's funny. Imagine a two-by-four sticking out of someone's eye who then, as he walks around, says, hey, you got something in your eye. And you're like, what do I got in my eye? A little bit of sleep. You got a little sleep in here. Let me help you. And like, they turn to help you and they're knocking stuff off the shelves. Do you want that guy to help you get the sleep out of your eye? That guy's got a two-by-four sticking out of his eye, but he's going, hey, hey, hey, hey, wicked sinner, repent. Get over here. Let me help you out. Right? It's like, no, thank you. That's David here. And it reaches a boiling point when he hears the story about a guy who killed baby Lamb Chop, the pet. Even though he had all these herds, he had thousands of sheep, but he chose to take someone's precious little pet that slept in his own bed. And Nathan knew what he was doing because David was a shepherd and he risked his life to save sheep from wolves and from bears and from lions. So when he hears about this rich guy that had no pity. One translation puts it this way: does this man think there's no justice in my kingdom? Does he think I won't deal with this? I am Batman. When you're living out of this judgmental spirit with death on the inside, you don't see clearly. So what did David say? I'm going to kill this guy, and then he's going to pay. Well, David, if he's dead, he can't pay, you know, because dead men can't pay. But he's not thinking clearly. He's just like, this guy's going to pay because it's the tell-tale heart of his own sin that he's actually speaking to. What David did was allow him to see himself in the mirror. And that's when David lovingly said, David, it was you that I was talking about. It was you that did these things. And David fell on his knees and repented because he realized that Nathan, his friend, was right. So here's my question: how can we avoid this from happening? Because it's great to pile it on David. But the real question: if it happened to him, it can happen to us, so how do we avoid that from happening? Because I guarantee you if you were able to sit down with David while he was penning Psalm 23, Because don't forget, you read that epic Psalm, the Lord is my shepherd, David had to write that. So he's out alone in the fields, and there's probably, like, nine versions of how it starts. You know, originally, it was going to be, God takes care of me like a baby sheep. No, that's not, he crumples that one up. The Lord is my shepherd, I'm good. No, no, no. I shall not want. Ah, I got it. Bling, bling, bling. And if you would've said, hey, hey, David, you showed up in a DeLorean or something, hey, David. Hey, question. Do you think it's possible that one day you're going to have an affair and then murder one of your best friends to cover it up? Do you think it's possible that you'll ignore God for a whole year, you won't return his calls, but you'll still be showing up at church for a whole year? David would say there's no way I would ever do that. God's my shepherd. I have everything I need. And so here's my point: you and I, how many Psalm 23's have we written? Yeah, exactly. So if it can happen to David, we're not immune to this temptation. And any of us could do exactly what he's done or worse. So how do we avoid such a thing? I jotted down three things, three things that could keep us from such a thing. And the first one is that we have to be open to conviction, open to conviction. We have to welcome, be receptive to the conviction of God's Holy Spirit because, no doubt, at every single moment, God was giving him the chance to do right. No one has overtaken any trespass except that which is common to man. And God always provides a way of escape. What does that way of escape look like? It's that little rumble strip, brrp, brrp, brrp. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's be receptive, speak, Lord, your servant is listening to conviction. The second ingredient is that we have to keep short accounts with God, keep short accounts with God, meaning don't let things pile up. Have you ever waited too long to balance your checking account? Have you ever waited too long to go through the receipts? And so then you're like, I don't remember what this was for. What was this one for? I don't remember what this one's for. And it's so intimidating because you allowed it to pile up, and so there's so much. If you keep short accounts, meaning every day you go through and balance, every day you approach it, you deal with it when it's fresh, it's much easier to do. Let's keep short accounts with God. What does that mean? We are all going to sin, every one of us. So when you do rush to God, rush to him, rush to His presence, ask forgiveness. Don't let it pile up in your soul. Keep short accounts with God. And then third, have the right friends. I see in David's life, thank God he had Nathan, not just Joab. David had Joab in his life who didn't, Joab knew exactly what David was doing, and he helped him cover it up. And by the way, he never let him forget it. From this moment on, Joab will be uncontrollable by David because he has this over him, by the way. So here's my question: do you have a circle full of Joabs, or do you have some Nathans? Do you have people in your life who are going to help you on the path to sin? Or do you have people in your life who are willing to lovingly confront you when you're making decisions that will harm you? I see two sides of the Nathan. I see, hopefully, that we need to fill our lives up with Nathans. And what a great opportunity for me to say that you should be in a small group. What a great chance for me to say you should be on a team here because if you have a team leader and you have people around you serving on a team within the Fresh Life Church family, then guess what. If you're chronically late, you have a team leader who's going to lovingly say, hey, I've noticed that you always hold everybody up. We've asked everyone to be here at this time. And they're able to deal with issues in your heart that would come from pride that would lead to a lack of punctuality. They will call out little things that, everyone wears this shirt, you don't like it. Everyone does this, you see what I'm saying? There's people who lovingly can address these little issues. Hey, it seems like the way you talk about your wife when she's not there, that's not the kindest. It seems like you interrupt a lot. You see what I'm saying? Do you have a life full of Nathans, or all you have is Joabs who are bad examples and not doing anything about the things that they're seeing in your life? But the second ingredient is that we need to learn to be Nathans, too, that we need to be Nathans, too. And what I mean by that is that we know how to properly speak to people about the errors in their lives and the errors that we see in the world with grace and with truth, with love and honesty, but with a broken heart. Nathan didn't rush in to the room and say, you pervey, scummy sinner. Yeah I do follow some Christians on Facebook. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. He was winsome. He knew how to speak to David. He knew how to not get David's shields up. And what an appropriate time for us to speak about the way that God always communicates love, always wants to give those who are in error the greatest chance of doing the right thing when we're currently sitting in this hallmark legislation, this law that's been passed in New York. And the eyes of the world, and certainly the nation, are on New York. And as it goes in New York, so often it spreads to the nation. And of course, we're talking about this law making abortions more guaranteed in New York to a later point of time. And yes, our hearts break when we think about babies being killed in the womb, babies being killed. Bathsheba said, I'm with child. There's a child knit together by God in her womb. And we view life as sacred, and we view it as a gift from God, and we're made in God's image. But our hearts don't just break for the babies that are killed. Our hearts break for those, their experiences, that they would feel that there's no other choice but to do that in some situations. Not all are just frivolous, I want to have sex and not have consequences. Some are people, I don't know how I'm going to have a baby. I don't know what this is going to do to my life. Our hearts break for both sides of that. There are two victims when there's an abortion. There's a woman who has to live with that, and there's the baby, of course. So our hearts break with that, but not in a pious way, like we know better, and how evil are you. Our hearts should break on both sides of that issue and understand there are complexities. And the way that we speak about it should be with the wisdom and the dexterity and the love and the grace of a Nathan. Yes, it is evil, and it is vile. But it's not unprecedented. The Church was born into the Roman Empire 2,000 years ago at a point when it was common practice, if you had a baby and didn't want it for whatever reason, there was some sort of birth defect or it was a girl and you wanted a boy or you just didn't want any more kids, there was something called infant exposure. You would just toss the baby out and it would die. Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, supposedly were just babies that were discarded. That was common practice. And you know what it was that upended the practice of infant exposure and eventually got that outlawed? It was Christianity in the Roman Empire. But it was not them posting on their Facebook page how evil and how vile it was. Yes, eventually, a bishop did get in the face of a king lovingly and encourage him to pass a law to outlaw it. But what it was was Christians who, during the plagues when people were dying who were Christians and non-Christians alike, dying because of the plagues at a rate where 5,000 people per day in the city of Rome were dying of the plague, it was Christians who were showing love to people who were dying of the plague. It was Christians who were putting themselves out there to help people who were dying. And when they would find a baby that was exposed and left to the elements, it was Christians who would pull them into their home. It was Christians who would give money to help mothers have the resources to be able to live with this child that she saw no other way but to get rid of and discard the baby. It was Christians not just speaking love, but living love and showing love and demonstrating love. And that is what changes the world. And yes, there is a time to speak and to say, hey, this is evil, but to do so with a broken heart and to do so with the spirit of humility and to do so in a way that says I'm no better than you. My heart breaks for you, and I'm willing to help you. And that's why we, as a church, are not just committed to speak about that we're all made in God's image, therefore, life is sacred. But why we, as a church, give to support pregnancy centers in every city where we have as a church and have for years, and we'll continue to. Just to say to a young girl, this is wrong, but to not make it possible for her to see other options and to see how she can be taken care of and to actually be the hands and feet of Jesus, we can't just speak like a Nathan, we have to live like a Nathan, as well. So those three things, I think, will keep us back from David's mistake here as he messed with the baby monster that eventually grew big enough to chew him up. What about Bill Bixbee, you're wondering. You're wondering how did Billy's story turned out. So the baby monster that grew big, eventually when it was recognized, it got small again. Now it's the size of a kitten, and the family's decompressing. And Billy's mom says, gosh, so I guess dragons are real. But why did it have to get so big? Billy said, I don't know, I guess it just wanted to be noticed. And if we will notice the baby monsters in our lives, they won't be able to grow. Why? Because sin grows best when it's left unaddressed. And when we'll address it, we won't be lethargic. We will be hungry. We won't be lenient. We will be disciplined. When we do sin, we won't be thinking damage control, damage control. We'll be thinking forgiveness. And there won't be a bit of piousness or smugness about us, we will be humble. In Jesus' name we pray. Because sin grows best when it’s left unaddressed. And when we’ll address it, we won’t be lethargic. We will be hungry. We won’t be lenient. We will be disciplined. When we do sin, we won’t be thinking damage control, damage control. We’ll be thinking forgiveness. And there won’t be a bit of piousness or smugness about us, we will be humble. www.freshlifechurch.com

Mean People and What to Do about Them Andy Stanley Now as some of you know, today we are in part two of a series entitled "Mean People", and specifically "what to do about them". Mean people and what to do about them. And just so you know, I realize that you have been mean, perhaps somebody is gonna hear or watch this message, I hope not and you'll come to mind. I hope that's not the case. We've all had seasons in our lives when we've been the mean people. And mostly when we get together and open the scripture together and worship together, we're talking about how to live a life in such a way that we're not the mean people. So we usually focus on how to become better people but in this series, we're talking specifically about how to respond to or what to do about the mean people in our lives. Not just the folks who bug us, we all have people who bug us. Specifically, these are the mean people. These are the people who are deceptive, they're controlling, they're just unkind, they're unpredictable, they're manipulative. To be specific, I'm not talking about somebody who's physically or sexually abusive. That's different, that's illegal. This is just the mean people. And it's important to talk about this. And it's important to think through how we're gonna respond, because if we don't have a plan, if we're not prepared, if we're not proactive, well you know what happens. What happens to the mean people in our lives, the mean people in our lives, they actually gain a measure of control over our lives. And before we know it, we are being mean right back even if we don't mean to. In fact, it's almost as if we have no choice, because, and you know this, mean can make you mean, because mean people keep us off balance. And if somebody walks up to you and pushes you and you're off balance, what do you do? Well, you have no choice. But to compensate when we're off balance, we're forced to compensate. So when you're around these people, you always feel a little bit off balance. In fact, when you're around these people, other people who know you might even say to you. You know, when you're around him, when you're with her, I noticed when you're together, you're not the same person you are everywhere else. You seem to become a different person, it's because that person has kind of thrown you off balance. And obviously or it seems intuitively, our only choice is to respond and like kind. I told you the first part of the story last week, we have an 80 year old friend Sandra and I do name Alice. And Alice, Sandra became her legal power, financial power of attorney because we needed to move Alice out of her home into assisted living. And Sandra went to jump through all the hoops to become legal power of attorney. And we eventually got Alice moved but during that process, Alice had invited a friend to move in with her who had fallen on hard times. This guy's in his late 60s, living out of his car and out of the goodness of her heart. she said, well you can stay with me a few months until you kind of get yourself together. And we were warned that if he moved in, we would have a hard time getting him out. But when I met this guy, his name is Roger. He seemed like such a nice guy and he was actually helpful with Alice and helpful with the garage sale. So we eventually get her house cleaned out. Some of you heard this story last time, get her house cleaned out. We put the house on the market but he won't move out. And we gave him a deadline, he won't move out. We're showing the house a real estate agent, showing the house. There's nothing in the house now except Roger's air mattress, some clothes and his computer. It's a lovely home just don't look in there at the guy camping out in the house, he'll be gone. So we're trying to show the house, sell the house so she can get her money. She was living off a pension, social security and there was a little bit of a gap in terms of her monthly expenses with the assisted living. So we really, really wanted to sell her house, put her equity in the bank and she'd be good to go. But Roger wouldn't move out. And what was our response? Well, our response was pretty much what probably your response would be. We sat around, coming up with mean manipulative ways to get Roger out of Alice's house because that's just what you do. And after a while we realized, we're becoming like Roger, we're thinking like mean people. In fact he was so in our heads, it was like he was living with us in our home. It was all we talked about. He became the focus of our attention. I'd come home every day, what's the latest with Rogers? We got closer and closer and closer. This closing and we were so worried he was gonna undermine the closing. In fact as I shared last time, he actually tried to do it. The point being, it's difficult not to be mean to mean people. It's difficult not to be unkind to people who've been unkind as it's difficult to be sensitive to insensitive people. And again, the golden rule is like right out the window, isn't it? When it comes to mean people, now it's the iron rule. It's the do unto others as they have done unto you or as they are doing unto you or even worse, right? But of course, and we talked about this: the problem with getting back at the mean people or the problem with trying to get even with mean people is that it actually makes things worse. Because the problem with getting even is that it makes us even with someone we don't really even like. It makes us like someone that we actually dislike. So the question we're asking in this series and we began unpacking the answer last time is what do we do? I mean, you can't just ignore these people, that actually empowers them and eventually you're gonna break, right? Eventually you're gonna break, you're gonna act like them or worse, which actually gives them more power over you. In fact, we have all been there. Some of our greatest regrets perhaps or how we responded or how we reacted to the people who threw us off balance, the mean people in our lives. So there's actually a third option. You don't have to ignore them, you don't have to become like them. There's a third option that actually takes away some of their power. I meant it actually positions us to keep our frustration from overflowing into other relationships around us. Maybe you grew up in a family where your mom was angry, your father was angry and as you got older, you realized they're not really angry with me, they're angry with their father, their mother. They're angry with somebody else, they're angry with life but their anger just overflowed and how they parented. And this third option protects us from falling into that trap as well. Jesus taught it of course, and Jesus modeled it. In fact, he was the ultimate model but Abigail modeled it as well. And Abigail is a character in the old Testament that many people don't know about and she's part of, sort of the backstory of the story of David. Most of us are familiar with king David if you grew up in church. Maybe you know the story of shepherd boy, David. But this story takes place in the season of his life where he is fugitive David. When he was a teenager as most of us know, he marched down into the valley of Elah. He killed Goliath with a Slingshot. In that moment, he became a national hero. So king Saul the king of Israel brought him in close, actually made him part of his family because he was a national hero and he was a leader and he had influence. King Saul was smart enough to know, you keep your enemies, You keep your friends close and you keep your enemies close as well. And David, he realized was a bit of a threat to his power and his influence in Israel. And then, he gets word that a rogue Prophet had actually gone to David's house when he was a little boy and anointed him as the next king of Israel. And if you are the current king, of course that's a problem because you want your son to become the next king. So now David is a threat to Saul's dynasty. So he tries to kill David, he eventually banishes him. David becomes a fugitive, he gathers other fugitives around him. Before long, he's got about 600 men. Their wives, their girlfriends, you know. Their kids kind of traipsing along behind him. He's got a small army but he's a fugitive from the law and he's angry and he's angry with king Saul and he's angry with the circumstances. But he can't get to Saul, so he just kind of carries the seething anger every where he goes. And that's what brings us to the story and this is where we meet Abigail. So I'm gonna catch you up a little bit with the story and then we'll continue from there. Here's how the story begins. 