God's Way - First Things First: Part 3

God’s Way - First Things First: Part 3 - Financial Discipleship Q&A

1 Corinthians 16:1-2; Malachi 3:6-10; Proverbs 22:1-7; 1 Timothy 6:6-10; Deuteronomy 14:22-23

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are continuing in our God's Way First Things First series. And if you haven't been around maybe the last couple of weeks, we've been diving into and understanding what it means to put God first in everything in our lives. And that until we let God's glory and His goodness shine into all the dark areas of our lives, we will continue to be in bondage in those places. And if you've been with us, we've been talking about and processing this foundational lie that began in humanity all the way back in the garden in the beginning of the Bible in the book called Genesis. And this was the lie that the serpent told Adam and Eve in that garden: that God is holding out on you. That you don't have enough, so you have to look out for yourself. You have to control everything. You have to say, "Hey, God, you're not providing, so I'm going to do it my way."

We've walked through maybe what it looks like, how we live this lie out today. We live this lie out in how panic drives who we are. Our anxiety and our worry—the stats as of late, they are through the roof in society. That we over-schedule ourselves, running here and there, everywhere, to make sure everything gets done. We focus on being self-providers to make sure that we have enough. But we know that this lie, that we don't have enough, that God is holding back on us, is truly that: a lie.

And then it comes down to a point of real trust. And we talked about Abram, who then became Abraham. He had all this wealth in the world, but he had no heirs. He had no children to pass that wealth on to, and he was angry with God. He was frustrated. He's like, "God, how could you even let this happen?" And God goes, "Let's go outside, buddy. Let's look up at the stars. See all those? Try to count them." Abraham ran out of fingers and toes real quick trying to count stars. And God said, "Those stars represent the descendants that you are going to have." And Abraham's like, "We don't have any descendants." And God goes, "I know. I got a plan." He's like, "Well, but what about this? And my wife and I, we are way past those days of when that is to biologically happen." Sarah, even at one point, laughs at God.

I had a frustrating conversation with God two weeks ago in the middle kid's room down in this hallway. And I found myself going, "I am no different than Abraham and Sarah." And I have personally been on a journey along with you guys in this of what does it mean to be truly obedient to God in everything that we are and everything that we have. And I love it because I'm having conversation with you guys as well. Many of you have been hearing from God. You've been having the conversations. You've been praying. You've been saying, "Okay, God, well, I don't know what this fully looks like, but I'm here and I'm listening. God, speak to me." Many of you are stepping into financial discipleship and biblical stewardship. And I love this because honestly, I have just been asking you to have a conversation. I haven't even put a challenge in front of you guys yet. But you're being intentional with this. You're hearing from God.

And we too, as a staff, we've been having conversations of, "Hey, maybe how we have gotten in the way." The first of which is, I haven't really ever talked this bold about money in the church before. Hi, my name is Chris. I'm your friend. And you guys have been so receptive. You've been so gracious. I thought by week three, there'd be like two of you right here. That would be it. But you're here and you knew it was coming. Maybe not all of you, but.

And today I want to kind of walk through maybe a little bit different of a talk this morning, but some Q&A to maybe answer the why behind why we live the way that we live and why God calls us to live this way. And so the reality is that when we look at money, we look at how we spend our money, how we save our money, how we use our money, it reveals who we are at our core. And that this relationship with money has instructions given to us by God in His word.

And we're going to be in a few different scriptures this morning, but the first of which is going to come from First Corinthians chapter 16. And this here is Paul writing a letter to the church in Corinth, which is another small church that started around the Mediterranean area. And he's telling them, kind of giving them some instruction when it comes to finance. He says this: "Now regarding your question about the money being collected for God's people in Jerusalem, you should follow the same procedure I gave the churches in Galatia. On the first day of each week, you should put aside a portion of the money you have earned. Don't wait until I get there and try to collect it all at once." So Paul here is talking about this idea of don't wait to the last minute to try to figure all this stuff out. And Paul isn't necessarily talking about what the Old Testament talks about—we're going to say, walk through in a minute—of this principle of first fruits. I don't know if you guys have heard that before. But Paul is echoing this idea of when you put your finances together in order, there is a system in which you should do that. And he is echoing this idea of honoring God with every single aspect of our lives.

No different than maybe when you get to work and you pray, "God, I am your servant here at work. Use me how you desire." Or maybe at home, you come home and you go, "God, use me in this place how you wish. I am your servant." Maybe in parenting, for me as a father, I pray regularly, "Lord Jesus, give me your strength. Give me your hope. Give me your help. I am your servant in this place as I father the children that you have steward to me. My children are not my own. I just have them for a certain amount of time. They're God's. But I am called to lead them and to instruct them and to teach them into God's word."

And so a theological posture for us would be that honoring God in every single sphere of our lives begins with what we do first. And that this idea of first fruits is about not a transaction. It's not a transaction, but it's about worship. We talked about that week one. It's about trust. We talked about that last week. And it's about priority realignment. We're going to dig into that a little bit more.

But the first question that I commonly get when talking about money and finances is this in the Bible: Why does it have to be first? What matters for these things to be first? Does it matter if it's in the middle? Does it matter if it's the end? Like if it comes from the same pot, why does it matter? And I, honestly, that's a legitimate question. And I think it's something that for us to think about and to discuss. The logistic reality is what matters most receives our first attention in our lives.

If you are married and you have a spouse, my spouse is right here. This is Lauren. As an earthly relationship here on this planet, she is my number one. God is my ultimate number one. But as an earthly relationship, she is my number one priority. And so she deserves the best of me. She doesn't deserve my tiredness. She doesn't deserve my leftovers. She doesn't deserve my second best. She deserves my number one. And so as we would say, I think, in here, those of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus and Christians, God deserves our number one, right? And things in our life are really important. They become a top priority. And so this also carries into our other relationships and our other things in our life. They are set in a certain particular order. And so we will carry this into our whole lives.

Side note, if you're in here and you are unmarried, I want to encourage you: make God number one in your life right now. Because it is only going to carry into your future marriage and relationships in a way that is going to be a solid rock foundation in ways you can't even imagine. And it's just going to set everything in order, perfect the way that God instructed. But when we think about our finances, the biggest chunks take priority and get to the front of line, right? I think for most of us, that would probably be a mortgage or a rent, right? Probably our largest expense we have on a regular basis. Now, if you own your home, I'm very jealous of you. But when you were paying that baby off, okay, that was your largest thing. And then that brings the largest thing, then puts other things in order and perspective, right? And so as an order, this top thing, everything else just kind of slides into place as you go through your finances.

This is about priority realignment and putting God first in our finances reorders our priority with everything else. Because God is in first place, then that puts everything else in their right place. I think I got a slide for that. I want to put that up on the screen. When we put God in first place, it puts everything else in right place. See, our financial world falls in the right place when God leads.

We talked about this a few weeks ago, the different levels of financial engagement with the church. Maybe you never have given before, and that's fine. That's okay. Maybe you've given one time to something like our Operation Christmas Child, where we send shoeboxes with practical gifts and toys in the gospel around the globe for kids to hear about Jesus for the first time, and you gave to that. Awesome. Thank you so much. Maybe you have a monthly thing where you are regularly giving. Maybe it's $20, $50, $100 a month. Maybe you're putting something in on the regular saying, "God, I want to be in a relationship of financial discipleship with you." I know some of you others have stepped up into tithing regularly. And we're going to talk about what a tithe means. But you look at your whole sum that comes in, you get, "God, I'm going to give 1% of all of this back to you." And then maybe 2%, 3%, growing in that, in your generosity. And then you have tithing, which is 10% of that. And then it stops right there, right? No. God asks for extravagant generosity. And I've said for the last few weeks, and I'm gonna say it again: you are a recipient of extravagant generosity.

This space, this facility, this building would not have happened without extravagant generosity. There are people, a part of this church and others who are no longer with us, that sacrificed big time for us to be able to purchase this facility and to move here to have a place to call home. Because we were just bouncing around before that. We started in a school in 1999. Set up and tear down. There was no home for us. But God opened up doors for rental facilities. They were a place, but they really weren't our place. And then God allowed a place like this for 24-7 ministry to happen. For youth group during the week. For children's ministry. For Bible studies. For events. For weddings. For funerals, for things that we can call home and a place to take a foothold in the community for the kingdom of God.

So however you are regularly paid, maybe that's weekly, twice a month, monthly, quarterly, however you get that income, you give God the best and the first and this puts everything in order. And when we do that, put God first, we have our fixed expenses, then everything else kind of falls in line. And you may come to a point where you get to the end of the month and there isn't another trip to TJ Maxx in store. Sorry, ladies, I just stepped on some toes. I apologize. Man, we can't go back to Bass Pro or Home Depot or, I don't know, where are guys spending money these days? Golf. There you go. Golf. There's not another round at the end of the month. But when we put this in order, everything orders out the rest. And when we are intentional about something, it orders our priorities.

Now, sometimes there may be a situation where you don't get the tithe to be like the first thing, auto-pay bills. They'll sneak in there on you sometimes. But it's a personal practice of worship. For my wife and I, we get paid around the 15th and the end of the month. And I will intentionally that morning when I wake up and my phone says, "You got money, a direct deposit," I try to take a moment and to worship God and literally write the check right there to say, "God, this is the absolute first thing that is coming out of this blessing that you have given." I know some of you will take a moment and utilize our online giving portal and you will set up a moment. You will sit down, you will pause, you maybe turn on some worship music, maybe you sing a song to God and then you click the button and you give the tithe. Others of you, you write the check during week, you come in, that is the first stop that you do and you go to that drop. You will not talk to anybody else. You're like, "I am going to worship and you walk in, you drop, and you're like, hello, I can talk to you now." But it's a priority. It's your first thing that you do.

And when we put God first in things, the other things that kind of just suck up our finances become less of a priority. "Ah, you know what, Pastor? There was a lot of stuff that happened this month and just, we got to the end and it just, there just wasn't enough." Okay, it happens. But maybe you need to reorder some of those things so that it is a priority, is a first thing, it is something that is done at the beginning. Now I'm not saying this: get this right, you have to pay your mortgage and rent, that's just reality of life, okay? I wish it wasn't the case, it is, and in California stupid expensive, let's be honest, we just call it what it is, so that is a big chunk. All right. I realize you have that. I realize you have to put food on your table. Okay. You have to provide maybe for your family, for your kids. You have to take care of them. I get that. I don't think anybody came in here this morning hungry intentionally because you did not have enough. So I know if you did come in this morning and you don't have enough and you're hungry, please come talk to me. We have people in this church who have asked, "Pastor, when someone comes in, they are hungry, send them my way. God has blessed me and called me to take care of them." That is the purpose of the church. Okay?

But when we prioritize, what gets cut at the end of the month isn't God. It's what's less essential. The less over becomes less and even less wasted if you want to talk about it. Last two weeks, I've asked you to go home and have a conversation with God, if your spouse, if you have them, with your family, maybe even with your kids, about what this means. This week I want you to begin to maybe pull out your bank statement and begin to evaluate where you are spending your money. And then just let the Holy Spirit speak.

Because I know for me, I am the first, things can just slip in. I've been trying to make iced coffee on my own during the week. I love me some cold brew. Okay, I have some like right here in front row. And I've been trying to make it at home because it's now stupid expensive, but we went on vacation and we came home and I got out of routine and then I didn't have this and I was out of beans and all this stuff. Like a week has come by and I've gone to Starbucks like four times. Don't tell my wife, okay? And I'm literally going order and I'm like, because I know it's not, I'm not being wise there. There's better ways to do things and it might take us some time to sit down, and it's not going to be fun. It's not going to be comfortable, okay? I'm telling you that. But on the other side of that, oh, guys, let me tell you what that is. It is amazing. So ask ourselves, is this honoring God with the provision that He has given us, or are we feeding extra just stuff?

Question two, I get asked: how much should I give? What is tithing? Great questions. I get asked this lot as a pastor and people come to me. And I want to go to a scripture in Deuteronomy chapter 14. And it says this, it says, "You must set aside a tithe of your crops, one-tenth of all the crops you harvest each year. Bring this tithe to the designated place of worship, the place the Lord our God chooses for His name to be honored. This applies to the tithes of your grain, new wine, olive oil, and the firstborn males of all your flocks and herds." Anybody a farmer or cattle or rancher in this room? No, this makes no sense to us, right? Let me translate this a little bit. This was their currency, their grain, their crops, their wine that they would grow their grapes and turn into wine, the olive oil they would get from their trees to press out, the firstborn males of their flocks and their herds. This was all their money. And God is saying here, I want you to set aside a tithe of all of that, a tenth of what you bring in.

Did you know that we don't get the best pineapples? Did you know that? A couple of people have been to Hawaii here lately. The best pineapples stay on the island and they are the first crop. I think that's called a plant crop, I think is the correct term, you guys will correct me later. But this is the initial pineapples that are grown on the plant and I guess they will just, you can see the future if you eat them. I've never had one personally, I hope and dream and wish one day I can, but they are the first pineapples. Hard because they are the main one off the plant and then everything that grows is kind of an uproot sprout outside of that. It's secondary and that plant puts everything into that first pineapple that it grows and they will just, they will blow your mind. You guys ever thought about extra virgin olive oil? It's the first press, right? Oh, it's the best. I don't know how or why they came up with that name, whatever. But then you have like extra virgin and the next press is virgin and then after that it's just like it just gets like blended up, I guess. I don't know how it works. But when we go to the store and we're like, "I'm gonna buy olive oil, what you got?" Extra virgin? I'm not going to muscle anything else. It's the first. It's the best. You guys have had like, we had friends who went to Italy and came back and brought us like true extra virgin all the way from Italy. Oh my gosh, guys. I want to just like spoonfuls of this stuff. It is amazing. But it's the first. It's the best.

And this is what God is asking of us is that He has a system and an alignment for us that He wants this best for Him and for us to learn in that. And this tithe piece is the foundational piece of scripture about financial generosity. And it's a process of growth. Talked about all those different phases. Stepping into that next phase, and I trust you, God, more. That next phase, I trust you, God, more. Next step, I trust you got more, to lead us to a place that is ever blessed, that we're going to talk about in a moment here, comes with a promise only found in a certain part of scripture, only about tithing and finances.

So what does that look like practically? Chris, like break it down for me. Well, if you get whatever your paycheck is, $1,000, $2,000, $100, whatever that is, you just move the decimal over one, and that's your amount. So if you made a hundred bucks, you move it over one, it's $10. That's what that breaks down to. And God here isn't saying, "I have to have your money." Okay? That's not what this is. God is greater than all of this. He is beyond that. He has Everything at His disposal. It's a step in relationship with trust with Him. And I will tell you, if you don't want to do it, don't do it. Wait, pastor, you just said, yeah. Don't want to do it? Don't do it. You got free choice. You got free will to be able to do it if you want. And especially don't give grumpy, please. Nobody likes a grumpy face. I'll use other words, positive relationships in church. Don't give grumpy. We're gonna, we're gonna read a scripture on that in a moment. But but the the reality is asking, "Lord, what do you want for me to do? Where do you want me to begin?"

Now people get lost in the weeds: is it pre-tax? Is it post-tax? Is it net? Is it gross? Is it off my retirement, investments, birthday money? Is it over if I get cash back on a return? Is it like people can get so lost on this stuff. I found a quarter on the ground. Now I got to find two and a half pennies to give to Jesus. I can't break a penny in half. Do I round up, round down? I'll just give a whole quarter to God. I don't want to. And that's not what I'm saying here. What I'm saying is a heart posture with Jesus. And I'll tell you, I have some thoughts on it. I have my own personal thoughts. These are Chris's thoughts, not God's thoughts. So if you want to talk, love to talk. And you might have different thoughts than I do. I know some of you in this room have different ideas about some of those little details in that. But it's a heart, a posture, giving that to Jesus, growing in relationship with God.

And here, there is a promise that is given to us out of Malachi chapter 3 and it is an incredible thing and it's only found in that scripture with no other topics besides that one. And that when we step into the tithe there is an incredible blessing and a promise from the Lord that comes with that. And I know some who have stepped into tithing were like, "I couldn't be generous. I stepped into tithing and now I can be generous in ways that I never imagined. I have money to just buy somebody a meal on the street. I have money to be able to..." There was a time when Laura and I were going through a hard time in life. And we had friends who didn't have a whole lot of money. But they were really good about this stuff. And they just sent us like 200 bucks. Blew our minds. I'm like, "I think you guys are actually making less money than we are. How? What the...?" "We want to bless you." And it's an amazing how God works this out. Because I will tell you, one plus one equals infinity with God. The math doesn't math with God. I've tried to figure it out. I carry the one in the movie, He does something just awesome in the middle of it and He just makes it incredible. But it has to start with this: Malachi chapter three.

