Guest User 1/24/21 Guest User 1/24/21

Serve the Lord

Some of the things we’ve talked about, we’re longing for this hunger for this God. And whether it’s happened or not, I love what Meister Eckhart says. He says: The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God’s love;… It’s true. It’s wonderful. That’s what we’re praying for. But then I love this. He says: …but if the soul cannot yet feel the longing, then it must long for the longing.

Series: As for Me and My House

David Stockton

Some of the things we’ve talked about, we’re longing for this hunger for this God. And whether it’s happened or not, I love what Meister Eckhart says. He says:

The soul must long for God in order to be set aflame by God’s love;…

It’s true. It’s wonderful. That’s what we’re praying for. But then I love this. He says:

…but if the soul cannot yet feel the longing, then it must long for the longing. To long for the longing is also from God.

I love that. It’s a little bit of ease, a little bit of comfort a little bit of saying, “It’s okay, young one. It’s okay if don’t have it all figured out. Just come close. Draw near to the Lord and he will draw near to you.”

We talked about what John Tyson says:

The soil of secularism doesn’t have the nutrients for the human heart to flourish in environments like this. We need more for times like this than our culture has the capacity to give us.

And that’s something that’s been so evident and true and on grand display last year, 2020 in particular, how there was so much energy, effort and ideas being offered, and yet there was no real satisfaction in anything that was being offered to us by our culture. That’s why we need the Lord and his word.

Then Mark Sayers, a guy from Australia who’s kind of like a cultural prophet in some ways, he describes the progressive vision fo the word that’s been inundating us as:

We want the kingdom without the King. We want all of God’s blessings—without submitting to his loving rule and reign. We want progress—without His presence. We want justice—without His justification. We want the horizontal implications of the gospel for society—without the vertical reconciliation of sinners with God. We want society to conform to our standard of moral purity—without God’s standard of personal holiness.

So there are all of these visions of what righteousness looks like, what justice looks like in our world. We’ve been told over and over and over again by many different people, “This is what justice looks like,” Then we have people saying, “No, that’s wrong. This is what justice looks like. This is what righteousness looks like.”

So what we’re saying is we don’t want to hear anything else. We want to silence our own hearts. We want to silence the world around us, because we want God to speak. We want to hear what his vision of righteousness is. We want to be like Jesus said in the Beatitudes. We want to hunger and thirst for his righteousness. We want to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness; because that’s the only righteousness that comes with the promise that you will be filled.

So that’s what we’re doing. We’re just really jumping in there. I’ve already got our next two sermon series dialed in. It’s all going to push us further into getting that vision for the righteousness of God. I’m excited about that. I’m not a planner so this is really weird for me to have the next few months all planned out. But I feel like it’s because the Lord is guiding us.

This is more personally, and as a church, as a pastor I felt there were a few things the Lord wanted us to focus on first. They come from 1 Thessalonians 5. They are:

As for me and my house, we will cultivate gratitude. Something so necessary ad we’ll see that in the scripture. And we talked about that two weeks ago.

As for me and my house, we will consecrate ourselves. We see that in Thessalonians 5. We talked about it last week. It was kind of a serious message. I had to shave my mustache because I didn’t feel like I could preach that message with a mustache. It just didn’t seem to fit for me. I’m weird, I know.

And then, today we’re going to be, As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

So 1 Thessalonians 5, let’s jump in there:

12 Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you. 13 Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. 14 And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. 15 Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.

And then he says in this next section, what we talked about two weeks ago, cultivating gratitude:

16 Rejoice always,
Anybody joyful today? Well, you all have to be, because the Bible says.
17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances;
Does he say that because things were great in Thessalonica? No. He says that because they needed a reminder because the circumstances were rough.
for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil.
23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

Again, that last part we talked bout last week. The sanctification, what that means, the being blameless, the testing everything, avoiding evil, clinging to what is good; and then the beautiful promise at the end there is at the end of the day you’re going to fail, but you’ve connected your life to someone who is faithful beyond measure and he will do it. He will do it. It’s such a relief to fall always into the hands of God’s grace.

Now we’re going to look at this first section. Serving the Lord. This is what Paul is writing again to the people of Thessalonica. He didn’t get to spend a lot of time with them, so I think he was a little nervous as a father in the faith, as a pastor. He wanted to give them some final instructions at the end of this letter to try to help them. This is how you keep going. This is what you put into practice after what we’ve experienced together. And in this first part, he says, “Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you.”

Now some of this might be coming because t he people that were put over the people in Thessalonica were pretty new. Paul, as far as we know, only got to spend a a few months in Thessalonica. As he was doing his missionary travels, he would go to a town, he would go to a synagogue, he would preach the gospel. And everyone int he synagogue would get all fired up and half of the people would be like, “We want to hear more.” Half of the people would be like, “We want to kill you.”

He would talk to the people who want to hear more and he would kind of form a little bit of a fellowship. And they would meet regularly. In that time, over time, getting to know the people, he would recognize who had authority, or who was really getting the gospel in clarity and he would appoint them as elders or deacons in those fellowships. And they were supposed to continue on in the Lord. And then Paul would move on. But he would be able to write back letters. They would be able to interact and he would be able to support them from afar. That was kind of the rhythm he was in.

So when Paul is saying this to the people in Thessalonica, he’s probably going, “Hey, you know those two people I put in charge? You need to be okay with them. They might be new. They might not get it right. They might not be perfect, but I’m putting them in charge over you and I want you to respect those who work hard among you. I want you to respect those who admonish you.”

Now, this is a very anti-American thing, where we have to set ourselves aside and be able to live into the kingdom culture described in the scriptures. Because we rebel, right? No taxation without representation, man! Give me some tea, we’re going to throw that in the river. We have this rebel spirit. It’s been a good thing. We have this rugged individualism. In some ways it’s served us well, but in some ways it’s really, really served us poorly.

Because, if someone, especially nowadays—and I’m sorry millennials, but this is true of you—if someone was to admonish you, you would react very interestingly. You would “unfriend” them or something. It’s true within all of us, though. If someone wants to admonish us, if someone sees something that is lacking in us and brings that to attention, whether they do it in the right way or the wrong way, in our culture these days, we don’t receive any correction at all. We just rebel about it. We make excuses for it. Or we call them some sort of bad person. Or we find fault in them and we say therefore everything they say doesn’t count. It’s an absolutely foolish way to live.

Paul is saying, “You guys need to be receptive of those admonitions, those challenges that come to you.”

Then he says, “Hold them in high regard because of their work.” So the people who are working for you. You can think about this. The leaders. Whether those are church leaders—hey! —or civic leaders or you know, people within your organization. Your bosses, those type of things, employers. This is a consistent theme throughout scripture. Whether they’re getting it right or wrong, you still honor them.

One of the key commandments in the Ten Commandments, the ten boundaries that God gave his people, right at the core of the Judeo-Christian ethic is “honor your father and mother.” And then there’s a caveat: if they get it right. No, that’s not in there. It’s not. It’s just honor your father and mother.

Now, honor, obviously you have to define. It’s not do everything they tell you to do even if it’s going against God’s law. No. Absolutely not. But even if you had to go in a different direction from them, you would do it in an honorable way. We’re supposed to honor those in authority over us. There’s a lot of humility necessary for that. And we don’t do it necessarily to make those people feel good about themselves. We do it because we love Jesus. We do it because he’s worthy and he’s asked us to do it. It’s a way that we can serve the Lord.

It’s important in our day and age, right now while there’s so much animosity built up and there’s so much frustration built up. And I’m not saying that everything our leaders have been doing and saying is right. Please. No way. But we still need to figure out how to be that alternative community, that kingdom culture, that finds a way to honor those in authority over us.

Then he goes on to say, “Live in peace with each other. And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.”

I asked Dan Riccio, our resident scholar to kind of unpack these things. He said these really come out to disciplining the ones who do anything unhelpful and also the ones who aren’t doing anything that is helpful. Right? You have both kinds of unhelpful. Ones who don’t do anything. But also the ones who are doing things that are unhelpful and damaging. And we need to admonish them. We need to give them a piece of our mind. There’s a time and a place for that. We need to speak out against, stand against, bring correction and discipline. It’s absolutely true.

But then he goes on to say we need to encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure nobody pays back wrong for wrong. Try to be kind to each other and everyone else. There’s this moment of, yes, we need to give people a piece of our mind, but then he almost goes into a much fuller and longer exhortation that we need to give people a piece of our shoulder.

And what I mean by that is, so often we come to people and we see some of the struggles they have, we see some of the things that they’re doing wrong and we’ll just kind of blast them. And though there is a time and a place for that, I think what overarchingly you see in the scriptures, and even in this little passage, you see what God really wants us to do is lend people our shoulder, to figure out what’s really hard for them, what burden they’re carrying. Instead of just saying, “Why are you doing that?” Or “Why is that so bad? What decisions have you made to bring you to this place?” Instead to just come alongside of them and say, “Can you put some of that burden on my shoulder and we could walk to gather for a little while?”

So there’s that little imagery. Serving the Lord, yes. There is a time to give people a piece of your mind, to give them the truth. But so often it’s much more important to give people a piece of your shoulder, to get your shoulder under the burden they’re carrying. Because then, over time, you’ll start to realize things. Walk a mile in their shoes and then you’re admonishing, or your piece of mind might change, and how you might change what you would speak to them.

That’s 1 Thessalonians talking to us about serving the Lord. Some practical things from Paul there. We have a whole Bible that’s always continuing to challenge us and call us to serve the Lord. Actually, the phrase, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord,” comes from way back in the Old Testament, where Joshua had led the people into the Promised Land. He formed them into a nation. It’s carrying on the work of Moses, delivering the people who were slaves into a nation. At the end of it he says for them blessings and curses. He says, “If you follow the Lord and do these things you’ll be blessed. If you don’t follow the Lord and do these things, you’ll be cursed.” So he said, “I set these things before you. But as for me and my house, we’re going to serve the Lord. We’re going to serve the Lord.”

Then you have all this time through the scriptures. Basically, think about the very beginning. What did it mean to serve the Lord for Adam and Eve, who were basically gardening. Right? Gardening and then not eating of that one tree, which didn’t work out so good.

But then you have the very next story that we kind of come across. You have a guy who’s serving the Lord, building a big boat. I guess for his family, serving the Lord was not thinking their dad or husband was an absolute fool, but kind of joining in the work.

Then you have a guy that serving the Lord for him meant leaving his father and mother’s household and the ways that would worship, and going to a place and becoming a sojourner. In some ways Abraham was the first missionary, just going to wander around and helping people know what it looked like to have a relationship with this God that he knew very little about.

And you continue on. And you have Moses. Serving the Lord meant going back to face past demons and helping to set slaves free and lead them into a Promised Land. And on and on it goes. All these different ways. The reason I’m saying this is because serving the Lord has so much creativity. There’s so much diversity. God has made you and fashioned you as a specific tool, unlike anyone else in the world. And, what the scripture tells us in Ephesians 2, he’s also formed works for you to walk in. He’s formed opportunities. He’s set things up in your life that you’re going to stumble into. And you’re going to realize you’re the only person that has been uniquely designed to actually serve in this way. God loves to see those moments when you are able to serve him in the way that he’s created you to serve.

But I can’t get up here and say that, if you really want to serve the Lord, you’ll become one of the singers. And sometimes that’s the way we feel. If you really wanted to serve the Lord, you’d be up on this platform preaching. The rest of you are just kind of so-so servers. In the scripture, the preachers? Usually not doing so well. Usually God’s having to yell at them. But each one of us is called to serve the Lord. And each one of us has to find what the Lord’s calling us to do. It’s actually a very exciting thing, a very wonderful thing.

Isaiah 58, right here in the middle of the Old Testament, we have this passage in the Message (MSG) Translation. I think this is really helpful to help us understand the heart behind serving the Lord. He says:

1-3 “Shout! A full-throated shout!
    Hold nothing back—a trumpet-blast shout!
Tell my people what’s wrong with their lives,
    face my family Jacob with their sins!
They’re busy, busy, busy at worship,
    and love studying all about me.
To all appearances they’re a nation of right-living people—
    law-abiding, God-honoring.
They ask me, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’
    and love having me on their side.
But they also complain,
    ‘Why do we fast and you don’t look our way?
    Why do we humble ourselves and you don’t even notice?’
    “Well, here’s why:
“The bottom line on your ‘fast days’ is profit.

Basically, you’re seeking the Lord as kind of a genie. You kind of rubbing the lamp with your fast to get what you want instead of really submitting to the Lord.
You drive your employees much too hard.