1 Samuel 25. Samuel was essentially David's biographer. A certain man in Maon, who had property there in Carmel, was very wealthy. He had a thousand goats and three thousand sheep, which he was shearing in Carmel and his name was Nabal. Now during sheep shearing season, men and families who had a lot of sheep discovered just how much wealthier they had become. This was like payday, this is an annual financial report. His name was Nabal and his wife's name was Abigail. And she was an intelligent and beautiful woman, but her husband was harsh and mean. There's our word, in his dealings. So David and his men hear about the fact that Nabal is having sheep shearing in Carmel and realizes, Nabal's about to become even wealthier. So David sends 10 of his men to Carmel to meet with Nabal to say. Hey, would you be willing to share some of your wealth and some of your extra wealth, some of your extra with me and my men. And why would David feel like he could make that request? Well that's what the message to Nabal, the message from Davids meant to Nabal explains that, here's what they said. They said Nabal, When your shepherds were with us out in the fields for months and months and months. When your shepherds were with us, we did not mistreat them. And the whole time they were at Carmel, nothing of theirs was missing. In other words, our men could have taken whatever they wanted to take. We could have taken women, we could have taken sheep, we could have mistreated your shepherds but instead, you can talk to them. Nothing went missing. In other words, your profit is due in part to our protection. So this seemed kind of reasonable. Hey, would you share with us your profits because you know, your profits are due in part to our protection. Nabal's response, he was rude. He said this who to David's messengers. Who is this David? Now he knew who he was. Who is this David? Who is this son of Jesse? Who's broken away from the king. He's just abandoned, he's a fugitive, he's a nobody, he's an outlaw. I did not ask for his help, I didn't need his help and I don't owe him anything. And you can go back and tell him that. So David's men they've turned around and they went back. When they arrived, they reported every word. And if you were with us last time, you'll remember David's response. David said to his men, "Each of you strap on your sword". So they did and David strapped his arm as well. And about four hundred men, about four hundred men went up with David. They were headed out of the mountains to caramel. Now this four hundred men, this was an overreaction as we said of ethic proportion. This was going to be a massacre. And as he rides along, he does what many of us have done many, many times. As he rides along, he kind of builds up a head of steam. He begins justifying to himself what he wasn't 100% sure he should be doing. It's been useless, he mutters to himself. It's been useless, all my watch over this fellow's property in the wilderness so that nothing of his missing. And what has he done? How has he responded to me? He has paid me back evil for good. And then God, you know. David evokes God's name and invite God into the equation. May God deal with me, he says. "May God deal with me, may God deal with David Be it ever so severely if by morning I leave alive one male of all who belong to him". I'm gonna kill his servants, his friends, his sons and then I'm gonna kill him. Now again, you read this through and you're like, okay. So David, he didn't share with you. Is this what you do? Well, if we know anything or if you know anything about David's history, this is what he did. So he's riding along, he's hurt, he's angry. He's powering up, It's gonna be evil for evil. He's really channeling, I think his frustration with king Saul but king Saul is untouchable. But he's found somebody he can take his anger out on. And that's pretty much where we left off last time with the story. So, we'll continue from there. Meanwhile back in Carmel, here's what happened. One of the servants, Nebal's servants told Abigail, Nabal's wife. "David sent messengers". You weren't here, we find out later. You weren't here but let me tell you what happened. "David sent messengers from the wilderness To give our master his greetings But our master hurled insults at them". Yet Abigail, these men. David's men. These men were so good to us, they did not mistreat us the whole time we were out in the fields near them nothing went missing night and day. Night and day they were like a wall around us. They protected us the whole time we were herding our sheep near them. And then she says, Abigail think it over. I want you to think it over and see what you can do because disaster is hanging over our master and his whole household. He and then I think she leans in. She doesn't say this very loud. She whispers in Abigail's ear. He is such a wicked man. He's such a wicked man that nobody, nobody can talk to him. So Abigail acted quickly. And here's what she does, it's kind of interesting. She assembles a caravan of food donkeys. If you're familiar with food trucks, Okay. Food donkeys, the caravan of food donkey. She gets all these donkeys, ties them together and then she loads them up with food. Food donkeys, there were hundreds of loaves of bread, figs, cakes, wine. She just loads them up, she knows she has about 400 male mouth to feed. Then she told her servant, this was so smart. She said to her servants, you go on ahead. You head out toward the plain, I'll follow you. But she did not tell her husband Nabal what she was up to. Meanwhile, coming down out of the mountains here comes David and his 400 men armed for battle. And he's just mumbling to himself, building up this head of steam. Justifying, building up justification for what he's about to do. And as he comes out of this ravine, the text tells. As he comes out of this ravine onto this big wide open plane. And what does he see? A caravan of food donkeys and in the front is this beautiful woman. And it totally messes up his mood. You've ever had that happen. Like you've got your speech perfectly planned and you've kind of built up a head of steam and you're gonna go home or you're gonna go walk down the office to the other office. You've got it all worked out. And then somebody apologizes or somebody does something so nice for you. It's like, I was so mad. I was perfectly mad, I was perfectly mad to deliver this message. So here comes David. I mean he's spent all this time, he's got these guys. And here's the food caravan, ruins his mood. I mean, you just can't mad with that going on. So here's what the text says. "When Abigail saw David, She quickly got off her donkey And she bow down before David With her face to the ground". And this is so powerful. She begins to speak to David. She begins to speak to David as if he is already the man that she hopes he will become. Now ladies, you should take note of this. This will work on us even when we know what you're up to. It just works, you know. Honey, you are so patient with the kids. I am? Yes you are so, it's like a Jedi mind trick. You are so patient with our son and with our daughter. Honey, you are such a good planner. I can't wait to see what you've planned for my birthday. You're such, such a good planner. It's like, I am? Anyway here's what she does, it's so powerful. She fell at his feet and she said, Pardon your servant my lord and let me speak to you. In other words, just give me a minute. And please hear what your servant has to say. Please, she says. Pay no attention to my husband, my Lord. That wicked man Nabal, he is just like his name. His name means fool, and folly goes with him. So you're not wrong about my husband, okay. And as for me, your servant. I wasn't there when your 10 men showed up and made the request. If I'd been there, I may have been able to influence my husband. I wasn't there. This wasn't my fault. Referring to the 10 men that David had sent ahead of time. Then here she goes, this is so powerful. Here's what she says. And now my Lord, as surely as the lord your God lives and as you live, since the Lord has kept you from bloodshed, since the lord has kept you from avenging yourself with your own hands. And David's like, he did? she's like, yes he did. In other words, David, you're not the type of person that would avenge yourself on a defenseless person. Are you? I guess I'm not. And then she gives him credit again for being even better than he was about to be. She continues. And let this gift, which your servant has brought to my Lord, be given to the men who follow you. Again, this just completely ruined his plans. I mean, how do you justify slaughter and pillage when somebody is bringing you what you were gonna steal. The Lord your God. The Lord your God will certainly make a lasting dynasty for my Lord because you fight the Lord's battles. He's like, I do? Yes, you do. You fight the Lord's battles. You don't have to fight your own battles David. And no wrongdoing will be found in you as long as you live. It won't? No, it won't. Even though, and then she refers to king Saul 'cause everybody knew the story, everybody knew the background of why David was a fugitive. Even though someone is pursuing you to take your life, the life of my Lord will be... She uses some interesting Hebrew imagery. The life of my Lord will be bound securely in the bundle of the living by the Lord your God, which is like what here's... Here's basically what she's saying. Even though someone is trying to steal your life, your life is tucked away securely an Then, this is my favorite part. Then she takes him back to 15 year old David, he's 15 year old self when he faced Goliath. In fact, perhaps as we talked about last time, David sword was Goliaths sword. He'd actually taken it from a priest earlier just a few chapters earlier. Perhaps she saw Goliath sword strapped to his back or strapped across the back of his mule. Maybe that's what gave her this idea. Here's what she says, but the lives, this is so great. But the lives of your enemies, he, God. Will hurl away as from the pocket of a sling. David. Remember, remember God's past faithfulness. Remember when you marched down into, walk down into the valley of the valley of Elah to face Goliath. You weren't a warrior, you weren't equipped for battle. You didn't have a sword. You just did what you felt like God wanted you to do. And do you remember how God came to your rescue? Do you remember how God defended You? Remember those days. David, you don't need to get even. You have no need to return evil for evil. For the lord Your God is with you. And then she speaks to his future. And essentially, she asks the question that we ask all the time around here. She asked the question without asking it directly. Essentially this next part, she says. David, what story do you want to tell when this is nothing but a story that you tell? Years from now, when your looking back on this season of your life as a fugitive because one day you're gonna be the king, God's gonna keep his promise to you. But when you look back on the season, what story do you want to tell? Here's her version. When the Lord has fulfilled for my Lord, every good thing he promised concerning him and has appointed him ruler or king over Israel. My Lord, this is so great. My Lord will not have on his conscience the staggering burden of needless bloodshed or having avenged himself. David, isn't this the better story? Don't you want to look back on this season and realize that you stepped back instead of taking matters into your own hands. And of course, David comes to he's senses. He's about to act like somebody he doesn't even like. And David said to Abigail "praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel. Who has sent you today to meet me. May you be blessed for your good judgment". In other words, you had good judgment I didn't. I'm thanking God for your good judgment and I'm so grateful it intersected with the decision I was about to make, for keeping me from bloodshed this day and from avenging myself with my own hands. I have heard your words and I'm granting you your request. Now at some point, we all need an Abigail in our lives don't we? We all need somebody who can talk us down, we all need somebody who has access to us. We all need somebody who feels permission to delve into those areas of our lives that we oftentimes just keep people away from. We all need an Abigail. And when she shows up or when he shows up in our lives, we should be wise enough to listen. In fact some of us if we're honest, one of our greatest regrets could have been avoided if we had listened to the Abigail in our life. Somebody did say something, maybe a parent, maybe a friend, maybe somebody you work with, somebody you date. They did say something but you just wouldn't listen. We need to listen to those people who speak to our preferred future. Who reminds us that what we want immediately sometimes, is gonna get in the way of what we want ultimately. That we'll feel what feels right, right now may haunt us later. And then and I was tempted to skip the rest of the story because it's a little bit storybook but hey, this is how the story ends and this is how things went down back then. When Abigail went to Nabal, he was in a house holding a banquet like that of a king cause he's got all this extra wealth. He was in high spirits, he was so happy and very drunk. And so she told him nothing at all until daybreak. She doesn't go back and say, you really owe me big time because, she just waits. Then in the morning when Nabal was sober, his wife told him everything that had happened and his heart failed him when he realized how close he came to being executed and losing everything he had and he became like a stone. And then about 10 days later, the Lord struck Nabal and he died. And then the storybook ending. Then David sent word to Abigail asking her to become his wife. It's like, really? Yeah, this is just how things happened back then. And what do you think she did? Abigail quickly got on a donkey and attended by her five female servants, went with David's messengers and became his wife and of course they live happily ever after. The end. So yeah, I made that part up. So, here's what we have and this is where this begins to interface with all of our lives either now or in the future. Three characters, three different responses but only one hero. Nabal, David and Abigail. Evil for good, evil for evil. This is where we're tempted to live and then good for evil. As we said last time as you get to know Nabal, he's pretty much maniacal. David is predictable in this circumstance and Abigail is remarkable. And these are our choices, really. And if you're not a Jesus follower, you get to choose. And hopefully you will lean more in one direction than the other but it's up to you, you're the captain of your own ship. But if you're a Jesus follower. For those of us who not just Christians, not those of us who just say we believe stuff. For those of us who wake up every day and say to our heavenly father, I want to surrender my eyes, my ears, my will, my life, my resources. To the best of my ability, I want to follow you. We're really only left with one option and that's remarkable. And the reason it's our only option is two fold. Number one, we've been on the receiving end of remarkable and we have been called to model it. We don't call our remarkable Abigail, amazing Abigail. We call ours amazing what, amazing grace. That while we were still sinners, Christ died for our sins. And then Jesus who died for our sins says now I want you to not just believe in me or believe things about me. I want you to get up every single day and follow me. To which you may be tempted to say, what does that look like? And Jesus would smile and say, well you should know by now. If you're gonna follow me, it means you emulate me. Which means I want you to love your enemies to which we say, you mean tolerate and ignore. He says no, I mean love. Here's his words, his words. I want you to do good, not just ignore and not just not be unkind. I want you to do good to those who hate you. To what you would say, I thought I was doing good Just not to hurt him, hurt her, or let the air out of his tires or slip the air mattress and put all of his clothes out on the street and change the locks. I mean, I thought I was already doing good because of what I hadn't done. Jesus says no, that's not what I'm talking about. And I want you to bless those, I want you to bless those who curse you. And I want you to pray for those who mistreat you. Does anybody do this? To pray for the... If we're honest we would say, I don't even spend a lot of time praying for the people who treat me well. And Jesus says, I want you to pray for those who mistreat you. I want you to pray for the mean people. I don't want you to do something to them, I want you to do something for them because that's how you keep from becoming like them. But there's a bonus. Jesus says, when you do to them and for them what they don't deserve for you to do. And when you pray for them and when you do good to them, you actually become like your father in heaven because he is also kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. So, got some mean people in your life. Parents, do your children have some mean people in their lives. And because your children have mean people in their lives. You know if anybody mistreats my kids it's like they're mistreating me. And how have you responded? And what would it look like? You don't have to do it. And what would it look like for your children? They don't have to do it either but what would it look like in your circumstances to actually do good to those who hate you? What would it look like to return good for evil? As things continued to escalate with Rodger, he threatened to Sue our real estate agent. I mean, it just got completely out of control. About six days before closing, the closing that we weren't sure that was gonna happen because he wasn't about to move out. And of course, you're not gonna close on a house with somebody living in it. I mean, it was just so weird. I walked into the kitchen and Sandra had been baking and she had cookie sheets out with muffins out that were cooling. And then there was a paper plate with six muffins with some cellophane over it and clearly she was gonna take these muffins to somebody, what she does all the time. And I said, who are these for? And she looked at me and smile. She said, they're for Roger. And I'm like what? She said they are for Roger. A little backstory, during the garage sale that Roger actually helped us with, he actually bought things from sweet Alice and then said he would've thrown her out of her house. It's just crazy. Anyway, during the garage sale, Sandra took two different kinds of muffins and he loved one particular kind. So she got up that morning and made his favorite muffins and was gonna go over there and... I'm just like, darlin really? And here's what she said. She said I have to do this for me. I have to do this for me, I have to do something for him. I have to do something for him and this is the best thing I could come up with. So she went out in the garage, got on her donkey and rode to Lawrenceville. Now her plan was to get that and leave the muffins on his car and then text him and say, Hey, Roger you know. He was outside. They had a very awkward conversation. She left the muffins, didn't make a dent. Sandra, she would tell you. She was free. And then four days before the closing was to take place, after again, all kinds of just crazy stuff. He finally took he's stuff and he left. But here's the point for all of us. Let's not write a predictable story, let's not write an evil for evil story. It's so predictable, it's what everybody expects you to do. It's what you're justified. You're your friends would say, well of course that's what you did. This is our moment, this is our opportunity. The meaner they are, the brighter our light has an opportunity to shine. And I know that because I don't know your circumstances, I know that so easy for me to stand up here and say. But I'm not asking you to follow me, I'm just trying to inspire you and encourage you to follow our savior and to write a remarkable story. To do for others precisely what they don't deserve for you to do. And it may not, In fact it probably won't change anything anything in them but it will do something for you. And in doing so, you will be like your father in heaven. Hurting someone because they hurt you doesn’t end the cycle. It perpetuates it. And it makes you look like the person you dislike. www.sermons.love. www.northpointchurch.com.