"I am the Lord, I do not change. This is why you descendants of Jacob are not already destroyed. Ever since the days of your ancestors you have scorned my decrees and failed to obey them. Now return to me," says the Lord, "and I will return to you," says the Lord of heaven's army. "But you ask, how can we return when we had never gone away? What do you mean? Should God's people cheat you? You have cheated me," says Lord. "But what do you mean? When do we ever cheat you? You have cheated me in the tithes and offerings due to me. You are under a curse for your whole nation has been cheating me. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my temple. If you do," says the Lord of heaven's armies, "I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great that you won't have enough room to take it in. Try it. Put me to the test."

This tithe is the only time in scripture where God guarantees an outcome when you are obedient to God. He's saying, if you trust me in this, then I will open up the heavens and I will rock your world. Is it always financial? No. Okay? I'm not saying, well, if I start tithing today, then God, you better send me that $20,000 check in the mail. It's not what He's talking about. He's talking about a blessing over your life and your family and your family's family and generational things here, guys, that will change everything about who you are.

But this blessing, this storehouse, heaven, what does that mean? Well, that's a great question. If I remember correctly, from the Bible, in heaven, the streets are made of something that starts with G, ends with old. They're with, okay, that's your part. You say that back to me. I give you a clue and you say, okay, perfect. Okay, so the streets in heaven are made of gold. Guys, they are paving with gold in heaven, paving. What are they making their storehouses out of? And then what are they putting into those storehouses? Like, you guys ever thought about that before? I had this moment of like, what? This week. That's where they keep the good stuff. And God is saying, "Will I not open up the gates of heaven? I will not pour out upon you." Whoa. And the Israelites over here have been stingy with God. "Well, we haven't cheated you." "Yeah, you have." "Well, what do you mean we haven't?" "You're not being generous. You're not tithing." "Oh, yeah. Yeah, sorry, we forgot." God says, "Trust me in this and I will take care of everything. Trust me in this and I will take care of everything."

And there's a discipline piece here that is required of us. And I'm not saying having a lot of money is bad. Do not, I did not say that. Okay? Don't try to go there. I did not say that. And I don't know how it all works. God gives money to some people and less over here. I don't understand. He creates it all. But the obedience principle is exactly the same no matter where you're standing. Honestly, sometimes a lot of money means a lot of tithes. And that might be honestly sometimes even harder than having less in a smaller type. But it's an obedience piece. And it's the same calling that we all have. Asking ourselves, am I honoring God first?

So where do we give? Where do we give? That's a good question. Where do we give? Well, how many are traveling to Jerusalem, to the temple on a regular basis? No? No? Nobody? You're not weekly flying over there and depositing? No? Okay. It's a joke. But what I'm saying here is that today, the modern temple or synagogue is the local church. The storehouse is that piece. And so He's calling us to bring all the tithes into the storehouse. Another translation says, bring the full tithe into the storehouse.

And I've been asked this before, and some people say, "Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris, What if I put like 3% over here into this really good thing, and I give like 5% to Spring Valley, and then like 2% like goes over here." And I will say, I love your heart of generosity. That is phenomenal. Don't stop being generous. But I would like to provide maybe an alternative perspective here from Scripture that says to bring the full tithe, the full 10%, into God's house. And then out of that, live your generous life. Give to missionaries around the world. Give to parachurch organizations. Help pastors plant churches in different places around the world that don't have the gospel accessible to them. Yes, be generous in that. But the way we live our lives, how we live and give, is interpreted of what we do. I've heard it once said, give where you are being spiritually fed. And it's a heart check for us. Because generosity follows God's lead, not our obligation.

All right, I got two more questions. I got to go hurry here first. How should I give? It's a great question. Some people have asked, how should I give? Well, I see three pieces to this. That it's first intentional, it's accountable, and it's accessible. What do I mean by that? Well, intentionally: when when COVID happened we stopped passing the buckets or passing the plates, if you grew up in church or whatever it was called, and we moved to just a drop box because we didn't want to, here you go, here's your COVID, like we didn't want to pass that around, okay. And some of you that was a hard move. You were used to coming in church, worshiping, singing a song, doing the the offering tithing piece during worship, and you just like, we just went to a box. But we've gotten used to the box, right? And it's not necessarily in front of us. Sometimes something that's in front of us reminds us on a regular basis what needs to be important and how we need to live our lives. We are talking about possibly bringing back the buckets because it's an act of worship as a family together rather than just a boop in the back of the room. And we have to be incredibly intentional in that, that we are doing on a regular basis. It's a deliberate choice to honor God so we don't forget and we have to be intentional.

Is it accountable? And this isn't just tax purposes, okay? I'm talking about a financial shift that might happen in our lives when our, and that usually tends to be our giving changes. And this, I will tell you as a pastor and as our team and our pastoral care team, you don't necessarily bring us in on the loop. You don't necessarily tell us. And so when there's some tracking systems of finances in the church, when those things change, that can be an indicator that we need to just touch base. And not in the sense of, "Hey, where'd your tithe go? You're not giving, you're used to." No. "What's going on? Can we help you? How can we come alongside you? You lost a job? Okay, well, we know this person, they're looking to hire over here, and this person over here, how can we connect these things?" It's a family. You'd want to know, I think, as a parent, if your child was struggling through something, right? And so part of tracking that, writing on the envelope, we don't fingerprint the money in the back, guys. So if you're just dropping cash back there, awesome, God bless you. We don't know. And there's another accountable piece in that for you to be able to begin to track of like, "Hey, pastor was challenging me to give and I started giving and I've given this much and like my finances haven't dipped. Like things are still good." And it's a moment to go, "God, you are amazing," but you're not tracking that. You don't know. We don't know. We can't help you in that.

Is it accessible? I talked about this, trying to figure out, do we begin to pass the place? Do we have some sort of other way to do that? We're making sure our online giving is always 100% secure. We are working to make sure that there are easy ways for you. If God prompts you to be able to be generous in things like even Camp Awesome and Operation Christmas Child and being able to have you guys as a stirs in you to be able to have a quick avenue, an easy avenue with no barriers, to be able to engage with that and to be obedient. It says this, 2 Corinthians 9-7. "You must each decide in your heart how much you will give. And don't give reluctantly or in response to pressure. For God loves a person who is giving cheerfully." God loves a cheerful giver. I said earlier, don't give grumpy. Right here in scripture.

Fifth question, what about debt? What if I have it? Oh, great questions. Love this. I want us to think in this way, okay? Because we probably have it, the reality is. And when I'm talking about unsecured debt, I'm not talking about like housing, like a mortgage. That's more secure because you have the problem. I'm talking about like credit card debt here, okay? Three things I want us to think about this, okay? Think mission possible, not mission impossible. Because sometimes we got debt, it feels impossible, right? It feels impossible to get out from this mound. One, avoid it when possible, okay? There's times it's going to happen. Happens in life. It's happened in our life where you're just like, "Oh, man. Did not see that coming." Life happens. I got to put something on the credit card. Okay. There's grace in that. Okay. But when possible, avoid it. Don't just be like, "Charge it, charge it, charge it, charge it." Like, don't do that. Two, pay it off as quickly as possible. Don't make minimum payments. You will never get out from underneath it. It is set up in a system that is to just destroy your soul. Don't. And then don't take on more debt when possible. Figure out how to realign. It's going to be hard. It's going to take work, I promise you. But it is worth it to get out of that. And we have resources and different things we'd love to connect you with to help you if you are finding yourself in that place right now. God wants you to have freedom from that.

I want you to hear me this morning. God does not want you. But we live in a world, right, where it's like, "I have to have a good credit score and have a good credit score. I've got to have debt. But if you have debt, then you have a bad credit score. But if you don't have debt, then why do you need a good credit score?" Something there going on that's fishy. Proverbs 22. We're going to close with this. "Choose a good reputation over good riches. Being held in high esteem is better than silver or gold. The rich and the poor have this in common. The Lord made them both. A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions. A simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences. True humility and fear of the Lord lead to riches, honor, and long life. Corrupt people walk a thorny, treacherous road. Whoever values life will avoid it. Direct your children onto the right path, and when they're older, they will not leave it, just as the rich rule the poor so the borrower is servant to the leader. Choose a good reputation over riches."

I don't think we hear that in life very much. But what about the cool dude who has all the stuff and the toys and all that? Yeah, he's probably up to his eyeballs in debt, let's be honest. And one missed payment, all of that fun stuff goes away. Talk about finance with your children. Prepare them. I was a product. I had a grandfather who was so financially sound. And he taught me at an early age. He brought me alongside me and said, "Hey, this is this. And this is what this means. And this is like, it's your tithe. And this is how you got to pay your taxes. And you got to invest." And like he set me up and taught me some core principles I'm so grateful for today. Teach your children about these things. Plan ahead.

I don't know if you guys know when you drive your car, your tires start disappearing. They just poof, go away. And if you bought any lately, you know they're not cheap. Right? So the scripture says a prudent person saves away for the future. Maybe we need to start putting away some money on a regular because you know those tires and those new tires are coming. And if you don't have the money, it's going to get you into a bad place. Think ahead. Plan ahead. How do I set new healthy financial habits? 1 Timothy 6. It says, "Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. Pouring out the riches of heaven, right? Remember that scripture? After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into this world, and we take nothing with us when we leave it. So if you have enough food and clothing, let us be content. But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. The love of money. And some people craving money have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows."

That's interesting, pierced. I did a cultural background on this. Did you know when you borrowed money from somebody, you owed somebody, they would pierce you with their name. I owe somebody 20 bucks for both of these. I'm just kidding. But that's what they would do. And to walk around with piercings was actually shameful. You would walk around and you would see a loop maybe in someone's nose and it says, "Doug." Like, "Oh, you owe Doug money." What does that year say? "Susan?" "Susan?" But people would appear, and it would be a cultural shame. We don't have that today, do we? We tout, right? We're like, "Woo, look at us." You don't want to know my credit score. I get emails every month. I'm like, "Delete." I don't care. I'm not buying anything. But it's a cultural shame. Great wealth is actually true godliness and contentment.

So as we close, how or what has God told you today? Maybe there's a question. Maybe you had a question and I gave you an answer today. Maybe you have more questions. Maybe it's about debt. Maybe it's about financial discipleship. Maybe it's about first fruits. Maybe it's about contentment. But what will you do about it this week? And on your card, on your program, you came in your little response card. I want you to check the box. Maybe if God said something to you today about financial changes that may need to happen in your life. And I'd love for you, we're gonna have ushers in the back on the way out. Drop that in there. And we wanna be praying alongside of you. We're not gonna be like, "Hey, what did God tell you you're supposed to start giving?" No, it's between you and God. We are presenting the gospel and the scripture. And it's your choice on how you want to respond to what God is saying to you.

But don't forget, remember, I want to leave you with three things right here. Ask Him, trust Him, and align with Him. That's what it's about. And it's a journey. You're not going to figure this thing out overnight. You never will. It's a journey with Jesus as He leads you deeper into trust and faith and hope and freedom in Him. Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for this morning, God. We are so grateful for your encouragement, God, for your grace, for your love and care. God, even as we mess up with this stuff, God, you are still there saying, "I love you. You are my child. I have better things for you." And so Jesus, I pray that we would listen to your leading, listen to your calling in our lives. God, maybe we need to have a conversation about our finances, about our budget, maybe where we're spending some things, maybe how to focus in on getting out of debt. But God, at the same time, you don't say, "Hey, if you got debt, make sure you pause that giving. You can get out of that debt first." No, God, you ask us to be obedient in the midst of it all. And so God, I pray that we would step forth and trust and faith in you. God, that we would know who you are and the better calling and the better life that you have for us and the freedom that is on the other side of that. And you want to pour down, God, the blessings of heaven and just blow our minds. God, I pray that you would do that this week. We love you, Jesus. Amen.

God's Way - First Things First: Part 2

God’s Way - First Things First: Part 2 - How God Gives First

Genesis 15, Genesis 22, John 3:14–21

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Well, good morning, everybody. Excited that you are here with us today, and we're going to be continuing in our God's Way First Things First series. We will be in Genesis here in a moment, but I wanted to give a quick recap of where we were and how we wrapped things up last week. If you were with us, we began to walk through this idea that there is a lie that has been told to us since the beginning of time, which began in the garden with Adam and Eve. That lie came from the serpent, or who we know as Satan. He came to Adam and Eve and said, "Did God really say that you can't eat of that one tree in the garden? Did he really say that? Like, why would God allow that to happen? To create something in the garden, a poisonous fruit, which is probably what we know is reserved for Disney movies, right? Like, why would God create a poisonous fruit in the garden?" He says, "Actually, what you don't know is that God doesn't want you to have the knowledge. He doesn't want you to have the knowledge that he has. He, God, is holding out on you. He's withholding his everything from you. And so in return, we have to figure it out on our own. We have to take control. We have to be the ones that call the shots because God isn't gonna give us enough." And this lie has perpetuated and passed itself down year after year after year until even today: that you can't have God's blessing because he's not going to give it to you. He is going to hold out on you.

And we began to walk through what it means that God desires the absolute best for our lives. He wants the absolute best for us. But there are areas in our life and in our heart where there still is darkness. Until God's light shines in those dark places, we will continue to have bondage in those things. So the only way for us to begin to stop believing that lie is to trust in God, because he is the perfect designer. He's designed everything in our world. You want to know how he's designed marriage? Read the Bible. You want to know how he's designed relationships and families? Read the Bible. You want to know how he has designed sex? Read the Bible. If you want to know how he has designed community, church, life, and relationships, read the Bible. If you want to know how he has designed finances, open up God's word. Because he is the perfect designer, and he has a design for us.

And like I joked kind of last week, I talked about how our cars are designed to run in a certain way. The price of gas lately is out of control, and it would be easier for me to find an alternative liquid to put into my car. For me, I would say that would be water, right? My spigot's right next to where I parked my car. I could just fill it up, top it off, and I'm on my way. But that would cause catastrophic damage to my car. It wouldn't run anymore. It wouldn't work. And God has a plan. He has a design. And yet we go, "Oh, God, okay, I know you have your plan, but you know what? I know best. I know how this works. You can keep your instructions. That's fine." And yet we struggle in our lives, our marriages, our world, and our finances. And we go, "God, why are you letting this happen?" And God's like, "I had a design for you guys." But we take control because we don't think that we're going to have enough.

So we talked about these maps, these zones of where we are with our trust on the spectrum with our finances with God. The first zone is kind of the beginning line of where we've never given to the church. The finances are ours. I direct them. I choose where they go. You've never given to the church. Maybe you've given once. Maybe it was through something like last Christmas. We had Operation Christmas Child where we gathered things. Maybe you donated some toys or some socks or maybe something to that. And that's amazing. But the next step that God wants us to take is consistency in giving. Maybe for you, that looks like starting with about twenty bucks a month, fifty bucks a month, whatever you're at. But you're beginning to have a faithful, regular giving system where we see God is in the systems, that you would have that flowing in a system. And then maybe from there, you would step up to a proportional commitment. You give a percentage. You begin to look at everything that God has blessed you with: your income, your retirement, your investments, everything that comes in as income. And you begin to say, "Hey, I'm going to give a portion of this, maybe one percent, two percent, three percent." And that's where I'm going to start, having a proportional giving of what God has blessed me with.

And then I said from there, the Bible talks about biblical stewardship, discipleship, is a tithe. And what does a tithe mean? Well, tithe is the word tenth. And you could be like, "Holy buckets, Chris. You're talking about ten percent of everything that comes in?" Yeah, that's what the Bible says. But that's it, right, Chris? There's nothing more that God's asking. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. We kind of want to land there and be like, "Okay, good. I'm good, God. I did. I'm fine. I'm set." But God goes, "No, no, no, no. I have a level five that is extravagant generosity. That is a biblical ten percent tithe and beyond. Giving to things like local para-church organizations, maybe like a Christian pregnancy center or gathering in a local nonprofit that works with the homeless. Or maybe it's a situation where you are a recipient of this, and the fact that you're sitting in a facility that was only possible with people who had extravagant generosity. Before this building, there was not a home per se for Spring Valley Church. There were leased buildings. It began set up and tear down in elementary school back in 1999. And then God opened up different doors and then eventually this one here where we can call this place our home, ours, twenty-four seven. And because of that, we have things like youth group that happens on Monday nights. We have things like people being able to come and worship God during the week. Men's and women's Bible studies, children's ministries, Camp Awesome, that we would have a space to call our own to even be able to do something like that for days. Like this is amazing. And you are sitting in a place; you are a recipient of that extravagant generosity."