You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight.
    You fast, but you swing a mean fist.
The kind of fasting you do
    won’t get your prayers off the ground.
Do you think this is the kind of fast day I’m after:
    a day to show off humility?
To put on a pious long face
    and parade around solemnly in black?
Do you call that fasting,
    a fast day that I, God, would like?
“This is the kind of fast day I’m after:
    to break the chains of injustice,
    get rid of exploitation in the workplace,
    free the oppressed,
    cancel debts.
What I’m interested in seeing you do is:
    sharing your food with the hungry,
    inviting the homeless poor into your homes,
    putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad,
    being available to your own families.
Do this and the lights will turn on
    and your lives will turn around at once.
Your righteousness will pave your way.
    The God of glory will secure your passage.
Then when you pray, God will answer.
You’ll call out for help and I’ll say, ‘Here I am.’

That’s the kind of fast that God is after, that he longs to see us. You get on to the New Testament. You have Jesus, who comes on the scene, representing the perfect reality of what it looks like if God were to be here and to walk among us and to serve. He said he came to seek and serve. And what he says is the Spirit of the Lord was upon him and because he had anointed him to proclaim good news to the poor. He said, “He sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for he blind, to set the oppressed free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. “

That sounds like a lot of shoulder work to me. A lot more so than giving people a piece of his mind. And guess what? He saw clearly. And he did. He definitely stood against. He definitely spoke out against. He gave people the truth. But he got his shoulder underneath the burden of the people he walked with. It’s so amazing.

One of the most fascinating things about Jesus, I think, is when it says that the common people heard him gladly. It was like the people that have their stuff together, the people that weren’t educated, they really liked to be around him. And I think that’s fascinating because Jesus is God, totally. He knows everything. If they really could see who he was in some ways they should shudder in fear. But instead, the way he came off, full of grace and truth, it caused people to just want to be around him. I think that’s the way Christians should be, too. People that others really want to be around.

And then, James 1:27. James, the brother of Jesus, kind of sums up for us real simply what it looks like to serve the Lord, as far as he’s concerned. He says:

27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

This is kind of a joke I always say in our Explore Class—that’s a big part of what our Explore Class is—just so you know, it’s coming up soon—is to kind of help people move through a process where ultimately they’re done with those weeks and they know what God is calling them to do at this point of their life. They know what gifting the Lord has given them, and they know, maybe, how they can put those into play right now in 2021 at this church, or in this city, or whatever situation they’re in. So, if you’re not quite sure, if you have some of those questions, it would be a great class to go to.

But in there I always talk about how, at the end of this class, if you’re still not quite sure, just find some orphans and some widows and start there. Literally. I mean you’re just not going to go wrong if you go there. And if you need help finding those, we can help, for sure. But I mean, at least you could start there and you know you’re getting it right. It might be that God has something else for you, or something more specific, but that’s a great place to start. It’s a great place to start.

So, with all that being said, that’s the biblical perspective of this. The way that this has been kind of fleshed out in my life really comes down to these three words. When I think about what it means to serve the Lord, what I’ve discovered serving the Lord is, the first one is sacrifice. We actually kind of played with changing the title from “As For Me and My House We Will Serve the Lord” to “As For Me and My House We Will Figure Out What It Means to Do Sacrificial Love” but it’s a real long title. But sacrificial love is really something that we need to think about when we talk about what it means to serve the Lord. Then support. That’s when we’ll talk a little more about the shoulder. And then faithfulness. Faithfulness.

So when it comes to serving the Lord, sacrifice. That was a big deal for me. Because all of my life, growing up, until I was about eighteen years old, I was really important to myself. I mean, I still am, more so than I want, but I was one of the most arrogant, condescending individuals you could ever meet. My brothers, I have two older brothers, and they called me The Tyrant. Which is a little strange, right? Because I was small and weak. They were big and strong. And yet, still they would call me the tyrant. Because I had a lot of confidence. I had a lot of arrogance. I thought I was better and what I thought I wanted was more important than everybody else.

I had one friend. I won’t mention his name. But all my life I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him because every time we would hang out, he would start to get so uncomfortable in all these situations. But I realized, literally, what I thought was wrong with him, was actually him uncomfortable with me being so arrogant and condescending everywhere we would go. And I never realized it until later on. So, anyway… enough about me.

That was a huge shift. When I gave my life to the Lord and said, “Okay, Jesus, I want to follow you,” that was the salvation that came to my life. All of a sudden I actually was aware of others. Now, again, I know this sounds so ridiculous and horrible—and it really was. But it was like, all of a sudden, someone else’s pain mattered to me. And I cared about it.

Here, this super arrogant, self-centered, condescending individually, Jesus came and totally took over my life. I look back and this is so silly, but every Friday night when I should go try and hang out with my friends, or go and try to meet a girl or something, all I wanted to do was I wanted to go hang out with thees like fourth through sixth grade. I was working at this church and I was in charge of the fourth through sixth graders. And I just wanted them to make sure they had the funnest Friday night they could.

So I would go round up like ten of them. We’d go to Peter Piper Pizza and we’d go out there. And I thought it was so fun. I was loving it. To try to help these kids have this wonderful time. And on and on it went. I just wanted to give my life away. I just wanted to prop somebody else up. It was like this salvation had come. I just wanted to serve the Lord. And whatever they were going through was more important than what I was going through. I really did happen. This shift. And now sacrificial love was now a joy for me. I did want to decrease so the Lord could increase. It was fascinating. It was cool.

Yesterday I was watching some basketball. And I don’t know if you follow college basketball, but Baylor is like number two in the country. They’re undefeated and they’re really good and all that. They were doing an interview with one of the main guys. He’s going to go NBA and he’s going to make millions of dollars. He’s amazing. They were doing an interview with him. One of the questions this guy asked him was, “Hey, you know, we heard that on Sundays you do something very different and interesting.”

And he was like, “Yeah, yeah. I’m glad you brought that up.” What he does is, he goes and works at his church. He teaches the second and third graders every Sunday at his church. It was just so shocking for me to be sitting there and being like, “Oh, this guy. He’s so cool. This guy is so big time.” And he’s just talking about how he loves Sundays, how he just learns so much from those kids. It is just so cool to be able to do that. He feels like it’s the biggest gift in his life.

And I’m just like, “Yeah! He’s serving the Lord!” He’s actually going to have a challenge because he’s going to have a lot of other opportunities to do things. So he’s going to need to stay grounded. But he’s serving the lord. He’s serving the Lord in the face of all of those other things, which is so beautiful to see.

I remember one story too, that was so interesting when this was happening. So I had gotten serious about serving the Lord, and, like I said, I was up in Oregon, I was like a worship leader. That’s what I did all the time. Down in Phoenix, they’re like, “You’re not very good at it so we don’t want you.” But that was cool. It’s cool. So I remember I had signed up to go, they asked me at the college I was at if I would lead this concert of prayer. They needed music at this concert of prayer. And I knew it was going to be. It was basically like senior citizens, kind of going there and doing that. And I was like, “Yeah, I want to serve the Lord.”

I didn’t realize that it was Valentine’s Day. And I was invited to this party where this girl that I liked was going to be at. I didn’t know her very well, but I had been trying to get to know her. So it was this opportunity. Valentine’s Day party. And guess what? You know—same time. You know, like, am I going to go lead this concert of prayer for the senior citizens or am I going to go to this party with this girl that I wanted to get to know more?

So I decided I was going to go for the concert of prayer. And I was walking across campus and—just to add insult to injury—I was walking across campus and we crossed paths, as she was going to the party and I was going to—just randomly crossed paths. And I was like, “What the heck are you doing here?” And it was so funny just to go through that experience. But just fast forward a couple thousand years—I’m married to Brittany and I like her so much. And guess when her birthday is? Valentine’s Day! So it all worked out great for me. So now the Lord’s like, “Hmm? I got you, man. I got you.” So it was kind of fun serving the Lord.

Because, you know, when you’re young, you’re like, “If I serve the Lord he’s going to give me everything I want.” And it is true, but it’s just way down the road, way down the road. So, anyway, so sacrifice. That’s sacrifice. Think that.

If it doesn’t break your heart, it isn’t love. If it doesn’t cost you something it’s not worship. Those are important things to remember.

Support. This book, Tatoos on the Heart was super helpful for my wife and then she taught me and I read the book. Here’s what he says about serving the Lord:

Here’s what we seek. A compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry, rather than stand in judgment at how they carry it.

So this is that concept. He’s just realized. He works with gangsters in L.A. He calls them home boys. And he realized that, really what they needed—more than someone to tell them they’re bad and doing it wrong, which they were already very aware of—what they needed was someone to just get their shoulder under their burden and feel what it was like to be loved in that way. Then they could see life change.

Then the last thing is faithfulness. Faithfulness. 1 Corinthians 4:2 says the one thing God requires of his servants is they be found faithful. And moms and dads, what your kids need more than anything else from you is they need you to be faithful. What a friend needs more than anything else is someone who’ll be faithful. Faithfulness.

It doesn’t count as faithfulness until it goes against your desires or will. If I went to the Valentine’s party instead of the prayer service no one would have described me as super faithful. But when you’re tired of doing something and you keep doing it, that’s when it becomes faithfulness. When you’re afraid of doing something, but you do it anyway, that’s when it’s called faithfulness. When you won’t gain anything and maybe even be criticized or ridiculed for doing something, but you do it anyway, that’s faithfulness.

And as Jesus said that when we live and die seeking God’s will and his desires to be done instead of our own will and desires, one day we’re going to stand before him, and he’s going to look us in the eyes and he’s going to say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into your rest.”

Whether or not that’s a big deal to you now, to be able to hear those words from Jesus, I promise you, please understand that there will be a day where you will stand before Jesus and that will be the thing you long to hear more than anything you’ve ever heard before. When you stand before your Maker, who loves you so much that he served you, he gave himself to you, he sacrificed, he shows support, he’s faithful to you. And on that day, for the first time in your whole life, everything will make sense, and you will long to hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And you won’t regret one sacrifice that you made. You’ll be so thankful for every time you denied yourself for his name’s sake. Every time you got your shoulder under someone else’s burden and walked with them. Every time you served the Lord.

Just to share a little bit of a vision with you—we have a lot of opportunities for you to serve here at the church. We’re going to be laying those things out more and more. But if the Lord is stirring your heart and you know you’re not really serving the Lord, but you’d like to, please let us know. Please contact us. And we can help you. We won’t just throw you out there, but we can help you get to a place where you feel like you are serving the Lord. But also don’t need us. You can pray and see what the Lord would lead.

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Consecration

We’re going to continue in 1 Thessalonians 5. We’re in the middle of a twenty-one day season of fasting and praying for God to light a fire in our hearts that creates a hunger and a thirst for God as well as a hunger and a thirst for his righteousness. We’re doing this because Jesus promised that, if we hunger and thirst for righteousness, we’ll be filled.

Series: As For Me and My House

David Stockton

The message today that we’re going to be talking about is consecrating ourselves. I was so impressed by the Lord—and I want to say this now because we’re going to say a lot of things over the next four hours of being together (that’s a joke)—but I don’t want to miss this. Some people, I think, have forgotten that maybe ninety percent of our Christianity, ninety percent of what it means to follow is Jesus is denying yourself. It’s acknowledging that you have disordered desires that you have to say no to every single day of your life.

Jesus said, “If anyone wants to follow me, come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me.” It is so easy—I mean I feel like I forgot this last year, and many of us have—it’s so hard in the culture we’re living in to remember that you shouldn’t just “do you.” That will lead you to selfishness and emptiness. But you should do what Jesus is asking you to do and be who Jesus knows you can be.

It’s this challenging thing that we’re in, but denying ourselves is a huge part of our relationship with God for now. So, this message has a little bit to do with that. So, again, you should leave right now if that doesn’t super exciting to you.

I will say, denying yourself is not just a matter of God wanting you to be miserable. Denying yourself is actually a sign of your love for him. So he receives that as love for him. It’s a beautiful thing. He is worthy of that. And also, denying yourself gets you into the place where you’re going to be able to be with him forevermore. And every single thing that you’ve denied in this life will count as a reward in the life to come. And the glory that shall be revealed to be worthy to be compared with the sufferings that we go through now. These verses are in the Bible for a reason, because denying ourself is such a huge part of our relationship with God.

We’re trying to cultivate this hunger. We’re trying to stir up this hunger. I heard someone say recently, that challenged me a bunch—when the prodigal was hungry, remember the prodigal son who took all of his father’s stuff and spoiled it on licentious living, then he got to a place where he was hungry? When he was hungry, he went to the pigs. But when he was starving, he went back to the father. When I say we’re praying for a hunger, I’m not just praying for a hunger that will get us back to the pigs, I’m praying for a kind of hunger that will actually get us to go home to the father, because we’ve all gone astray.

And our world is full of counterfeit righteousness. Tables have been set before us, full of humanistic ideologies and popular political propaganda claiming to have the high moral ground, claiming that they can satisfy the hunger and solve the problems. But communism, capitalism, socialism, nationalism, progressivism—and all of their friends—have left us high and dry just like all of the societies who looked to them before us. They will never, can never satisfy the human soul and solve any of the problems that we have. Though we try to satisfy our souls with many things, we only truly live, grow and progress by feeding on God’s nutrient-rich word.