Let me guess. You keep thinking it’s going to get better, only to discover…it hasn’t. As I’ve been catching up personally with leaders over the last while, I sense a deep exhaustion and fatigue heading in, as well as a growing recognition of that fact that a break in the loss and bad news probably isn’t coming soon. For church leaders in particular, this is a discouraging season. When I talk to pastors of any sized church, in their candid moments, despite being open in person for months or longer now, they tell me: In person attendance is still running at 40-50% of what it used to be. Online attendance has dropped. People they’ve known and trusted for years have left the church. Volunteers don’t want to serve like they used to and many have bailed. They get criticized for being too political, not political enough, pro-mask, anti-mask, saying too much about vaccines or too little, or being too left, too right, too..whatever. And they wake up tomorrow and face the same thing all over again. Sure, there are a few glimmers of hope: new people are coming. There are stories of life change. Not everyone left. But when you’re facing unprecedented loss after leading for 18 months in perpetual crisis, it’s no wonder people are quitting and leaving. Success is, as Winston Church famously said, moving from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. But the question is, how do you keep going? Here are five things that I hope can help you when you’re under constant stress and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. I know they’ve helped me in hard seasons. 1. Grieve Your Losses One of my mentors, Terry Wardle, taught me that ministry is a series of ungrieved loss. So is life. Think about how much loss you’ve endured in the last few years. The list above will barely get you started. Ministry is a series of ungrieved loss. So is life. Click to Tweet From every lost friendship, to the death of someone you know, to personal illness, to things as simple as a lack of progress on a key issue…all of it is loss. I used to be terrible at grieving losses. Then during my season of burnout, it was like a dam burst. I spent a month (August 2006 to be specific) crying every day, sometimes for an hour at a time. Often inconsolably. Since then, I’ve tried to remember to grieve as I go. For driven people, sadness often comes out as anger, irritation or frustration. When I find myself feeling that way, I pause to ask what’s going on. And (I know this sounds so woo-woo, but trust me, it works), I let myself feel the sadness. Often it’s not tears, but it’s just coming to terms with the fact that yes, I’m sad. Yes, that’s a loss. And no, I’m not immune. And when it lifts, I move on. Grieve your losses. For driven people, sadness often comes out as anger, irritation or frustration.Click to Tweet 2. Stop Imagining That Everyone Else Is Winning Another game that’s easy to play in tough seasons is to imagine that somehow everyone else is winning and you’re the only loser. I play that game way too much. In the last two weeks, I’ve checked in with leaders and asked them to be completely honest with me and with each other. When you strip away the bravado a lot of us try to manufacture to pretend we’re winning when we’re not, here’s what you discover: almost everyone is struggling. And while that may not help you…it’s strangely comforting. You’re not the weirdo. Stop imagining that everyone else is winning when you’re not. You’re not losing nearly as badly as you think. And they aren’t winning as intensely as you think either. Leaders, stop imagining that everyone else is winning when you’re not.Click to Tweet 3. Deal With Your Triggers: Respond. Don’t React. When you’re under prolonged, even constant, stress and discouragement, the unhealthy side of you leaks out. You dealt with the first ten people who asked you about X with grace, but if you’re not careful, it’s easy to lose it on person #11. Similarly, the people closest to you will often take the brunt of your discouragement and frustration. The adage is easy to understand but hard to do: don’t react, respond. Just know in this season it will be easy to be triggered. Triggered leaders become ineffective leaders. I really can’t think of a single exception to this rule. Triggered leaders become ineffective leaders.Click to Tweet 4. Find Some Small Wins Never give up on your mission. Keep trying to make progress. But when you’re not winning on the big things, it’s important for your own sanity to try to win on some small things. I was having a particularly intense day recently. Nothing quite felt like it was getting done the way it needed to be done. That night, I hung patio lights in my backyard. Best of all, they worked. I’ve found over and over again that small wins make a big difference. If you’re not winning at work right now, don’t give up, but try to win somewhere else. Clean out your junk drawer. Clean your desk. Rearrange your book shelf. Mow your lawn. Move some little project from start to finish. If you don’t think small wins make a difference, think again. Psychologist Henry Cloud believes small wins can make a big difference. 5. Craft A Sustainable Pace There’s a fatigue that can come with leadership that’s a little hard to describe. The adrenaline that got you through the first phases of a crisis gives way to the sustained drone of decision after decision, assault after assault, and disappointment after disappointment. A lot of leaders mistakenly look to time off to heal them. We tell ourselves, I’ll be fine if I can just make it to: my next day off vacation the week at the beach Christmas That’s pretty much a completely false hope. Why? When the way you’re living and leading isn’t working, all the time off in the world won’t fix it. We’ve seen an uptick in the number of leaders who land on this site after Googling phrases like: ‘tired of everything’ ‘why am I so exhausted?’ ‘tired of life’ Oh man, I feel for leaders. That’s almost always a sign of burnout. Wondering how exhausted or tired you are? My team and I put together a burnout indicator assessment you can take for free, and it gives an assessment of whether your burnout level is low, medium or high. You can take it for free here. Time off won’t heal you when the problem is how you spend your time on. When the way you’re living and leading isn’t working, all the time off in the world won’t fix it. www.careynieuwhof.com . encourage

The Peace-Stealers Transcription The Peace-Stealers - James 4:1-7 - Skip Heitzig [MUSIC PLAYING] Peace. Celebrities demand it. Pop culture makes it a catchy tune. Activists protest for it. Still, peace seems out of reach. True peace can't be found in, or understood by this world. [MUSIC PLAYING] (SINGING) And all we are saying is give peace a chance. All we are saying is give peace a chance. Give peace a chance. What a fine, fine day it is today. Welcome to church. Glad that you are here. I do want you to know that we do pray for your peace. I was praying for you this morning, just that God would fill you, your family, all that you are working through, with a sense of His peace that would guard your hearts and minds. And so when we talk about give peace a chance, we're talking about it from God's resources. So let's turn in our Bibles to James chapter 4. James chapter 4. Did you bring one of these? This bible? Did you bring one? Good, good. Good thing to have at a Bible study -- Bible. James chapter 4. We all know that war is a fact of life, that as long as there have been humans on the Earth there have been wars on the earth. Simon Jenkins, who's a British author, even noted every generation has its war. So my dad's generation was a World War II generation. Mine was the Vietnam War. That was really up where my brothers were, my older brothers. In more modern times, the Gulf War, the Afghanistan war. Every generation has its wars. According to the Wall Street Journal, they said war has shaped the world we live in and it's still shaping many parts of the globe. Now that's a sad truth to contemplate. That people and generations and nations get defined by the wars that they fight. In the 20th century, it's estimated that 108 million people have been killed in wars. But that throughout history, both soldiers on the battlefield and people who are not on the battlefield, but get killed as a result of war, is 3,500,000,000 people. I know that's just a number for a lot of us, but that is the sad reality. That we, throughout our history, have managed to kill 3,500,000,000 human lives. Now some wars are more famous than others. All of us could rattle off a list of ones that we know about, but I bet there are some wars you've never heard of. For example, there is a war that's called the Pig War. The pig war was a war in 1859. It was really an argument over a slaughtered pig that nearly led to a full scale war between the United States and England. So here's how it worked. There's an island off the coast of Washington called the San Juan Island, and at that time it was the home to settlers both from Britain and from America. One day, a pig, a British pig, not that it had like an English accent or anything, but it was owned by the Brits. It was a black boar. Went rampaging through an American farmer's potato field. And the response was the Americans called the army in. A general was dispatched to assess the situation. He and his troops declared San Juan Island to be US property, all of it. So here you have partly settled by the Brits, partly settled by the Americans, general comes in and says, nope it's all ours. Well that didn't bode well with the Brits. They sent a fleet of Naval ships to surround the island. I mean that's how close it got. There was a standoff for weeks until they finally settled it. So I just want to say right now that I would hate to be the guy who says yeah I fought in the pig war. It's not like the Big War, the Pig War. Here's another one called The War of the Stray Dog. I just like the titles. The War of the Stray Dog. There was a long hostility between two nations, Greece and Bulgaria. It came to a head in October of 1925. And what happened is a Greek soldier was shot as he was crossing into Bulgaria chasing his runaway dog. So they killed him because he had crossed over into their country. OK, that's bad, but what's worse is how Greece responded to that. Greece invaded the country of Bulgaria over that. In fact, it got so bad that the League of Nations had to intervene to stop that invasion and that potential war. Then I'll throw one more up on the screen just because I like the title of it. It's called the War of Jenkins' Ear. In 1738, a man by the name of Jenkins, Robert Jenkins, he was a British sailor, a Mariner, stands in front of the British Parliament in London with a severed ear. He claimed it was his ear, a decomposing, severed ear. You know you know sometimes these politicians, that's just so off the chart. Take your ear and have a meeting with it. So he pulls his ear out. He claims that his ear had been severed by Spain, by a Spanish soldier, seven years prior. So let me just say, if you're holding on to your ear for seven years, you have bigger problems. And he's holding it up and he says that this is done by a Spanish soldier. Spain and England for decades had not gotten along, but they used the incident of Jenkins ear to go to war with Spain. And war was formally declared by the Brits on Spain. War of Jenkins Ear. Crazy, right? Now sometimes there are wars that are fought that are not even against nations, they're not against people. They're a war of things or activities or ideologies. We talk about a war of ideas. We talk about the War on Drugs, or the Cold War. Or here's one war I wish we would bring back is called the Gas Wars from the 1960s when gas, incidentally, was $0.28 a gallon. Come on, bring that war back. So it was basically gas stations, you know, lowering the price a quarter of a cent, a half a cent, a cent to compete with other ones so that people would buy gas from them. Then there's the war on terror. All sorts of wars that are fought, for all sorts of reasons. In James, chapter 4 we have three wars that steal a person's peace. Three wars that are going on right now, all over the world. All three of them are peace stealers. All three of them will make your life miserable. And all three of them need to be ended and when they're ended, the result will be a lasting peace, if they can be ended. OK, so this is the Book of James, and James was written by, guess who, come on. James. See you guys are Bible students. So James, but the question becomes which James, because the New Testament has a bunch of people named James. So to just kind of cut to the chase, probably it was written by James, the brother of our Lord Jesus Christ. Or better put, the half brother of the Lord Jesus Christ. You probably know that after Jesus was born-- he was virgin born-- after that, Joseph and Mary had normal relations and had several children that the New Testament names. One of them by the name of James. So James is writing this letter. He's writing to Christians, Jewish Christians, people who have come to faith in the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. And he is writing because, evidently, church people have all sorts of personal problems as well as relational problems. Which is true of any church in any generation. But the theme, therefore, of the Book of James is maturity. Maturity. He's saying to them "grow up". You need to grow up in certain areas of your life. Warren Wiersbe said "spiritual maturity is one of the greatest needs in the church today. Too many churches are playpens for babies, instead of workshops for adults." So I remember my three older brothers would tell me to grow up all the time. It was their favorite mantra for me, especially my oldest brother Jim. He would see me act in a certain way and he'd say "grow up!" And my retort was "this is me growing up. This is what kids my age do growing up. So I'm on my way there". James is telling this church it's time for you to be growing in certain areas. So in chapter 4, we're going to look at the first seven verses, but three wars-- the war among you, the war inside you, and the war above you. And you're going to discover something. All three wars are related to each other. So first of all is the war among us. Look at how verse one begins. It's the simple question, "where do wars and fights come from among you?" Now that's a good question generally. Where do these wars come from? How do you get a war over a pig? How can you declare a war over a dude who holds an ear up in parliament? And where do these wars come from? There's an author who decided to try to answer that question. His name is Mike Martin. He's a former British soldier. And he wrote a book called Why We Fight. It's a whole book devoted to the reasons people go to war. Here's one sentence out of his book. He said, "Humans fight to achieve status and belonging." Now, he takes an approach from an evolutionary model, one I don't subscribe to. He talks about biological underpinnings, where people go to war to ensure their own possibility of reproduction. In other words, I want my tribe to keep going, so I'll eliminate other people who would be a threat to that, for that to happen. The Guardian Magazine, on the other hand, says this, "Warfare provides people with a semblance of psychological positivity in oppressed societies where other outlets are lacking". Now that almost sounds noble. It's like I get it. I see why people will fight for that. But the article goes on to say, "In most cases, wars are initiated by governments, not by populations". In other words, people don't want to go to war. Their governments get them into this. --"and most of the time, are the result of disputes over resources and land, or of a government's desire to increase its influence and power". So it's a good question, where do wars come from? But that is really not the question of James. The question of James, he's not dealing with a war in general, or warfare in the world. Notice how he puts his question, "where do wars and fights come from among you?" Now the "you" in James' mind are the believers. Where do wars come from among you Christians? So scholars or commentators will make note of this fact to kind of give the nuance. You'll notice in verse 1 the difference between wars and fights. See those two words? What they'll say is, wars describes the underlying conflict that you might have with another person, whereas fights are the expressions, you know, the outward expression, the flare-ups, that come. Where do those things come from? Either way, they describe a combative relationship between church members, church people. One of my favorite psalms, Psalm 133, there's only three verses in that psalm, and that's not why it's my favorite psalm, but it begins this way. See if you remember this, "behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity". It's a good psalm. The opposite is also true. Behold how bad and how unpleasant it is when brethren don't dwell together in unity. Where instead of extending the right hand of fellowship, they want to extend the right fist of fellowship. Not good. Unpleasant. Not helpful. But here's what you need to know. Conflict among God's people is not new. It's been going on a long time. I could take you all the way back to Genesis chapter 13 where Abraham and Lot are at odds with each other, the patriarchs, because their herdsmen had strife between them. And they were at odds with each other over land rights and water rights. I could take you to the New Testament. In the New Testament the disciples of the Lord Jesus argued. Remember what they argued over? Anybody remember what do they argue over? Who would be the what? Who would be the greatest in the kingdom. They're arguing over who's going to have the top dog seat in the kingdom. I'm sure that it started out sort of a jocular conversation, like they're making fun of Peter. Peter snores. He's not going to be on top in the kingdom. I will be. I lean my head on Jesus' chest, that's John. You can throw Thomas out, he doubts everything. He won't be the greatest. But it eventually got into a heated argument, so much so that Jesus himself had to intervene. So those are the cream of the crop. These are the disciples. Peter and Paul argued among themselves. According to the book of Galatians, Paul said concerning Peter, "I withstood him to his face". So there's Paul getting in Peter's grill. Thank God, you're all Jewish over here with that group, but you're all Gentile over with that group. We're kind of playing the hypocrite. They had a disagreement. They had an argument, as did Paul and Barnabas. In fact, the Galatian church itself had problems. Paul wrote to the Galatians, and notice that there's biting and devouring among these people, just nitpicking, short-tempered. The Corinthians competed in spiritual gifts publicly. They were taking each other to court. Now the reason I'm bringing all this up, and there are many more examples of God's people not getting along in history many, many more. The reason I'm bringing it up is because some of us have this romanticized idea of what the early church was like. I hear this all the time. We need to get back to the purity and the simplicity of the early church. Ever heard that? Anybody who says that needs to bone up on church history a little bit. Because when you do, you go oh they're kind of like us. Like church of Corinth, church in Galatia, that's New Testament. That goes way back. So when people romanticize the early Church-- it was so pure, it was so awesome-- you know that's the 'good old days' mentality, and I've discovered that the good old days is just a combination of a bad memory and a good imagination. So the church is not a society of perfect people. We the Church are a society of forgiven people, redeemed people. But yes, this is an area where we need to grow up in. Because, when it comes to getting along, even among ourselves, we can act very immature. Let's look at the immaturity of this church. Go down now to verse 11. And we're going to get back, but go down to verse 11, because it fills in some of the color, lets us know what's happening. So look at verse 11, "do not speak evil of one another". OK so that was going on. "Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you're not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?" So now we know what is going on. There's some bad-mouthing going on. There's some back-biting going on. There's some back-stabbing going on among these dear saints of God. James brings this out. He's indicting them because of it. It's pretty straightforward language. But I want you to notice that in his indictment he also gives the solution to the war that is among us. So let me offer you some advice. If you're struggling with getting along with people in your life, let me give you a few steps to end wars among us. First of all, this is very practical, always make it a family matter. If it's with a brother or sister, it's a family matter. In fact, you'll notice that he says do not speak evil of one another brethren. That's the plural for brothers and sisters. "He who speaks evil of a brother and judge's a brother", so brethren and brother, brother. What is he doing? He's saying, I just want to remind you that we're part of the same family. So keep that in mind, if you're arguing with another believer, that's a brother. That's a sister. It's more than just a client, more than just a customer, more than just a neighbor, more than just a mother-in-law, more than just a son-in-law, more than just a weirdo-in-law. That's a