But this lie that Satan began and gave in Genesis 3 really begins to influence everything that we are. It influences our finances. It influences our time, our resources, our life planning. And Jesus spent, I talked about this last week, one-third of his time talking about money, possessions, and finances. That's a pretty big deal. And I began to really wrestle with that. I'm like, "Jesus, why did you spend that? I mean, I thought you were all about love and grace and forgiveness." He is. But he also knew that at the forefront of that was where our hearts were. And there was a rich man who came to him that said, "Hey, Jesus, how do I inherit heaven?" And Jesus says, "You have to obey the law, honor your mother and father, love others better than yourself, love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, your strength, everything that you are." And he goes, "I've done all that." And Jesus goes, "Sweet, you're getting into heaven." No. He says, "Sell everything you have and give it away." Why? Because Jesus knew that that rich man had made finances and money his idol. He had replaced God. Yes, he had checked the boxes, but he had replaced God in his heart with his money.

Jesus says in Matthew chapter six, "Don't worry about food or clothing. Take a look at the birds of the field. Take a look at the flowers, the lilies. Do I not care for them? Do I not feed them? Do I not clothe them in glorious splendor? Will not your heavenly Father do the same for you?" Don't believe the lie. And this ties us into our spiritual readiness regarding money and finances. Our financial decisions reveal our ultimate allegiance. Is it trust in God or trust in ourselves? And it's not about the amount. I don't want us to get caught up in that. Well, okay, Chris, what do I need to write my check every week? How much cash do I need to bring to every church on Sunday and put in the drop box? It's not about that. It's about a posture of our heart. And Jesus spoke on these things because he knew for us it was going to be something that we were going to have to wrestle with. That it was going to be a tough thing to trust God over trusting ourselves. It's a spiritual issue.

And we closed last week and I gave you a challenge. I said, "Go have the conversation." First, go have the conversation with God. Where are you at financially? Go talk to God about it. And then if you have a spouse or you have a family, go talk to them about it as well. This is a family unit thing that you all are on the same page biblically when it comes to financial discipleship. If you forgot, fear not. You got a whole nother week. But if you did have a conversation, I'm proud of you. That's awesome. But don't skip it. Don't just say, "Oh, don't worry about it." No one just stumbles into financial discipleship, just as you don't stumble into a six-pack. I'm not talking beer here, okay? I'm talking our fitness. No one stumbles into being physically fit, right? It takes intention. It takes planning. It takes discipline. But we don't like those things. They're uncomfortable, right? Last time I checked, I don't think God called us to a comfortable life. I think he called us to an obedient life.

And so today's objective, I want us to shift from identifying the lie to understanding God's actual pattern of giving. Generosity is who God is. It's his core character. And when we have that, there's an abundance that follows steps of faith. So what does it mean for us to act the way that God acts? Well, this is where we're going to be. Genesis chapter 15, starting in verse 1. We're going to have it on the screens if you want to flip there with a Bible or open it up on your phone. It says this in verse 1 in chapter 15: "Sometime later, the Lord spoke to Abram in a vision and said to him, Do not be afraid, Abram, for I will protect you." Now, maybe you might be thinking, "Hey, Chris, I thought the dude's name was Abraham." That's going to come later. We're going to talk about that in a moment. But right here, God is saying to Abraham, who is going to protect him? Is it gonna be by his own strength? Is it gonna be by his own might? Is it gonna be by his own children that Abraham is gonna be protected? No, God says, "I will protect you. Do not be afraid, Abram." This is God's character. He is protector. He is provider. He is promise keeper. And Abram's expected response was to depend on God, not his own strength, not his own control, not his own choices, not even his own children. Because the reality is he has no children.

So where's the lie? Continue on in that. He said, "But Abraham replied, O sovereign Lord, what good are all your blessings when I don't even have a son? Since you've given me no children, Eliezer of Damascus, a servant of my household, will inherit all my wealth. You have given me no descendants of my own, so one of my servants will be my heir." Where is the lie? God, you're holding out on me. You have not given me a son, an heir to everything that you have blessed me with. And he admits he has been blessed. But there is no son to pass it along. Abraham has wealth. He admits it. He has wealth. But he cares also where it goes. And it's going to go to someone who isn't his flesh and blood. Some person who is just a part of his crew that is just going to receive it, and there is going to be no legacy.

I think there's a modern parallel to Abram's fear, maybe in our lives, that fear has this incredible grip on us. We have this financial anxiety. If you're, I have a fear, will I ever be able to retire? I joke about, and my wife, we make this joke, that we are too young to have lived through the housing boom and we are too old to have been an online social media influencer. We are in this gap of living through many crises in life: 9-11, financial crisis, pandemics, inflation, wars, bloodshed around the globe. And there's an anxiety that we don't know if there's going to be enough. There is uncertainty. There's debt. There's less than ideal income. And this even goes into our parenting that sometimes we think, "God, you gave me what?" I remember that first time holding Adelyn, my daughter who's almost 12, going, "Lord, I don't know what I'm doing. And I not only have to be responsible for my own life, but my wife, which I committed to years ago, and now this tiny little human that can't do anything on their own to survive. Lord Jesus, help me." I remember praying that prayer, holding her, going, "I don't know what I'm gonna do, God."

And some for us, this rolls into how our children become our idols in our life. We become taxi drivers for our children to make sure they're at this sport, at this camp, doing this thing, over here at this thing. Why? Because we just want the very best for them. And I think it comes from a really good place. But when we look at what might be our idols, take a look at where we spend our money and how much we spend our time. It's only in America does it feel like there's this rat race for our children. Well, you know what? I didn't make it in the NBA, but my kid is going to. And I'm going to make sure that they get there if that kills me. Newsflash, it's going to kill you. We have deified our children in our life. Are they a blessing from God? Absolutely. But they shouldn't control everything that we are.

See, the problem is when we live and believe this lie, fear crowds out our faith. Fear replaces our faith. And when we go to count and we don't see, instead of trusting what God can do. Abram, God, you're not doing a good job. I don't have a son. I don't have an heir. And God in his grace just goes, "Oh, small little man, you know nothing. You don't understand what I am doing." He moves on in verse 4. Then the Lord said to him, "No, your servant will not be your heir, for you will have a son of your own who will be your heir." Then the Lord took Abram outside and said, "Look up into the sky and count the stars if you can, buddy. That's how many descendants you will have." God here directly refutes the lie. Your servant will not be your heir. You will have a son.

And I think there's some imagery here that God is speaking to him inside and then takes him outside. Sometimes we need to get outside of our little world. We're stuck in this inside little bubble thinking God can't do that. He's not enough. It's not gonna make it. We're not gonna last. We're not gonna survive. God is calling us to step outside of that. And he takes Abram outside and says, "Look at the stars, dude." One of my favorite things when we go up to South Lake Tahoe at night is to go out and look at the stars. Like if you guys have never done that, gotten away from the city and been outside in like really darkness, but to be able to just look up into the sky, like holy buckets. There are so many stars. And I'm reminded when I look up that, I was like, I can only imagine at that place in that time in the world with like no light pollution, what would have the night looked like for Abram? And God goes, "Count him. I double dog dare you. Don't lose track. You can't count him." Because fear says you will not have enough. But God says to Abram, "My promise is you will have everything." We have to replace our limited human perspective with the unlimited divine promise from God. And we have to shift our perspective to God, knowing the full truth of everything that he is. To the point that you will not believe your own eyes. And it will remove your fear because it will come to a point where you can't even count the blessings that God is bestowing upon you.

It won't always look like money, guys. That's what I'm not saying. I'm not saying you start tithing and then your money will be perfect. You'll start reordering your heart in the way that God wants you to, but God will provide in many different ways to bless you in things that you can never dream, ask, or imagine. For Abram right now, counting zero was easy, right? That was his tunnel vision: zero. How many kids? Zero. But God is saying, "Look at the stars. That's how many descendants you're going to have." And this is one of the greatest verses in the Bible. I absolutely love it. In verse six it said, "Abram believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness because of his faith." The lie is God is holding back that you have to do it your way. You have to control it. You have to make sure that you have your plan and your system. But the truth is that God says, "Do it my way and all of my abundance is yours. Everything that I have, I want to bless you with." See, the key principle here is abundance follows faith. Our way triggers scarcity and anxiety, but God's way unlocks overflow.

Abraham had a change of heart in his mind and his action in that moment. And it wasn't just lip service. It wasn't like, "Okay, yeah, God, sure, I hear you. Stars equal descendants and there's a lot of them. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Cool. Thanks, dude." But there was a promise that God was going to come through. So do we believe the lie that Satan has been telling us forever, or do we believe that God, when it comes to money, says "you will have what you need, put me first, everything else will be taken care of"? Because this is ultimately the financial question before us, right? Are you trusting yourself? Like the lie, like Adam and Eve, like Abram before God came into his life? Are you trusting God? And what's awesome here is after this moment, God has a ceremonial covenant moment with Abram, and he actually changes his name. The name of God, if you don't know in Scripture, is Yahweh. And I know there's a whole lot more to it if you know Hebrew. I don't know Hebrew, so you can ask Pastor Andre. He's very skilled and knowledgeable in that. But the word Yahweh literally has within its core this idea of God's breath. And I heard it said this way once, and it changed my perspective. It's literally like Yahweh. It's literally the breath of God inside of us that sustains us. That is who God is. And God goes through this ceremonial covenant with Abram and says, "From now on, your name is going to be Abraham." Abraham. God literally puts his name in the middle of Abram's name. How cool is that? So that every time that somebody would call Abraham's name, they were saying the name of God. And Abram was reminded of that covenant that he has with God.

And so we come to chapter 22 and it says this. It says, "Sometime later, God tested Abraham's faith. Abraham, God called. Yes, he replied, here I am. Take your son, your one and only son, Isaac." So God fulfills his promise, right? We read that shortly after that covenant God says, "Hey, I'm gonna come back around a little bit and you are going to have a son." And Abraham and Sarah go, "What?" Because by this time they were old. I'm not gonna say a number because then that might offend some of you in the room, okay? But there comes a point in life where men and women just do not naturally conceive anymore. Okay. And Abraham and Isaac had, or Abraham and Sarah had tried time and time and time and time and time and time again to have a son, to have a child, and it didn't happen. And they just gave up on that hope. And then God comes along and tells them, and he's like, "What?" And it's interesting because Sarah laughs so loud that God, having a conversation with Abraham, goes, "Did your wife just laugh at me?" And Sarah goes, "No, no, no, I didn't." Okay, now, first off, if you didn't know, you can't lie to God, okay? He knows everything, all right? But Sarah doubles down on this going, "I know my life, I know my body, I know biology, the basics of it. That doesn't happen when I'm my age." But you're talking to God, the God who promised an heir. But Sarah just digs down and fights and says, "No, I know better. I know best." Isn't it awesome when you get to have a conversation with someone who thinks they know better and they know best? Isn't that just the most fun? No, it's miserable. They sit there, they dig down. "This is my side of the story. This is the truth. This is what is right. This is what is true." And they fight from their perspective.

We're going to touch on that a little bit. But God says there's going to be a son. And God says it's not going to come through your concubine. It's not going to come through your messed up plans that you've screwed up to try to create. Now you've got Ishmael around. But it's going to come through my promise, my design, my way, not yours. And so Abraham and Sarah have a son. And they call him Isaac. And so here in verse 22, he says, "Take your son, your only son. Yes, Isaac, the one that you love so much and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you." Do you ever read a Bible verse and go, "I just don't like that?" Like this is one of those Bible verses where I'm like, "I don't like this. I don't like this concept. I don't like this test. I don't like anything about it." And I go, "God is, man, like, we have the understanding of the other side of this, but Abraham didn't." And I'm thinking, "God, sometimes in life, I'm like, God, is there any way you could teach me a lesson and just make it easier? Like, why does it have to be so hard sometimes?" But God here is saying, "Hey, I need to know if you trust me." You've said you trust me. You've had probably some small actions that show that you trust God. But God goes, "I need to know because I think deep down in here we get caught in this as well that we begin to idolize the blessing that we receive from God rather than the one who provided the blessing." And God here is saying, "Abraham, I've given you the blessing of the one son that you deeply desired, the son who you love with everything that you are. Do you trust me with this? And do you love me more than Isaac?"

And there's this nature of just spiritual testing, and it's almost comical. That at the moment that we have a commitment to God, it is always followed by testing. So the question, and you may have experienced this last week, I asked you to have the conversation. Did you avoid it or did you have the conversation? If you did have the conversation, either something happened to you last week or something's going to happen this week. Because here's what happens. It is so incredibly regular that God tests us to verify our obedience. Not to trip us up or to mess with us or to say, "Ha, ha, ha, you little idiot, like you messed up again." Like, no, no, no. But God tests us to want to know, do we truly believe what we say we're going to do? I had this happen a few weeks ago, preparing this sermon series. And I was doing some errands around here. I was driving around and all of a sudden, my engine kind of running a little rough. And I'm like, "That's weird. I'm like, it won't happen again. Keep driving." It happens again. I'm like, "Okay, that's, wow, what? Something's not right here." And all of a sudden it goes and goes. And I get to the point, the check engine light is not only on, it is flashing at me. So I'm like, "Oh no." I'm trying to come up Sunset over here past Rocklin Event Center. You know that's a big hill. My car is revving, shaking, making the most Lord awful sound I've ever heard in my life. And I'm like twenty miles an hour. People are honking at me. They're flying around me like, "What's this idiot doing?" And I'm like, "Lord Jesus, just get me to the church, please, Lord." And I limp it up the hill and I coast down a little bit and I sit in the light. I'm like, "Lord, the church is right there. Just please." And I'm like, "This is it. This is my car's toast. It's done. It's over. The engine's shot. The transmission is destroyed." I'm like, "God, we don't have the money for a new car. We don't have money for a car payment. This car is paid off. Lord, do you know how amazing that is?" God, no. Limp it into the parking lot, back it in, sit in front of the church, and I pop the hood, and I'm just like, "God, I don't know." And I'm like, "God, I trust you. You have a plan. You have a purpose. We're doing everything we can to live within your design financially. And we're not coming up a short, but I'm staring down something that looks like I'm going to be coming up short."

So I call my dad. "Hey, dad, stuck at church. What are you doing?" I'm like, "Hey, can you get me this tool and this tool and this tool?" This is what happened. He's like, "Okay, I'm on my way." So he comes up. I'm looking at the... I can't do anything. I don't have the connection to do the check engine. Like he brings that up. We check the engine and the most glorious peace, love, grace of God comes over me and it says an engine misfire. And for those of you who were just like that went straight over your head, that is a blessing because it could have said engine default, exploded, it's over, good luck, see you later, goodbye, transmission no worky. And so we're like, "Okay, misfire means something's wrong with the spark." We're like, spark plugs. And I start looking around. Every auto parts store in this place is shut down except for the one that is right over here. I cruise in. I grab the spark plugs. We come back. Dad helps me. We swap everything out. It was amazing. Just a little cover that comes off. Like that doesn't happen when you work on a car. Like just one cover. Replace the spark plugs. Get back in the car. Jesus, start it up, and it starts. It's not shaking. Like, okay, that anxiety-riddled lap around the block. You guys have been there if you've worked on a car. You're like, "All right. So you go around the block. You keep it simple. Keep it chill. Everything's good. You're like, all right, let's get that speed up. Let's get those RPMs." And I take it up the hill, cruising, flip a U-turn, come back, cruising, pull in the parking lot, and I go, "Thank you, Jesus." What I thought was going to have to be a brand new car, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars, $59.95, four spark plugs. Yes. And I remember driving home, I was still anxious, but I was just like, "Lord, you are so good. You are so good."

But when we step into this truth of God, he's going to test us because he wants to know whether our obedience is faith that's just a verbal one or is a visceral one that is down to our gut. So Abraham puts the wood on the back of his son, grabs his fire starter thing, whatever, flint, whatever they used, and they start on a trek. And Isaac turns to Abraham, his dad, and says, "Hey, Dad, where's the sacrifice?" Because this wasn't the first time Isaac had done this. He had gone with his dad before to offer this worship to God. And he knew that there needed to be something that was going to have to be killed and sacrificed to cover the sin. And I cannot imagine, as a dad, to have to turn to my son and to say, "God's going to provide, bud. God's going to provide. I don't know." And so he gets to the place. They build the altar. He puts the wood on. And he bounds his own one and only son and puts him on the wood and he raises his hand and God stops him and says, "Now I know." That even says in Hebrews chapter 11, the faith chapter, it talks about that Abraham had such faith that even if he would have gone through with killing his son, he had such faith that he believed God would raise him back to life. Because he embodied the covenant and the promise. And God provides an animal, a ram that's stuck in a bush right there. It's the only way God can, right? And they have a sacrifice. And there might've been silent treatment from Isaac to dad for a few weeks. But the faith that Isaac now had watching his dad trust God in a way that I pray that we never have to be tested in was amazing.