Amen? Amen? Scream ‘amen’ kind of deal I think is the only way I think we’re going to counteract the marketing and the propaganda and the populism of our day. In case that happens again, you can scream it.

Augustine said:

“You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

Pascal, who liked to follow science, said:

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”

And Ronald Rolheiser, who is a Catholic priests who wrote about longing, said:

“There is within us a fundamental dis-ease, an unquenchable fire that renders us incapable, in this life, of ever coming to full peace. This desire lies at the center of our lives, in the marrow of our bones, and in the deep recesses of the soul. Spiritualty is, ultimately, about what we do with that desire. What we do with our longings, both in terms of handling the pain and the hope they bring us, that is our spirituality.”

We have appetites. We have hunger. We have deceptive ideas in our world that play to disordered desires within us that are normalized and even celebrated in our central society. The challenge is great. The way Mark Sayers says this:

Mark Sayers describes the progressive vision of the world as “the kingdom without the King.” We want all of God’s blessings—without submitting to his loving rule and reign. We want progress—without his presence. We want justice—with his justification. We want the horizontal implications of the gospel for society—with the vertical reconciliation of sinners with God. We want society to conform to our standard of moral purity—without God’s standard of personal holiness.

Yes. That’s where we’re at. That’s where we’re at. It’s a problem. It’s a challenge. And those who deny it or try to ignore it will succumb to it. We're called to consecrate ourselves.

So what do we do with the dis-ease and unquenchable desires that we have within us? Well, 1 Thessalonians 5 is Paul, who spent just a few months with these people in Thessalonica, and God did something so supernatural and wonderful that it like stoked a fire in their hearts. And they all decided that they wanted God instead of what the world offered them. They all came together as a community and Paul was teaching them. But, because of persecution, Paul had to leave.

So this young church was just a few months old and Paul had to go on to the next town. But he wrote this letter, 1 Thessalonians, to help encourage them and give them what they need so they could go forward. He tried to give them the nutrients of God’s word so they could go forward and navigate the challenges of life. And these are some final instructions as he’s kind of summing up.

He says this in 1 Thessalonians 5:

12 Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you. 13 Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. 14 And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. 15 Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.

Then, as we talked about last week, we’re supposed to cultivate gratitude.

16 Rejoice always, 17 pray continually, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt 21 but test them all; hold on to what is good, 22 reject every kind of evil. 23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

We’ve broken this section into three weeks. Last week we talked about how to cultivate gratitude and how that can help stoke the fire within us, the hunger within us. This week we’re going to focus on verse 20 through 24, the last part, as this is some way that we can continue to make sure the Spirit is not quenched within us. And we’re going to talk about what consecration means. Then, next week, we’ll look at verse 12 through 15 and talk about what we’re going to do to serve the Lord.

So we’ve kind of housed this all as As for Me and My House. Going into 2021, we will cultivate gratitude. As for Me and My House, we will consecrate ourselves. We’ll figure out what that means for us in 2021. And As for Me and My House, we’ll serve the Lord. We’ll talk about that next week.

So, consecrate ourselves. This is one of the things that we have to do to make sure that the Spirit’s fire is not quenched within us and within the ones that God has given us. Ultimately, God has called you not to change America and make sure all the laws of the land are perfect. I’m not saying that’s a bad work. I’m not saying we shouldn’t put effort there. But what I am saying is that what God has called us to do is take care of the ones that he has given us.

Remember Jesus? Jesus came to this earth and had a big job. And yet, he was extremely small town. Extremely small town. And in the end, when he prayed in John 17, he said, “Father, I have kept the ones you have given me.” And that’s ultimately what God is calling you and me to do. And we are so connected, supposedly, with all of the federalists, nationalistic and even global situations that are in the world—and again, I’m not saying that’s wrong or that’s bad. But sometimes it can make us feel like that’s what we’re supposed to be engaging in. And we spend all our effort doing that and we get discouraged when we don’t see things go our way. We forget to do the really most important work, just to take care of the ones the Lord has given you, that are right there in your own house.

That’s why Jesus didn’t say, “Love everyone.” He said, “Love your neighbor.” And if everyone would just love their neighbor, guess what? Everyone gets the love of Christ.

So we’ve got to take care of the ones the Lord has given us. Start there and that will make a huge difference.

Just look at Jesus’ life. He took care of the ones the Lord had given him. And Christianity’s done pretty well the world over, yeah? He just took care of the ones the Lord gave him and — bam— the single most dominant force for good the world has ever seen in every area, every season of time, every age, every nationality, every language. It has been the single most dominant force for good in the world. It’s encouraging. So, if we can do that, we can take hope that God will take that and use it to make something great.

But here we have, “Do not treat prophecies with contempt, but test them all.” This is something we learned last year, for sure. There were all these people claiming to speak the truth or speak what was right. And we learned how important it is for us to hold on a minute and test these things. We all got duped. We all got fooled quite a bit last year by very powerful marketing campaigns that really housed something that was more poisonous and toxic. And we had to do some research. We had to test everything. We had to develop our filters so that we could hold on to the good and reject what is evil. That’s something that we need to continue. We need to develop our filters.

How do you develop a filter so that you will not be fooled? You get to know the word of God. It’s that simple. I mean, some people say you’ve got to climb up the mountain and stare at your belly button for a little while. You could try it. I don’t know. But I know this will work. This right here will work. It’s served a lot of people for a lot of time that were in much more dire situations than us. It withstood the test of time. It’s trustworthy. It’s true. And it can help us so much filter out what is not good and what is not right. The Bible actually describes itself as a sword that can cut through joint and marrow and really get to the heart of everything. So we’ve got to know the word of God, absolutely.

“May God himself, the God of peace sanctify you through and through.” I love what Paul is saying to these people. He’s not saying, “You need to go and sanctify yourselves.” He’s saying, “I pray that God will sanctify you.” Just like when Jesus said to his disciples, “If you follow me, I will make you into fishers of men. All you have to do is stay close to me. I will do the work to make you into the person that you’re supposed to be.”

So sanctification is an important process of consecration. We need to be set apart. We need to be holy. We need to be other. We need to be alternative. We need to realize that following Jesus is going to require us to go against the grain. And it may require that more and more and more, depending on how our society goes. But that’s what we’re called to be, a peculiar people.

Then, lastly, he says, “May your whole spirit, body and soul be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus.” All of those matter. Body, soul and spirit are all extremely important. Your whole being is to be kept blameless.

Now this is tricky, because we think, “How am I going to be blameless? You don’t know what I’ve done. You don’t know what I’m dealing with.” It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to God because your unrighteousness will never be more powerful than his righteousness. And through the blood of Jesus Christ, his righteousness is applied to you. How about some good news right there? The blood of Jesus, applied to your life washes out, cancels out everything. In fact, now when God sees you, he sees you as blameless, he sees you robed in the righteousness of Christ when we come to him.

And his whole goal, the work of the Spirit, the work of the word of God in our lives is to get us to the day when we go stand before Jesus, we are presented as a spotless bride. I know it’s a little weird for some of us guys, but just take the analogy. A spotless bride. Blameless. It’s what God’s plan for your life is, if you’ll hold on to him. So this is what Paul was encouraging them with.

So I want to kind of unpack consecration a little bit more. We’re going to do three things. We’re going to think biblically, which is so important for us these days. Think biblically. Think theologically. We’ve got a lot of help. A lot of people have fought some of these battles and sorted through some of this chaos before, and they’ve got some good things to say to us. And we’re going to think practically, because it’s 2021 and we’ve got to leave this place. I mean, leave the church, that’s all I’m saying. You have to walk out of this place. Not like, whoa, leave this place. Not being crazy. Test those prophecies, you know? Whatever. But think biblically, think theologically, and think practically.

First of all, biblically. It’s so important for us to be thinking biblically these days. The Bible has a lot to say about consecration. First of all—brace yourself—when I say consecration, thinking biblically, you should be thinking about circumcision. Now, it’s very rare times where any pastor is going to tell you you should be thinking about circumcision. But if you think about what God was doing in his people, he said to Abraham, “I want you to circumcise every male in your household, and this is going to be a sign that you belong to me. This is going to be a sign of my relationship with you. This is going to be part of your consecration. This is going to be part of your sanctification. I’m calling you out. I’m calling you to be different than all the other nations. The reason I’m doing it is because I want you to be an example of what it’s like to be in a relationship with me, for all of the other nations.”

So Abraham circumcised everybody, including himself. Whoa. And that circumcision carried on as a sign of God’s covenant with the nation of Israel. And there are all kinds of ramifications you can make, but absolutely, one of them is sexual. God wanted his people to be very different sexually than every other nation. Because every other nation didn’t have any boundaries as far as sexuality. Even in their worship of their gods, there was often a sexual element. But God said, “My people are going to be very different sexually.”

Sexuality is a hugely important reality for the flourishing of human society or the demise. When God created the world and there was nothing but goodness, what he did to make sure that goodness could be maintained was he created something in his image and he called it male and female, nothing else. And as soon as we start messing with male and female, we lose the greatest picture of the image of God that he gave us. And then he said that male and female, to even take this further, “I’m going to put them together in some sort of sacred, holy covenant of marriage, where they’re going to become one. And they’re going to produce family. And if everyone will just take care of their own family, then everyone will be taken care of and the goodness can be maintained.” It’s that simple.

Yet, we’re moving the boundaries. We’re wanting to change what God has set in order for our greatest freedom and our greatest flourishing. So he calls his people to consecrate themselves in what seems like very radical, even challenging, self-denial, sacrificial ways, but it’s not because he doesn’t love us. It’s because he’s creating the boundaries that we need for the greatest freedom and the greatest human floushing.

So not only think about circumcision—we’ll move on—think about Samson. Samson was called to be different, to be set apart. So he had this Nazarite vow in the scriptures, which was, he wasn’t supposed to cut his hair, he wasn’t supposed to go near any dead thing, and he wasn’t supposed to —anyone? Anyone? I’m saying that because I can’t remember the third one right now. I remembered it first service. No alcohol! He wasn’t supposed to go near any fermented thing. Whew. Almost had to quit the message right in the middle there. Just kidding. Samson. Nazarite vow.

Think about Daniel. Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego. They’re taken from their place. They’re young men. They’re pulled into Babylon and they’re getting to see what basically, you know, total indulgence looks like. Babylonian culture was powerful, luxurious, all of those things. And these young men just felt this need to consecrate themselves. They said, “We will not eat the king’s meat and we will not drink his wine.” And they consecrated themselves against all the others. And, in the end, they were shown to be wiser, stronger and faster, but they had that call to consecrate themselves. They understood the need, in that moment, that they would be completely overcome by the power and persuasion of that culture if they didn’t real quickly figure out how to cultivate hunger for God. They consecrated themselves.

In the Old Testament, think about Sabbath. Think about tithing. These were things that set apart that community, that they would give a tenth of everything that they made. They would just go and give it to the priest. They would give it to the community at large. That was so bizarre, so different. And that carried on.

And Sabbath. Every once in a while, one day a week they would just chill, and just rejoice and thank God for all that’s been given to them. And there were times where those lines were blurred in Israel’s society and it ended up causing them to go into exile. God was very serious about those things. God considered it robbery when they would not give him a tenth of what they had produced. These were things that would set them apart.

Now go to the New Testament. In the New Testament, the best thing, I think to do is to think about the book of Acts community. And, again, if this is hard for you to understand, you need to read your Bible more. I know I’m going through these things quickly, but you should be reading your Bible. You should be cultivating that in your life, so that when we talk about these things, you’re, “Oh, yeah, yeah. I know what you’re talking about. The book of Acts community.” This is basically the first church, and they were set apart. There was one time where it says that all the people around that first church were in awe and in fear of them, and none of them dared join them. I know that sounds a little weird. They weren’t saying that no one was joining them. They’re saying that people were a little unsure of what to do about them. And daily the Lord was adding to their number those that were being saved.

They were such an alternative community. They were a city on the hill. They were the salt and the light in their communities. It was tangible and evident. And the four things that stuck out were, they would gather together, all of them. And it wasn’t just gathering together that was so fascinating. What was fascinating is that they would gather together as rich and poor and everybody felt the same. They would gather together as Jew and Gentile. But they would love each other. They would gather together, though they all had different political backgrounds or ideologies, but it was no problem when they met together, because there was something that was stronger than all of those. That was the bond of the Spirit and the unity of Christ. And it was remarkable to everybody else who couldn’t get along. Can I get an amen here? You see how this is working out, right?

So the second things was they shared everything in common. Again, a further explanation of this tithing idea. They constantly brought things in together to make sure everybody was okay. They were generous. They were kind. They were not greedy. And it was a puzzle. It was confusing to all those who were trying to get ahead and get rich. And they cared for the sick and the poor. Like, literally, they would go and take care of lepers, even though, at that time they thought leprosy was contagious and could kill them, it didn’t stop them. When the plagues would hit and those type of things, they would go and get the dead and bury them, risking all of that danger. To where Roman writers were saying, basically, “Those Christians are taking better care of the Roman dead, poor and sick than we are, and we’re the empire.” Amen? Amen? Amen?