brother in Christ, a sister in Christ. We're part of the same family. We have the same Savior. The same Holy Spirit that lives in me lives in you. And because of that, I refuse to fight you. I won't fight you. "I wanna fight." I won't fight you. I'll fight for you. I'll fight with you, given the right battle, but I will not fight you. Because as long as you make it a family, matter how can you? So that's the first step, make it a family matter. Second, get off the judge's seat. That's sort of James point here, isn't it? You make yourself a judge. Now follow James' impeccable logic. He says, "don't speak evil of one another brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you're not a doer of the law, but a judge". And then look at this. There's one lawgiver. There's one judge, and it ain't you. There's one judge, and that's God, and he's not giving his position away to you. There's only one. Now, what does James mean when he says all this? Here's what he means. The essence of the law is summed up in one word. What is it? Love. Jesus said, if you love your neighbor as yourself, if you love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, that's the summary of the law. So when you slander someone you violate love. And when you violate love, you are violating the very core essence of the law. And when you act like a judge you are usurping God's authority as the law-giver. See that's his logic. It's just brilliant logic. So James is not telling them to stop evaluating people, because we must. He's not saying don't use discernment in situations, because we must. He's just saying stop condemning people. So make it a family matter, get off the judge's seat. Third tip, use your mouth to heal and not to hurt. You know that's a decision we can make before we leave this room today. From now on, I'm to use these lips more to heal than to hurt. Look at the context of verse 12. Says there's one lawgiver one judge, it's capital L so it's referring to God, who is able to save and to destroy. Think for a moment of the power a judge has in a courtroom. A judge by his or her words can save or can destroy. Can say, as the gavel goes down, innocent or guilty, acquitted or condemned. That's a lot of power. You can save or you can destroy. So just like the words of a law-giver or a judge can do that, so our words have great power. We can save. We can destroy. You know you've heard me talk about D.L. Moody in the past, for years right? Dwight Lyman Moody, the founder of the Moody Church in Chicago, a century ago or so, also a great evangelist. There's one thing about D.L. Moody that people noted, he was not a polished speaker. He was not a highly educated individual, like a lot of clergymen at the time were. He's sort of like a simple person, packs a punch, you know, street level kind of a guy. So he didn't always say things perfectly, and people noted that and often criticized him because of that. Now he was not naive. He understood that people were talking smack about him, so he addressed it. Look at what he said, "you may find hundreds of faultfinders among professed Christians; but all their criticism will not lead one solitary soul to Christ." That's powerful. "I never preached a sermon yet that I could not pick to pieces, and I find fault with. I feel that Jesus ought to have a far better representative than I am. But I've lived long enough to discover that there's nothing perfect in this world. If you're waiting until you find a perfect preacher or a perfect church I'm afraid you'll have to wait till the Millennium arrives." First of all, can I just make note that he believed in a Millennium, a literal Millennium. Way to go D.L. Moody, old dead guy that I really like. But what he's saying here is powerful. Here's what he's saying, he's saying, look, they're criticizing, I'm evangelizing. They're pouting, I'm preaching. They're using their words for evil, I'm using my words for good. And that's why I say use your mouth to heal and not to hurt. We could do that. We could decide we're going to do that. Well no man can tame the tongue. You're right, but you're filled with the Holy Spirit. You're filled with the Holy Spirit. This can happen. You could use your mouth to preach the gospel. You could use your words to encourage people. You could use what you say to bless, to instruct, to equip, to inspire. So that's the war among us. But there's a second war. In fact, the reason for the first war is because of the second war, and that is the war inside of us. Let's look at what he says. He says "where do wars and fights come from among you?" We already went through that. Now he answers it. "Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?" Now when he uses the term "in your members", he's not saying in your church members. He's talking about in your body. The bodily members of your person. The different parts of your body, your makeup, that are vying for attention and affection. That's what he's talking about. And then he continues, "you lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight in war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss, that you might spend it on your pleasures." Let me sum that up and then pick it apart. Here's the summary. The reason there's a war among us, is because there's a war inside of us. It's the war inside of us that is fueling the fires of the wars among us. That's what he is saying. The war inside the heart was fueling the war inside the church. That's the real source, so just keep this in mind. If you're struggling with other people, that struggle could be generated by the struggle within you. Some of you have no clue what I just said. You're going, struggle, within me? I don't have a struggle with me. I love me. I'm not struggling with me. I love me. I'm my own best friend. I get along fine with myself. I give me whatever I want. Bingo. Therein lies the issue. Because you'll notice in verse 1, the word pleasure. Do they not-- where do these things come from? Where does the war among us come from? He says "do they not come from your desires for pleasure?" Very interesting and important word. The word pleasure here is the Greek word hedone. And hedone is the word from whence we get our word hedonism. Ever heard of hedonism? A hedonistic person? It's a philosophy of life that says, my personal pleasure is my highest goal. That's hedonism. I live for pleasure, a pleasure seeker. Now I'm going to push the pause button. OK, I'm pausing the sermon. Because I want to say something before we get back into this. There's nothing wrong with pleasure per se. God created us with a very amazing, intricate nervous system with pleasure receptors so that we would find enjoyment in life. He did that. That's how we are created. So there's nothing wrong with enjoyment. There's nothing wrong with pleasure per se. There's nothing wrong with say, enjoying a fine meal together, or a day in the sun where you feel like on a day like this-- oh, I feel so good, that warmth on my skin. You don't have to feel guilty because of that. A nice barbecue in the backyard, with friends and family. A golf game, especially when you're hitting it really well and you're finding pleasure in that. It's like wow, it went right down the fairway, so good. A healthy sex life in the covenant of a marriage relationship. God created you to enjoy those things. But when those desires become the passion of your life, that is, they drive us, they control us so that life is one continuous search for pleasure, that's a problem. It's a problem when we become like what Paul described in 2 Timothy chapter 3 those people who are lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. When we become like the seed sown that Jesus spoke about in Luke chapter 8, when he said that they were choked with the pleasures of this life. Or when we become like what Paul described in Titus 3 those who are enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. You get the idea, driven by, enslaved by, controlled by. OK, now pause button off. Let's go to verse 1. Look at the second part of it again. "Do they not come from your desires for pleasure", now notice this, "that war in your members?". The pleasures are waging war inside of you. Those pleasures are like little rebel soldiers demanding satisfaction, and when they do not get satisfied they declare war. That's the war inside you. When a person is victimized by their own desires, their inner life becomes a battleground. And when that happens, relationships around them get hurt. Because people, at that point, are collateral damage. It's like, I'm sorry but it's all about me right now. I'm sorry that I'm hurting you, but really I want to get my pleasure fulfilled. See so when you are that focused, people around you don't matter. And so you have diminished their importance, and they get hurt. So the war inside of us is what is causing the war outside of us among us. But look at verse 2 now. He gets a little heavy. You know James is up front, kind of like D.L. Moody, just in your face kind of a preacher. But he says this, "you lust and do not have." Look at the next sentence. "You murder and covet and cannot obtain." OK, whoa. That's sort of a shocking statement. Imagine having your Friday morning, ladies Bible study group, gather them all in your home in the living room. Well good morning murderers. It's like what? What did you just call me? So he's calling them murderers. What does he mean by this? Well most people think it's a metaphorical statement. Just like Jesus said, if you hate your brother you've committed murder. He could be that. I'm not going to disagree with that, but some scholars actually believe that he was not being metaphorical he's being actual, being literal. That there was a case of a church where somebody killed another church member. It became known, it became a scandal. And one of the reasons that caused James to want to write this general letter was because of incidents like that. That's a possibility. I don't know. I can't tell you. I can tell you that if you were to look up in your Bibles the life of King David, the man after God's own heart, there's a record of how he treated a woman named Bathsheba and her husband named Uriah the Hittite. And if you go look at that story it is almost word for word verse 2 and 3. An adulterer. A murderer. It's like he acted these verses out in real life. Whatever the case, James point is taken. The struggle inside of you is real. But that real struggle is ruining relations around you and ruining your testimony for the gospel. It's all about, I want this and I want this and if I'm not getting what I want. So if you get five people together and they all want what they want only there's going to be a war in that room. Is that right? There's going to be a war in that room. I read an article this week I wanted to share it with you. There's a biologist from Purdue University named William Muir. Purdue is in Indiana. He's a biologist. And he was doing an experiment, or doing research, on chickens. Which I know it's a foul thing to research, But-- I wanted to see if you're listening and you are. Chicken, fowl. Good good good good, you're tracking. OK so he is studying chickens and he decides to find out how they reproduce over time. So he divided these chickens into two groups. Let's call group number one the average chicken group. And let's call group number two the super chickens, the super flock. So he found chickens that were extraordinarily, individually productive and put them all in the same group, and just put regular chickens in the other group and watched them over six generations. So after six generations of reproduction, this is what he discovered. The first group did just fine. They were plump, fully feathered, their egg production increased, all good. What about the second group? What would you imagine? What he discovered is that all of the chickens in the second group except three were dead. They pecked each other to death. Now I see a quarrel there. Sometimes that happens, you get a bunch of super-achievers together, right? Because it's like, no no no my plan is better. Oh no no you're an idiot. My plan-- and it's like, clash, clash right? That happens a lot. So, the war among us is, according to James, because of the war inside of us. Now keep following his line of thinking here, because at the end of verse two he says, you do not have, here's something you want, you want, you want, but you don't have it, because you do not ask. And the implication is you don't ask God. You don't pray about it. You're not talking to God about it. You're not asking God, should I have this, should I not have this? Can I have this? Verse 3, "you ask and you do not receive because you ask amiss, that you might spend it on your pleasures". Without unraveling that too much, let me just put it to you this way. Selfishness leads not only to wrongdoing, it leads to wrong praying. Because you see, when you're self-focused as an individual, you become self-sufficient. Self-focused people often become self-sufficient. And last time I checked, self sufficient people don't pray. I don't need to pray. I got this. I'm strong enough, I'm smart enough. I don't need God to help me on this. This is like easy stuff. Self-sufficient people don't pray. And self-focused people, when they pray, it's just praying sort of all about them. That's the greater point here. Now let me close this before we move on by saying, whatever it is you think you need and you want in your life, you need to understand that what God wants for you is far greater than anything you could want for yourself. So when it comes to just enjoying life and having pleasure, keep that in mind. Number two, about that, even if following Christ is hard sometimes, the very worst that God has for you is better than the best that the world has for you. It is. It's better. It's a better plan. So the war among us is caused by the war inside us, but there's a third war and we're going to close with this, and that is the war above us. And oddly, often this really is the issue of war. It's because people are fighting God. So look at verse 4. "Adulterers and adulteresses!" Again, thank you pastor James, God bless you too! "Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world and makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the scripture says in vain 'the Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously'? But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: 'God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.' Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you." Do you know that a person can declare a war on God? He said, oh yeah an unbeliever can. Sure unbelievers shake their fists to God all the time. No no no. He's writing to brethren. Speaking to fellow believers. You can declare war on God. You want to know how? You can declare war on God by getting too close to God's enemy. Fraternizing with the enemy. When you move from God toward God's enemy more and more, you are in effect, making God your enemy, declaring war on God. And the enemy he's speaking of here is not only the devil but he mentions the world. The world. You probably know, I hope, that when the Bible talks about the world it's not necessarily referring to the world of people. We are to love them. Not referring to the world of plants and animals, we're to enjoy them. It's the world of ideas. It's the system of values that is opposed to the values of God and his kingdom. That's the world. To be a friend of this world, and notice that he compares friendship with this world to adultery. And why would he do that? Well, simply because we're married to Christ. Romans chapter 7 says that we are married to Jesus Christ. We are the bride of Christ. He is the Bridegroom of the church. So if you're a friend of the world, if the world is more important and the values of the world are more important to you, then you are making yourself an enemy of God. So this begs the question, how do I know I'm a friend of the world? Well I've jotted down a few general ideas. You know you're a friend of the world when your personal pleasure is more important to you than spiritual pleasure. If that's happening, if you're tending toward that, pretty good indication you're a friend of this world. You know you're a friend of this world when you care more about what unbelieving friends and family think about than what God thinks about you, or knows about you. Let me put that a better way. You know you're a friend of this world when you care more about what unbelieving friends and family think about than what believing friends and family think about you. And you know you're a friend of this world when you disregard scripture. Twice in this passage James is quoting scripture. He's referring to Old Testament passages. But if you're the enemy of God or if you're hostile toward God, you don't care what He has to say in His word. That's not important to you. You disregard it. Yeah OK, the Bible's a book God wrote. It's important. Tell me what it means from time to time. I'll listen to it every now and then, but-- they disregard it. So what's the solution? The solution is verse 7. I love it's so simple. "Therefore", here it is, "submit to God". Isn't that simple? It's not complicated. It's not easy, but it's pretty straightforward. "Therefore, submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you." He's writing to a group of people that have resisted God, and submitted to the devil. Now he's saying, turn that around. Submit to God. And resist the devil. Submit to God because God is fighting for you. Now, I want you to look at verse 5. We're going to close with this. I'm done, almost. "Or do you think that the scripture says in vain, 'the Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously'?" Now the idea behind that verse is simple. It's this. God is passionately pursuing you. He's put his Holy Spirit in us because He jealously desires a relationship of intimacy with us. That's his heart. And he proved on the cross He was willing to go to any extent to rescue you. So if you don't mind, I'm going to close with the movie clip. Can I do that? I know it's church maybe I shouldn't do that. I'm going to say something. Maybe you don't want me to say this. I'm going to talk about a favorite movie, maybe a preacher shouldn't have a favorite movie, but I'll tell you why this is one of my favorite shows. It's about a father who loves his daughter so much, nothing will stop him from rescuing her. And that to me is the heart of God. So in 2008, this movie came out. It's called Taken. Liam Neeson was a CIA operative. And he finds out that his daughter is abducted by sex traffickers in Paris, in France. And they're going to sell her. So he flies all the way over to France, inspects the crime scene. He's a CIA guy, ex-CIA guy. So he knows his stuff. He inspects it, finds his cell phone, makes contact with the abductors, and has this conversation. I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for a ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you. I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you. I will find you. And I will kill you. Good luck. Yeah, yeah. Good luck. They need good luck. You know how the movie ends. He finds his daughter, rescues her. He's beaten up, he's bloodied, but he rescues his daughter. His daughter collapses in his arms and says daddy you came for me. And he said, I told you I would. That's the commitment of a Father. And look, I'm not advocating take the law into your own hands, go kill people, obviously. But any daughter would love to have a Father like that, who will stand up for her and protect her and go to the ends of the Earth for her. So I did that because that's a picture of this verse. God's jealous love for you is, I'm willing to take on the devil and all his thugs and go to the cross and get bloodied and beaten because I love you. I love you. Thank You, Lord. Thank you for Your love for us. Thank You for Your willingness to do that. We celebrate it so often. Today Lord, though, we understand that some of us are struggling inwardly. And the real struggle that's causing the effect to be felt in relationships around us is that we just want what we want, when we want it. We want our own interests to be served. And that spills out and breaks other things around us, the relationships around us. Maybe what we need to do is realize we could be fighting you, and we need to stop and submit to God, and give this situation, I ask You to work in it. Pray through it. We have not because we ask not. I pray that our relationship with You would not be about getting what we want, but getting what You want for us, getting what You want through us, getting what You want to accomplish by us in this world that You love so desperately. I pray that we will be ambassadors of that love and of that peace. In Jesus' name, Amen. Let's all stand. We hope you enjoyed this special service from Calvary Church. We'd love to know how this message impacted you. Email us at mystory@calvarynm.church. And just a reminder, you can support this ministry with a financial gift at calvarynm.church/give. Thank you for joining us for this teaching from Calvary Church. People have been going to war for centuries. Conflicts and clashes are part of our history both as a civilization and as a nation. But there are three wars that are being fought everywhere in the world right now, even sadly among Christians. These three wars steal our peace, divide our hearts, and insult our God. James tackled these three wars head-on and told us how they can be ended. Used by permission. www.connectwithskip.com .