This parallels a story from the New Testament. If you guys have read your Bible and seen the whole story, but it says this in John 3. "As Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, the Son of Man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. For this is how God loved the world. He gave his one only Son so that everyone who believes in him would not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son to the world not to judge the world but to save the world through him. There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him, but anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God's one and only son. And the judgment is based on this fact. God's light came into the world, but people love the darkness more than the light for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed." He's talking about this, shining light, all areas of our life. But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see what they're doing, what God wants. You might have heard this scripture before, maybe a different translation, maybe you memorized it. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him believes what?" Well, believes the same thing that Adam, Abraham did with Isaac. God the Father did with his one and only son, except God finished the job. Christ died on the cross for you and for me so that we could be reconciled. That's a big fancy term that means we are fixed in our sins, that they would not be counted against us, but they would be counted against his one and only son because God's son was given for you so that you could come into the light and be in right relationship with God. And God wanted to know that Abraham was in right relationship with him.

See, God gave you his first and best, not his leftovers, not his second choices, not what was just kind of there at the end of the month, but God gave completely, fully, freely, holding absolutely nothing back with no conditions to his love. And not only that, he actually adopted us into his family and calls us his own. Do you guys believe that? I've preached this stuff for a long time and I still don't get it or understand everything that God is doing. But it's a call to discipleship. We are invited in to act like God, love like God, live like God, and give like God. Fear shows that we're holding back. Faith shows that we are trusting. God's generosity is the blueprint for our obedience. The conversation I want you to have this week now is are we willing to move forward in actually putting our faith in God with our finances? I didn't ask of anything last week. I'm not asking of anything. We're not signing on a line. You're not committing to anything right now. I'm just asking, are you willing to move forward in your biblical financial discipleship with Jesus? And it just starts with a conversation. Another conversation of God. What do you want us to do? What would it look like for us to give in the way that you have given to us, God? God holds nothing back. God has never held anything back. But I know at times, I'll be the first to admit, I have. I've held back. I've had fear overcome my decisions. Because trusting God with our everything, including our finances, is actually our full and ultimate act of worship. Giving is our worship.

We're going to talk about this more in the next few weeks, but how do we worship God? Do we worship God with our hands, with our heart, with our actions? Is it our entire life, including our finances? And are we putting our life in a way that would be correct and proper to the way that God has, as the ultimate designer, designed our lives to be? We're addressing some things here at church of how can we remove barriers? How can we invite people into practicing regular biblical financial stewardship? Maybe that's stuff that we need to do as a church. We stopped passing the plate during COVID because we didn't want to share COVID, right? Maybe we need to bring that back so we can worship together as a body. I don't know. We're still wrestling with some of these things. Maybe we need to change the way that we have our drop box in the back and the way that we have our online setup or the way that we send out our statements of those who financially give on the regular. This is a theology of giving that we need to have for our lives. And obedience flows from trust. I want you to get this right. There is no guilt. There is no shame. There is no manipulation. It is just an invitation into what God has called us to do. And I will admit, I need to ask for forgiveness from you guys. I haven't talked about this as well as I should have. And so I'm sorry. I haven't led you well in this area. Out of fear. I was afraid everybody was going to leave. I start talking about money. You guys all showed back up this week. I won't tell you we have two more weeks of this, so I'm just kidding.

But we're at a crossroads here. Is God going to be the first in our spiritual life? Is he going to be the first in our financial life? Are we going to trust him the way that he has designed things? Are we going to stop believing the lie? Because reality is free will still remains, guys. You don't have to do this. You don't. But I think, and the way that I have found, is that living in this, on the other side of it, there's no other way to experience this without just fully going in on it. That on the other side of it, there is just this place of, oh. The Bible talks about a peace that passes all understanding. I'm telling you, we've tithed for a long time, and the numbers never matched. I would do the math over and over. I'm a math guy. It didn't make sense. But God asked for faithfulness. I said, "Okay." And we've never gone without. Things have been tight. We've had to say no to things. We've had to make sure that we budget in a certain way so that we have that ability to put God and him first in everything that we are. And I know some of you I've had those stories with you of how you fought it and fought it and fought it and fought it and you just said fine and you did it and you're like, "Oh my goodness, what? Why didn't I do this sooner?" Because there's just something on the other side of obedience that just opens up our world and no other way can you attain that without that trust. I encourage you step in faith, step in trust, trust the one who is the blesser. God, don't get so wrapped up in the blessing but trust God. Have a posture of faith and of prayer and of life realignment because we might need to reorder our life around God to make this happen. And it's not going to be easy, but I'll tell you it is so worth it on the other side. And I think Abraham, if he was here today, would agree.

Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you, Lord. We thank you for your gift and for your sacrifice. God, we thank you for your first generosity. God, we thank you for how you first gave your one and only son, that we would even have the opportunity to be here in this place, to have new life. Jesus, I pray for courage as we have these conversations with our family and with you, God, that we would ask that you would open our hearts to what you desire for us, God. More spiritual depth, more maturity. God, shining that light in all those dark places that we wanna control and hide from you, but God, you already know those places. So God, I pray, I ask for forgiveness for maybe our fear-driven decisions that we've made in the past and are focusing on our self-reliance. God, give us strength for small faith. This isn't something that we just wake up tomorrow and go, "I'm tithing and I'm being extremely generous." But it's a journey. It's a process. God, I even pray for you inviting testing. God, you desire the best for our lives and that might take us being tested a little bit. God, we thank you for what you're doing in our lives, in our giving and our tithing as worship. And God, I pray that our life would be a life of praise and declaring to you and to the world and everybody around us that you are the number one thing in our life, Jesus. God, may it be so. We love you. In Jesus' name, amen.

God's Way - First Things First: Part 1

God’s Way - First Things First: Part 1 - Shining Light On The Hidden

Matthew 6:19–24; Genesis 3:1–6; Matthew 19:16–22

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

So I'm excited to be back and jumping into a new series with us today called God's Way. This series kind of came out of a little bit of research I had been doing, some studying of the Word, and after kind of working through our tough questions. And if you guys remember, I kicked off our tough questions series, and I said, "If you want your church to be happy, to like you as a pastor, and to come back every single week, don't talk about certain topics. Do you remember? Hell, money, or politics." Good news for you, I have already covered hell. So you can go back and watch that sermon. And we're going to hold off on politics. We might jump into it later. So just forewarning, that might be coming. But here's the bad news: we're going to be talking about money.

And I felt like in this series that this was something that was very important to cover. And I know everybody, you already have the thoughts, right? They're already flowing through your mind. You're like, "I haven't been to church in months, and this is the Sunday I show up, God. Are you kidding me?" So just keep an open mind, okay? Keep an open mind to what God has to teach all of us, including myself today. And in this, we have a core theological principle about our belief and our walk with Jesus. And we know this to be true: until God's light shines into the dark corners of all of our lives, those dark corners continue to stay in bondage. And it is only when we allow God to shine into all of our lives that we find perfect, true, whole freedom.

This is only possible when we begin to identify areas in our lives where we are misaligned with God's will. I will be honest: these topics are 100% uncomfortable, and I might step on some toes. You may not like what you hear in this series, and that's fine. What I want to do is articulate to you Scripture and God's Word for our life. I always thought it was uber cheesy when people do this with acronyms and stuff, but I've heard it said that the Bible is our Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. And it is so true that the Bible gives truth to our right-now lives. Not old Bible-timey lives. Not before-Jesus Bible, old-school, Israelite, lost-in-the-desert lives. But our personal, right-now, end-of-May-2026 lives and beyond.

As a pastor, it is my calling and my duty to equip those whom God has called me to equip. I want us to be people who are grace-filled and Spirit-guided, with transformed hearts, lives, people, and families, and to have our church as a gospel-centered place. But we have to have a cultural reality check to be able to address some of these things. And I want to make sure that we don't elevate Scripture over things, or things over Scripture. Because when we put things above Scripture, we lessen and we degrade God's Word in our lives.

Society has these rules of engagement, right? They tell you, like I said before, we don't talk, especially around the dinner table or maybe a family meal with outside family. You don't talk about politics. You don't talk about religion. You don't talk about money. You don't talk about even sex. But I want to tell you that God has a design for everything that He has created. He does. And Scripture is very clear about how we are to live our lives in every single aspect of it. Take government and politics, for example. Did you know that there is an entire book in the Bible that is dedicated to how God wants to see, use, and roll out government and politics? Does anybody know what that book of the Bible is? It starts with a D and ends with a Y. What book? Oh, you guys, you're so good. I like that. No, I'm sorry. But we are called to understand God's design.

Sexuality and relationships. God created sex. And it's a beautiful, beautiful thing when held within the context of biblical marriage. He has given it to us as a gift. It's a blessing, guys. But there are clear instructions on how that is to be lived out throughout Scripture. And when we understand His design and live it out, it leads to a place of health, joy, and just greatness. But without it, it becomes manipulated and twisted. It leads to a place of shame, control, and abuse. God has a lot to say about money and finances. I found this out. I didn't know this: a third of what Jesus talks about and is recorded in Scripture was all about addressing money, possessions, and stewardship. It is the single most discussed topic that Jesus spoke about in our Bible. So that tells me it's probably pretty important.

And yet, in the church, we do a horrible disservice by tiptoeing around it, not really addressing it, not taking it head-on, and not giving clear, biblical, direct instructions on it. And I have failed you as a pastor. Throughout my entire pastorate, I don't think I've ever dug this deep into biblical stewardship. I was talking to another pastor this week, and he's been focusing on this in his church as well. I was like, "Oh, this is awesome. I love this." But he called it financial discipleship. I was like, "Ooh, I'm going to steal that. I like that." But we like to categorize it in a way that it's just kind of over here. I'm over here. And maybe I'll get close to it, but I don't like it. But Jesus focused and taught a lot about finances. Well, I thought he talked a lot about love and forgiveness. Yeah, he does. He talks a lot about that. But when we back up a little bit more, we realize that Jesus' focus here is actually addressing finances, which are a primary barrier to practicing love, to practicing forgiveness, and to spiritual maturity.

What we do with our resources shows our true allegiance. See, in the church, we are not influenced by the world. Is that true? No! We fall into these same traps of self-absorption and consumerism that the world has too, and yet we're supposed to look different, right? And this is an opportunity for us as a church to show the world how to live. It's an opportunity for us to speak truth in grace and with patience, and with love and forgiveness, which flips the argument in a way that the world doesn't understand. And I want to, during these weeks, offer a different alternative for us to live. When lived out, as the Bible says, it brings blessing upon blessing upon blessing.

And you might know a lot about this topic. Maybe some of you are like, "I know this front and back. I know exactly what I'm supposed to do." Awesome. I would suspect you probably got a little area you can grow in. And maybe you've never heard the church talk about money before. All you've heard is some televangelist say, "Send me your money and you'll be healed." Not talking about that either. Or maybe you're like, "Yeah, I'm supposed to, but it's just hard. Have you seen the price of bananas lately?" And my desire is to just have open hands and hearts, and to let the truth of God's Word just pour over you, and continue in your discipleship walk with Him, and to let Him continue to form us into the image that He so lovingly desires for us.

I wanna pray real quick. Jesus, we thank you for today. We thank you that you have not hidden yourself from us, God. This isn't some mathematical equation that nobody knows about except for you, and we don't have to try to figure out how to just unlock this blessing. But God, that you have shown yourself, you have shown your will, your way, who you are, and through Scripture, I pray that today our hearts and minds would be open to what you have for us. That we would be receptive to what you wanna say to us individually, how you wanna challenge us, how you wanna call us up, God, into a new way of living. And maybe there might be some repentance, God, along the way too. God, I pray in this process that your Holy Spirit would move freely and that we would not resist it. That God, both as individuals and as a body of believers, that you would lead us deeper into healthy, biblical discipleship and to live into right relationship with you. Jesus, Lord, we need you, God. We need you now more than ever. We love you, Jesus. We pray all of this in your name. Amen.

Can I share a little secret with you? I love it right there, right here. I am a little bit of a closet apocalyptic movie fan. I don't know anybody else who is big into end-of-the-world movies or TV shows. Yeah. Okay. Right. You're right here with me. I'm not huge on zombies; the most I would go is *World War Z*. Okay. So, I'm not all in on *The Walking Dead*. That's just not me. But things like *Greenland* with Gerard Butler? You guys seen that one? Okay. They just came out with a second one recently, continuing the story. Great stuff. Or maybe *The Day After Tomorrow*, maybe a little bit of *Planet of the Apes*. Anybody? No? No? There's a recent movie, not a movie... yeah, a movie and a show that came out called *Homestead*. It's really good. Movies like *Revolution*. Anybody remember *Revolution* back in the day? Were they like the nanobots that got into stuff and knocked all the power out? The show went on way too long. I'm like, guys, we should have ended this seasons ago. But then there's another new, recent one called *Paradise*. If you guys are streaming that one, it's pretty intense.

So, I love these movies, and the premise of an apocalyptic movie is that you don't know what's coming. You come onto the scene, and life is great. The world's moving, everything's fine. And then all of a sudden, something happens. Maybe it's some massive weather event that changes the polar ice caps, or it's a volcano that goes off, or maybe something from space collides into Earth, or just like aliens show up, or a biochemical outbreak. And it's just like, ah. What I've noticed with these movies is they all have one thing in common: when it all happens and chaos ensues, people abandon all of their stuff and prioritize what is important. Yet, we tend to build and live our lives surrounded, centered, and focused on all of this stuff. No one in these movies is like, "Hold on, before we leave the house, I gotta make sure I have all of my shoes in the car. But what about my purse collection? I can't leave that behind." No. Nobody's like, "Let me go get my sports trophy from my seventh-grade soccer game that I got a participation award for."

Nobody's loading up their books or their coin collection or their golf clubs. No. What are they loading up? What are they loading up? This is the interactive part here, okay? What are we loading up? Kids, you're family. You're loading up family. You're loading up medicine. You're loading up water. You're loading up food, the necessities. Weapons? I took a dark turn. Okay, there we go. Gold star for my mom. But the important stuff, right? Nobody's like, "Hold on, hold on, we forgot grandma's gravy boat. Like it's in the huge, top corner on the right. For when we have gravy?" As we're running through the forest for our lives from zombies? Nobody's trying to unbolt their flat-screen TV from the wall and be like, "Put this on the truck." No. You go after what is important. And yet, what do we do? We spend our lives, even decades, collecting stuff and focusing our lives around what would be left behind in the middle of a crisis.

Jesus has an upside-down kingdom that He's called us to live. And He says that some stuff is really just the opposite of how we're supposed to live our lives. And we in the church at times get caught up in this stuff, and we can laugh at ourselves, but we get caught up in this and we build our lives around stuff that just isn't worth focusing on. Jesus talks about this in Matthew chapter 6, where we're going to be today. If you want to turn there, it'll be on the screens. But this is in the middle of what is called the Sermon on the Mount. This is where Jesus takes a moment in His ministry and preaches the greatest sermon ever written and ever recorded. And He, in here, a third of the time, talks about money and finances and financial discipleship. But He focuses in on this set of verses I want to talk about this morning, starting in verse 19.

He says, "Don't store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Rather, store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there your heart will also be. Your eye is a lamp that provides light for your body. And when your eye is healthy, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is filled with darkness. If the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is. No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one, love the other, or you will be devoted to one, and you will despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money."

Jesus said this 2,000-plus years ago. And He talks about three core things in here. I want to walk us through them this morning. The first of which He says is to store treasures, not on earth, but to store treasures in heaven. Treasures on earth versus heaven. He says, earthly wealth decays. Don't know if you know this, but no matter how hard you try, you're not taking anything to heaven. When you die, it all stays here. It doesn't go anywhere. I've heard the stories of people buried with all their possessions, loaded in a car, thinking that that's how they're gonna go to heaven. It doesn't go anywhere, guys. Jesus says here, what happens to it? It's destroyed. It falls apart. Moths eat it. It rusts away. Thieves steal it. But heavenly treasures are secure and eternal. What you sow and reap, some big church words here, farmer terms, I think we don't really know very well. We're not farmers. We may be backyard gardeners. But He says, what is in heaven, what is eternal, will last forever. And this is really our heart allegiance. Whatever your treasure is there, your heart will also be, it says in verse 21. Finances reveal our true spiritual posture.

Jesus continues on to talk about the eye as a lamp. A biblically healthy financial perspective will illuminate and trickle and flow into our whole life. And the same is true for an unhealthy one: it will breed spiritual darkness in our lives. And then He finishes with the dual-mastery improbability that no one can serve two masters. It's completely impossible because you're either over here loving this one, which means you're hating that one. And then you go over here and you love this one, which means you're hating that one. There's no way around it. You cannot serve God, He says, and be enslaved to money. Devotion to one brings contempt for the other. And so why does Jesus, if I said He talked about this a third of the time, why does He continue to come back to this time and time and time and time again? With some other topics, He talks about them once and then He's done with them and moves on.