And then the last thing, and probably the most fascinating to everybody at that point that caused them to be so set apart and so different was the concept of enemy love. When the experienced persecution, hatred, disadvantage, whatever it was, they would respond with love. They would respond with the good news of Jesus Christ. Enemy love. Picture better than anywhere else when Stephen is being martyred and the religious leaders are throwing rocks at him. And they will keep throwing rocks until he’s not breathing anymore. And as the rocks are hitting them, he just cries out, “Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.” He’s full of love for them.

It was radical. It was beautiful. It was alternative. It was different. It was set apart. It was consecrated. And it’s our inheritance. It’s our heritage to live up and into that. It’s so necessary for us to figure out consecration.

So that’s thinking biblically. Now let’s think theologically. This might be a little bit painful, but hopefully not. Theologically. Basically, when we talk about soteriology, that’s the study of salvation, we know that Jesus is the Savior. He came. To save us. But the salvation that is unpacked in the scriptures anymore through theology has three different aspects to it. Salvation that we experience with Jesus first of all is justification.

That’s what we receive. When we receive Jesus, when we confess our sins and say, “Jesus, I need you,” and we call on his name, we are saved. But the first step is justification, which basically, now God looks as you just as if you never sinned at all. His righteousness, the blood of Jesus is that powerful, that it completely wipes out all debt, all sin forevermore. Even to the extent where, if you sin in the future, bam, his price that he paid is counted for that as well. And so you are justified, you are seated in heavenly places. It’s done. Your names in the book. Over. Justification. It’s one of the greatest things to unpack and understand.

But when I hang out with you, I don’t see you that way. There is a reality. We all know inside of us, though we have been justified, though we are saved, though we know our place is in heaven, we’re all good to go with God, we look in the mirror and say, “There’s still some things wrong.” I hang out with you a little while and I’m like, “There’s some things wrong.” You get to know me and you’re like, disappointed.

Because there is another aspect to our salvation that is called sanctification. And sanctification is the journey. It’s the work of God every day in the life of a believer to renew them, renew them back into their original design, to get them back into the image of who God wants them to be. Ultimately, the image of Christ. And it’s this daily work. Sanctification. Sanctification. Where God is renewing, he’s setting us apart, he’s making us holy. And that’s the work that God does every day.

The way the Westminster Catechism says it, again, a theological document. It says sanctification is…

“…the work of God’s free grace,…”

Hallelujah! God didn’t make us figure this out. He said, “You’re not going to figure it out, so let me send my Son to do it.

…whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God,…

I just explained some of that. And catch this, this is so important:

…and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.”

This is where what I said in the beginning comes into play. Ultimately, the goal of the work of the Spirit of God, yes, it’s to get you to be able to live beautifully and wonderfully and experience all that God has for you; but one of the main things that the work of the Spirit in your life is supposed to do is hep you win the battle with your disordered desires. It’s to help you deny yourself so that you’re not overcome by the sinful nature and desires that are housed still within you until the day you die or Jesus comes back.

I mean, that’s good/bad news, right? It’s bad news because the truth of the Scripture is, until the day we die we’re going to have some of these desires. We’re going to have some of these things within us that long for the things that will kill us and destroy our relationship with God.

But the good news is, you’re not alone. The good news is God puts his Spirit inside you, puts his community around you. He puts his words in you to help you combat those things so that you don’t have to succumb to those things.

And just because you have some of those disordered desires does not disqualify you from living under righteousness and being extremely fruitful in your life. And, somehow, even those disordered desires, the only reason the Lord leaves them there is because he knows they’re going to work in you a dependency on him and a sympathy for those around you, or an empathy for those around you, that’s going to be very, very fruitful.

But you’ve got to understand, there are deceptive ideas in our world that play to disordered desires within us that are normalized and being even celebrated in our sinful society. And we need that sanctification process.

The really great news is there’s one more aspect to the soteriology, the salvation, is glorification. You’ve got justification, sanctification, glorification. Glorification, summed up real easy, is when Jesus comes back or we go to be with him, no more sinful nature. No more disordered desires. We are free forevermore to just live into the righteousness and goodness of God. Amen? Amen.

Lastly, thinking practically, I’m just going to give you a little illustration here of thinking practically about consecration. Where I live, some of you have been over at my house, by where I live, there are thirteen humans, including me. Most of them are smaller. There are twelve chickens. There are two little goats. There are two giant tortoises. I think they’re still there. They’ve been underground for a while lately. There’s a bearded dragon. I don’t see him very much, but I guess he’s there.

One of the things we’ve had to do is we’ve had to build some pens, right? Chicken coop, a goat pen, built some fencing around. And we’ve done this because we’ve had animals before that haven’t made it. They haven’t made it because we have coyotes and we have bobcats and we have raccoons. They’ve got to eat too, you know?

One of the things that I’ve had to do is I’ve had to get really good at building these coops and these pens to make sure the bad guys don’t get in there to get the animals, right? And I build them, and that’s fine and all, but raccoons are smart. They’ve got opposable thumbs and they’re like, rrrrr rrrr, little by little, rrrr, rrrr, and so I have to go and do boundary maintenance. I have to continue to mend the fences. I have to continue to check and see where the holes are and build those things back up.

And I also have to do something else. I had to get a German Shepherd. It’s actually my daughter’s dog. His name is Lucky. And I leave him out there at night. He wants a job. He’s a German Shepherd. He loves jobs. And he goes out there at night and he sits in a chair. Literally, this big comfy chairs and he just sits there and watches. It’s a cartoon, but it’s my life. And we’ve got no problems. If I’ll mend the fences, if I’ll do the boundary maintenance and I’ll keep Lucky out there, we don’t have any problems. And what we’re supposed to do for our own souls and four the people that the Lord has given us, is we’re supposed to be people who do boundary maintenance.

And our society now is wanting to completely erase all of the boundaries. They think that freedom is “no boundaries.” They think that, if we really loved the chickens and the goats, we would get rid of all of those things that are holding them in. And what has happened to every society before us who’s done that, who’s tried to throw off the old, archaic, oppressive word of God and biblical boundaries—they get decimated. They get destroyed. God knows what he’s doing. He has set the boundaries in a place, not to limit our joy, but to give us the most freedom possible in this life, and to set up the greatest chance for human flourishing. But the boundaries are important.

And we, as people of God, are to be about boundary maintenance. I don’t know how to legislate righteousness. I don’t know how to vote in this or that. I mean, obviously the Democrat and Republican parties are both lost. Neither of them house the word of God. You might think one does more than another. But go ahead and talk to another Christian, and they’re going to convince you another way. We’re not building that. We’re building the Kingdom of God. And I think we should fight the federalist and nationalistic battles. We should fight for Arizona. We should fight for the things we believe in, absolutely. But, at the end of the day, what we’re measured on is what we’ve done with the ones that the Lord’s give us.

As for me and my house, we will consecrate ourselves. We will do boundary maintenance. As for me and role as a father, I will let my daughter have a phone. And I will do boundary maintenance every half hour for the rest of her life. And I do. Because there are coyotes. There are raccoons. There are bobcats. And way worse.

And it’s not that I just create these boundaries and suffocate her. But I have to figure out how to create boundaries and do boundary maintenance, and then teach her to do that for her own soul. Because, at some point, she’s gone. And if I haven’t helped her learn how to do boundary maintenance and see the beauty and wonder of it all, it doesn’t matter what I said or didn’t. And that’s what we need to be doing.

Just to unpack it a little bit more, as we’re thinking practically here. Ten Commandments. Start there. Start there. But not in King James Version. Like, start with “You shall have no other Gods before me,” and figure out what that means. “Remember the Sabbath.” Figure out what that means for you right now. “Honor your father and mother.” And on and on. Unpack those things. Those are boundaries that God has given us for human flourishing. And, ultimately, those things have become the Judeo-Christian ethic.

And the Judeo-Christian ethic is the best thing that has ever been given to a society. Wherever the Judeo-Christian ethic has been applied and embraced as a society, you have experienced freedom and human flourishing. Ever heard of Israel? Against all the opposition and challenge that they have experienced, if you go there, there is flourishing and there is freedom. And the American experiment was that same thing. Let’s apply the Judeo-Christian ethic in a Constitutional governmental form. And what has it caused? It has caused freedom and flourishing, no doubt about it.

And yet, we want to get rid of it. We want to throw it off as oppressive, abusive and archaic, and call it progressivism. As for this house, Living Streams Church, as long as I have breath in me, no. It will not live here. I don’t care if there’s two people left in this church, it will not live here. I don’t care if they shut us down. I don’t care what happens, that’s not going to happen here. We’re going to be about boundary maintenance. And we have really good boundaries, and a really kind God, who knows how to get us where we need to be. And I’m so thankful that, ultimately, I’m going to lose the breath in my lungs. And, ultimately, I can talk big, but I’m nothing. But the last verse in this section says, “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.”

So, in my daughter’s life, ultimately, I can try, but it’s a promise of my father that he’s going to do it. And it’s a promise of the father that, if you let him, he will do it.

If you’re working ninety hours a week in pursuit of the almighty dollar, understand that you move the boundaries. The boundaries in your life are in the wrong place. There may an underlying issue that’s driving you to move the boundaries in the wrong place. So boundary maintenance would involved moving the boundary back to the right place, as well as addressing the underlying heart issues that drive you to move the boundary to the wrong place.

If someone has a sexual partner outside the boundaries of scripture, the covenant of marriage, one man, one woman, then boundary maintenance would be to end the out-of-boundary relationship, deal with the issues driving you to engage in that behavior, and do the ministering of healing the heart of everyone affected by the moving of those boundaries.

None of this disqualifies you. It’s not like God said, “Hey, you moved the boundary. Sorry.” It’s just a matter of coming home. It’s just a matter of returning to the Father, and he’ll say, “Okay, let’s get the boundaries back in place. Let’s start doing the healing. Let’s get back on track.” And here we go. That’s the good news of Jesus.

Let’s pray. Let’s just bow our heads and listen in as we close. And as you’re trying to hear from the Lord, I want to read this verse and just see if something pops out as maybe the Spirit is highlighting this. It’s Galatians 5 [paraphrase]:

The things your sinful old self want is sexual sins, sinful desires, wild living, worshiping false gods, witchcraft, hating, fighting, being jealous, being angry, arguing, dividing into little groups and thinking the other groups are wrong, false teachings, wanting something someone else has, killing other people, using strong drink and wild parties, and all things like this. I told you before and I’m telling you again that those who do these things have no place in the holy nation of God. But the fruit that comes from having the Holy Spirit in our lives is love, joy, peace, not giving up, being kind, being good, having faith, being gentle and being the boss over our own desires.

Jesus, we are undone before you. As we hear this, we are reminded of how weak and frail we are against the challenges in our lives. But Lord, we don’t lose heart. We don’t despair because you, you are able and you are willing and you are for us and you are with us, no matter what we’ve done. So restore unto us the joy of our salvation and renew a right spirit within us. Create in us a clean heart, God. And show us where we’ve allowed the boundaries to be moved and help us put them back in place, Lord. We pray all this in your name, Jesus. Amen.

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Guest User 10/4/20 Guest User 10/4/20

Acquainted with Grief

Good to be with everybody. Thanks for coming. Thanks to all the online folks joining in. We need a “Hoo” and a “ho” for them. I don’t know if they could hear it, but I did. It was cool.

We’re trying to figure out how to go forward as a church. Actually, after September, Living Streams has officially been going for 36 years. That’s something. I started it when I was seven years old. No, obviously I wasn’t there at the start.

John 11
David Stockton - October 4, 2020

Good to be with everybody. Thanks for coming. Thanks to all the online folks joining in. We need a “Hoo” and a “ho” for them. I don’t know if they could hear it, but I did. It was cool.

Mark Buckley and Kristina Buckley started the church 36 years ago. They did so in their living room up near like 32nd Street and Bell. If anybody’s ever heard of that part of town. That’s where it started and it’s been 36 years and here we are today. Mark, who I still talk with all the time, he’s still a big part of the church here. He was saying he’s never seen church have to go through anything like this in his 36 years, or whatever. But this church was birthed out of a challenging situation, which is going to hopefully help unpack a little bit of where we’re going today with the message.

Mark and Kristina were loving life up in Northern California, Marin County. It’s where Mark had grown up. They had a church going and it was really great. But his son was having some severe asthma. So his son came to visit some friends down in Phoenix and his asthma cleared up. So they had a really, really challenging, disrupting, difficult, hard decision to make. Would they stay where they were, where everything was wonderful (so they thought), or would they completely uproot and change their lives for the sake of their son. And they did. They ent to Phoenix, to the desert, and the Lord was faithful to them. They ended up starting Living Streams and here we are today.