The days of being buried in the church where you were baptized and married are long gone for most. Ours is the age of the McChurch. There are realities embedded in that truth that are good and bad alike. Every cultural location has its own blessings and challenges. Believe it or not, I don’t think that the problems attendant with our consumerism are wholly bad. Imagine, for instance, how difficult it would to have your congregation embrace the truth that each member is part of a “royal priesthood” (1 Pet 2:9) in France circa 1200 AD. Why would that be so difficult? Because in that culture serfdom would have permeated the identity of the congregation. In a congregation of serfs, it may be easy for them to understand their identity as servants of Christ, but far more challenging for them to internalize the truth that they are priests. Let’s consider then how our cultural identity as consumers impacts the way we engage with the local church. How does our McDonald’s world shape us? Here are five statements that shape us as consumers: 1) “I’m broken, therefore I shop.” We look for churches that latch onto our deficits, insecurities, and offer fulfillment to those desires. The pulpit has always been a place where the timeless truth intersects with the cultural questions of the day, but that reality has been heightened in a consumer-driven world. The blessing of this is that the Word of God does offer healing for our brokenness. The problem is that we can be drawn not to the whole counsel of God, but only those portions that we believe help us at any given moment. 2) “I shop with others.” Our consumerism is driven by our pre-existing social networks. Unless you are completely new to a town and without a social network, your church shopping is driven by your network of friends. We go where we are already connected and accepted. In fact, it is totally normal that one frequents several churches where one connects with different sets of friends. The gift of this is that we can step into connected life together in the family of God more naturally. The problem with this is that the family of God is far more than just those who look like us and have similar interests. And our commitments to the people of God ought to be far thicker than even our commitment to our friends. 3) “I shop therefore I am.” Consuming shapes identity. We the consumer ask that the hour and fifteen minutes we spend in the worship center on Sunday morning create and be sufficient in shaping our Christian identity and experience. It should provide for us the feelings and catharsis we desire. The goodness in this is we come with the expectation of an identity-forming experience. The problem is that we are not willing to do the work to become the people we are called to be the other six days. 4) “I am in control.” We are in charge when we shop. We choose the product, the store, and even how quickly it is delivered. We will serve the church and engage in calls to action, but only when we feel as though our needs are being met and that we can trust the leaders. The gift of this can be a healthy sense of ownership. The problem can be the lack of a servant’s heart and submission to authority. There are a number of weaknesses attendant with trying to be faithful Christians in the culture we live in. What would it look like to truly live lives where we are so invested in one another that we are characterized by our exhortation of one another (Heb 3:13), by our consistent commitment to gather together (Heb 10:25), by our sharing meals and possessions with one another, and praying with one another (Acts 2:42-45)? That community would stand out starkly from the world we live in. Perhaps that strangeness might have a compelling quality. Is it something that you long for? I bet there is something in you that wants to experience that type of community. This engagement and giving of ourselves to our brothers and sisters in meaningful long-term relationships cannot happen as long as we are consumers of the product of our local churches and not participants and ministers of the gospel (Eph 4:12). When we stand as consumers of a product that is offered, we will never engage and own the ministry to which we are called. To paraphrase (rather cornily, I admit), John F. Kennedy, we should ask not what the church can do for us, rather ask what we can do for the church. Churches and congregants alike can’t avoid the reality of the consumerist sea we swim in. But both those in church leadership and those who fill the worship centers are called to an awareness of and to fight against our impulses. We are no mere spiritual shopping mall, but are in fact “living stones… built up as a spiritual house” (1 Pet 2:4). Let us not, fellow Esaus, sell our birthright for the McStew offered us by McChurch. www.thebeehive.live .

Stand for Truth, a wonderful Christian news organization in the Philippines compiled these quotes. EVERY PERSON should read these chilling words: 1. CAESAR BORGIA—Italian nobleman, politician, and cardinal: “While I lived, I provided for everything but death; now I must die, and am unprepared to die.” 2. THOMAS HOBBS—Political philosopher: “I say again, if I had the whole world at my disposal, I would give it to live one day. I am about to take a leap into the dark.” 3. THOMAS PAYNE—The leading atheistic writer in American colonies: “Stay with me, for God’s sake; I cannot bear to be left alone , O Lord, help me! O God, what have I done to suffer so much? What will become of me hereafter? I would give worlds if I had them, that The Age of Reason had never been published. 0 Lord, help me! Christ, help me! No, don’t leave; stay with me! Send even a child to stay with me; for I am on the edge of hell here alone. If ever the Devil had an agent, I have been that one.” 4. SIR THOMAS SCOTT—Chancellor of England: “Until this moment I thought there was neither a God nor a hell. Now I know and feel that there are both, and I am doomed to perdition by the just judgment of the Almighty.” 5. VOLTAIRE—famous anti-christian atheist: “I have swallowed nothing but smoke. I have intoxicated myself with the incense that turned my head. I am abandoned by God and man.” He said to his physician, Dr. Fochin: “I will give you half of what I am worth if you will give me six months of life.” When he was told this was not possible, he said “Then I shall die and go to hell!” His nurse said: “For all the money in Europe I wouldn’t want to see another unbeliever die! All night long he cried for forgiveness.” 6. ROBERT INGERSOLL—American writer and orator during the Golden Age of Free Thought: “O God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul!” Some say it was said this way: “Oh God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul, from hell, if there be a hell! 7. DAVID HUME—Atheist philosopher famous for his philosophy of empiricism and skepticism of religion: He cried loud on his death bed “I am in flames!” It is said his desperation was a horrible scene. 8. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE—French emperor who, like Adolf Hitler, brought death to millions to satisfy his greedy, power-mad, selfish ambitions for world conquest: “I die before my time, and my body will be given back to the earth. Such is the fate of him who has been called the great Napoleon. What an abyss between my deep misery and the eternal kingdom of Christ!” 9. SIR FRANCIS NEWPORT—Head of an English Atheist club, to those gathered around his deathbed: “You need not tell me there is no God, for I know there is one, and that I am in his presence! You need not tell me there is no hell. I feel myself already slipping. Wretches, cease your idle talk about there being hope for me! I know I am lost forever! Oh, that fire! Oh, the insufferable pangs of hell! Oh, that I could lie for a thousand years upon the fire that is never quenched, to purchase the favor of God and be united to Him again. But it is a fruitless wish. Millions and millions of years will bring me no nearer the end of my torments than one poor hour. Oh, eternity, eternity forever and forever! Oh, the insufferable pangs of Hell!” 10. CHARLES IX—The French king. Urged on by his mother, he gave the order for the massacre of the French Huguenots, in which 15,000 souls were slaughtered in Paris alone and 100,000 in other sections of France, for no other reason than that they loved Christ. The guilty king suffered miserably for years after that event. He finally died, bathed in blood bursting from his veins. To his physicians, he said in his last hours: “Asleep or awake, I see the mangled forms of the Huguenots passing before me. They drop with blood. They point at their open wounds. Oh! That I had spared at least the little infants at the bosom! What blood! I know not where I am. How will all this end? What shall I do? I am lost forever! I know it. Oh, I have done wrong.” 11. DAVID STRAUSS—Leading representative of German rationalism, after spending a lifetime erasing belief in God from the minds of others: “My philosophy leaves me utterly forlorn! I feel like one caught in the merciless jaws of an automatic machine, not knowing at what time one of its great hammers may crush me!” 12. JOSEF STALIN—Soviet Georgian revolutionary and politician. In a Newsweek interview with Svetlana Stalin, the daughter of Josef Stalin, she told of her father’s death: “My father died a difficult and terrible death. . .God grants an easy death only to the just. At what seemed the very last moment, he suddenly opened his eyes and cast a glance over everyone in the room. It was a terrible glance, insane or perhaps angry. His left hand was raised, as though he were pointing to something above and bringing down a curse on us all. The gesture was full of menace. . .the next moment he was dead.” 13. ANTON LEVEY—Author of the Satanic Bible and high priest of the religion dedicated to the worship of Satan. One of his famous quotes was: “There is a beast in man that needs to be exercised, not exorcised”. His dying words were: “Oh my, oh my, what have I done, there is something very wrong. . . there is something very wrong.” 14. GANDHI—At his death, he said, “For the first time in 50 years, I find myself in the slough of despond. All about me is darkness. . .I am praying for light.” Compare these last words from atheists, with these last words, from these saints of God THE APOSTLE PAUL: “O death, where is thy sting?” KING DAVID: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no Evil.” AUGUSTUS MONTAGUE TOPLADY (1710-1778): Toplady will ever be famous as the author of one of the most evangelical hymns of the eighteenth century, “Rock of Ages,” which was first published in 1776. During the final illness, Toplady was greatly supported by the consolations of the gospel: “The consolations of God, to so unworthy a wretch, are so abundant that he leaves me nothing to pray for but their continuance.” Near his last, awaking from a sleep, he said: “Oh, what delights! Who can fathom the joy of the third heaven? The sky is clear, there is no cloud; come Lord Jesus, come quickly!” He died saying:”No mortal man can live after the glories which God has manifested to my soul.” Lastly, JESUS CHRIST said: “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth on Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” Only fools never learn from history, and it’s amazing that even in our days, with all these facts on our fingertips, someone with a mind can devote his entire life to a delusion, and want everyone to know that there is no God. No wonder the bible says, “Only fools say in their hearts, there is no God.” (Psalm 14:1)

Sometimes life happens faster than we can run our race.  We can’t control everything that happens to us or around us. We can’t control the decisions others make that deeply affect us. Even if we’ve walked with Christ for years and allowed him to do a deep healing work inside of us, we can still find ourselves in a place we never dreamed. A place we never intended to be. A place asking ourselves, “How did I get here?” I’ve been there. A few years ago, I found myself in a place where I wanted to take cover more than I wanted to take ground. Where I didn’t feel that I had the strength, courage, or confidence to keep going. I had never felt so vulnerable, exposed, or weak. I didn’t know if I wanted to keep pressing in and pressing on. Reaching out for what’s next. Pursuing the adventure that I always had. It wasn’t a crisis of faith; rather, it was a sober realization that, if I were to keep going, it would probably mean more sacrifice, more pain, more heartache, more exposure, more vulnerability, more attacks…even though all of that would mean more fruit. The course Jesus had chartered for me was worthy of my continuing—because Jesus was worthy of my continuing—but somewhere I had drifted from seeing that, to losing myself in my feelings. It was my feelings that were screaming at me to pull back. I knew that I could keep going through the motions and no one would even really know I wasn’t pressing in as hard as I once was, sticking as close to Jesus as I once did. Willing to keep taking risks like I always had. No one would really know…except Jesus. He would know. And that mattered more than anything. Pin it I found my way back. And I learned much along the way, including the understanding that there are many ways to drift—mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically—and that at some point, we’re all prone to drift. To keep ourselves from drifting, there are times we need to hit the reset button and make sure we are trusting God more than anything and anyone else, including ourselves.  We need to be checking what I call the links in our chain—the things that keep us connected to Jesus, the anchor of our soul—on a regular basis, so we don’t find ourselves drifting unaware. Then, when a crisis of any kind hits, be it a financial one, a relational one, an emotional one, a spiritual one, a career one, a health scare, or even a global pandemic, we aren’t trying to drop anchor in a storm, when all the waves are so high that they are about to overtake us. We aren’t scrambling and playing catchup on trusting God with all our hearts. Think of it this way: On a typical bicycle chain, there is a single removeable link. It’s called the master link, though sometimes it is called a quick link or a power link. It’s what holds the rest of the chain in place. If you want to remove the chain, you first disconnect the master link. Spiritually, this is what trust is in our lives. It’s the master link. If we don’t trust God with all our hearts and instead rely on our own understanding—in every area of our lives—then we’re more likely to drift in some area. But if our master link is intact—if we’re trusting God and God alone—it makes all our other links stay in place. It makes it easier to stay connected to God in all the ways he wants us to be connected to him. For me to fully trust God is to place all my confidence in him—and everything about him. In fact, one Bible dictionary defines our trust as “a reliance or resting of the mind on the integrity, veracity, justice, friendship, or other sound principle of a person.” So when I start questioning God and his goodness, then I’m no longer trusting him. Maybe, when we find ourselves drifting like this, in order to stop, we need to reframe all the questions racing through our minds, especially the ones that begin with what if. You know the ones: What if I lose my job? What if I don’t get to finish school? What if we get a divorce? What if the car breaks down? What if we lose all that we’ve worked so hard for? What if….what if…what if….? Maybe we need to be asking one pivotal question: “What kind of God do I believe in?” Did you feel the shift in perspective? Ultimately, placing our trust in God is a choice.  There are times we trust God because of what we can see, but there are also times when we have to trust God in spite of what we see.  When we have to choose to “trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding.” I believe in a God who is good, who does good, and who is working all things together for my good, no matter what is falling apart around me. I trust in the character of God. The nature of God. No matter if I’m temporarily falling apart inside me and the world is falling apart around me. Nothing changes who he is because, “Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever.” Not small problems. Not medium-sized problems. Not even pandemic-sized problems. I believe there are times, in order to stop drifting, we need to go back to what we know to be true about God. God is good. ( Psalm 119:68 ) God is holy. ( 1 Peter 1:16 ) God is love and his love endures forever. ( 1 John 4:7-8 ; Psalm 136 ) God is for us. ( Romans 8:31 ) God sings over us and rejoices over us. ( Zephaniah 3:14-17 ) God is faithful to us—and he keeps all his promises to us. ( Hebrews 10:23 ) God fights for us. ( 2 Chronicles 20:15 ) God is just. ( Psalm 50:6 ; 1 John 1:9 ) God is merciful and compassionate toward us. ( Psalm 86:15 ) God is always kind and ready to forgive us. ( Psalm 86:5 ) God knows all things. ( Psalm 139 ) God does not make mistakes. ( Psalm 18:30 ) God is on the throne. ( Hebrews 8:1 ) God is in control. ( Isaiah 14:24 ) And on I could go… After more than thirty years of following Jesus, there is much I still don’t understand, but God’s ways are not my ways and his thoughts are not my thoughts. In fact, the Bible says they are both higher. So my starting point in wading through any confusion I might have is that God is God and I am not. If I do not understand something God is doing, it does not suggest a problem with God. It just means I don’t get it. At least, not at the moment. We rarely have the whole picture all at once. It’s like holding one piece of a jigsaw puzzle and God is holding the other 999 pieces that we don’t even know exist yet. We can’t see all that he is doing. And I know from experience that so much more is going on in the purpose of God than we can see. Some things are simply hidden from us, and just because we can’t see them—just because we can’t trace God—doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t trust God, and that he isn’t working. www.propelwomen.org .