Well, I think it's this: that His disciples, and I believe many of us modern-day disciples, are constantly defaulted towards control, assumption, and fear over trust. We constantly find ourselves at battle with our inner self, and discipleship requires confronting the gap between cultural habits and kingdom economics. And this was a reality check for His disciples, and it's a reality check for us today that Jesus taught about this repeatedly over and over and over again. Why? Because the disciples still hadn't gotten it. And I think for most of us, I will be the first to raise my hand, I'm still not getting it. And I need to be reminded in Scripture and to still trust who God is, to focus on not self-reliance, but surrender. And at the core of this, which is what I found in my study, is that we are all still believing a lie that originated at the beginning of the world and humanity. We're still being stuck and caught in this deception that happened all the way back in the garden with Adam and Eve.

If you flip to the front of your Bible, the first book is Genesis. And in Genesis chapter three—so like one, two, three, boom, right at the front—we come to this moment where Satan comes before Adam and Eve and tells them a lie. And it's the same lie that I and all of us continue to believe to this day. And this is the lie: that God really didn't say you would die if you ate that fruit on that tree, right? He's talking to Adam. He's like, "That's so silly. Like, why would God make poisonous fruit? That's only for like Disney movies. Like, really?" No. You know what the truth is? The truth is that God doesn't want you to be like Him. And if you eat that fruit, you'll have knowledge of good and evil. You will be like God. And this lie ultimately boiled down to this: that God is holding out on you. And because God is holding something back from you, you must take control and you have to provide for yourself because God's not gonna do it. It's the same lie that He gave Eve that said, "Hey, eat this, go take it out of him. Go give it to him if he needs it too." That to do it in a way that isn't God's way so that we can take care of ourselves, we gotta be in control.

And we live this out every day. I do. "Well, I got it, Pastor. I gotta work 60 hours a week, or I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to provide for my family." Or maybe, "If I do it God's way, I've run the numbers, Pastor. I calculated it out. We're just gonna run out. There's just not enough to go around if I do it the way that the Bible says." Oh, you ran the numbers? You don't think God might be big enough to provide? You must be right. God must be wrong. Just on this topic though, just on this one, right? Just this one. And it leads us to a place of financial hoarding, a scarcity mindset, and an anxiety-driven decision-making process. And I want to tell you today, we have to break the lie. You will never be able to find the peace, the hope, the joy, or the blessing that God has for you until you break the lie.

Jesus talked about this in Matthew 19, just a few chapters later than six, when a rich young man comes to Him and says, "Jesus, how do I get into heaven?" And Jesus says, "Well, you obey the law. You honor your mother and father. You love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength. You love others, your neighbor, rather than yourself." And he goes, "I've done all that." And Jesus said, "Sweet, you're getting into heaven, right?" No. He says, "Take all of your wealth, all of your possessions, sell them and give it away." Because Jesus knew that this man had made wealth his God. He had made his riches an idol, and he left dejected after meeting Jesus. Because to do what Jesus was asking him to do was giving up way too much control that he didn't want to do. Because we are constantly at war with that. We're constantly at war with God's system versus our human intelligence. Fighting back and forth, back and forth.

However, when we read the Scripture and Bible, we see that God is fundamentally into systems. All throughout Scripture, we find different instructions, processes, direction, systems on how we are to live our lives. And it's funny, it's almost as if the Guy who designed everything understood how we are to live our lives. And when we live in that design, in God's plan, God's way, it works 100% of the time. Because He is the Designer with the perfect design. And our place isn't to come in and go, "Good job, God, I'm gonna do a little redesigning, do a quick renovation of this." No, our place is to be obedient and to trust. He even says specifically in this, in this topic of finances, to actually test Him in it. That's how much He believes in His system. It's a testament. And will I not throw open the storehouses and provide for you in ways that you never dreamed, thought, hoped, or imagined? We're gonna talk about that another time.

But I think of it this way. Has anybody seen the price of gas lately? It's ridiculous. It's like, there's just no limit. It's a free-for-all out there. And I was thinking, you know, it would be a lot cheaper, a lot easier, and a lot quicker just to put water in my car. Right? It's right by my house. I could fill up my tank. It would be easy. It wouldn't cost as much. It's liquid, right? It's just liquid. But if I did that, it would be foolish. And the ramifications of that would be catastrophic. I actually did a bunch of research on that when you get water in your gas tank. Like, it is a big deal. And yet, what do we do in our lives? We think, "Okay, God, I know you got your system, your way of doing it, but I got a better, quicker, cheaper, easier way. I'm just going to run with that." And yet, we find our marriages falling apart. Our families are struggling, our finances are stressing us and a burden on our shoulders, which sometimes feels like we can't even breathe. Our anxiety levels are through the roof as a society in a world today. And we wonder why. Because Jesus, who is the ultimate mechanic, came to earth, fixed what was broken. And yet we said, "Thanks God for fixing that. I got it from here." And we just run with it. And then all of a sudden our car's like, "Why God, would you allow this to happen?" Well, He's like, "Well, I gave you something that had something to say about that."

Scripture offers us a way that gives blessing upon blessing upon blessing upon blessing if we are obedient and walk in that. Here's the funny thing about discipleship: we can be really awesome in one area and be completely just falling apart in another. And we like to highlight the ways that we're doing well. "I know a lot of Scripture." Well, good for you. That's awesome. "I volunteer in the children's ministries." Beautiful. "I love it, Pastor. I'm here every single Sunday. I haven't missed a Sunday since 1972." Amazing. I'm glad that you're here. And you know who's the worst at this? Doctors. You go to the doctor, and they just have like this one thing they want to nag you about. You're like, "Yeah, yeah, I've been eating good, I'm working out, I'm getting my steps in every day, I don't go to Taco Bell anymore. Like, I'm doing great." He's like, "Yeah, but have you seen your cholesterol numbers?" You're like, "Shh, stop. Look at everything I'm doing that's great. That's awesome. Yes, yes, you're doing that right, that's great. However, if we don't address this one thing right here, you're going to have lifelong ramifications." And this is Jesus coming along our side and saying, "Yes, you're doing great. I love you. I applaud you. Keep going. Don't stop doing that stuff. Keep doing that stuff, but I got some tweaking I wanna do over here."

Because the reality is our spiritual health is bound to our whole self. Our spiritual health is bound to our whole self. We can't divide this up. And this is the funny thing about discipleship: there is usually massively unequal growth in our walk with Jesus. And that's okay. And I want to tell you, if you might be there at that place, God loves you so much. You're His son; you are His daughter. He sees your growth. He sees who you are. He says, "I want to address something else to bring full health." And so, as we close, I got a scale I want us to look at. And this is just honesty, okay? If you can just be honest with me in this, I want to walk us through a couple things here. I call it the Five Zones of Financial Discipleship. And the first zone would be, I would say, Zone Zero. You're like, "Wait a minute, you said five." I know. Okay, okay, good. This is the starting place. Maybe for those of you who are in this zone, you've never given anything to the church, whether that was your time, your resources, or your money.

You're on complete reliance upon yourself. There's no trust established between you and God. You're like, "This is mine. God, do your thing. I'm doing my thing." And if you are here in this camp, again, I want to tell you, God loves you. God absolutely loves you. This does not change your salvation. This doesn't change your place in heaven. This doesn't change whether you have to wait after you die to get in heaven. No, no, no, none of that, okay? He loves you, and He wants the very best for your life. He wants to have an honest conversation with you, and He wants you to be honest with Him. He wants you to bring your worry, your anxiety, your fears, maybe your even anger. "God, how come you're not providing? How come I have to live paycheck to paycheck to paycheck? You've got to change this, God. I am mad." He wants that. Bring it to Him.

The first step after that would be Zone One. This would be what I would consider a one-time engagement. You, at some point throughout history, at one point gave something to the church. Maybe it was last Christmas, holiday time, we did Operation Christmas Child, where we sent shoeboxes to poverty-ridden countries that brought the gospel message to them through a practical gift in their life. If you did that, thank you so much. You changed a little boy's, a little girl's life in ways that you'll never know or imagine. And you might walk into heaven one day and meet them and get to hear their story. This is big. I want you guys to get that. This isn't, "Well, I'm only in Zone One and he's up in Zone Four. I'm less." No, no, no, no, no. That's not what I'm saying, okay? Maybe you bought something for the church. Maybe you donated something to the church. And this was a first step of trust. I'm so proud of you. This is awesome. But it was still self-directed. Okay?

The next zone, Zone Two, would be emerging or stepping into stewardship and biblical discipleship in a standard method or a system. And this would look like an occasional gift on the regular. Maybe it's you throw 20 bucks a month in the backdrop box, and you're like, "God, this is what, boom, I'm giving." But you're consistent in it. And like I said, and we'll explore this more, God is into systems. And so we believe the same here at Spring Valley Church, and we have systems for you to be able to give to God, whether that's through an envelope in your chair, whether that's a drop box in the back, maybe it's online, secure. Maybe it's a way that you set up online giving on a recurrence that just automatically gets given to the church in a system that is just easy and regular. But you begin to see how God has systems set up. This is phenomenal.

The next zone, Zone Three, would be when you shift maybe from 20 bucks here or there, or a little bit here, you begin to go to a proportional commitment. What do I mean proportional? That would mean that you begin with, say, 1% of your income, you say, "God, I am giving back to you." So it is proportional to the blessing that you have received. Now, if you want to know, I will tell you that biblically, there is a word called tithe, and that is translated tenth or 10%. The desire that God has for us in this is to not stop at 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, whatever percent, but to rise up to a level of 10% of our income that He has blessed us with is given back to God through the church. This is huge because you begin to understand intentional alignment with biblical Scripture.

Zone Four would be you are arrived. You're at the 10%. You're like, "Oh my Lord, Pastor, 10%." I just lost count. I didn't get to 10%. I am extremely fortunate that when Lauren and I got married, we had somewhat of a commitment to tithing, but we decided that we were gonna commit to this 10% when we got married. And when we got married, we were both still in college, full-time. We were both working part-time jobs. She was at a Christian bookstore. I was at a Starbucks. And our rent, which killed us every single month, was $325. Oh, Lord Jesus, bring it back, Lord. And it hurt to tithe. But in that obedience, there was a peace. There was a blessing. There was a hope that without that actual commitment every single month, we could not have experienced without being on the other side of it. And it's going to take you being like, "You said 1%, now you're at 10%. But how the?" It starts being intentional. I know people who start with 1% and said, "By this time next year, I'm going to be at 2." And they continue to work at it. And 2 turns into 3 and 3 into 4. It just grows and grows and grows. It's going to take a reordering of the priority of our lives. We might have to go without some things. Like that?

"And then that's it, Chris, right? Zone Four, we're good, that's it?" No. Jesus has a standard even beyond that, and that's what He calls extravagant generosity. This is beyond the baseline of 10% obedience, but is a heart actively seeking opportunities to bless others and advance God's work around the globe. You would not be sitting where you are sitting right now without extravagant generosity. Because there were people who came before us who sacrificed and gave and went above and beyond to get us into this facility. Some of you know who I'm talking about. And that we would not have a place to call home. We would not have a children's ministry down the hall. We would not have Monday night youth group. We would not have men's and women's Bible studies. We would not have different moments of men's and women's events to be able to gather in a place that we call home to hold a foothold for the kingdom of God in Rocklin and Roseville and Plaster County without extravagant generosity. This might look like also donating to parachurch organizations, a local one called Mercy, maybe Sierra Pregnancy Center. Another one known as Gathering Inn who works with the unhoused in the area. This is the ultimate peak of what God desires for us in our biblical financial discipleship.

Now, let me be clear. This growing in these zones is about progression and is posture-driven, not performance-focused. I want to get this absolutely clear right now. That it is about a process over perfection. And I don't want you coming up to me and going, "Well, Pastor, you know I'm a Zone Five Christian." Blessings on you, I don't want to know. God cares about it, and we're not going to come in and have different seating arrangements based upon what zone you are in. Nobody's talking about that. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand or say, "I'm in Zone Three" or "I'm in Zone..." No, no, none of that. What I'm talking about is moving to a place of financial discipleship. And the reality is, the last six years have been absolutely chaos. The world stopped in a way that we never thought the world would stop. Things happen that we never thought would happen. There's fear, there's trauma, and this does cause pullbacks. But I want us to have an invitation from God right now, here in this moment, to have an honest reset. To take a moment to pause and to think about where we are at. I'm not asking you to come forward today and start committing, "I'm tithing 10%," or "God's housing me, I got to give $500,000 to the church." No, that's not what I'm saying. If you do have that, and God is asking about that, let's get lunch this week, okay? But what I'm talking about is asking for you to move forward with an honest conversation with God. And to ask just simply, "God, where should I begin?" Because it is a shift from control to dependence in these finances that will then trickle down into our entire lives. It's a process of surrender. Surrender control, embrace peace, walk in obedience.

So here's what we're gonna do. I wanna ask us, and you got on your program, you got a little card at the bottom. And I want you, if you're willing, to pray over this card and to just check the box there that says, "I'm going to have the conversation." That conversation is going to be with you and God. That conversation might be with the spouse if you have one. Conversation might be with a family if you have that one. We've been talking about this in our house. How do we begin to teach these biblical financial discipleship values to our children? Because it takes the whole family. And it takes all of us as a family. To shift from control to dependence. To break the lie. To focus on progress over perfection. And if I can so boldly say, embrace the awkward. Embrace the awkward. Trust the Designer. Align your home. And walk in Christ's ultimate freedom.

Today, let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for today. God, I pray that we would have open hearts and minds to be receptive of Your word. God, I pray that the Holy Spirit would break in here and put away this lie of self-reliance. God, that you would fill our hearts with your grace in ways that are sometimes really difficult, but absolutely necessary to have these conversations. God, help us to walk in confidence in Your system over our own cultural or personal engineering. God, that you would put peace in our hearts to replace our financial anxiety and to grow in us kingdom-minded trust. God, give us the strength. Lord, we're gonna need it, Jesus, to rely on You first above everything else. So Lord, I pray, break this lie of Satan. You would hold on to us. Put Your truth in us. Bring us Your provision. Bring us Your love. God, help us to see Your redemption and Your care and Your grace, that it may shine so bright in our lives to those far corners and far, far places in our hearts that we want to keep, and Satan wants to keep in darkness. God, that You would bring that light. You would break that lie. You would bring salvation to those spots.

Colossians: Part 5

Colossians: Part 5 - Living Faith Where It Matters Most

Colossians 3:18-4:6

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are wrapping up our Colossians series, so we have been walking through Colossians from chapter one all the way through chapter four. And so we are finishing that up today. And it has been a really powerful series as we dove into this book of Colossians, into this letter from the Apostle Paul, and really kind of got to see how Paul shares who Jesus is and how He's above everything. And throughout the book, starting all the way in chapter one, he's been teaching us and reminding us how we can live a life that is worthy of the Lord. He gives really clear theological arguments for who Christ is, that He is the Son of God, that He did come in bodily form, that He did die and rise again, that He is who He says He was, and then because of that, we should live our life differently. He goes on to say that Christ is our life. He is everything. He gives us a new identity. He takes off the old and puts on the new. He just outlines this so well throughout the passage. But really, because of this, because of who Christ is, and because we are transformed and have this new identity, the natural progression is that our lives, our everyday lives, would be changed. Our behaviors, our attitudes, our actions, our words. Everything is impacted by Jesus. I shared a quote on the first Sunday of our Colossians series. I wanted to share it again because I think it's really powerful, but it also just really applies to how we're going to wrap up the series today. It's from the guys at the Bible Project. It says, "No part of human existence remains untouched by the loving and liberating rule of Jesus. We're invited to live in the present as if the new creation arrived when Jesus rose from the dead. With Jesus, no part of the human existence remains untouched." No part is untouched. This means that we are completely made new. No part of us is exempt. We don't get to just kind of pick and choose what parts are impacted. Or maybe what certain parts we'd like to change. Every aspect of our lives is put under the authority of Jesus Christ. I said in week one that a person can encounter Jesus, and when they do, they will never be the same in some shape or form. Even if they choose not to follow Jesus, they will be impacted in some way. They won't be the same. But when a person is truly transformed by Jesus, everything is different. Everything changes. What we read, the content we consume, the food we consume, the relationships we have, who we surround ourselves with and allow to influence us, how we take care of our health, how we spend our money, how we treat other people. Everything is impacted and needs to be submitted to the authority of Jesus.