It’s a cool story. But again, it’s out of disruption, out of challenge, out of suffering, out of heartbreak, God was able to change the trajectory a little bit for their life. They would look back now and say it was great. So be aware that some of whatever you’re going through right now could be the Lord just kind of changing the trajectory a little bit, kind of getting us in a better trajectory.

We know that at Living Streams. That’s something we’ve been praying for. We want to follow God. We want to see where he wants to take us. We don’t want to go back to the way things were before this year. We want to go forward into whatever those new wine skins might look like. Because we want to catch every drop of the new wine the Lord wants to pour out. We don’t want to miss a thing.

So that’s what we’re doing. We’re doing a lot of that. And we have this Saturday this thing called an Explore Class. Normally it’s like an eight-week class. But we’re going to do it in one morning. 8:30 to 1:00 pm. We’re going to have all the sessions kind of jammed I not one. But we’d really like to invite you to join in with the church here. We’re trying to make sure we’re not a church where you can just come watch a show and go.

We really do think that the only way we’re going to build something beautiful here is if everyone joins in. That we knit our lives together in some ways. That’s going to take some time together. It’s going to take some learning about each other. It’s going to take everyone caring for another person or two in the church. Because the pastors here, they’re awesome, but they’re not that good you know. They need some help. We all need help caring for each other. Let alone the challenges in the world that we’re dealing with and the people who are going through tough times.

One of the guys in our church, who’s been around a long time, his name’s Marty Caldwell, and he sent me this quote that I thought was pretty good at trying to put words to what we’re trying to do as a church here. It’s from this guy Trueblood, who was not writing in 2020, post-COVID or whatever—we’re not even post yet, we’re still like, I don’t know where we are. Nobody knows where we are.

He was writing about his time, but I think his words ring so true today. He says:

We cannot revive faith by argument, but we might catch the imagination of puzzled men and women by an exhibition of a fellowship so intensely alive that every thoughtful person would be faced to respect it. If there should emerge in our day such a fellowship, wholly without artificiality and free from the dead hand of the past, it would be an exciting event of momentous importance.

This is what we’re praying for. This is what we’re trying to live into. We know it can only happen if everybody joins in. We really have to believe in the priesthood of all believers. Everyone who comes to be a part of this church needs to see themselves as a full-fledged, qualified priest of the Lord, who is supposed to be taking part in building healthy local church or churches, and also creatively expanding God’s kingdom.

The way that we try and flesh that out, kind of our mission statement is we want to put God’s glory on display, both as an organization, as well as individuals within it. We want to build courageous people, both as an organization, as well as individuals within it. And we want to engage in society’s pain. This year we’ve had a lot of opportunities to engage in society’s pain in many different facets. It’s been challenging, but it’s been beautiful, because the opportunities have abounded.

And we also want to make sure that we help everyone understand that they have to take seriously their own spiritual formation. COVID, if it has taught us nothing else, it taught us that a basically we can’t be dependent on one hour a week type church. It’s just not the way it’s supposed to be. Never should have been that way. So you take that away and we’re left to say, “What does our fellowship look like? What does our Christianity look like?” I’m so glad the Lord did that because we get a sneak peek into it, to see what it’s all about.

We have to take seriously our own spiritual formation. It is good that we have other teachers and other people that can help us. But at the end of the day, the responsibility is each one of ours to make sure our lives are taking in and receiving and practicing out what will make us more into the image of Christ. It’s our responsibility.

And, if we know that the scriptures are true and Jesus’ life is our example, we know it’s important for us to take seriously the spiritual formation of those the Lord is giving us. Right now, whether you like it or not, God is giving you at least one, if not two, maybe three people that he’s counting on you to shepherd, to care for, to help them form into the image of Christ. Jesus took on twelve. You’re not Jesus. I’m not Jesus.

It can get so overwhelming, trying to take care of everybody all of the time. That’s not what God is calling us to do. I think the next big thing for the Church is trying to figure out how to do one-on-one discipleship again because that’s the way the kingdom really does it. So we want to get that figured out. We want to do that. We want to join in with that effort.

We need to remember that Church is not what Christians do. What we’re doing right now is not what Christians do. This is just supposed to help Christians do what they’re supposed to do. This is just the little orange slice and Gatorade cup on the marathon. That’s all this is. You stop in, get a little orange slice and Gatorade, you get back out there, keep running. It’s so important that we catch that.

God does not want to make you good at church. These are a couple of our sayings that we keep bringing up. God does not want to make you good at church. For some reason, as Christians, we think this is what we’re supposed to be good at right here. But God doesn’t want to make you good at church, he wants to make you good at life, because life takes up a lot more hours than just being at church. And I’m here all the time. I don’t live here. Some people think I live here. I don’t live here. That house over there that’s super nice—not my house. No way.

But God wants to make us good at life. He cares much more about the other hours, than just what we’re doing when we’re sitting in a pew at church. Not to say this isn’t important and good and great times, but we’ve really got to understand this if we’re going to get to that kind of vision that Trueblood was laying out or the vision that the book of Acts laid out, or the vision that’s in God’s heart for his people.

That being said, sign up for Explore Express on Saturday. I can’t promise you it will be the most exciting time of your life, but it will be rich, it will be good and maybe even help you get through some of that trajectory stuff that we’re talking about.

John Chapter 11. Let’s dig into this. John is basically Jesus’ best friend, would be a good description of him. He is an apostle and he walked with Jesus. Jesus left and he continued to walk with the risen Christ in spirit. Then, at the end of his life, he’s writing this book as an evangelistic effort to try and help people who read it, whoever might read this. Maybe ten people. Maybe twenty people. I don’t know what John had in mind, but he was writing this so that some people would read this and they would believe. Little did he know there’d be quite a few people reading it in quite a few different languages, including us in 2020 Phoenix, Arizona, who are reading this to try and figure out what he’s saying about Jesus.

So, I have five points I want to go through. Basically—I say this sometimes in our church, but it would be a good time to leave right now if you’re not wanting to get too serious about Jesus. We’re login to talk about suffering and God’s view of suffering, which is very different than an American view of suffering. Or fill in the blank view of suffering. So we’re going to look at suffering.

These are the points that we’re going to bring out and unpack. First of all:

Being in love with God, being in the love of God does not keep you from suffering.
Suffering is one of God’s favorite environments to reveal his glory.
a. Jesus is not opposed to allow us to suffer or remain in our suffering on this side of heaven.
b. Jesus is not opposed to lead us into challenging, difficult, and even life-threatening situations.
Suffering reveals and refines the quality of our faith.
Our suffering grieves Jesus. (In more ways than we’ll ever understand.)

So first one, being in the love of God does not keep you from suffering.

1 Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

And there you have it, right there. Jesus loved Lazarus very much. Jesus was very close to Lazarus, Mary and Martha. Jesus healed a lot of people, but these were Jesus’ people. These were the ones he spent time with day and night. When Jesus would come to the festivals, he would stay at their house, which was not far from Jerusalem. Jesus was very intimate in relationship with these people. He loved them with a natural, kind of humanistic love, not just the God agape love. He was friends with them. He enjoyed their company. They enjoyed being with him.

And there are a couple of kind of friends that are real important to have. It’s real good to have a friend who defends you, who never wants you to ever have to suffer. I have a couple of friends like this. One of my friends, I was on a basketball team with. We were playing this game and things were getting kind of hot. It was getting towards the end. I think it was a pretty close game. We were all down on this end and, I don’t know how, but somehow a guy got a steal. I can’t remember, it was probably I lost the ball and I just don’t remember. I blocked it out. Anyway, he gets the ball and this guy is racing down all by himself. Everyone’s over here and I take off running, I’m trying to stop this guy from getting a layup. He’s coming in and he comes in really hard. And I came in to kind of make sure he wasn’t going to make it. I stood in his way and did one of these. We collided and we both fell on the ground.

I got up and he got up real fast and was coming at me, like he was going to, you know, whatever he was going to do. And I was standing up and was getting ready to brace myself, and all of a sudden, my friend was in between us. Just like, voom, standing there. He’s a big guy and, at one point he was very fast, he’s not as fast anymore, but this was lightning speed. He was not going to let anything happen to me at all. He’s a lot bigger, so this guy who was coming at me was feeling very strong, but then when the big guy came he wasn’t feeling so strong anymore and he just kind of walked on. Because I’m not big and my friend’s big. I felt loved. This guy, this dude’s got my back. The rest of the game, anytime anything would go down he would kind of stand next to me. He was just making sure his presence was felt. It’s good to be loved like that.

But there’s another kind of friend, also, that loves you enough to kind of tell you when maybe you’re doing something wrong and suffering for it, they’re going, “Hey, I think this might be good for you. I think this might be a good wake-up call for you.” They’re able to tell you and kind of help perceive, “Hey this challenge that you’re going through, I think maybe this could end up being a good thing for you. And I’ll just kind of be here with you.”

And what you find out about Jesus is Jesus really is both. He’s both kind of friends. He defends us at every point. But he also loves us enough to every once in a while say, “Hey, I need you to know something. I need you to learn something. I need someone else to learn something or know something. And so I’m going to allow you to go through this thing.”

Just because you’re in the love of God doesn’t mean you’re not going to get sick. When I first started really following Jesus, those next two years were some of the most broken-hearted years of my life. But now, for the first time, I was going through a broken heart with the love of God and it was very different. Very different.

Number two: suffering is one of God’s favorite environments to reveal his glory. So verse 4:

4 When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”

Now this is, again, kind of bringing us back to two weeks ago when we talked about the man born blind. And they said, “Is it this guy’s fault or his parents’?” And Jesus said, “No, you’re totally asking the wrong question. This suffering that this guy has gone through his entire life was all about this moment right now, where he is going to receive his sight, and you’re going to know the power of God, and I’m going to talk with him, and he’s going to learn about the Messiah.”

It was this beautiful, beautiful moment. You’ve got to understand suffering is sometimes the time where God loves to show up and reveal his glory the most. And so suffering and God’s glory go hand in hand. He is the Savior. His light and goodness and truth shine the brightest in a backdrop of darkness, evil and deceit.

And in John 14, Jesus goes on to teach his disciples, just after this, He says, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled when you’re going through really hard times.” When you’re going through those 2020’s. I wish it was like John 20:20 because then I could post it and it would go so viral. But it’s like John 14:1. Nobody gets it.

He is basically saying, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled.” Track with me. Don’t let your hearts be troubled when you’re going through hard times. But he says, “Believe in me and believe in God, and know that in my Father’s house there are many mansions. And I’m going there to prepare a place for you.”

So in this kind of way that John reveals what Jesus is teaching, Jesus is basically saying, “I want you to remember something when you’re going through suffering, when you’re going through hard times. Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Believe. Keep trusting. Keep hoping all the way until the end. And know that not only am I with you in that, and not only am I going to do good in that, but know that somehow in the way that you are faithful in your suffering now, it is resulting in some sort of building happening in the next life. What you’re doing in this life actually does impact what happens in the next life.”

Again, I can’t talk too much about that because I don’t know much about that except for the fact that whatever we experience in that next life is going to make the suffering we experience in this life something that we just laugh at or don’t even remember. Kind of like Jesus is risen from the dead and they’re like, “Hey,Jesus, remember that cross and all the suffering that you went through?” And he’s like, “Eh, kind of. But what I’m remembering more is all of the people that have been saved from the stain of sin and death. What I do remember is watching sin being peeled back, shriveled back. I remember all the undoing of all the injustices that have ever happened. It was for the joy set before him that he endured the cross.

And that’s what we should do too is remember that in suffering, in some ways, and this seems a little strange—but Christians are strange—when suffering happens we should have a part of us that goes, “All right. Get your eyes open. Any minute now we’re going to see something beautiful.”

Now, that doesn’t mean then we say, “Oh and suffering doesn’t exist and you should never hurt.” No. I’m saying a little part of you should have that little bit of hope rise up. And in 2020, we are hurting. Some of you are hurting very seriously. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t feel that. That is reality. That’s okay. But as a believer, there should also be just a little bit of a silver lining. There should just be a little bit of a whisper deep inside your soul that says, “I know God’s about to do something awesome.”

Number three:
a. Jesus is not opposed to allow us to suffer or remain in our suffering on this side of heaven.
b. Jesus is not opposed to lead us into challenging, difficult and even life-threatening situations.

5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was…

He didn’t go help. He didn’t run to their rescue.

…he stayed where he was two more days, 7 and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”
8 “But Rabbi,” they said, “a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?”
9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. 10 It is when a person walks at night that they stumble, for they have no light.”
11 After he had said this, he went on to tell them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.”
12 His disciples replied, “Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.” 13 Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep.
14 So then he told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, 15 and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.
16 Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

Now that sounds like Thomas, wait, he’s getting something right here. It’s not. It’s sarcasm—total sarcasm. Thomas is basically like, “Oh, yeah, this sounds so fun. Let’s go with Jesus so we can all die with him!” He’s not excited about it because he knows that going with Jesus back into Judea is possibly going to get them killed.