Solid Week 2 May 14/16, 2021 Solid Week 2 Thinking Well Jeff Jones Today we continue our series, Solid—how to become the kind of solid people we all admire and that we all want to be. The pandemic has been a test of that. Some people have stayed so solid in the pandemic, unflappable, and others have fallen apart. What causes some who experience the same circumstances as the rest of us to be so solid? That’s what we are going to talk about the next couple of weeks, and this week we are focusing on where solid living starts. Solid living starts with solid thinking, thinking that anchors us as waves of trouble come at us or winds of bad ideas blow our way. Solid people have that anchor. That reminds me of a sailing story, and I haven’t shared a sailing story in a long time. This one is in my book, Distinct by Design, which is about what makes Chase Oaks--Chase Oaks. If you haven’t read that yet and you are new in our church, let me encourage you to read it. It will give you a big head start on understanding what makes this crazy place tick. To put everyone at ease, I get zero pennies from that book, so that’s not why I’m asking you to read it. Doing so helps us all be aligned. Christy and I love to sail, and occasionally we go with some friends and family to bareboat in the Caribbean, and by bareboat that’s not about sailing naked. That kind of vacation does exist, just is not the way we roll. Bareboat sailing simply means that we have enough training and experience to captain our own boat. So, call me Captain Jeff. On one of our last trips to Belize, we were checking out the boat before sailing out and I noticed that it had a troubling characteristic—a very small anchor for such a large boat. When I saw it, I thought, “Hmm, this might be a problem.” I also knew that the anchorages were grassy, which would be a problem with that small anchor, but I decided to just go ahead and go with it. I did however swim the anchor line and make sure the anchor was set that first night, and we did okay. I noticed the next morning we had drug anchor about 20 feet, which made me nervous because I knew a storm was coming that night. And the storm did come, a squall line with over 40 mph winds. As the storm blew in, to check our holding, I stepped out of the comfort of the cabin into the darkness toward the front of the boat. It was pitch black, but I did have a 1 Solid Week 2 May 14/16, 2021 flashlight, and out of the corner of my eye I saw that the boat which had anchored next to us all of us a sudden starting moving forward very rapidly. It was shocking, because they were going faster than a sailboat takes off. It was more like a ski boat. I was like, “How are they going that fast? And why are they taking off in the middle of the night?” And then it hit me. They weren’t going forwards. We were going backwards. Our anchor did not hold, and we were at the mercy of the storm, going about 40mph toward trouble. We had very dangerous coral reefs all behind us, with one exception—a little tiny mangrove island that had sand leading to it. By God’s grace, we hit that mangrove island rather than the reefs, which was a miracle. We sank into the sand fortunately, without damage. The rest of the trip however was miserable, because I couldn’t trust our anchor. I got almost no sleep, because as the captain of the boat I knew I was responsible and had to check our holding constantly. It’s no fun being on a big ocean with real wind and real waves and real storms and no solid anchor. You will likely end up in trouble. So, let’s bring it back to sports, a Ticket way of saying, “Let’s bring it back to what we are talking about today.” In this world, a big ocean of ideas and stormy circumstances, solid people have a solid anchor I will call solid thinking. The reason they don’t get blown off course by bad ideas or get disillusioned when bad things happen is that they have a solid grid that filters and helps interpret all that comes at them. I want all of us to have that. I originally was going to do another series right now, and Solid was a change. If you know me, you know that I am an advanced planner and usually stick with the advanced plan. But sometimes God gets in the way of those plans, and in prayer I know that we need to drop the plan and talk about something that is urgent and critical for the situation we are in. This is one of those times. Through the course of this pandemic, as a pastor, I’ve seen so many people blown off course onto various reefs in this pandemic storm. Now with social media and all kinds of media, so many ideas are blowing around out there, and also circumstances that seem unfair that can easily cause people to get disillusioned with God, as a pastor I realize we’ve got to do a better job making sure people are well grounded, solid enough in our thinking that we can stand strong and even get stronger in storms rather than blown off course. This was a huge concern in the Bible as well, and today Paul is going to help us know how to become solid in our thinking. We will be in Colossians 2 in 2 Solid Week 2 May 14/16, 2021 the NT, and let’s listen to his pastoral concern 2000 years ago that is just as relevant 2000 years later: SLIDE_________________________) Colossians 1:28-29, 2:2-8 “[Jesus] is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ. To this end I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me…My goal is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine sounding arguments. For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how disciplined you are and how firm your faith in Christ is. So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.” He was working so hard for people to be solid in their faith, solid in their thinking. Did you notice phrases like “fully mature,” “rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith,” “how firm your faith is.” SLIDE______________________) “fully mature” “rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith” “how firm your faith is.” That’s solid. That’s anchored. Notice also why it is so important: SLIDE_______________________) Colossians 2:4 “I tell you this so no one may deceive you by fine sounding arguments.” And at the end, 3 Solid Week 2 May 14/16, 2021 SLIDE_____________________) Colossians 2:8 “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental forces of this world rather than on Christ.” There are a lot of bad ideas out there that can blow us way off course. He even says that such thinking takes us captive, meaning what we think is what dictates our decisions, our direction, the whole course of our lives. So, it is possible to be held captive by bad thinking that will always take us a bad direction. The problem is that bad thinking is often disguised as really great thinking. That’s why Paul describes it as “fine sounding arguments” and “deceptive.” Bad thinking that is obviously stupid and easy to spot as bad thinking is not so dangerous. But what is dangerous is that bad thinking often sounds really great. It makes a lot of sense. Making all this even more dangerous is that it’s not just humans involved but Satan and his demons. That’s what Paul means by the “elemental forces of this world.” In 1 Timothy he says, DELETE SLIDE_____________________) 1 Timothy 4:1 “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.” People will be blown off course not only by bad human ideas but by bad thinking promoted by demons. It reminds me a little bit of what is happening right now with social media, where nations like Russia and others who see themselves as our enemies spread bad ideas to mess up our thinking, to further divide our polarized culture, and to try to deepen our fears to an irrational level. It’s really smart for an enemy to do that, and Satan and demons are really smart and really good at this. They are always at work trying to destroy us and destroy all that is good, and the most effective way to do that is with bad thinking. There is a good reason for that, because as Proverbs says, SLIDE__________________) Proverbs 23:7 4 “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” Solid Week 2 May 14/16, 2021 How we think determines how we live. It’s why the New Testament talks so much about it, and even describes the process of becoming spiritually mature a process of changing our thinking. Romans 12:2, DELETE SLIDE____________________) Romans 12:2 “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” And 2 Corinthians 10:5, KEEP BUT DISABLE SLIDE___________________) 2 Corinthians 10:5 “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” The word “repent,” you’ve heard that word, simply means to change your mind about something, to change your thinking…because the way we are thinking is dictating the way we are living. To change your life, it starts with your mind. A solid life starts with solid thinking. It would be nice if every idea was filtered the way our phone companies filter our phone calls. How many “Scam Likely” calls do you get every day? Anybody need a car warranty? Three times a day every day they are kind enough to give me a “final courtesy call.” I wish final meant final. But I do love that “Scam Likely” feature that helps me avoid the whole thing. If ideas that float around our culture and that Satan and demons try to plant in our thinking came with the “scam likely” label, that would be awesome. But they don’t. In fact, they can sound really great. If you and I don’t have a solid filter of our own, solid thinking that provides a grid to funnel ideas through and a grid that helps us think through disappointing circumstances through, then we will constantly be blown off 5 Solid Week 2 May 14/16, 2021 course. It’s similar to what Paul says in Ephesians about developing that filter so that: KEEP BUT DISABLE SLIDE__________________) Ephesians 4:14 “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.” Here’s the scary part about this whole deception thing, is that people who are deceived don’t know they are deceived. They think they are thinking clearly, because at the time it makes sense. I don’t know if you have ever been duped by some deceptive person or scheme or not, but it is no fun once you realize that you were duped. Early in our marriage, when I was in seminary and we had no money, one way we were able to do vacations was going to timeshare presentation trips that were free, but of course you had to sit through the presentation. I have no inherent problem with the concept of timeshares, and they can be great when people know what they are doing and make an informed decision. The problem, of course, is that often those sales people aren’t the paragon of integrity. The good news for us is that we were so poor that we tended to get out of the presentation. At the beginning, I’d say, “You know, we live on about 18,000 a year, and are in seminary preparing to be a pastor, so I’m not sure how whatever you are going to try to sell me can possibly fit into that budget.” And usually they’d say, “How did you even get the invite?” And we’d get off without having to do the presentation. One time though after seminary while newly on staff here at Chase Oaks we did sit through one, and the guy was really good. He also told us a really big lie, a way too good to be true kind of lie, and we signed up because that lie seemed true if it was true then it was a really good deal. Later that night, as we discussed it, we realized there is no way that the too good to be true could be true. When we looked more deeply at what we signed, sure enough, it was too good to be true. We had been duped. I didn’t sleep much that night, and we met with him the next morning and confronted him with what we found and what he had said, asking him to let us out of the contract and give our money back. He was smooth, and he smoothly let us know that they don’t do that, and that we should have read more carefully what we signed. That’s when I went full pastor on him. Occasionally that helps. I said, “Look, you lied and made 6 Solid Week 2 May 14/16, 2021 a sale, and I guess that’s our fault. But you have to understand why this matters so much to us. I am a pastor, and every dollar I have I believe is God’s. I’m a steward of all that he gives me, and every dollar I receive is from people at my church who give their money to honor him. So, I can’t just make mistakes like this, because this is God’s money. But I did make that mistake. and I can’t do anything about that. You, however, can. You get to decide whether to stick with it and misuse God’s money or let us out of this. It’s really between you and God, and I’ve been praying that you will do the right thing.” That’s what going full pastor means. He started to say something, and then stopped himself. He then said, “You know, my grandmother who raised me was a Christian and very faithful to her church that she contributed to. I shouldn’t do this, but I can hear what my grandmother would say to me right now, so I am going to give you your money back and destroy the contract.” I said, “Well, your grandmother I’m sure is looking down from heaven and is very proud right now.” Going full pastor doesn’t always work, but it’s nice when it does. But that realization of being duped is a horrible one, and usually by the time we realize it so much damage is done. As a pastor, I see that all the time with people who don’t have a solid filter and are blown off course by bad ideas that sound really great. Or, when bad circumstances come, they crumble because they don’t have a solid filter to interpret those circumstances in a way where they could actually grow and come out of that with a more solid faith. This pandemic time has been a storm, where winds of doctrines have blown and waves of adversity have come, and some have stood strong. Many others have been blown way off course. As a pastor, here are some of the bad ideas that sound good at the time that I’ve heard over these months: SLIDE_______________________) “Jesus is my vaccine.” “We are a Christian nation and must take America back.” “Let’s not talk about issues like race. Let’s stick to the Bible.” “God would never let me suffer more than I can handle.” “Follow your heart.” “I know it is God’s will because I have perfect peace.” “I know it would be better to do my sexual life the way God says, but it’s not that big of a deal and I’ll know he’ll forgive me anyway.” 7 Solid Week 2 May 14/16, 2021 “It wasn’t God’s will for me to marry her in the first place, and I know now she isn’t the person he had for me.” “I like to hear X preacher because he is so ‘deep” when they are not a reliable Bible teacher. I could go on, but a scary thought is, “Where am I duped right now?” How would we know? What do we do about this? Well, Paul tells us what to do. We already read it: SLIDE______________________) “Just as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught.” Notice this is a command to us as individual believers. It is up to us to do this, to not only receive Christ Jesus the Lord, but to take the next step to be rooted and built up, to be strengthened in the faith, in other words, to be established. This is our responsibility. And it’s not to learn about all the bad ideas out there so that we can spot them. That would be impossible. Instead, it is to become solid in our own faith, in our own thinking, so that we can more easily spot bad ideas as “Scam Likely” because we have a good filter. That’s the secret of those Christians who are so solid. Solid living starts with solid thinking. They have a good filter, so when bad circumstances come they filter that in a way that makes them stronger and when good-sounding bad ideas come their way they can spot them for what they are. You can develop the reliable filter of solid thinking, and we want to help. This summer we want to make it easy for everyone to take a step and solidify their faith. The first opportunity to consider is called Established, which was designed here at Chase Oaks to do just what we are talking about today—to help our roots go deep. Over 6,000 people have gone through it and we ask every Chase Oaker at some point to do it, whether you’re kicking the tires or a 8 Solid Week 2 May 14/16, 2021 seasoned Christ-follower. It’ll give you a chance to discuss the foundational elements of faith, Jesus, the Bible, and share your story with others. This Summer we’re launching several Established groups, both digital and in person. They’ll start toward the end of May. If you haven’t done it yet, I can’t think of a better next step to do. Register on our website. SLIDE_______________________) Special Sermon Slide Web address and Established (chaseoaks.org/established) We know many of you have done Established and all of us are called to keep growing, to keep getting equipped in our faith journeys. This summer we want to make it really accessible for all of us to take a step and grow. So, we’re launching five masterclasses around topics like understanding the Bible, financial stewardship, parenting, gifting and leadership. We’ve curated some resources from great experts to learn from in key areas of faith. These classes are digital and on-demand, so you can do them from your home, from the beach, as you’re out and about, wherever. We will guide you through the content as we release some of it each week and ask you to have a few conversations with fellow classmates along the way. These masterclasses mean none of us has any excuse not to grow this summer. Course content will become available on SLIDE_____________________) Special Sermon Slide Masterclasses Info. & web address Sign up on our website (chaseoaks.org/masterclasses). The New Chase Oaks App is also on its way, and one of the big features of that new app is a way for us to be in the Bible every day and to grow our roots that way. Coming soon. SLIDE_____________________) The New Chase Oaks App 9 Solid Week 2 May 14/16, 2021 ADDED SLIDE______________________) Humility Let’s all choose to take one step to go one step deeper in our thinking this summer, no matter how long you’ve followed Jesus. Today is one of those trajectory changing days for a whole lot of people, for all those who take an important step. If we are not established, rooted, then our whole lives are compromised in ways we don’t even know. We may have this idea that things are not as they should be, that they should be better, or more solid, but we just get used to that feeling. But we don’t have to. God wants us to flourish, to live solid lives that bear fruit. The only way for that to happen is to grow our roots deep in the faith, and the opportunity is right there in front of us this summer. With that in mind, let’s go to God in prayer. 10 It’s been a turbulent season. What has caused some to stay anchored during the storms and stresses of life, while others have lost their bearings under the same conditions? It all begins with what and how we think. Join us for a crucial look at the importance of deepening and strengthening our thinking, so we can remain solid and thrive no matter what the circumstances. www.chaseoaks.org . Used by permission. Sermon begins at 10 minutes.