Now here's the thing. Jesus isn't just trying to be a fun killer, and as soon as you decide to follow Jesus, you have to get rid of everything you love. That's not the point. But if you are actively surrendering every aspect of your life to Jesus, some things will stay. Some things will have to change in some shape or form, and some things will have to go. Maybe forever if they're a sin issue or something the Lord has convicted you on, but maybe it's just for a season. But when you are living the surrendered life, He's going to make it clear to you of what can stay, go, or be changed. But it all, everything has to be surrendered to the Lord. And that is easier said than done. Honestly, it's an ongoing process. There's times when we are in a new season or we're in a new part of life or something new comes up for us. Maybe we have new information or we learn something new from the Bible and the Holy Spirit convicts us on something and we have to re-surrender. We submit it to Him and say, "Jesus, what do You say about this thing? How can I surrender this? What do You want me to do with this thing? Is this okay for me? Do I need to change it or do I need to let it go?" Paul spends a lot of time talking about who Christ is. And then because of that, how we as individuals are changed. And just to kind of recap some of the things we talked about, he talks about how we should grow in our knowledge and wisdom and understanding. That we should allow the Holy Spirit to produce good fruit in us. That we should grow our roots deeper into good soil of the truth of who Jesus is so that we can be strong in that. That we should build our lives on the truth of God's Word so that we can stand firm when false teachers or other ideologies that go against the Bible come up against us. And we should remember that Jesus is enough, period. He is enough for our life, for our salvation, to sustain us. He is our very life. All of these things are good and necessary for us to live a life worthy of the Lord. But then Paul gets a little bit more practical in chapter three, as we saw last week. He said that we should put to death our old selves and put on this new identity. Get rid of the old self, the sin that is mixed up with that, and put on this new identity. We should clothe ourselves with the characteristics of Jesus. And we should live in holy community, in Christian community with other believers. These are just some really practical things that Paul is saying, "You can do this because you have been made new. These are the steps you can take.”

So we're picking up in chapter three, verse 18, and Paul moves into even more specific and practical things. He's gonna talk about relationships and how even those must be surrendered to the authority of Jesus. So today we're gonna talk about everyone's favorite topic, submission. Everyone loves the idea of submission, right? We love the idea of learning how we can be better about submitting to someone else. But really with this passage, Paul is kind of overhauling the family. He's overhauling the dynamics of the home and family, and then also the workplace. He's teaching us and showing us how the authority and love of Jesus should impact these relationships. In the first century, the readers who were originally reading this, they understood and believed that the man was over everything. The man was the head of the house. He was the head politically. He was the head socially. He had full control and authority over his household. Everyone just submitted to him because that's what you did. And Paul is going to flip the script, not in taking authority away from the men, but in how they behave with that authority. He's gonna turn some things upside down for these first century Christians, but in the upside down kingdom of God, relationships should look different than the world. It would be a problem if they all look the same. So Paul is reshaping the Roman household and the Christian household around Jesus who rules with this self-giving love. He leads and has authority differently than human authority typically operates. Some of these things that we're gonna talk about to our modern day ears may not actually sound very revolutionary. We have progressed in civil rights and human rights, and we have learned how to treat people differently in our Western culture. So they may not seem crazy to hear, but I think it's still a good reminder because just because we know something doesn't mean we always live it out. And so it helps us to remember to shape or reshape our relationships here and now around the rule and authority of Jesus.

So first, he starts with the husband and wife relationship. We're gonna be in chapter three, starting in verse 18. We'll have it on the screens, but if you want to turn there with us. Verse 18 says, "Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord." Little caveat here. This is not all women to all men. This is specific to the husband-wife relationship. This says, "Wives, submit to your husband." Okay? Just wanted to just make that clear. So wives, submit to your husbands. We are called as wives to submit to the husband. But here's the thing. The word in Greek here is referencing, it's similar to a military term, that is referencing to be under in rank. This is not talking about value. It's talking about position. A soldier could have more ability. They could be stronger or more intelligent than their superior officer, but that doesn't change their rank. They still have value as a human being. They still have value in their abilities, but they still have a certain position. And that is under the authority of their higher ranking officer. So in this case, Paul is not lowering the value of wives. He is saying you have a particular position to take. This is your position. Genesis 2 references this idea. And when God made Adam, he said, "You need a helper." None of the animals or anything else in creation was suitable for him. So God said, "You need a helper." Well, this word helper, it's the word "easer." E-Z-E-R. And the only other times, besides in Genesis 2, as far as I understand, the only other times that is used in the Bible is in reference to military, when they would come to help or support the nation, or referencing God himself, that he is the helper, the "easer" of Israel. That God is the helper of his people. So to me, to reference the wife as an "easer" shows strength. It shows stability. It shows support. This is not lowering a wife's value. It is giving her value. It is just putting her in the proper position. It also, this idea that Paul shares, it connotates a willing or a voluntary submission. This wife is allowing her husband to be in rank over her. She is submitting to his authority voluntarily. She is allowing him to rule over her in this marriage relationship. In the verse it also says, "As is fitting to the Lord." So this is not, this "as is fitting to the Lord" can be a little confusing of what this actually refers to. Well, it is not referring to an absolute submission as we submit absolutely to God. It is not the same. We don't say, "Well, I'm going to submit, or wives should submit to your husbands as you would submit to the Lord." It is not the same. It is not this complete absolute submission. It is also on the flip side, not a caveat for wives that says, "Well, if you are fitting to the Lord, husband, then I'll submit to you. If you are doing what is right in the Lord's eyes, then I will submit." It is saying that wives should submit because it is fitting to the Lord. It's part of our duty as Christian wives to operate in this way. It's one way that we as wives can live out our lives worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we do this, it honors God. God is not a God of chaos, but of order. And he has created order in the marriage relationship. So it honors him and it honors the order of authority he has placed in our lives. Really, submission is, this idea here is more about submitting to Christ than it is about submitting to your husband. You submit to your husband in order to also show how you submit to Christ. And it honors God when we do that.

So then Paul goes on and addresses husbands in the next verse. He says, "Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them." So wives, submit to your husbands. Husbands, love your wives. The word here is agapeo, for love. You may have even heard a different form of it called agape. This love is a specific type of, we have the word love for just about everything. I love tacos, I love my husband, I love my children, I love this show. We kind of just use the word love interchangeably. But in scripture, we see different types of love. And this one, one commentary states that agape can be defined as a sacrificial, giving, absorbing love. The word has little to do with emotion and has much to do with self-denial for the sake of another. This love is a sacrificial love that gives without expecting in return. A person who has agape gives because they love. Now, Paul is not lessening, again, he's not lessening the husband in any way, or lowering his value, or softening him. I think a lot of times we connect like lovey-dovey or feelings or emotion with like a soft man. He is not softening the husband. In fact, I would say the husband has a greater obligation put on his shoulders because of this charge to love his wife. He is called to put her first, to put her needs above his own, even to his own self-denial. It also, in the definition, it said an absorbing kind of love. I picture that when life's hardships and things come at you, at your marriage, the husband is the one on the front line absorbing the hits. That's the sacrificial kind of love. But that takes a strong man, someone who is surrendered to the Lord in order to love in that kind of way. He's calling husbands to love your wives as Jesus loves his kids. It is not self-serving. It is sacrificial. It is absorbing in the sense of you take on, you take the hits. It is, brings care. So husband, or wives, submit to your husbands, husbands love your wives.

And then he goes on to the parent-child relationship. Verse 20 says, "Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not embitter your children or they will become discouraged." Now, Paul is affirming that children should obey their parents because children, especially those who have already surrendered their lives to Jesus, they are capable of also living lives worthy of the Lord. And so this is part of that, is living in obedience to their parents. But he also addresses the parents. He says, fathers, or fathers and mothers, do not discourage your children. Parenting is one of the most refining things I have ever experienced. It is wonderful and beautiful, but it is also refining. Because when you parent these tiny humans that look and acts like you, it shines a magnifying glass on your own life. And it is not all pretty, unfortunately. So Paul is admonishing parents and he is saying, don't discourage your children by being too rigid or too overbearing. By being too controlling. Care for them. Expect obedience. Require respect. That is all good. That is all part of parenting. But don't be so harsh with them that you discourage them. That you make them bitter. So children, obey. Parents, don't discourage. My translation is, kids, if you live under your parents' roof, you need to obey them. Parents, don't be jerks. That is the Lawrence Nader translation. Honestly, this was pretty radical. Again, in this first century world, because children were just kind of along for the ride. No one was really concerned about hurting their feelings, or if they were discouraged or not. Kids just did what the parents said. The parents had the, really the father, but the parents had the final say. But Paul is saying, look, these are human beings made in the image of God. They have needs and desires and preferences just like you. So as a parent, as we are growing, helping these kids grow, and we are discipling them towards following Jesus. Again, we do require respect and obedience, but we do it in a way that is loving and caring, and points them to Jesus rather than brings them discouragement, or distress, or bitterness. Because that can impact your relationship. That could impact their relationship with Jesus. We care for them, again, just like Jesus would want us to, and how He cares for us.

So then the final relationship in this section is the relationship between slave and master. It's actually the longest part of this section, if you look at the different relationships here. It's actually the longest part, and I feel like in the first century there wasn't a plethora, nobody was typing up these letters, right? So if they took this much time to write out some words and use this much ink and paper, it's something we need to pay attention to. We're going to look at verse 22. "Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything. Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, and do it not only when their eye is on you, and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for their wrongs, and there is no favoritism." So what does this have to do with us modern readers? Because slavery is illegal, it still exists, but slavery is illegal, we don't have slaves anymore in our homes. So what does this mean for us? Well, we can look at it in comparison to our jobs, to our workplaces. Even if you maybe volunteer, if you are a stay-at-home parent or retired and you do some volunteer work, you can even look at it in that regard. If you are an employee or under someone's authority in some type of workplace situation, this applies to you. The first part is really talking about integrity. We actually just discussed integrity at Youth Group this last week, and I asked the students to define, or tell me how they would define integrity, and they said, "It's doing what's right even when no one is watching." And they're right. It's doing what's right regardless if anyone sees you or not. We are called to be good workers. We are called to be good stewards of what has been entrusted to us, even when no one sees it. So worker, operate with integrity. We may have bosses or superiors, managers over us at work, but everything we do must be done unto the Lord. He is the one we're working for. We do have humans that we serve or work under, but He is the one we're working for. So instead of trudging along through your day or seeing how early you can dip out, you're watching the clock go by, instead we're called to work to our best, do our best and work to the best of our ability because we're called to live and work with integrity.

Again, verse 23 and 24 says, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving." It says, "You will receive an inheritance from the Lord." Slaves did not receive inheritances. So what is Paul talking about here? Well, another translation says, "You will receive the inheritance from the Lord." He's talking about an eternal reward, that when our work and our jobs are surrendered to the authority of Jesus and we are operating with integrity, there is an eternal reward waiting for us. Now, let's be completely honest. I don't know if an eternal reward is going to be enough motivation on a Monday when you're walking in and you're ready to go home before you've had your first cup of coffee. But knowing that we have this eternal reward with Jesus when we live a life worthy of Him, it helps us to do better work. It helps us to work with integrity. It helps us to remember to work for Him. That when we surrender our work, we can do everything as if He's literally sitting right there. We work for Him.

Then in a really weird chapter division, we jump to chapter 4 where Paul finishes his thought on this topic of relationships. So chapter 4 verse 1 says, "Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a master in heaven." Bosses, employers, supervisors, managers, owners, any one of you that has authority over others, this part, they're talking to you. So authorities, do what is right and fair. You also in your role are being called up. You are being called to submit in this position. You're called to do what is right and fair. Right in the last verse, Paul said, "Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for their wrongs, and there is no favoritism." Yes, he is referring to the slaves or the workers that he just referenced in the previous section, but this also applies to the masters that he's talking to. God does not show favoritism just because you have a higher rank or more authority. You also must live in submission. In the Kingdom of God, last week we learned that there is no Jew or Greek slave or free. I've heard it said, "The ground is even at the foot of the cross." The ground is even at the foot of the cross. When we are living a surrendered life and we are submitting ourselves to Jesus at the foot of the cross, we're all on even ground there. So if you have a position of authority in your workplace, in your home, in whatever space of life, don't abuse that. Do what is right. Do what is fair. Because you serve one who has more authority than you. We, again, we work unto the Lord. So even in our work as the authority figure, it should also be done unto the Lord. It should also be submitted to him.

Well, with these verses, Paul has really flipped everything. He's flipped the script for these first century Christians. And he's challenged them to live differently, to surrender these relationships. But then Paul's not done. In true Paul fashion, he has more words. It's kind of like throughout Colossians, he's worked in concentric circles. He started at the middle, our internal transformation, and then he went out to the closest relationships, our family relationships, and then he moved out to the workplace.

And now he's finally going to talk about the churches, the church relationships, and beyond. So Colossians 4, verse 2 says, "Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful, and pray for us too that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly as I should. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders. Make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." Paul tells the Colossian church, "Keep praying, be watchful, be thankful." So church, pray, watch, thank. This is our call too. We are called to pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ, for those that we live in community with here at Spring Valley and in our greater Christian community here. But we're also called to pray for the global church, for the spread of the gospel worldwide, and for those that are doing the work of spreading the gospel. Pray for your pastors, pray for ministry leaders, pray for missionaries. Pray that the gospel would continue to spread. He says to watch. As followers of Jesus, we have to be on guard. We are in an information world. We have all the information we could ever want at our fingertips. But that also means that we have to be on guard against false teachers, against untruths or half-truths, against blatant lies from the enemy, against ideologies that are nowhere near what scripture says. We have to be watchful to be on guard against this. And then Paul tells us to give thanks, always coming back to thanks. He says, "Be thankful. Constantly give thanks." He says this over and over and over again because he knows it changes us. It changes our hearts, our minds, our perspectives. So we should always be giving thanks, regardless of our circumstances, because of who God is, His sovereignty, His provision, His love, His transforming work in our lives. And then he finishes with the final circle, the outsiders, the ones who have not joined the family of God yet. He says, "Make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." We're called to be gracious and careful with our words so that we can continually point people to Jesus, to show them His love and grace, that in the everyday stuff of life, we're making the most of every opportunity.

Christ is above everything, and we have a responsibility to tell the world about it. Y'all have cards on your seats. We want you to take these cards, put someone's name on there that you want to invite to Easter, put their name on it twice, you're gonna put it on the top, and you keep that part to pray for them, and then you rip off the bottom, you can drop it in the back when you leave so that we can pray for the same person. That you would not only have the opportunity, but then you would have the courage to take it. That you would take this opportunity and make the most of it. 'Cause we get to go tell the world that He is above everything. He's above our past, He's above our failures, He's above our current circumstances. Nothing is left untouched by the transforming work of Jesus. We get to go into all the world. We get to tell others what He has done for us, so that all may know Him and His greatness. We're gonna head into a time of prayer, as Andrei said earlier. The band's gonna come up, and they're gonna play a song. You are welcome to stay in your seats and worship and pray where you are, but Andrei and I are gonna be up here. We are just gonna be available to pray with you. If you have something you want to pray about, or be prayed over, or maybe a praise, we would love to do that for you.

But before we head into this time of prayer, I just want to read you a group of scriptures that I think really exemplifies the idea of Christ above everything. You'll recognize some of the scripture from our Colossians series, but there's also passages from Philippians and Ephesians as well. And I felt like it was an appropriate way to end our series, to keep our eyes on the one who is above all things. So as I read this, I invite you to close your eyes and make this your prayer as you listen to these words of scripture. "We pray that the eyes of your understanding will be enlightened, that you may know what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us, word, who believe. And according to His might, the working of His power, which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, and He set Him at His own right hand in heavenly places. He's far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world, but in the world that is to come. And God has put all things under His feet and given Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness which filleth all in all, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For by Him were all things created, whether in heaven, whether they're on earth, whether they're visible or invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were created by Him and for Him, and He is before all things. And through Him, all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who was the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in Him should all the fullness dwell. And wherefore God hath also highly exalted Him and given Him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Amen.

Colossians: Part 4

Colossians: Part 4 - A New Way to Live

Colossians 3:1-17

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

I'm excited to be here with you guys today. We are gonna be continuing in our Colossians series, as you just saw on the video. The series we've titled, Call it Christ Above Everything. And this series has really been something I've enjoyed. I hope you guys have too, of just journeying together verse by verse through Paul's letter to the church at Colossae. And today we're gonna be diving into, if you wanna turn, tip, tap, flip, page, I talk for a living, it's okay, don't worry about it. To Colossians chapter three this morning. And anybody else in here enjoy like cop or like spy TV shows or movies? Anybody? Yeah? I love me some cop TV shows, especially like the NCIS, Oh, So Good, or the FBI series. I'm so sad they took away extra FBI series or just down to the original. But I love these shows. And there's always this point in the show at some time that the person has to go undercover, right? They have to go undercover and sometimes it's planned and they have a long runway up to that moment of going undercover. So they get a packet that tells them who they are going undercover, right? And it tells them their backstory. It tells them what they're doing, their role in this position, what the police, the investigators are trying to figure out, whether it's a criminal organization or they're trying to figure out where the drugs are coming from or who murdered who or some like some mob boss or something. And those just fascinate me because there's like a whole backstory. Sometimes this is like on the fly and a guy gets like three hours notice that he's going under, they gotta do a backstory, they gotta put him maybe onto a website with a story so that whoever finds him and meets him, they do a quick Google search on him. They know that he is who he says he is. But people are trying to memorize these facts and these people like sometimes, I remember I think the show called "Chuck" and he would go undercover, but he would like mess everything up and he would just kind of like play it off. And it was hilarious. You guys were watching the show "Chuck", it was so good.