So Jesus stayed when Lazarus, who he loved, and Mary and Martha, who he loved, were going through their agony and suffering. He didn’t rescue them. And he describes to the disciples, “And I’m even glad.” Like, “I was talking with the Father and it was hard for me to stay here, but now that I’m hearing where you guys are at, I’m so glad that this suffering has taken place and lasted, because I really am excited about what you’re about to see and who you’re going to become because of this.” And then he says, “Let’s go into this very dangerous place.” And they head in.

I want to share a couple of verses that, again, they’re troubling, but they’re beautiful.

Revelation 12:11 is basically talking about all kinds of apocalyptic stuff going down. It says that the believers overcame the evil one by the blood of the Lamb, the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives so much as to shy away from death. There was something about this where they were saying so resolutely that, “Even if this costs me my life I’m going all the way.”

And then Hebrews 11 describes all these great heroes of the faith—like the hall of fame. It says this:

37 They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38 the world was not worthy of them.

Basically, this phrase is just talking about how, in God’s perspective, the world was not worthy of them because these people were so willing to suffer for good.

Lastly, in the New Testament, Acts 5, John, among these other disciples and apostles, says:

41 The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.

This was John’s response based on watching what Jesus had done. When suffering came his way, there was a part of him that rejoiced because he knew what Jesus was talking about.

Number four: Suffering reveals and refines the quality of our faith, which again, is so precious to God.

17 On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 18 Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, 19 and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.
21 “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

What is she saying here? I don’t know. But this is interesting. We’re going to unpack this and we’re going to try to do a little hermeneutics, a little exegesis to find out what is really taking place in this conversation.

She says to him, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died. I’m disappointed, Jesus. I’m hurting. I’m confused. Why didn’t you come? I thought you loved us. I thought you cared. I just knew if I sent word to you you would come and keep him from dying. And yet, now he’s been dead for four days.”

It feels like that, as Christians, sometimes for sure. Maybe you can feel that real strong right now as you’ve gone through this year.

But then she says, “But even now, I know that God will give you whatever you ask.” I don’t know if this is her saying, “Can you do this, too?” I don’t know what she’s saying here. And I don’t know if Jesus did either, because he responds:

23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”
24 Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; 26 and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Refining. Revealing the faith that is in her.

27 “Yes, Lord,” she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”

Not exactly what he was saying. But I love it. He says, “Your brother will rise.” And she’s saying, “Let’s clarify this. You’re saying my brother will rise and I don’t want my heart to hoping that you’re going to resurrect him, because I don’t even know what that looks like or if that’s possible. But I know he’s going to resurrect in the last day. I know he’ll be risen up at the last day. I’ve got a theological framework for that. I’ve got a pat answer for that.”

And then Jesus says, “Martha, you’ve got to understand something. I’m going to teach you something right now that I don’t want you to miss, I don’t want Mary to miss, I don’t want the disciples to miss, I don’t want the Jews to miss, I don’t want the people sitting in a church in 2020 to miss: I am the resurrection and the life. I’ve been trying to teach you about a life that’s very different than the life you have known your entire life. All you have ever known of life is life can be killed. Life gets old. Life gets corrupted. Life has suffering. And what I’m trying to reveal to you, what I’m trying to teach you guys is that there is a resurrection life that death no longer has any say of. There is a resurrection life that cannot be corrupted. It does not grow old or weary. It’s a life that feels like being born again. It’s life that feels like never thirsting again. It’s a life that feels like torrents of living water gushing up and out of you. It’s a life that I’ve been trying to teach you about. And I know it’s so hard for you to understand, but I’m here to give a life that’s very different than the one you’ve known. Do you believe? Do you pistis,” [in the Greek]. “Do you receive this and hold onto this until the day that it shows up? Do you believe?”

And I love her response, because so often I’ve said things like this to the Lord: “I know who you are. And I know you can do stuff.”

That’s basically what she’s saying. “I know you are the Messiah. I know you are the Son of God and that you came into the world. I know who you are, Jesus. And can that be enough? Because I don’t get what you’re saying. But I just know that you’re going to be able to do the right thing in the right way at the right time. And I just want to be where you are.

That’s the perfect response. If you’re here today and you’ve never really given your life to Jesus, and you’re hearing about all these different things, again, it doesn’t have to make perfect sense. As long as you take Jesus’ hand, that’s good. As long as you keep your eyes fixed on him, everything else will work itself out.

That’s Martha. She’s like, “Resurrection life, I don’t know. But I know I want to be with you.” And Jesus takes that.

Then the fifth point: Our suffering grieves Jesus. It makes him mad.

Here we have verse 28:

28 After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” 29 When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. 31 When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there.
32 When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Again, grief, disappointment, frustration, confusion.

33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.

He wasn’t just sad. He was upset. And we’ll understand that a little bit more.

34 “Where have you laid him?” he asked.

You’ll notice something different about Jesus’ language. Jesus is resolute. He is all of a sudden focused in and his word seem terse. But I think you’ll understand why.

34 “Where have you laid him?” he asked.
“Come and see, Lord,” they replied.
35 Jesus wept.
Why did he weep?
36 Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
38 Jesus, once more deeply moved,

And the Greek word there has a connotation almost of like a bull getting read to charge, like breathing through the nostrils, angry, frustrated.

came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39 “Take away the stone,” he said.
“But, Lord,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man, “by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.”
40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
41 So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.”
Not a very flowery prayer. Straight and to the point.
43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out,
Anybody heard that? Yeah. The dead man came out. He calls out to the tomb and a dead man comes walking out of the tomb.
his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.
Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

What I see in this is Jesus wept. Jesus was greatly troubled. Jesus was grieved. Jesus was once more deeply moved. And it’s not that he’s sad. He’s sad, obviously, because of the situation, but he also knows what’s about to happen. But he’s very, very upset. He’s grieved. He’s frustrated. He’s angry.

He’s not angry at the people around him. What I think he’s angry about is he’s angry that sin and death have continued to rob humanity of so much. He’s face to face with the full hurt of what sin and death feels like and the agony that has troubled humanity for so long. And he’s very, very frustrated. And he says to the Father, “Let’s do this.”

The book of John has given us seven signs to demonstrate who he is:

The first one is when he turned water into wine.
Then he healed the royal official’s son.
Then he healed the paralytic at Bethesda.
Then he fed the five thousand.
He walked on water.
He healed the man born blind.
Now this is kind of like, that’s it. No more playing around. This is like the last straw. This is the nail in the coffin. This is basically Jesus saying, “All right. If you’re not going to believe because of this, you’re not going to believe. This is my final appeal to all of you to put your trust in me and I will lead you to resurrection life.

There’s this resolute, “I’ve had enough of this. Sin and death, I’m coming for you.” And he does this like many other things. He does something to prove something he’s trying to teach the people.

For instance, when the four guys came and lowered the paralytic through the roof and Jesus is like, “What’s up, man?” And everybody’s looking on. And what did Jesus say? He said, “Your sins are forgiven.” He said, “My son, your sins are forgiven.”

And the guy is like, “Thank you? (I think). I don’t know.”

And the friends are all like, “Man, that’s not what we came for.”

And then it says, “Jesus, knowing what was in the people’s thoughts..”

They were like, “Who is this guy who thinks he can forgive sins? Blasphemous!”

Or maybe they’re thinking, “Who is this guy? He says ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ Anyone can say that at any time. There’s no power.”

And he knows what’s happening and he says, “Because of your thoughts, I want you to see what happens next. So that you can know that the Son of Man has power to forgive sins, son, get up and walk.”

And the guy gets up and starts walking. And Jesus is like, “Hey, hold on. Take your mat, too.”

And the guy is like, “Okay,” grabs his mat and walks off.

And everybody in the room was left with this decision: Does he have the power to forgive sins? It sure looks like it.

Here Jesus is saying to Martha and Mary and Lazarus and the disciples and the Jews that were there, and to us today, “To prove to you that I am able to give resurrection life, Lazarus, come out.”

The fact that Lazarus came out, and Jesus says, “Get those death clothes off of him. Get those things that are reminders of sin and death and the power they have had over humanity—get those off of him. I don’t want to see them anymore.”

Jesus was trying to teach people about this life that he had been trying to teach them all along. And he was using this as an example. But we all know that this wasn’t really the last sign. There was another sign far greater when Jesus himself had gone through suffering, crucified on the cross and died, laid in a tomb just like this. And on the third day, he came out.

But Lazarus was not resurrected to resurrection life. Lazarus was resurrected to the same temporal life that he had experienced. Because Lazarus, once again got sick. Lazarus once again died. So Jesus was not raising him to resurrection life, glorified life; he was just raising him back to the kind of life that everyone knew and was familiar with.

But when Jesus rose from the dead, he rose to resurrection life. He was the firstfruits of the resurrection. The fact that he came out and then lived a life—he would walk around and they would not recognize him but then they would recognize him. His body wasn’t in the tomb. It was all glorified up. He could eat and he could walk around with people, but then the next thing, he’d be gone and show up in a different place.

Jesus was the firstfruits of the resurrection. So those who follow Jesus into death will be raised just like Jesus into resurrection life, which is incorruptible. Which is everlasting. Which does not have any suffering. There will be no more tears, no sorrow, no more darkness.

This is the reason that Jesus came: so that you and I could know that kind of life. Without Jesus we can’t. There have been many people who claimed to know the way. Buddha thought he knew a way to escape. But guess what? He’s dead in the grave. Muhammed. He thought he knew a way to escape. Guess what? You can go visit his tomb. He’s still there. And on and on. Jesus is the only one to claim what he claimed and no one can find him. He’s alive.

If you will give your life to him, he will lead you into resurrection life forevermore. Let’s pray:

Jesus, I pray that you would help us to learn about how you see suffering. I pray that, in everything we do, Lord, we would be a church that has a very good blibical perspective, that all of these messages, all of these things being thrown at us, would have to go through the filter of your word before they land in our hearts and our minds. I thank you for this story, Lord, and what you did for Lazarus. Lord, I pray for the people in the room that they’re not following you, or the people online who aren’t walking in your ways. I pray that today they would make that decision and you would lead them to lead them to life, that resurrection life would begin, even now, until that day it begins fully.

If you’re in a place where you do want to make a commitment to Christ, you do want to offer your life to Jesus, you’re tired of doing it in your own strength, your own wisdom, and you’re wanting Jesus to take the wheel, you can just say a real simple prayer. You can repeat these words if you want:

Jesus, I need you. I’m lost without you. I’m sorry for the sins that I’ve done. I ask that you would cleanse me, make me clean, and I pray that you would lead me to life. Amen.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

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Guest User 9/27/20 Guest User 9/27/20

Voices

Living Streams! This is going to be weird. I hope you can bear with me. It’s been sixteen months since my family’s been in this church. So I’m standing in worship right now. Man, it’s just like I’ve been wandering in a desert for sixteen months and then I finally come home—come to this sweet pool of water and get to drink.

John 10
Joel Fritz - September 27, 2020

I don’t know how to do this. I have a little intro to tell you a little bit about myself, because I know as I even look out today that I’m speaking to a lot of people who don’t know me. So that requires me to introduce myself just a little bit. Those of you online, this is just kind of a cool moment, to know that there is such a big group of people who are joining with us that aren’t here.

But boy, what I’ve got to share is just this little sermonette before the sermon; and that is just that, man, it is a special thing to be together with you all. The body of believers is a powerful thing. We’re sitting here, worshiping together, singing those words out together, speaking out truth. We don’t always form words with our lips, do we? And the truth that we read maybe out of the Bible and the things that we want to believe in our hearts, we don’t always do that.

But then we come together on Sunday mornings, when we get the opportunity, you can now feel how special it is. For me, I’ve been in Italy for fifteen months. And we have a small group of people. But it’s not the same, right? You come into this big group of people and you all join in worship together, and you sing the same words, and you feel the power of the Holy Spirit move, and it’s an incredible thing.

And I know there are so many people who haven’t been able to come back to church. You’re maybe watching right now, and I’ve just got to tell you how special it is. When it comes around, it’s good. It’s just so sweet. So I’ve just go to start with that because I’m filled with emotion. In fact I told Dave, “Okay, I’m going to work really hard and not just make this a therapy session for myself, where I’m talking about all the things that happened and all the difficulties we went through for the last fifteen months.” Because that’s not the point. The Lord has given me a word to deliver to you guys. It’s a special word. It’s in John 10.

You guys have been in the book of John, right? You’ve heard David preaching. He did 8. I listened to that message. I didn’t catch his last message last week, so maybe I’ll say the same thing, who knows? Maybe the Lord wants to do that again. But I know he did John 9.

So let me just give you a little background. My wife and I started praying about what we should do, like, “Hey, Lord, you seem like you’re stirring something.” This was a couple of years ago. Here we are, I’ve been a pastor at Living Streams for about eight years. We’ve got a great group of friends and we feel like the Lord is saying, “I want to do something else for a season.”