The Acts of the Apostates Transcription The Acts of the Apostates - Jude 16-19 - Skip Heitzig Good morning. Boy, it is so good to see you here, your faces. I can see your faces, and I Can see your smiling faces. Even if you have a grumpy face, I'm happy to see it. I really like this motif that we have up here. You know, Jude said, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend-- or put up a fight. Contend earnestly for the faith, once for all delivered to the saints. That's why we call it fight for the house. We are here in church. We are gathered as the church. I've had an interesting journey in my lifetime, in my relationship to the church. Let me briefly explain. When I grew up, I had to go to church. For me to have a meal in my parents' house and live in a room and breathe their air, I had to go to church. In fact, it was even called by our church a Sunday obligation. Anybody ever have that term, growing up? So Sunday-- so obligation means you have to do it. When I was 18 years of age, I had an encounter with Jesus Christ. It was real. It was deep. It was profound. And everything changed. And my relationship with church changed. Now, I wanted to go to church. You couldn't keep me away from church. I went like-- whenever they had it, I'd go. And then, by God's grace, I moved from the West Coast to Albuquerque, New Mexico to plant a church. We've been doing it about 40 years now. So I've seen-- thank you. I've seen lots of people come to church over the years. I've also seen lots of people leave church. And I don't just mean leave our church go to another church. I mean leave church. And I've discovered that not everyone who goes to church, attends church, comes to church, hangs out at church, is actually part of the church. You might be part of the visible church. But not everybody in the visible church is part of the true invisible church, with a real, rooted, authentic relationship with Christ. Here's an example. In the book of Acts, chapter 16, Paul goes to Philippi, right? He goes there to bring the gospel. A church is planted-- very humble beginnings. He goes to a riverside. There's a few women who are gathered. A woman named Lydia believes, is baptized. And a few people make that sincere, deep, authentic commitment to Christ. But there was one girl, unnamed in the text, who hangs out at every church service. And she has something to say. Now, when you listen to what she says, you think, man, I want this gal in my church. I mean, this is like the best PR person you could ever ask for. Because this is what she said. These men are servants of the most high God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe Paul is going, yeah. Bring her with us wherever we go. But that didn't happen. Because it says that she did this for many days. And I kind of think she just sort of like interrupted what was going on with that little message. Because we're told this. Then, Paul, greatly annoyed-- just picture Paul the apostle, greatly annoyed. that's. Fun right there. Then Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit-- this is the demon spirit living inside of her-- in the name of Jesus Christ, come out of her. Now what's going on / here's what's going on. Paul had what is called discernment. He could tell the difference between somebody, in this case, who professed to know God, versus a genuine, authentic worship. Now I remember hearing this story that years ago, the Chinese wanted a sense of security that they didn't feel, because they were being invaded so much. So they decided that they would build a wall that would be too tall for people to easily climb over, too thick for people to break down, and too long for them to go around. So they built the Great Wall of China. And when it was done, they felt really good, really secure. But I read somewhere that within the first 100 years of the Great Wall of China's existence, that China was barraged, invaded, three times. And it's not that people got over the wall, or broke through the wall, or walked around the wall. They simply bribed the gatekeepers. That's how they got in. So we need to be open to all. And we must be open to all. We want people to come. We want people to feel welcome here. But we need to build character into the gatekeepers, to be able to tell the difference, and just to have a heads up. Because we love God's sheep and want them protected. And that's because the ministry of the church is a ministry of people. So if the church is alive, it's because its people are alive. If the church withers and dies, it's because the people in it are dead and outnumber the living people. There was a young pastor who decided to take a little church over in Oklahoma. He knew the reputation of this church. It was sort of crusty. They were not open to change, and were highly resistant to new ideas, new things. And this young pastor knew what he was getting into. But he just had the ambition and the drive, and he felt full of the Holy Spirit. So he went there, and loved them, and smiled, and tried new things. And they wouldn't budge. They wouldn't do anything. They didn't want to change. So he finally took an ad in the local newspaper and announced that he was going to bury the church. The church is dead, he said. And we're going to have a public funeral service for this church that is pronounced dead. Well, do you know that at that funeral service, which was 3:00 in the afternoon on a Sunday, the church was packed, like for the first time in ever-- packed. Everybody in the community wanted to find out, what is this stunt? So they're sitting in church, standing in church, packed in church. At the front of the church was a casket, with flowers on top. Pastor was in a suit. Got up, gave a eulogy. Talked about the history of this church. But now, it is dead, and it's time to bury it, move on. And then he invited everybody who had attended the funeral to get up, single file, down the front. And he opened the casket. Come and pay your respects to the dearly departed. So as people walked forward and looked in the casket, they understood. Because the pastor had cleverly put a mirror in the casket. So as they were there to see the church that had died, they saw themselves. Now, I told you you, Jude want to write this letter. That wasn't in his heart. He sat down to write a sweet, soft, light little note of encouragement, but felt compelled by the Holy Spirit to say fight for the faith. Why? He explained that certain people have crept in to the church unnoticed, and still hanging around, whose deadly ways and beliefs were influencing live, living, vibrant believers. So Jude goes back into the Old Testament. I mean, it's a short book. But he, in the economy of words, is able to go back into the Old Testament, starting with Enoch, citing several examples of falling away, apostacy, defecting to the faith in the past, and how God judged it. We come now to verse 16. And verse 16 to 19 is sort of like a summary statement. Let's read it. He says, these are grumblers, complainers, walking according to their own lust. They mouth great swelling, words flattering people to gain advantage. But you, beloved, remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how they told you that there would be mockers in the last time, who would walk according to their own ungodly lusts. These are sensual persons, who cause divisions, not having the Spirit. I've divided this into three categories of activity, three categories of these apostates' activity-- these detractors, these false professors. And they are words, walk, and warning-- the words they verbalize, the walk they personalize, and the warnings they characterize. So let's jump back into verse 16. And by now, you know. You know the style. You know what's going to happen. This is a Bible teaching church. We're going to go through every verse, every nuance, every phrase. We're going to dig down. We're going to find out what it says and what it means. So in verse 16, he says, these are grumblers, complainers, walking according to their own lusts. They mouth great swelling words, flattering people to gain advantage. This brings up a good question. How can you tell an apostate? I mean, nobody wears the sign, I'm an apostate. Nobody believes, necessarily, that they are. Nobody says to you, excuse me. Do you have 20 minutes of your valuable time? I'd like to try and deceive you, if at all possible. No, of course not. It's not always easy to tell. They're going to come in the name of God. They're going to quote their Bible verses. They're going to ride to your house on their bicycles. They're going to do a lot of things to make you think it's legit. But there are some signs. There are some indicators that they are problematic. And it has to do with what they say, what leaks from their lips. Remember what Jesus said? And I'll remind you of it. In Matthew 15, he said, it's what goes into the mouth that defiles a man. It's those things which precede out of the mouth to come from the heart and defile a man. So I remember when I was a kid. And I'd go to the doctor. And the doctor would take me in his little office. And he would say Skipper-- that's what he called me-- Skipper, stick your tongue out. And I always thought that was weird. It's like, I don't have a problem with my tongue. My problem is right here, in my gut. But a doctor is able to tell what's going on in the inside by what's sometimes on your tongue-- what color is, if there's bacteria, if it's looks gnarly or whatever. They can tell something is wrong in the alimentary canal, based on what I see in the tongue. Jesus said much the same thing. He said out of the abundance or overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. So I also remember as a kid, my mother was fond of a ritual that she would perform with her four boys, especially her youngest. Whenever we would say words that were inappropriate, she took us into the bathroom. And the ritual was a washing ritual. It was a bar of soap, stuck in the mouth. And she washed my mouth out with soap, more than once. And she never figured this out, but it did no good. And it did no good, because the problem wasn't with my mouth. The problem was with my heart. And so Jude gives us an x-ray of the heart by telling us the verbal activity of these apostate people. He calls them, in verse 16, grumblers. It's a good word. Listen to the Greek word, [NO SPEECH]. Sounds like I'm grumbling, just saying the word, right? It really is an onomatopoetic word. That is, the word describes what it means. And it's the only time it is used in the entire New Testament-- grumbler, [NO SPEECH]. But it is the same word in the Septuagint version-- that's the Greek version of the Old Testament-- to describe the children of Israel, who were grumbling for 40 years in the desert, and for which God judged them. We saw back in verse 5 of the Book of Jude. He delivered them out of Egypt. And he destroyed them because they didn't believe. And one of the indicators they didn't believe is what they said. They grumbled. Children of Israel became experts at grumbling. I mean, they grumbled against God's law, against God's ways, against God's love, against God's leaders. They grumbled. Notice what's next on the list-- complainers. Now I know. You're thinking, well, that sounds redundant. Like he says, grumblers and complainers. But it means the same thing. Well actually, it doesn't. Because this word complainer means to blame, to place blame on somebody. And the idea is that describes somebody who is always discontent, always dissatisfied, but blames somebody else for it-- complainers. By the way, did you know that God takes complaining pretty seriously? It's like, oh well. I know you're having a bad day. Go ahead. Just gripe. You know, gripe in the name of the Lord. Gripe in Jesus' name. No, he takes he takes us really seriously-- so seriously that the children of Israel, their complaining was immortalized forever, so that every time the story would be told to subsequent generations about God delivering them from Egypt, this point would be made. I'll just give you two examples. So fast forward from the children of Israel in the desert to the Book of Psalms, written by David, largely. Psalm 106 says, they despise the pleasant land. That's the promised land. They did not believe his word, but complained in their tents and did not heed the voice of the Lord. It's like man, it's been hundreds of years. And you're still bringing that up, that they complained? Uh huh. Now, fast forward to the New Testament. Paul the apostle, 1 Corinthians 10, verse 10, says about these people, the Israelites in the desert, these things became our examples, that we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted, and do not become idolaters, as some of them. Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, nor complain, as some of them also complained and were destroyed. Think God takes it seriously? I do. And you want to know why I think it is? I think complaining insults God, because it attacks God's sovereignty. See, if you claim to be a follower of God, and you're always grumbling, and always complaining, what you, in effect, are saying is God gives a lousy job taking care of me. God's love, God's care is not all that great, when it comes to me. So just remember that when you complain, half the people who hear you complain don't care. And the other half are probably glad you're finally getting what's coming to you. That's how that works. So their approach, these apostates, these false teachers, false professors, would murmur, complain, and cause other people to become dissatisfied with the church that he is writing to here, and plant those thoughts of discontentment. Because once those thoughts are planted, you can manipulate people like that. Now, let me just throw this out. You want to end complaining? The solution, I think, is worshipping. It's like the opposite. A praise-er, or a worship-er, somebody who's thankful and grateful, and that's the overflow of the heart-- you know, it's just inconsistent to have griping, grumbling, and worship and praise come out of the same mouth. That was James' whole point in his little New Testament book. How can you have sour and fresh water come out of the same fountain? So I love with the Psalmist said. He said, your praise shall continually be in my mouth. I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. But these are grumblers. They're complainers. And then he says, walking according to their own lusts. I'm going to get to that in a bit. But their speech continues, in verse 16. And they mouth great swelling words. The Amplified Bible renders it, they are boastful and arrogant. The NSV-- that's the New Skip Version-- I'm letting that sink in, to see if you are listening. I really don't have my own version. But I'm translating that this way. These people are full of hot air. They're full of hot air. So this morning, this happened to me this morning. I get up in the morning, take my dogs out. Beautiful, crisp day. One of the things I love about this place are called hot air balloons. And I couldn't see any yet. But I'm out there with the dogs. And I hear this noise. And what is the noise? Oh, you guys are so good. You're filling this place with hot air. That's what I heard. And then I hear it again. And I know there's a hot air balloon somewhere. And I just waited, wait for it, wait for it. About 20 hot air balloons in all were up in the sky. But one in particular was close to the house. And my dogs look up. And what's the first thing the dog does when that happens? Start barking really loud. But that noise, right, that Darth Vader noise-- there's some people, that's how they live their lives. They come into the room, puffing up hot air. Look at me. They mouth great swelling words. They turn on the flame. One commentator says, they pompously puff themselves up with an elaborated, sophisticated, religious vocabulary that has an external spiritual tone but is void of truth. Proverbs 10-- in the multitude of words, sin is not lacking. But he who restrains his lips is wise. Consider this. The Lord's Prayer has only 56 words. That's the model prayer. Jesus said, pray this way. You want to pray? Do this. 56 words. The Gettysburg Address has 266 words. The Ten Commandments, 297 words. The Declaration of Independence has 300 words. But a recent US government order setting the price of cabbage has 26,911 words. Just saying, it's not how long we talk. It's what we say that counts. Notice what else they do, what they say in verse 16. It's all about the speech, flattering people to gain an advantage. That is, they tell people what they want to hear, in order to influence them. So they give the impression they want to help you. But really, it's all about them. They want to gratify themselves. You know-- you do know, I'm sure. If you've ever read the book of Proverbs, you know that flattery is never a good thing, right? The Bible has a lot to say about that. One particular verse is Proverbs 29. Whoever flatters his neighbor is spreading a net for his feet, and that the Hebrew word for flattery means literally smooth. They're smooth talkers, man. They oil you up. They butter you up. And by the way, the English word flattery comes from the French word that means to stroke or caress with the flat of one's hand, flattery, stroke with the flat of the hand. As a Puritan preacher, Thomas Brooks, said, while a donkey-- though he used a different word in old English-- while a donkey is stroked under the belly, you may lay on his back what burden you please. That's the whole intent of these apostates. They want to manipulate so they can lay their trip on you. Now, I just want to, before we move on, say this, give you a little note on this. I don't want to turn you into a reactionary. I don't want every conversation you have in church, you give people the stink eye. It's like yeah, you're acting really nice and spiritual. What's up? I don't want you to do that. I don't want you to be the gospel Gestapo. But I do want you to learn to discern. I do want the gatekeepers to have character, to be able to tell truth from error. As Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 5, test all things. Hold fast to that which is good. And part of the testing comes by what people say. And if they're always grumbling and always complaining, or using flattery, and bragging about themselves, you've got a problem. Now, what a person thinks on the inside and then says from their mouths is going to spill out into their behavior, which brings us to the second category of activity, their walk. So the first is the words they verbalize. That's verse 16. Let's look at the walk that they personalize. Notice in verse 16, after describing a couple of noticeable elements of their speech, grumblers, complainers, look at this. Walking according to their own lusts-- just means strong desires, their own desires. Go down to verse 18. How they told you-- they being the apostles. I'll get to that in a minute-- how they told you, that there would be mockers in the last time who would-- here it is again-- walk according to their own ungodly lusts. Their talk points to their walk. Now, you know that walk in the Bible is a figurative expression. Just like you have legs that walk, you have a spiritual walk. And the idea of one's walk is one's lifestyle, one's outward conduct, one's behavior. I've always loved the story about Moody, DL Moody, the Chicago evangelist, having a conversation with his buddy. As they're talking, the man he's talking to has a friend who's in the background, who's kind of walking back and forth. And Moody says to his friend in the conversation, I bet your friend was in the army. And the man said yeah. How did you know that? Moody said, I can tell by the way he walks. He has that military kind of gait. And so you can tell by the way a person walks. You can tell by what they say. But you really tell by how they live, their lifestyle. And notice, they walk according to their own lusts. He says that twice in the passage. Simply means they follow their own cravings. That's their rule of life. That's their walk. It's self-centeredness. They give reign to their passion. Got to follow my passion! No, you don't. That's bad advice. Because a lot of times what you want isn't good, isn't godly, and isn't necessarily what God wants. But they walk according to their own passions, their own lusts, their own desires. He adds a little more color to that. Look in the 19th verse. These are sensual persons who caused divisions, not having the Spirit. Now, the word sensual persons, right-- that's English, sensual persons. In Greek, it's one word. Jude says, these are [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which means soul-ish persons. Now, get this. That word is important. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] was a word used in ancient Greek times, which was the opposite of another word, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] means spiritual ones. The opposite of a spiritual one is a [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], right? Paul translates it, in 1 Corinthians, chapter 2, the natural man. The natural man does not understand the things of the Spirit. So simply what Jude is saying is, they're not led by the Spirit. They think and they act like a natural man. They're driven by their own fleshly desires. Which begs the question-- because Jude said, in the beginning, these people have snuck into your church, and they're staying there. Why would anybody who's soulless and not spiritual, who's driven by their own lusts, want to hang out and stay in church? Well, I think I know why. I think it's because they want religious sanction for their sinful deeds. I think it's simply so they can say, I go to church. I'm a believer. I love God, all the while just sort of hanging around, staying there, never changing. It's never rooted. It's never real. It's never authentic. So they can live how they want to, and have stamp of religious approval. He further describes them as those who cause divisions in verse 19. Now, that's probably the consequence of letting people like that stay around. They get in groups. They talk to people. They cause dissatisfaction. They divide the church. It could even be their motive. But then, look at the very end of that-- not having the Spirit. So that kind of tells us their true spiritual condition. They're unsaved. They're unsaved. They are not regenerated by the Holy Spirit. They are spiritually dead. I bet some of them claimed to have more of this Spirit than everybody else. No, we're really spiritual. We're the real spiritual ones. Actually, you don't even have the Holy Spirit, Jude is saying. So whatever they claim theologically, in reality, they're grumbling, and murmuring, and complaining, and smooth talking, and living and acting very unspiritual. OK, this is deep stuff. This is hard stuff. As we said and every message in Jude, this is some slogging through the mud here. You know, this isn't like happy times sermon. So I know this was written to the church, authentic believers, to watch out for those apostates among them. But this is probably a good time to let this be a Warning to any one of us who claim to name the name of Christ, anybody who claims to be a Christian. Do you realize that all of us should really think if that's the case? you say, what do you mean? Doubt our salvation? No, just examine yourself. That is exactly what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 13, verse 5. Listen to what he writes. Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. I mean, just really check it out. Make sure. Is this real? Is this true? Is my profession reality? Examine yourselves, whether you were in the faith. Test yourselves, Paul writes. Keith Miller wrote this. It has never cease to amaze me that we Christians have developed a kind of selective vision which allows us to be deeply and sincerely involved in worship and church activities, and yet almost totally pagan in the day in, day out guts of our business lives and never realize it. You can be a theological Christian, while at the same time be a practical atheist. If you think about it, this is the worst form of blasphemy, to claim to know God, but live as though God didn't even exist. That's their walk. That's their words. That's their walk. That takes us to the third category, and that is the warning that Jude gives, the warnings they characterize. Look at 17. And I'm glad he says this. But you-- know he's pivoting. And next week is the really great pivot. But he says, but you-- he's turning the corner here. But you, beloved, or loved ones, the ones whom I deeply have affection for-- remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. So who are the apostles? I can think of a few. Peter's one. John's another one. James is another one, right? There were several apostles that followed Jesus. They wrote books in the New Testament. Paul said he was an apostle born out of due time. So think of the words of the apostles. Remember the words that were spoken J by the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ, how they told you that there would be mockers in the last time, who would walk according to their own ungodly lusts. Now, go back to the day of Pentecost, when the church was born. What an exciting time that must have been. Spirit gets poured out. Thousands of people get saved. The church is pure. The church is powerful. They meet daily. There's so geeked. They're so excited. They devoted themselves steadfastly to the apostles' doctrine, breaking of bread, fellowship, prayer, all that. And then you keep reading in the book of Acts, and you have the record of church history, the early church, the apostolic church. And they're evangelizing all over the world. They're planning churches everywhere. The Roman Empire is greatly impacted by that. But even in those early days, the apostles were given the privilege of seeing into the future. And what they saw terrified them. It terrified them. It was bizarre. So what did the apostles prophesy? Of the coming of Christ? Yes. Of the rapture of the church? Yep. Of the new heavens and the new Earth? Yep. Of the eternal kingdom? Yep. Of joy and bliss forever in eternity? Yes, yes, yes. But they also predicted something horrifically frightening. They predicted that the church would defect from the truth. They predicted that the church would abandon the Gospel. Jesus did. Paul did. Peter did. John did. In fact, I told you a couple messages ago, every single New Testament book, except for one-- that's Philemon-- has writings about falseness, falsehood, apostasy, false teaching. In fact they predicted it, would engulf entire congregations. It's got to have-- must have been the greatest prophetic shock to these apostles. God's letting them see into the future. Like oh, that's cool. Jesus is coming back! And oh man, joy! Peace! Wait a minute. He's telling me something else. Whole congregations? You want to know when? Want to know how quickly? So Jude is written. And about 25 years later, just 25 years, John writes a book of Revelation, next book in the New Testament. Chapter 2 and 3 are seven letters to seven congregations-- churches. Five out of seven-- so that many out of this-- were already fulfilling the predictions made by the apostles that the church would fall away, already. In the book of Revelation, the Church of Ephesus left its first love. The church at Pergamus was full of corruption and heresy. The Church of fire Thyatira was so wicked that Jesus even threatened to kill some people who were in it. The Church of Sardis was pronounced dead by Jesus. He said, I know you have a name, that you are alive. But you're actually dead. And then there's the famous church of Laodicea, that made the Lord so sick that he said, I'm going to vomit you out of my mouth. And it's still the first century. It's 95 AD. Doesn't take long, does it? Happened very, very quickly, like all the apostles said. So when he-- go back. When he says, but beloved, you remember the words which were spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ, how they told you that there would be massacres in the last times, who would walk according to their own godly lusts-- he's simply saying, just remember you were always told it would be this way. Now, here's a question. Why would the Holy Spirit inform the apostles about that? Why didn't they just talk about heaven, rapture, new heaven, new Earth, all the good stuff? Why would you tell them that? I think it's pretty easy to figure that out. He told them that so that when it would happen, they wouldn't be what? Surprised. They wouldn't be shocked. They wouldn't go something has gone terribly wrong with the church! He's saying no. Nothing is happening now that hasn't happened in the Old Testament, that hasn't happened even in heaven, that didn't happen with the children of Israel in the desert. It happened with the children of Israel after the greatest deliverance in their history. It happened in the very throne room of heaven with Satan himself. So this shouldn't shock you. That shouldn't surprise you. Now I WANT to land the plane. So let me give you two practical suggestions to walk away with, two simple words. Investigate. Number two, evaluate. Investigate others. Evaluate yourself. And when I say investigate others, let me get specific. Investigate leaders, people like me. Don't just swallow what everybody says to you because they stand on a raised podium behind a pulpit. You know, Paul the apostle congratulated the Bereans, because they received what he said with readiness of mind. But they searched the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. So investigate every leader. You go, well how do I do that? Let me give you a few simple tests. The test of character-- what is their character? The fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5-- love, joy, peace, suffering, kindness, gentleness. The test of character. Then there's the test of creed. What are they saying? What are they preaching? What these are-- what are their sermons like? If they never preach about the narrow road, if they never preach about holiness, if they are denying the historic Christian faith, or loosely talking about it, if their messages are always pep talks, and the service is just a pep rally, red flag, red flag, red flag, red flag. That's a test of creed. When they're more interested in tickling your ears rather than telling you the truth, red flag. So investigate every leader. Test of character. Test of creed. Another test is a test of converts. What's the influence of these people like? What is the effect of their teaching on followers of them. Again, I don't want to make you all you know weird around people. I just want to say this. Stay in the world, and don't be fooled by sheep costumes. Hey, not everybody who goes baa is a sheep of God. Because Jude said they're still among you. So that's the first one. Investigate leaders. Evaluate yourself. This is just a good day to ask a very basic question. Are you saved? Are you sure? In fact, it's not just a question. It is the most important issue of all of life. In 100 years, the CDC guidelines won't matter. You'll be dead. In 100 years, post-election politics won't matter. In 100 years, what will matter the most is are you saved? That's what matters. It's the most important thing that does matter. So you want to ask yourself the question, is my relationship to Jesus Christ authentic and real? Is it personal? Have I made a point in my life where I've turned my life over to him? You say yeah, I've done that. But I have a tendency to kind of go astray, and kind of wander. Welcome to the human race. I'm not saying you have to be perfect. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. But like that hymn says, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love-- there's a great little phrase in that that says, here's my heart, Lord. Here's my heart, Lord. Take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above. That's the solution, where have taken one step, 100 steps, or you just haven't taken a step toward God at all. It's only one step to him. Well, I've taken 1,000 steps from him. I need to go in a 12 step fine God program. No, it's a one step program. It's called repent. That's all it is. Turn around. It just means turn around. So you turn around, do an about face, and place your faith and trust in him. Father, thank you for the gutsiness of Jude to write this letter. He didn't want to. He didn't plan to. But he did, in obedience to you. And under the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, in such graphic language, and in such a short amount of time, with the economy of words, he was able to warn us, and to get our attention. And here we are today. Our attention, you have it. And Father, I pray for those who have wandered away from you. Maybe they made a choice earlier in their life, but they're not walking with you today. Or maybe they've never just authentically given their lives over to Jesus personally. It's not a reality in their everyday experience. It's not a real genuine thing in their life. I pray, Lord, that would change today. Hey, listen, if you're gathered with us this morning, heads bowed, eyes closed, if you've never given your life to Christ, or if you've walked away from him and God is saying, I want you to come back home, you are my beloved. You are my loved ones. I want to nurture you, and nourish you, and forgive you, and reinstate you, and throw the robe around you, and bring you in. But I want it to be real. Then come back to him. And if either one of those describes you, I want you to do something right now. If you are willing, today, to give your life to Christ, or to come back to Christ, with our heads bowed, eyes closed, I want you to raise your hand up. And I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing it for me, so I can see who you are. I can acknowledge you, I can pray for you. Raise your hand and keep it up for a minute. God bless you and you and you In the back, on my right. Anybody else? Raise that hand up, so I can see it. God bless you and you. Over on my left hand side, there are more. Who else? Raise your hand up. Do it right now. Maybe the lights up just a little bit more, in the back, on the left. That's much better. God bless you, and you. Yes sir. Anybody in the family room? If you're in the family room, there's just glass that separates us, nothing else. Anybody else? God bless you and you. Yep. You might be outside. You raise that hand up. There's a pastor right there. Just raise it up. Father, all those hands are connected to people. You love them. You love them so much. You sent your son for them. You rearranged the universe for them. We call it salvation history. You did it for us. We pray, Father, that as they come to you, that you'd receive them, you'd fill them with a sense of love and joy and peace, as they understand your love for them and your forgiveness to them. Make them bold. Make them strong. Make them vibrant, our brothers and sisters, as they come into the fold, in Jesus' name, Amen. Hey, listen. As we sing this final song, if you raised your hand, it's been a while since we've done this. I'm so glad to do it this morning. I want you to get up, let's all stand up. If you raised your hand-- and I saw 10, 15, 20 of you do that-- I want you to get up from where you're standing. Find the nearest aisle, and walk down, and stand right in the front. I'm going to lead you in a word of prayer. We're going to make it personal. We're going to make it real. We're going to make this your day, your appointment with God. It's all about that right now. So if you raised your hand, please come,Come on. Come and stand right here. [MUSIC PLAYING] Resurrection power that can save. The power in your name. The power in your name. If you raised your hand, and you're in the back, come . If you're in the family room, come through the doors. With power that can empty out a grave. There's resurrection power that can save. Come on up just a little bit. Thank you. Power in your name. Power in your name. Come on up. Come on up.We're going to wait just another moment. This is so good, so good. Just come on. You might be outside. If you raised your hand, there will be a pastor who will walk you inside. Just come and stand right here. Anybody else? Anybody else up for the free gift of salvation, freely given in Jesus, washed clean from all your past, all the guilt taken away? Anybody up for that? Anybody else? Anybody else? Now is that time.Hey, those of you who have come forward, welcome. I'm so glad to see you. I'm so glad you're here. Glad to welcome you into God's family. And I'm going to lead you now in a prayer. I'm going to ask you to say these words. Say them out loud after me. But say them, mean them from your heart, as you say them to God. It's a very simple prayer of giving your life to Christ. Say Lord, I give you my life. Lord I give you my life. I know I'm a sinner. Please forgive me. I believe in Jesus. I believe he died on a cross, that he shed his blood for my sin, and that he rose again from the dead. I turn from my past. I repent of my sin. I turn to Jesus as Savior and Lord. It's in his name I pray, Amen. Amen. Hey, man, congratulations. Antonio, can you see Antonio here? See that happy guy? He's a happy guy. You know, he was a Marine? He defended our country. Thank you for doing that, by the way. Thank you for all who served in the military. Question-- are all Marines that happy? Yeah, OK, so, but you're saved. So if you have come forward, and so many of you have, would you follow our team and Antonio right over here to a prayer room? Boy, it's so good to be back. We hope you enjoyed this special service from Calvary Church. We'd love to know how this message impacted you. Email us at mystory@calvarynm.church. And, just a reminder, you can support this ministry with a financial gift at calvarynm.church/give. Thank you for joining us for this teaching from Calvary Church. You’ve probably heard me refer to the book of Jude as the Acts of the Apostates. Apostasy is turning away from Christ by leaning on the rationale of worldly philosophy and personal preference. After going back to the Old Testament and citing examples of apostasy from Jewish history, Jude sums up the current crisis in the church and says that even Jesus’ apostles predicted it would happen. In this summary statement, Jude gives three categories of their activity. www.connectwithskip.com .

Let’s do a short study through  I John 1:5-2:2  about the importance of deception and confession. “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.  6  If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.  7  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.  8  If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  9  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  10  If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.  2  He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” After describing God as light, John then moves on to say that if we don’t walk in the light we are walking in darkness What does walking in darkness look like? (v.6) We lie. (v.6) We do not practice truth. (v.8) We deny our sin. (v.8) We deceive ourselves. (v.10) We call God a liar. Notice the progression of John’s words about walking in darkness. We lie. We live according to that lie, I.E., we don’t practice truth. Then we deny that something is a sin. We profess it so much that we deceive ourselves about the nature of our sin. And thus, we call God a lair by not believing him about our sin. There is another scripture that tells us about deception and God’s role in convincing us of our sin. It’s also by John in  John 16:8 , “When [the Holy Spirit] comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” This means that the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sin, but if we disagree with him about our sin we make him a liar. How and who do we lie to? There are three people we lie to when we walk in darkness. We lie to ourselves, we lie to others, and we lie to God. Lying is the most powerful tool that the enemy uses to keep us from Christ and salvation. Remember that the first thing Satan did in the Garden of Eden to deceive Adam and Eve was to question the truth of what God said, by saying, “Did God really say?” What does it mean to not practice the truth? Not practicing the truth means to live one’s life according to a lie and end up believing that that lie is the truth. The first lie that John is concerned with is that we lie about our sin. We justify ourselves when we excuse our sin or say that sin is not wrong or evil. If we persist in living a lie, eventually the Lord will give us up to that lie. Paul says this three times in  Romans 1:24 , 26 , 28 . “God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts… God gave them up to dishonorable passions… God gave them up to a debased mind.” When God gives up someone, he gives them up completely. Notice in Romans that he gave up their hearts (hearts), their body (Dishonorable passions), and their mind (mind). What does it mean to “Practice the truth?” It means to live our lives in obedience to God’s truth as declared in the scriptures. How do we deny our sin? We live as if the thing which is sin is not sin to us. We excuse our sin. It’s like an unmarried couple having sex. They use the excuse, “But we love each other, so it’s okay.” But it’s not okay. We make excuses and thus deny that the sin exists. In what ways do we deceive ourselves? We deceive ourselves when we persist in living in sin. Because we don’t want to experience the shame of sin, we redefine sin and deceive ourselves into thinking that what we do is not really a sin. Notice that John immediately follows this by saying, “The truth is not in us.” He does not refer to the truth as if it’s from the world. He says that the truth of God is absent from our lives. What does it mean to call God a liar? John repeats what he said about, “The truth is not in us,” with a similar phrase. He says, “His word is not in us.” The truth about our sin comes from the word of God. As an example, if we did not have the Ten Commandments, how would we know that lying or stealing are sins? How would we know they are wrong? When the word of God is not in us it is easy to sin and thus, we make God a liar about our lives. These are all traits of a person who does not truly know the Lord. Jesus said regarding a person’s character, “By their fruits you will know them” ( Matthew 7:20 ). Sometimes a person might agree that they are sinful, but they compare themselves with others who might be “worse” than them and thus justify themselves. But the truth is that even for such a person these five traits of walking in darkness reveal what kind of person they really are: one who is not truly saved. What does walking with the Lord look like?  (v.7) We walk in the light. (v.9) We confess our sins. (v.9) We are cleansed from unrighteousness. (2:1) Jesus advocates for us. Notice the logical progression of John’s words.  Light reveals our sins. We confess those sins. Then we are cleansed from those sins. And Jesus advocates for us to the Father, that we are forgiven of our sins. Let’s look at each of these contrasting solutions for our sin. What does it look like to walk in the light? Light is regularly used in the scripture as a symbol for righteousness and truth. Walking is also used as a symbol for living our lives. So, walking in the light means that we are to carry out our lives living in the truth about ourselves and about God. What does it mean to confess our sins? How much must we confess? Without confession there is no forgiveness of sin. There are times in scripture when the Lord expressed forgiveness before confession was made, such as Jesus on the cross forgiving his murderers. But generally, we cannot experience God’s forgiveness without confessing that which offends him. Confession means to tell God what we have done and agree with him that it was morally wrong. What does being cleansed from unrighteousness mean? Notice that there is a difference between being forgiven and cleansing us from unrighteousness. Forgiveness is the act of God dismissing our guilt for a sin we have committed. Cleansing from unrighteousness means that by forgiving our sin he makes it possible for us to walk in the light (v.7). Cleansing us from unrighteousness implies that we become righteous in his sight. Righteousness then is not earned by confession; it is imputed as a free gift that enables us to walk righteously. If we are cleansed from our sins, then why do we need an advocate in Christ? Isn’t confession and cleansing enough? Notice who John says we have an advocate with. (2:1) “We have an advocate with the Father.” Because our sin separates us from God we need forgiveness, then imputed righteousness, and then we need Jesus to advocate for us to the Father declaring our sin forgiven and we can walk rightly. Confession and righteousness are not the end result of the process, they open the door to renewed fellowship with God and then we can experience his love and forgiveness. With Jesus as our advocate, we come full circle in this passage, “We have fellowship with him” (v.6). So, what is John’s Big Idea? If we live a life of confession and repentance, we can be assured that we have eternal life and will always enjoy a love relationship with God. Walking in the light means to live our lives in obedience to the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. First, we must live according to scripture. If we don’t live according to scripture, then we cannot expect God to speak to us about other things. I was talking with a friend one day about his relationship to Christ He said, “I hear Christians say all the time that God told them something, or that he impressed them with something, or he convicted them of something. But I never hear God speak? Why doesn’t God speak to me? I quickly prayed in my heart for the answer he needed and asked him, “How often do you read your Bible?” He hemmed and hawed for a minute saying, “Well, my life is really busy and I don’t have a lot of free time,” and so on. Then I said, “If you’re not listening to what God has already said in his word, why would he have anything else to say to you?” At the end of our conversation he was deeply convicted. My friend had to confess the sin of not giving attention to God’s word. Once he did that, he began to grow in his faith. Applying this passage is rather simple:  We must come to agreement with God about our sin and engage in confession of that sin to God . No matter what the situation, when we are troubled by something we have done, confession restores our relationship with God. And through confession we can know God’s forgiveness and be assured that we are in right standing with him.