So the thing I wanna talk to you about today is what if you woke up tomorrow morning and you had a completely new identity? Like I'm talking about, you got a new name, you have a new house, a new address, a new job, a new family, a new life. You're not living in Plaster County, Rocklin Roseville, Sacramento. You're not there anymore. You're just, you wake up some other place and you have a completely new identity. What would you be thinking? I would be freaking out, that's a great point. I would be freaking out. I would be like, how did I get here? What is going on? Where's my wife and kids? Like that's what the questions I would be asking. And it's crazy to think that when these people, they go undercover and they do this stuff, there's always that drama of they get so deep undercover, they forget who they were before on the outside and they have to make the hard choice of do they commit the crime to save the cover? Or do they not? Is the bigger part of catching the mob boss worth whatever crime they're about to commit? And there's this tension there that they have of their old self versus their new self. And I wanna dig in here. Paul is talking about this a little bit, kinda. He's not setting up a cop show to the Church of Colossae. But he's going into talking about an identity crisis that we face as followers of Christ. And so read along with me, it's gonna be on the screen.

We're gonna start in Colossians 3, verse one, it says this. It said, "Since then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above heaven where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not earthly things. For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life," remember that part, we're gonna come back to that, "Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, which is idolatry, because of these, the wrath of God is coming. But you used to walk in these ways," Paul says. You used to live like this, you used to act like this, "in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these, anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language on your lips. Do not lie to one another," Paul says, "since you have taken off your old self in its practices and you have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge and the image of its creator. Here, there, there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised, uncircumcised, barbarian, Sicilian, slave, or free, but Christ is in all and is in all. Therefore," it's like one sentence that feels like, "Therefore, as God's chosen people, y'all, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with," what? "Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, bear with each other and forgive one another. And any of you who has a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, since as members of one body, you are called to peace and to be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly, as you teach and admonish one another all wisdom through psalms, hymns, songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or in deed, do it all in the name of Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Whew, it's a lot. We're gonna unpack that in a second here.

But here's what Paul is saying. Here's a quick summary. Here's your AI summarization of the last 17 verses. It says this, it says, "You who has accepted Christ, it transforms us completely. Your old self is gone and your new life is here now. So leave your sin behind, put on the ways as God's chosen people and live in unity with profound deep hearts of gratitude." That's where we're going today. I wanna unpack that for us.

But starting this first section in verse one through four, it says, "Since then you have been raised with Christ. Set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not earthly things. For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with him in glory." What's Paul saying here? Paul is saying, "Since you have accepted Jesus Christ into your life, you have taken that step of faith, you have asked him to come into you, then you are to set your things and heart and mind and soul on things above, heavenly things, not this stuff that's going on down here on earth." Because the reality is that you died in that moment. I don't know if it's explained to you when you accepted Jesus, you actually died. You are no longer who you were before. Your life is safe and hidden with God. And who's gonna appear in glory someday. But the key truth here is that Christ is not just in your life. I think we get this mixed up sometimes. It's really easy to do. We don't think about Christ as just in our life. What does Paul say? Christ is your life. The old is already dead, the new is already here. You have been given a completely new identity. It says right there, Colossians 3:4, Christ who is your life. We are to set our focus on the new. That is our priority. We are to set our focus on the new. What do you mean by new? Well, it says right there in Colossians 3:4, “Christ who is your life.” Christ who is your life. Not Christ kind of fits into my life. Christ kind of comes in and is kind of like melted ice cream and kind of fills all the nooks and crannies and just comes in and fills us up full. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You have been given a completely new identity. I love what this other translation in Colossians 3:4 says. It says your old life is dead. Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life, even through invisible, even though invisible to spectators, 'cause nobody around us can see really that change, right? It's a God change. Is with Christ in God, he is your life.

Let me ask you a question. Who or what is your life? If you were to have somebody ask you this this afternoon, maybe you're sitting, having lunch with somebody, and somebody said, "Who or what is your life?" What would you say? I think for me, I would probably say, well, I'm a dad. I'm a pastor. I'm a senior pastor here at Spring Valley Church. If I haven't met you, great to meet you. My name is Chris. I have a wife of 18 years. She affirms that. I did the math right. It's not in my notes. I didn't write it down. That's a tricky path to walk. I'm a dad to four kids, Adelyn, Elliet, Oakland, and Iliyah. I have friends in the area. I have friends who live in Nashville. I have a friend who lives in Idaho. I have extended family, kinda in Indiana, and Oklahoma, and Kansas. That's pretty much I would say summarizes my life. I like to barbecue. I play music. I'm the go-to tech guy in the area sometimes. People come to me, try to fix stuff. Nothing's certified, so I can't guarantee any results. But what is your identity? Or in whom do you have your identity?

Because do we truly believe these words of Paul that says that our old life is dead, it's gone, it's kaput, it's toast, it's smashed, it's extinct, it's croaked, it's kicked the bucket, it's six feet under, and we have a new real life. And that life is in Christ. That's the real deal. You have become a completely new person. But Paul is writing this because the reality is people in the church in Colossae, people in the church, Big C Church, people maybe even here at Spring Valley Church, have accepted Christ, but they're not living the way that life, that God has called us to. Verse five, put to death therefore. So if you've been raised in Christ, you have new life in Christ, you have a new identity, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, which is idolatry, because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways. You used to do it. That was your old life, your dead life. You used to walk in these ways, in the life that you once lived, but you now must also rid yourselves of such things as these. Anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to one another, since you have taken off your old self in his practices. Jesus says that we are to put on a new identity. But some of us haven't stopped living our old one. And it keeps showing up in our lives. And we get surprised when all of a sudden, we find ourselves in the midst of sin. And we think, how did I get here? Paul says to get rid of sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, idolatry, anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy talk, and lying. We are to put on Jesus. Paul says you used to live like this, but you don't anymore. We are to put the old self to death. We're supposed to put it to death. That doesn't mean we just keep it around when we get bored, or kind of dabble near it. No, you're supposed to put it to death. And it says in verse nine that because we're not putting to death, we are lying to ourselves and to others. I don't like this. Right? I don't like this.

There was a fifth century theologian and desert father called John Cassian, and he was known for his teachings on the inner heart. And he has this quote I want to share. It says, "It is not an external enemy we dread. Our foe is shut up within ourselves, and internal warfare is daily waged by us." John Cassian and other desert fathers had a story they used to tell of a moment they had somebody within their church community who was struggling with lust. And they say, we'll call him Brother Jim. Brother Jim came to them and said, "I need you guys who are my pastors. I need you guys to pray for me so I can overcome this sin that is just so on top of me. It feels like I can't escape from it. I can't run away from it. I can't find freedom from it. I can't proclaim victory over in my life. I continue to struggle with this." And so John Cassian and the other desert fathers, as they were known, prayed for this man, and he continued to struggle day in and day out. And he went before God and he prayed, and he's like, "God, why is this happening to my brother? How can this continue to happen? I have prayed for him. Other people have prayed for him. So many people are praying for him." And yet he continues to struggle in this sin, and the Lord gave him a vision in this moment of Jim sitting there. And there was an angel there with him, and the problem was that Jim was sitting there right next to lust and was playing with it, poking at it, messing with it. And the angel just had this look of just distraught sadness on its face. And he was talking to God, he said, "God, what is happening here?" He says, "The reason that Jim has not been able to overcome lust is because he continues to play with it." And that even though I've sent an angel there to help him overcome this struggle and this sin, he continues to dabble, be around it, play with it, and he is not throwing himself upon God. This is a pretty powerful story because I think for us, there's people in here that are playing with sin. And we do sometimes like to categorize it as, "I'm just being attacked by the enemy." "It's just who I am." "It's just something that I'll just have to live with for my whole life." But the reality is that that's your old self, and we have to put that to death.

We have to stop playing around with sin. "Well, well, well, well, pastor, you know, I'm just not as bad as that guy." Jesus doesn't call us to compare to other people. Jesus calls us to compare our lives to the Bible. That's the only standard, God's word. "Well, you, it just, I'm not hurting anybody." "It's not that big of a deal." You might not have any immediate ramifications of it, but that's a lie just straight from the devil. Let's just be honest. Let's just call it what it is. Because the reality is, yes, you actually are hurting yourself. You're hurting your marriage if you're married. You're hurting your family. You're hurting your friendships. You're hurting your kids. There is no way that you can sow bad seed into your life and expect to have good fruit from it. We've been talking about in the Christian-ish series about abiding to be the branch, right? God, Jesus is divine. We are the branch. We are to be the branch. Pastor Lauren has preached about abiding and being in the presence of Jesus to see and to judge people by their fruit. You cannot sow bad seed and expect good fruit. But what happens? We're sowing bad seed, and then all of a sudden we wake up in our lives, and it's just chaos, and there's all this bad fruit around us, and we go, "How did we get here? How did this happen?" I'll tell you. You've been sowing bad seed. I'm sorry. I love you enough to tell you. That's what's happening. We're playing with sin. It's mandatory that we step into the life that God has already done and actively put the old self away.

This is not optional. I'm sorry. It's not optional. There's no, "Ah, I feel like it today, and maybe tomorrow I won't." Or, "Oh, it's Sunday. Okay, put my Jesus on. I'm going to church. Here we are. Hey, everybody." And then we get home, and we just take Jesus off and throw him in the dirty clothes hamper, right? And then wait for our spouse to wash it and put it away for us. Oh, did I go there? We have to put our sin away. But when we put our sin away, what do we do then? Paul talks about that. Verse 10, he says, "You have to put on, then, the new self." And we've got that scripture here. We've got to put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised, uncertified, barbarian, sissy, slave, or free. But Christ is all and is in all. Therefore, another therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. And patience. As God's chosen people. You guys. That's who you are. This is where you come into the story. This is your part of the story. Holy and dearly loved. Did you know that? You are called to holiness and that you are dearly loved by your heavenly Father. Clothed yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. Bear with each other and forgive, just as the Lord forgave you. And above all, put on what? Love. Put on love that binds everything together in perfect unity.

Some of us got some clothing struggles going on. We got some wardrobe malfunctions happening in our lives. That's okay. It's okay. It's okay because Jesus has already taken care of this. So I can tell you, maybe you got a clothing malfunction going on, okay? It's all right. It's all right. Jesus is here to fix that, okay? Jesus is coming in with all the good stuff needed to fix that. What do I mean by wardrobe malfunction? Here's what I'm saying. I'm saying some of us were probably, maybe, I don't know, putting on some Jesus on Sunday morning, right? We're coming here. We're worshiping God. Maybe we're raising our hands, being a little vulnerable, saying, "Hey, I'm worshiping you, Jesus." But then we go out that door. We get in our car. We drive home. And then at the end of the night, we take off Jesus and put on our PJs. But we're not clothing ourselves anymore. That was my Sunday shirt. That was my Jesus Sunday shirt. I got to get some comfies on this afternoon. Anybody love putting comfies on after church on Sunday? Oh, I love it. So good. We're big PJ people in our house. That's just kind of the state of life that we're in with 4 kids 12 and down. PJ time. Everybody loves PJ time. Some of us, we're doing that in our lives. We put on Jesus, and then just like a dirty shirt, we take it off and we cast it away. But Jesus is saying, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You have a new identity." That isn't something, Jesus just isn't something you just put on. But Jesus is calling us to put on our new nature in God. It's a new identity. We are to put on our new nature in Jesus. That's our calling. That's what we're here to do. That's our number one priority is to put our sin to death and to put on Jesus. This new perfect nature of God is what we wear.

Paul is saying here, you're going to take these old clothes of your old self and you need to throw them away. You need to completely get rid of them. I think some of us were holding on to an old t-shirt in the back of our closet because it was comfy at some time before Jesus. And we keep walking by it in our closet and we keep seeing it and we keep going, "Wow, that might be cool to put that t-shirt back on." But Jesus is saying, "No, no, no, no, no. Throw it away." And maybe some of us, we've thrown it away and it's gone, but then we're like, "Oh, man, I remember that old t-shirt I had. I wonder if they still sell that at the store." And so we go to the store and we just start browsing. We're just kind of flipping through the rack, just kind of, "I'm not doing anything." Just seeing what's out there. Scrolling Facebook. Maybe we're looking at stuff on Amazon. Kind of got that wish list you don't want anybody to know about. You're like, "I'm not buying anything. It might be in my cart. It might be just saved for later in my cart, but I'm not buying anything." But what happens? Keep flirting with it and flirting with it and flirting with it. And all of a sudden, it's in our cart and we purchase it. And in two seconds, it shows up at our door, it seems like now, right? Prime's like, "Here's your delivery." I was like, "I haven't even checked out." "We knew you were going to. We saw you. We were tracking your fingers and your eyes." It would be really creepy, but I think they are. I don't know. Sorry. All of a sudden, we find ourselves and we have that shirt again. And we're like, "Do I put it on? No. No. I'm going to fold it, put it back in my closet." Some of us got some sin, new with tags, chilling in our closet that we need to get rid of in our lives. We need to put that to death because that's not who we are anymore. That's not who we are. We have a new identity.

We have a new calling. Your calling is to be God's chosen, holy, dearly loved people. But there's something even greater at play right here. And I love that Paul doesn't stop there because I think sometimes we stop there in our walk in faith. We go, "Okay, I pray to Jesus. I accept Him. My sins are gone. I'm not going to sin. I'm just going to live my life for Jesus by myself." But there's something greater here at play. Paul says this in verse 15. He said, "Let the peace of Christ now rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace and to be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, through psalms, hymns, songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or in deed, whether you're saying it or you're doing it, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

Not only are we called to a new self and a new identity, we are called to a new community. Paul says here, as Christians, we are called to be part of a community, aka the church. And you're called to be members of one body. Here's the reality. Most of the current research and data and everything they're doing about church engagement and participation and attendance, it is at an all-time historical low. There has been a constant, slow, downward trend since probably the 50s or 60s. That was the peak, at least in the States. Okay, we're just thinking United States here, okay? I'm not saying what's happened, God's moving around the world. It's powerful and it's amazing. But I'm saying within the United States, there has been a downward trend. And most research right now, there's research that just came out, I think, the beginning, the early February 2016 this year, that says the average church attender attends church two times a month. The average church attender is in church two times a month. And I think there might be some numbers there of the Bible Belt, that area kind of in the middle of the United States, who is very committed and they're in church every single week and weekends and midweek and Thursday nights and Wednesdays and Tuesdays and Friday afternoons. I don't know how they do it. They're there like living in the church. And us on the coast, we probably might be a little bit less. Let's just be honest. But Paul says we are called to one body. It's extremely difficult to function as a full body half the time. I guarantee you, if you all of a sudden had something of your body only working half the time, you'd be going either to the emergency room or you're calling your doctor for a Monday morning appointment. Amen? Right? You've got to move your arm and it's just like, well, that was, I moved it last time. This time it's just not going to move. Well, I guess I'm going to stand here because I used my steps up already today and here's the end of my steps. Or your vision. Can you imagine half the time you can't see or can't hear? Can't breathe? Or your heartbeat? Okay, now we're talking some serious stuff, right? So think about that. It's extremely difficult to function if we're only in a community half of the time. Paul says we are called to a community, a body, members of one body. You and I are called to live in a specific manner as a community and as a family. I'm talking about this is a full-time job, not a part-time job.

Paul says you're called to peace, to let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. You are called to be thankful. You are called to let the message of Christ live richly among you. So how do we do that? Well, I'm glad you asked. Paul says right here in Scripture, straight and simple and easy. It's so easy I can say. He says to be to teach each other about God. To teach each other about God and to encourage one another. When we put a weekend service together, our Sunday morning service, the number one thing that we think about and try to process through is we want whoever walks in these doors to be encouraged, to be taught the word of Jesus and to be lifted up and to be sent back out into the world. That is our number one thing that we think about. Paul also says that we are to sing songs and hymns and songs of the Spirit. You ever wonder why you sing in church? Here it is. Right? See, the reality is that we don't just choose these songs flippantly. We don't have a giant randomizer and just hit a button and bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop. Oh, here's our three songs for Sunday. Every single song that we sing is actually put through a test of theology, of message, of truth, of who God is, what is happening. The words that we sing are deeply vetted.