So we made ourselves open to him. We prayed. He introduced us to some people in Italy. I stood up in front of the church and I said, “Who on earth is ever going to support a family to go to Italy in doing missions?” And, sure enough, the church wanted me to go, just like the Lord wanted us to go. And we went and we ministered to people. Some great things happened. Some difficult things happened. The COVID onset. The video camera of the world alighted on Italy and we sat there in our little three-bedroom apartment going, “What is happening?” Right?

It was a very strange moment. But we got to see the Lord work. After being locked in our apartment for sixty-two days, we got set free, I guess you’d say. And, boy, what a perspective we had on life. What an opportunity we had to be with people again. It was very special. And then we felt the Lord leading us back. I’ll get into that a little bit later. But I just wanted to give you a little heads up who I am.

I’m going to be talking in John 10 today. So, if you actually want to pull out your Bibles right now that’d be very cool. We’re all for digital devices because we know the Bible can be on there, probably just hit your “Do Not Disturb” so that nothing else interrupts you. But then go on there and find John 10 and we’ll read into it.

I want you to know what this message is about today, so I’m going to say it again and again. This message is about Voices. I think there is one thing that we can all agree about right now: it’s that there are a million voices clamoring for your attention. They are passionate voices that want you to listen to them. So we’ve got to filter through that. We’ve got this complex task.

Before you run away because you’re thinking that I’m going to start preaching about which voices you should listen to and where you should follow them and exactly the right answers to all of it—I’m not. Stay with me. I’ll leave that stuff to Pastor Dave. Today I’m going to talk about one voice. One voice. And it’s the voice of the Good Shepherd.

You guys want to read a little bit with me out of John 10? We’ll start in verse 1

“Very truly I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief and a robber. 2 The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. 5 But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”

I’m going to skip down to verse 9:

9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

This is the word of the Lord. Would you bow your heads with me as I pray and invite the Lord’s presence?

You’re here today, I believe it. What a special thing, the people that are joined in presence with one another, get to experience this moment. Lord God, I pray that it would extend out past this room. There are many good reasons that people can’t be here today. Lord God, I pray that you would sit with them, in their midst in this moment. That you would connect us like only you can by the power of your Holy Spirit. And that we would experience you and listen to your voice today. There are so many voices clamoring for our attention, Lord God. But we want to be able to zero in, home in, acutely listen to you and your voice. We thank you so much for who you are, that you’re alive and that you love us. Now, Lord God, would you grant me the ability to speak your words and not my own, even if you want to change the direction. We love you. I offer myself to you in this place today. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

About two years ago, I remember something kind of funny happening. I remember my wife and I were having a conversation about something we wanted to buy. We were thinking about dinner plates. I think a few of ours were cracked. We’ve got little girls, you know, and things break over the years. So we were thinking, “Hey, we need to get some new dinner plates.” We had a conversation about it. And then, the next day, I was looking for a drill on Home Depot or something like that, and then, you know they’ve got that little column there on the website, like Home Depot and all these other places; and then, all of a sudden, these little pictures start popping up. But they’re pictures of plates. And I’m like, “Plates? What?”

Now, can you guys see this? I don’t know if the camera is good enough. I’m trying to Duane “The Rock” Johnson eyebrow thing. I love that quizzical look because that’s how I feel in my heart when I saw those pictures after saying it. “Who’s listening to me,” Is what I thought. “Who is listening to me?” Right? And then I think about it and I’ve got this thing called an Echo. My kids call, you know, saying, “Alexa, do this for me. Do this. Do a back flip for me, Alexa. Do you love me, Alexa?” All this kind of stuff. But Alexa is always listening. And if you don’t have your phone turned off, you know, like Siri, where I push the button first, Siri is listening.

So I don’t know how this all works. I am not a tech guy, and I’m not here to tell you the ins and outs of how that is all working. But what I do know is that people who are trying to get your business, not a bad thing, but they want your attention and they are more crafty today than they have ever been in the history of the world. They are somehow listening to you when you enter in a web address, when you enter in a search query, they are listening to you. Somebody is giving your information to somebody else, they’re landing that picture of that plate right there on that page where I’m searching. They’re crafty. Their voices want your attention today, and they’re going to do anything they can do to get it.

Some of the important things that I think we need to be asking are based around this one question. What are the motivations of the voices that are speaking to us? What are the motivations of the voices that we’re allowing ourselves to listen to today? This is it. The critical thing. It’s so important.

Now, when we look back on this John 10, and I’m going to do a little bit of what we call “exposition” here. I want us to be able to have a picture of what’s happening in this text of scripture, John 10. I’m going to dig in to it just a little bit.

When we look into it right, off the bat, I see three voices speaking. One: I see the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ. He is saying something. There’s a voice in that. And then he says there are these other voices that are speaking. There’s a hired hand. We’ll talk a little bit about that. And then there’s another voice. The thief. Or the word that I like better, the robber. It’s just fun to say. But there’s the Good Shepherd, the hired hand and the thief (or robber).

These voices are real voices. And I believe that these voices are active today. But now let’s get back into Jesus’ day and think a little bit about what he’s talking about. Who is he speaking to first?

Now if you’re a student of the Bible, you’re asking some simple questions on a regular basis when you’re reading the word of God. One of those questions is Who is speaking? Two: the question is Who is this person speaking to? Or who is the narrator speaking to. Right? So I want to answer those questions real quick. It’s very simple, but for four chapters actually, seven, eight, nine and ten, Jesus has been speaking with a particular group of people, and they are called the Pharisees. Now, when we hear the word Pharisee, I don’t know what it means to you. Maybe you grew up in Sunday school and you remember the flannel graphs, or you had these cute little videos that showed you these different pictures of Pharisees and who they are. But simply put, they are religious leaders. These were the authorities of the day in Jesus’ time. They held the structure in place. They were also the ones that had built the structure under themselves and they were on top of it.

So Jesus is speaking to these guys, in this case, and he is speaking to them about all the different perspectives that he had on this authoritarian structure. He was sharing what he thought about it. And they were not happy about it, because he was also introducing other ideas that were very dangerous for these people. Ideas like, “I am the Son of God.” And they had these back and forth arguments.

So when you think about teaching, and oftentimes you might think about something like this. Today we might think, was Jesus standing on a stage? Was he out on a hill? Was he speaking to people who were peaceful like you guys are peaceful right now? What was this context? What did it look like? What I want to make sure you know, I’ve heard David mention it in his sermons, but what I make sure you know is that this was not a peaceful circumstance. Jesus was saying things that were provoking the Pharisees and the religious leaders. So much so that I remember David pointing out chapter 8, that they picked up stones to stone Jesus. In that moment Jesus had said a word that was very precious to the Jewish people: Yahweh. It’s a word that they didn’t even want to pronounce. It was a word that they wouldn’t even write out. It simply means “I AM.” Jesus looked at the Pharisees and said, “I AM.” That’s reserved for God and Yahweh alone. Nobody else is allowed to say that. But he said it. They picked up stones to stone him. This was an intense moment.

And here we go, at the end of these four chapters, Jesus is having a simple exchange. But he’s sitting there and he’s telling the Pharisees who they are and who he is. So I need you to be able to see. To be able to get inside of this story, you have to be able to feel the context of what’s happening. People are listening. A crowd has gathered around. They’re watching as Jesus is speaking to these people. And he’s telling them their business. In fact, the very things that he’s saying are threatening to erode the foundation that they have built their entire lives upon. They have everything to lose in those moments.

So there is this one question, though, that we see. And it permeates this entire section and then transitions us into what we’re going to talk about with these voices. But this one question is a question that every person must ask in their life and have an answer for. It’s really a fascinating one, but it’s so simple. That question is this: Who is this guy Jesus? And that is the question of the day in which we find ourselves, as Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees about the Good Shepherd, the hired hand and the robber.

Hopefully that gives you the picture that you need. But now I want to pick up and I want to allow you to see a little bit of this and then transition into talking about the hired hand. John 10:27-33 says this:

27 My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”
31 Again his Jewish opponents picked up stones to stone him, 32 but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?
33 “We are not stoning you for any good work,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.”

Who is this guy, Jesus?

The hired hand. Jesus says this in John 10:11:

11 “I am the good shepherd.

You’ve heard that already. We’ve talked about it.

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

I have these question I will ask multiple times today. What is the motivation of the hired hand? Because there are hired hand voices speaking into our lives today, just like there were hired hand voices, the voices of the Pharisees, many times some of the Pharisees speaking into the lives of the people in that day. What are the motivations of the hired hand? Personal gain.

Remember when I talked about Siri and Alexa? I mean, it’s such an interesting picture. But companies want your attention. Now listen to me closely, please. I am not against profit. I am not against sales. And I think that people need things like plates like I talked about, to eat off of, and that make their life better. Somehow I need to find the best ones for the best price and all of that. So in and of itself, advertising is not bad. We need to be able to see that. That’s not my point today one bit at all. I’m not thinking in that way.

What I am thinking about is you asking the question, myself asking the question, what’s the motivation of the voice? When the voice gets our attention, what’s the motivation? The answer is the motivation is for personal gain. Is it wrong, if you’re a salesman, to want to be able to feed your family or make a few bucks or do well at your job? No. No. No. It’s not. The thing is, for you, when the voice has your attention, you have to be able to pay attention and think “Is this is my best interest, or is this in the best interest of the person?” I can’t tell you.

This is a lesson I want my daughters to understand, a lesson I want to live my life by. And I have a hard time doing it because the message that those voices, the hired hand, communicate are very slick. They make a lot of sense. It’s a voice that I want to hear because of the way they’re saying it. But what I have to do is to ask myself, “What’s the motivation?”

Jesus says that the hired hand is out for themselves. And that’s what I find so interesting about this passage. The hired hand is about what? Getting paid. So when the wolf actually comes in this story, the hired hand flees and runs away. I think it’s the same exact thing when we look at the voices speaking to us about “You need this,” and “You need this.” We have to stop. We have to analyze. We have to think, “Who is this voice for?” If it’s not for you, then it’s for them. And if it’s for them, then it’s not necessarily always in your best personal benefit. That voice can lead you down a road that won’t take you to green pastures and abundant life.

So we have to beware of the voice of the hired hand. But there’s a more sinister voice out there. This one’s an interesting one for me to talk about. But it’s the voice of the thief. You know the voice of the hired hand is not necessarily a bad voice. It’s just a voice that we have to pay attention to and be cautious about. Understand the motivation behind it. But the voice of the thief, listen to this:

8 All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep have not listened to them.
9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy;

So what is the motivation of the thief? We can all say it together. To steal, to kill and to destroy. Now, I don’t even know how to convey this. This is such an interesting thing to me. I think oftentimes in our society today we have kind of gotten to this place where we’re thinking that people who believe or let me see… people, when they speak to us, their motivations aren’t bad, I guess. But there’s truly an evil that exists in this world. Sin is still a part of this world today. Motivations from certain people’s voices, literally can be a voice of the thief in your life. And the motivation of the thief is not just to get something from you like the hired hand. It’s actually to destroy you.

And that’s where I think, when I think about my daughters, or I think about people that I’m caring about, these are voices that we really want to warn our kids about, that we really want to warn one another about. But the truth is that the devil is real. There is an enemy that you have that is trying to undermine everything that you do, that doesn’t want the best for you, but wants the worst for you. A thief comes to steal, to kill and to destroy. I think about that voice. That’s the voice that I want you to stay away from the most.

How can I illustrate this voice? When I was in Italy, I had to come up with these creative ideas to get to know people. I mean, here’s a guy that, we show up over there, I can’t speak Italian and I want to get to know people. Very few people speak English. This is not Rome or one of these tourist cities where people are speaking English because it’s part of their business. We were in kind of like the armpit, podunk town in Italy that you’re never going to see on the tourist map. Albeit, it’s beautiful. It’s in amazing country. I love it. But it’s not a tourist city. So nobody speaks English.

So how am I going to get to know people? I joined a bicycle club. I’ve been a bicycle rider for quite some time and I knew that Italians love road biking, right? So I thought, “Well, hey. That’s a way to get to know people.” So I get a bicycle, start riding with these guys. They’re serious, you know. They’re just going to leave you in the dust if you can’t keep up. So I had to do some riding out on my own.

There were some great hills around there and I remember this one day in particular where I was riding up a hill. For you runners and cyclists out there, you understand this lingo, but I had already ridden about fifteen hundred elevation feet up. This is just a big mountain. I was climbing straight up this mountain. I probably still had another five hundred feet to go of elevation feet, so maybe another mile or two.

When I get at this point and my heart rate is probably at 85-90% of its total capacity, and right at that moment, there are these sheep dogs everywhere, because there are sheep and there are cows, and the bells ringing on the cows—it’s surreal. It’s like something you never experience in the United States. But here I am riding in this serene environment, riding up this hill, heart’s pounding away and these dogs come out barking.

And for the history of cycling, I know there’s never been a friendly relationship between a cyclist and dogs. So these dogs start chasing me. Think of what my heart rate is doing. Pow, pow, pow. It’s accelerating past the 100% and I’m going to explode. I’m going to die. I stand up on the pedals and I’m pedaling away from these dogs. You don’t know what to do. You just react. I presume the dogs were all bark and no bite. But I get past the dogs, my rate comes down and then I keep on riding.

The next time I go up that hill, wouldn’t you know what happens? I come to that corner and my heart rate elevates. Boom. I’m already at 85-90% of my maximum heart rate. And I just come around the corner and bam, bam, bam. It starts pounding. Why? Because the voices of those dogs were so acute, that I immediately recalled them as soon as I came to the same place that I was before. They weren’t there this time. And they weren’t there the next time. But the same thing happened the next time .

You know what’s fascinating to me is that I think the enemy puts these barking dogs in our own lives; because he doesn’t want the best for you. I was faced with a moment of anxiety when I came to that corner, and my heart started pounding again. And the thought crossed my mind, “Should I turn around and go back?” Thankfully I answered, “No, I’m going to press forward. I’m going to keep going up the hill. I need to accomplish what I set out to do.”

But the enemy doesn’t want that for you. The thief comes to kill, to steal, and to destroy. And so my question would be to you then, what are the voices of those barking dogs? What voices are the thief using in your life to try to slow you down, to stop you from being all that God wants you to be, to stop you from finding the green pastures that Jesus talks about, the abundant life that Jesus talks about.

Let’s ask this question. What is the Good Shepherd’s motivation? What is the motivation of the Good Shepherd? John 10:9-11 tells us very clearly:

9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out, and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. 11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Jesus. What’s his motivation? The well being of the sheep.

When we look at these three distinct voices that exist today, we see very clearly. The hired hand, out for personal gain. Not always bad, but definitely something we should be asking questions about. What’s the motivation? Is it in my best interest

To the thief. What does the thief want to do? Steal, kill and destroy. Those barking dogs in your life that just won’t let you go. Those things, those voices that continue to tell you you’re worthless. "Remember when you failed at that? You’re never going to be able to overcome." “You can’t move forward any longer.” Those voices of the enemy that don’t want good for you.

And then there’s the voice of the Good Shepherd. And truly he says, “The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep because he wants the abundant life and to lead you into green pastures.” This is his motivation. We see this because Jesus actually came. He gave up his rights as God, lived among us, and did the hardest thing imaginable in order that we can experience life for ourselves.

So I want to ask, how do we come to know the Shepherd’s voice? Let me ask. Are there any dads with daughters out here today? You can raise your hand at home, too. Dads with daughters, come on! Be proud. I’ve got three little girls. I have no sons to my name. I have three precious little girls. And my three little girls talk, talk, talk, talk…which requires a lot of listening, listening, listening, listening for me. I want to talk too. I have some things to say. But I don’t always get to say those things.

And sixty-two days in lockdown with three little girls was an interesting experience. I found out that I can escape and I can go somewhere where I didn’t have to hear the voices all the time, and all the words that they have. But then, when you’re in lockdown and you’re stuck, I had to listen, listen, listen. And I prayed to God for patience. And he gave me patience much of the time. There were also times that I found myself locked in a room, curled up on the bed while my girls were actually outside heckling me. I mean, you get that picture in your head, standing at the door, “Daddy, daddy, daddy!” And they’re laughing! They’re like, “I can’t take it, ha, ha, ha!”

Those voices. Those precious, beautiful, amazing voices. Those voices that sixty-two days in lockdown just made me more aware of the intonations, the tone, the personality, specificity, of each one of my precious little girls. I promise you, if I were in a dark cave filled with kids and I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, if one of my daughters called my name, if one of my daughters asked for help, I’d know exactly who it is.

I think it’s the same thing with God. If it takes sixty-two days, if it takes a hundred and two days, if it takes that time during the day that I’m going to talk about in just a minute, we have to figure out how to listen and hear the voice of the Shepherd. Because that’s the voice that will give you life. God has a voice. This may seem like a simple statement. And if you’re on board, I mean, great. But I don’t think everybody in this place today has really grappled with this question. God has a voice.

When I first got to Italy for survey trip in January of 2019 I met a man named Pasquale. Pasquale—neat guy. A real brainiac. He could speak English, so maybe I just loved him because he could speak English, but he loved to talk about theology. Not so much religion, because remember, this is a very religious country, Italy is. But the young people don’t want to talk about religion. They want to walk away from anything that smacks of religion at all. Basically everybody under 40 would call themselves an aonteistic or an agnostic. Very few people would claim any sort of faith. But Pasquale was wrestling with these questions of theology.

We had these amazing conversations. And when I returned in June of 2019, we would sit down probably every week or every other week. And we would have these conversations. And my friend Steve who was there with us, we would have these conversations together. It was fascinating. Because during the time that I was there, Pasquale said he was an atheist, which if you don’t know, means don’t believe there’s any God whatsoever. There’s no creator, there’s no God.

Then he transitioned himself from saying that to saying, “No, I believe that there’s a higher power. I just can’t know that higher power,” which would be called an agnostic, if you’ve ever heard that term.

Then Pasquale goes from being an agnostic during our conversations, into saying, “I’m a Deist.” Now I don’t know if you know what a Deist is or not. But a Deist has this concept that God made the earth, wound it up, kind of like a watch, built the watch, wound it up, and it just ticks and takes care of itself. We do what we’re going to do, but God is off in the distance and he has no interaction.

And, finally, one day we were having a conversation and I’m pressing, pressing Pasquale in a very friendly way, because we had developed this great relationship. And I’m like, “Pasquale, do you believe that God is real?”

And he goes, “I believe that God is real.”

I said, “But do you believe that God is conscious? Can you have an exchange with this being that exists out there?”

And he goes, “No, I don’t. I don’t believe that God has a voice and can speak to me because I don’t believe that God is conscious.”

I just have to say there are a few more things I want to mention in this sermon, but this may be the end for you. Does God have a voice? Because, until you answer the question, Does God have a voice, you can’t move on. Until you answer the question, Is God a conscious being? You can’t move on to listening, can you?

But today, this message is about listening. This message is about listening to a voice that I believe God has, and has used in the Bible for many years publicly, and uses often personally for each one of us.

So, finally, I want to ask for those of us who do believe, that have come to that place where we would say “God does have a voice, he is a conscious being, and I want to hear that voice,” I want to ask this: How do we hear God’s voice? And give you some simple steps.

Number one simple step is this: Be a sheep. Now, I was going to go off on this because in Italy there are sheep everywhere. We actually had shepherds leading sheep and I told you about the sheep dogs and everything. But the point is, what do we simply know that sheep do? And it’s real! Sheep follow. They follow. That’s what sheep do.

So my first thought for you is to be a sheep. And once you start thinking, “I can be a sheep. I can be like a sheep.” Then you have to ask, “Well, am I acting like one?”

Number two: listen to this. I hope all of us can hear this because this is one of the most difficult things in the world to do. Hit DND. Do you know what DND means? It’s an acronym for Do Not Disturb. Right? Every single phone has a Do Not Disturb button. But the question is, how often do we use that Do Not Disturb button. DND. Not to be confused with Dungeons and Dragons, which is another use of that acronym. But this is the number one way to use it. Do Not Disturb.

Are you hitting Do Not Disturb on your phone at any time in your day in order to hear the voice of God? Are you hitting Do Not Disturb on life at any point in your day in order to hear and listen to the voice of God? I wish I had a more simple answer and a crafty way for you to be able to say, “If I do this thing, then I will carve out the time and be able to listen to the voice of God.”

I don’t have that. It’s just hard. When you have kids, when you have a business, when you have a pain that you experience chronically on a regular basis, when you have all of these things that are screaming and yelling and trying to take your attention, it is difficult to hit DND on life and on the phone.

But if you think about the phone, I have another question for you. Do you tell your phone when to talk to you or does your phone tell you when it wants to talk? It’s just kind of a funny way to think about it. Your phone, my phone tells me when it wants to talk all the time and then I just go running, “Okay okay, okay.”

When I get out of bed in the morning, what’s the first thing that I do? Do I go to my phone and check the messages? Then somebody else has my attention. In those moments, that’s the time that I choose to hit DND and go to the Lord. For you, it may not be in the morning. But I ask is there a time that you hit DND?

We need to practice being silent. Number three: Listen to hear. Would you say that there’s a difference between listening and hearing? Listen to hear.

Finally, number four: Follow. It’s kind of where it begins.

See yourself as a sheep. Hit DND. Listen to hear. And then finally, when the Lord speaks—because he will—it’s our role to follow.

This message began with the word voices and finishes with the word follow. Have you heard the voice of the Lord recently?

I wonder if you’ve been listening for the Lord’s voice. If you have heard it recently, more importantly, I guess, is to ask when was the last time you heard the Lord’s voice. Was it through a Bible verse this morning? Was it when you gave your attention to God’s word? You gave your attention to God’s written word. The Lord showed you something simple in scripture but profound, something so profound that not even death can shake it.

Was it a few months ago when you found yourself alone with no job and were wondering what you will do? Finally coming to a point where you shut your mouth and say, “Hey, God, maybe you forgot about me, but if you have anything to say, this would be a good time.” And then something miraculous happened because, instead of moving on to the next thought or the next fear, or the next notification, you actually listened for a moment.

And in that moment, God reminded you that he is for you and not against you. That he loves you and that he gave up all his rights as God to come and allow himself to suffer just so that you could be close to him, reminding you of your worth and value, and that he doesn’t need anything from you because he already possesses everything in himself.

Or was it last year when someone you trusted took a chance and shared something you needed to hear? Something that actually changed your relationship because it meant you were wrong. You ever been there? As you reflect on it now, though, you see it was not for selfish reasons that that person came to you and risked the relationship. They were risking and paying a cost because they love you and they want the best for you.

When people speak to us, we need to ask the question, what’s the motivation? And even when people speak things to us that we don’t want to hear, if the motivation is right, true, pure and leads us into green pastures, it leads us into the abundant life—we don’t want to hear it even if it’s hard.

When Jesus speaks out and says these things, these voices that you hear and sound so good, they don’t have your best interest at heart. This one voice, it wants your attention and it’s not necessarily for bad reasons, but it’s not for you. It’s for them. Their number one motivator is for them. And if hard times come, if the storm of life comes, they won’t be there for you. Or is this the thief who wants to steal, to kill and to destroy?

The way we listen to these voices matters because it will influence the way that we respond. It will influence the situations of our hearts. It will influence whether or not we listen, we hear, and we follow the Good Shepherd.

What is God’s motivation? He’s for you. I hope you can believe it.

We’re going to do a baptism in just a minute and I was thinking about how I would pray at the end, maybe wrap it up and ask the Lord if we could hear him speak something. But I think this baptism is a pretty special thing; because when we’re listening to the Lord and we’re following his voice and he speaks, one of the things he speaks to us is about baptism. And he’s made it very clear, and it’s something that is so beautiful that the Church has done for thousands of years, ever since Jesus ascended into heaven.

This beautiful baptism, we even saw John the Baptist doing it before Jesus, where you get dunked under the water and it represents the reality that Jesus Christ descended into the earth from heaven, and then went step further down into the depths of Sheol and into death, was buried inside of the grave, but did not stay there; but proclaimed and declared his power as God, which you have seen clearly in John, declared his power as God, and resurrected, overcoming death, back to life, which means he’s alive today, that he is conscious, he’s alive today, cares about you, and wants good things, even the abundant life here and for eternity for you.

One of the things then he asks is that you would follow him into baptism; and I think there are some people here that the Lord might be speaking to that haven’t signed up for baptism yet. I want you to come and I want you to talk to Kurt or maybe Ryan over here and maybe they can get another pastor or two, and talk to them about what the Lord is doing in the way that he’s been speaking. Because this is a step of obedience, and there are ten people today through the services that are going to take that step of obedience and follow like a sheep after Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd.

So I’m going to take just a moment and I’m going to pray for us and then during that time Kurt is going to come up and is going to share with you a little more and he’s going to celebrate with them because they’ve received that new life, Jesus Christ, and their following him into abundant pastures.

Lord Jesus, I thank you for who you are. You’re incredible. I believe that you’re alive and that your voice is real and speaking. I’ve experienced it in my own life today. I’ve experienced it in my own life in the past, and Lord God, you have led us into green pastures, even sitting in the midst of Corona Virus. So many difficult things are happening in this moment in history, in this moment in our world, and yet, Lord God, you speak in the midst of it. You push aside the voices. You calm our racing hearts, and you take over and you tell us what is best for us. And I pray, Lord God, that your people would be able to hear you today. And for those that you are leading into baptism to follow you right into that, I pray that take that step in these moments. I thank you for them, Lord God, and that you called them. Let your blessing be upon them and in this first step into this new life, Lord God, I pray that it would be an abundant one, that you would show them clearly exactly where you’re leading them. We love you, Jesus. It is your day. It is your voice. In your name we pray. Amen.

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