Well, what do you mean by that? Well, here. You want to hear what you already sung this morning? You're here with worship with us today? Here's what we sung about. We sung about giving thanks to the Lord. Didn't Paul just say that? Right? Give thanks to the Lord. I didn't put that set list before I wrote that note. Okay? God put the set list together on my heart and then he helped me write the sermon and it lines up. It's beautiful. I love when God does this. We sung about God's nature, how it is love that endures forever. How God saved us, how he brought us from mourning to dancing. That we are here to praise the Lord together. How Jesus paid all of our debt of sin. That we were stained as crimson. Remember that song? Jesus paid it all. Stained as crimson. Now we are white as snow. Our sin has been washed away. How we are to live a new life in him. Hey, that's in here too. Right? That the battles in life we face, what has happened? God has already overcome and brought victory. How we hope in God for today, even in the midst of chaos. How we let God's peace outlast the darkness of this word. How God will provide for us no matter what comes in our life. Jesus is our savior. Jesus is our defense. And because of that, we don't have to be afraid of anything. The battle has already been won in Jesus. Amen? I don't know about you, but if I just had that read to me every single Sunday, I am pumped up, ready to go. Right? I haven't even finished my coffee today. This is amazing. I love this. This is why we're here. We now live together in unity and gratitude. Amen? Isn't this awesome? This is why we're here. This is why God has called us here. In our vision, to see our community saturated with really cool things. No, to see our community saturated with just happiness. No, to see our community saturated with the glory of God.

And how do we do that? We have to invite people in. And that's why you had that card when you came in. We had this challenge last year around Easter. We're going to have this challenge again this year. And for the next few weeks, you're going to have a card on your seat when you come in. And this is what we want you to do. We want you to begin to pray about an opportunity to invite somebody Easter Sunday. Easter and Christmas, the two biggest days of the year. The biggest days that non-believers, people who are just in either general spirituality, might be seeking, might be completely disinterested, might have just nothing going on, but they think all of a sudden in their mind, "I should go to church." Each of us has somebody in our lives that we can invite for Easter. Are they going to come? Maybe. But we love to have them. And so the little card here is really cool. What we want you guys to do is there's two lines, okay? There's two lines and there's like a dotted line. The top solid line, we want you to write that name down, okay? And then the bottom one down here, we want you to write that same name as above. "Well, why am I writing it down twice?" I'm so glad you asked because here's what's going to happen. "Oh, no. Mine's not perforated." What we want you to do, I hope yours is, write down the name twice and then you're going to do this. Tear it. You're going to tear it off. And what you're going to do is you're going to take this name and we're going to have some ushers back by the doors, we're going to have some buckets, and we want you to take the bottom section and drop it in that bucket. But we want you to keep this top section, okay? We want you to keep this top section because we want you to put it somewhere where every single day you can pray about this name. And what we're going to do is every single day we're going to pray for this name. As a staff and as a prayer team, we're going to take time and pray for this name. So they're getting prayer from you and they're getting prayer from us. Isn't that really cool? Everybody's getting prayer. So we want you to write down a name because the reality is every single one of us has somebody we can invite to Easter, right? Someone that has a neighbor, a friend, a coworker, a family member, somebody in our lives that needs to hear the message of Jesus. And we're going to share the message of Jesus on Easter because that's what we're celebrating on Easter. But we want you to begin to think about that. "Well, I don't have a name right now, Chris." That's okay. Don't worry about it. Take the card home and keep praying about it. Put that somewhere. You're going to see it every single day. And you go, "Jesus, who do I need to write down? What if I have multiple names?" Okay, wait until most people leave. Then go grab another card. Don't steal your neighbors, okay? Everybody needs to have one card. But grab another card. Write down another name. We love to pray for multiple names. How amazing would it be that come Easter Sunday morning, you've been praying about it, the Holy Spirit's been moving, God's been doing incredible things in their lives, and you get to bring a friend to church with you today. How amazing would that be? This place would be packed. We'd have to pull out more seats. It would be awesome. It would be fantastic. But what if we all brought somebody new to church on Easter? Maybe they're a Christian. Maybe they're not a Christian. I don't know. Jesus knows. He's taking care of it. But what if we did that together?

Because here's the reality. We are a new community that Christ has put together for all of us to do life together in the name of profound thankfulness. We put the unity in holy community. Okay, there's a little old school pastor, "We put the unity in holy community!" All right? It probably is not fully theologically sound, but it rhymes, so I went with it. But now you're going to remember it as you go. That is what we are about. It says, "Whatever you do, when word are due, do all in the name of Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

So put it all together. Because Christ, who is our life, right? The oldest dead. We now live as new identity, as God's chosen people, dressed in His character, loving one another in unity, and giving thanks in everything that happens in our life. That's what Paul is saying. And so, besides the Easter invite card, I have a challenge for you today. Okay? My challenge for you is to pick one area of this and work on it this week. Okay? What does that look like? Well, maybe you need to just start focusing on your new identity in Christ. Right? Maybe you have a sin in your life that needs to be put to death. It needs to be killed. It's a bad weed. Take some holy Roundup. Just get rid of it. Maybe you need a virtue that you need to start putting on in your life. Maybe you need a little more compassion. Maybe you need a little patience. Oh, do I sin! Maybe you need to have some steps towards unity in your life and your relationships. Maybe somebody in here, you need to have a conversation. You need to ask for forgiveness for something in here. You say, "I'm really sorry I did that. That's not right. God calls us to live in unity, to forgive one another, and I'm sorry. I need some forgiveness. Will you forgive me?" And I want you to act on this before next Sunday. That desert father, that fifth century monk, the guy I was talking about, John Cassian, he actually talks about, and he was the first to kind of set up the thought and the teaching among the idea of, when you remove something with your life, you need to replace it with something. Because if you just try to remove something from your life, there's just a hole there. And it's so easy for that thing that you just removed to come back in and fill that hole. So if you're thinking about, "I need to remove something from my life. I need to fill it with Jesus." You need to put Jesus into that place. I really, really, really hope that you guys today have heard that you have a new identity. That you are dearly and deeply loved. That Jesus has a new life for you to live. That you have to put this old stuff. Is it scary? Is it awkward? Is it weird? Yeah, it is. Because you've been living in it for so long, that's all that you know, right? And to step into something new can be kind of scary. Because it's different. You don't know all the ins and outs. You know all the ins and outs of that old life, right? Just step into that new life. And I hope that you guys have heard that we want this place to be a place of great unity and gratitude. We want this church on the corner of Sunset and Fairway in a tiny little business building in the back corner. It has a funny sign on the corner. That there is community there. There is love. There is patience. There is no judgment if you come in here and you're new. You're welcomed into the family. If you're first Sunday here, welcome to the family. This is a place where you can belong. This is a place where you can be encouraged and strengthened and built up. Because we want to be this kind of person that Paul is reminding us that Jesus calls us to. Not Paul. Jesus calls us to this. And we are to put the unity in community.

Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you, God, for who you are, for your word, for your just everything, God. Lord, help us to put this old self to death. Help us to put on our new identity. Help us to stop playing with sin maybe in our lives, God. To put on the virtues that you say, not just on a Sunday morning, but to put them on in our lives for real, permanent, forever, for all time. God, may we step into life with you and God, may we be a community that is a light in this world. A community that doesn't gossip about people like most do. That doesn't hurt people like most do. That doesn't stab people in the back like most do. God, we are a different community and the world is hurting and searching for that. So God, I pray that we think about these cards and these names, Jesus, that we would invite somebody to step into this community, into this life, into this world, into this relationship with you, Jesus. We thank you. We praise you. We love you. Everybody said, "Amen."

Colossians: Part 3

Colossians: Part 3 - Rooted, Built Up, Secure

Colossians 2:6-15

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Happy to be here with you all. Thank you for being here with us and for worshiping with us today. We are in Colossians. If you haven't been with us or didn't remember, we are in the book of Colossians. We're on week three of this series and it has been such a rich book to walk through together and I love the theology that Paul brings to us and the topics we get to cover. And really, just as a reminder that Jesus is above everything. He's the center of everything. He is all we need. And so the first week we really talked, we kind of laid the groundwork and we talked about praying for knowledge and wisdom and understanding through the Holy Spirit so that we can look like Jesus, so that we can live a life worthy of Jesus. And then last week, Pastor Andre talked about how Jesus is enough. He is all we need. Sure. There are other things he has given us that are good and for our benefit. The word of God, the body of Christ, the other believers, the church, prayer, communication with God. Those are all good and needed, but none of those are needed for salvation. It is only Jesus. And beyond that, he is the creator and sustainer of everything. And so we can know and walk in the truth that he is enough.

Well, today we're going to be moving in to chapter two of Colossians, and we're going to talk about what is needed for spiritual maturity. What do we need to grow in our faith? When we all choose to follow Jesus, regardless of our actual age, we start as spiritual babies. We are fresh and new and learning. But you don't want to stay in that infancy stage. You want to grow and mature. You want to get deeper into the faith and have a more mature relationship with God. So what do we need in order to grow and mature? Well, we're going to talk about that today, but first I want to show you something. I brought my plant. This is my pride and joy of my indoor plants, as I got it all tangled up. For those that don't know me well, I'm a recovering plant killer, a recovering black thumb. And so the fact that this is what it is, is amazing to me. Several weeks ago, Pastor Chris was talking about abiding in Christ, and he used the analogy of gardening and how we had gotten into gardening the last couple of years. And in his kindness, he said that I was the better gardener of the two. Now I'm not going to stand up here and tell you that your pastor is a liar, but I have to disagree with that statement. Because I'm not good at it. And the reason I'm not good at it is because I'm too impatient. See he will go and he will research, he will read discussion boards, he will go find different products and then he will try them and give them time to see if they work. I'm like, I gave you soil and water and sun, just grow. What do you need from me? I already have four children, I don't need another one. Just do your thing. Right? So I'm too impatient. But this time I let it grow its roots. See I will transplant a plant from the pot you get at the store into a pot in our home and then I will just think it needs to thrive and just be amazing right away. I don't give it time for its roots to grow down deep into the soil. I'm trying to rush the process. I just want it to do its thing and be great all on its own. Well on the flip side of that, we have an heirloom rose bush in our front yard. We have some pictures of these roses. And this, we inherited these, these were already there when we moved in almost a decade ago. And these things are hearty. They are sturdy. We have to do next to nothing for these roses. They get water from the rain and maybe the occasional sprinkler. They get the sun and then Chris chops them back every so often so they don't become overgrown. But these things grow year round. They just do their thing. I have to do nothing for them. This picture, it was taken several years ago, but these pictures were taken in January. I didn't realize roses would bloom in January. I know we're not like in snow and the tundra, but the little bit I know about nature is that most plants are dormant in the winter. But the thing with these is their roots are deep and strong. They can grow and bloom and produce regardless of the storms that come, regardless of the wind and the weather. They've survived hail and freezing temperatures. They just keep doing their thing because they've matured and they've grown and they have deep roots.

So we're talking about the day. Paul talks about us needing to have deep roots for our faith. We're gonna start in Colossians 2 verse six. Then we have several verses to go through, but we're just gonna break it down a little bit at a time. Verse six says, "So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught and overflowing with thankfulness." Paul says that in order to be mature, we must be rooted and built up. Now this rooted and built up, it's kind of a mixed metaphor. He's talking about plants being rooted and built up like a building. So he kind of mixes the metaphor a little bit, but the idea here is similar. You need strong roots to grow and you need a firm, solid foundation to build upon. See, we homeschool and I've taught my children the plant cycle three times now, right? And what I've learned is when you plant a seed, the first thing that happens is not a sprout. The first thing that happens is that the roots start growing. And you can't really see it because it's under the dirt, but the roots have to grow first and grow deep and strong in order to gather the nutrients and the water in order to produce the plant. We have to have a solid foundation. A building will not last very long if it is built upon an unstable foundation. If it's cracked, if it's unlevel, if it's not created properly, it will not stand. And Paul's saying the truth has already been taught to you. You already know the gospel of Jesus Christ. Those are the soil and which to grow your roots. That is your foundation.

Jeremiah 17:7-8 says, "But bless is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes. Its leaves are always green and has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit." It has strong roots that can go out and get the water and the nutrients that it needs. And because of that, it's not worried when there's a storm. It's not worried when there's a drought. It's strong and sturdy. In Matthew seven, Jesus says, "Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house. Yet, it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock." Jesus is our rock. He is the one we build our foundation upon. And when we do this, Paul says that we will be strengthened and overflow with faithfulness. That is just the natural repercussions of having a strong foundation in deep roots. We talked about it two weeks ago, being strengthened in endurance and patience, and then overflowing with thankfulness. That even when we are going through a storm or going through a wilderness, when our roots are deep, we're getting what we need to survive that. We don't have to worry. We don't have to stress. We need strong roots and a firm foundation. After this statement, Paul goes on to address the issue, the Colossians were facing and why Christ is the answer. He is our firm foundation and He is the ground in which we grow our roots. There's a big chunk of scripture here where he explains how and why this is true and why the Colossians can know that what they believe is real. And same for us, how we can know it too.

Let's go on to verse eight. It says, "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world, rather than on Christ. For in Christ, all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form. And in Christ, you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. In Him, you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through your faith in the working of God who raised Him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us. He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross." You want to break that down? He starts with, "Don't be taken captive by these deceptive philosophies." We explained that the Colossians were coming up against some false teachings, some false teachers who were deceiving them. They were starting with Jesus and then they were building upon it. They were adding to it. It was Jesus and Jesus plus something. And Paul's like, "Guys, deceivers are gonna deceive. They're gonna try to trick you. They can be sneaky." Because here's the thing, someone who wants to deceive you is not going to tell you that they're deceiving you, for one. And they're also not going to make it obvious. If you say murder is wrong, they're not gonna say, "Oh no, murder's right. Murder's okay. Murder's good." 'Cause you're gonna spot that a mile away. You're gonna know, "Okay, they're clearly lying and trying to deceive me." You're gonna take the truth and twist it just enough to make it untrue. Just enough to get you off course. Paul also talks about that it's by the traditions of man. Now there are traditions and there are rituals and there are practices that are good. But what Paul's saying here is they're being burdened by the traditions of man that are not coming from God. These are not things that God is asking of them to do. But they are being put on these spiritual extras that they're being told they have to fulfill in order to truly be a Christian. One of these ideas was narcissism. And at this time it was very early in narcissism, but this idea of narcissism was spiritual versus material. They could not coincide. In fact, to the point that they would teach that God was so other and spiritual that he could not even have been the one who created the earth because it's material. That he used underlings or angels or other beings to do the creating because he couldn't intersect with the material. But we know from last week that that is not true.

Paul demolished that argument in chapter one by saying that he is the creator and sustainer of all things. Paul through this chunk of scripture is demolishing the arguments and the false teachings and the philosophies that are deceiving the people. And he says, "For in Christ," in verse nine, "For in Christ, all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form. And in Christ, you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. In him dwells the fullness of the deity," or Godhead in some translations. He was, Jesus fulfilled that when he came in bodily form. Again, the spiritual intersecting with the material. So it couldn't, it can't be true what they're teaching. If what they were teaching is true, then Jesus didn't actually come in bodily form, but we know that he did. He came to earth. He took on human flesh. He dwelled among us. He is the fullness, the completeness of the deity in bodily form. And because of this, because he did this, we were brought to fullness too. We are made complete in him. We're complete in him because he was full of God and fully man, because he allowed the spiritual to intersect with the material. See, if he isn't the fullness of deity in bodily form, then we can't be complete. We can't be made right. But he is, if we believe it, he is who we, well, whether we believe it or not, he is who he says he is. And so we can know that he came in human form, but he retained his divinity the whole time.

C.S. Lewis said there are three options for believing who Jesus is. He said there can't be an in-between. There can't be, oh, he was just a good person or he was just a good prophet. He said there's three options. He was either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. Either he made it all up, he lied for his own gain, which if that's the case, he failed miserably. But he lied and just made up the whole thing. Or he was a lunatic and he was crazy, making all these claims about being the son of God, that he was God, he was one with the Father. So either he was a total liar or a lunatic or what he said was true and he is Lord. But there is no in-between because if he was just a good person or a good teacher, then all the outrageous claims he made, people would have written him off immediately. You can't be a good prophet or a good teacher and also make those claims. Unless they're real. So I choose to believe that he is Lord. That he is the foundation that I'm building on. That he is the good soil that I can grow my roots deep into so I can abide in him. He is above everything. Paul continues on with talking about circumcision. Lovely little practice that they had in the ancient world for the Jewish men. And this was something that was continued even into the New Testament. It's continued today. But it was specifically a Jewish practice instituted by God to represent and show that the people were set apart. They were his chosen people. The problem is the Colossians were Gentiles. They were not part of the Jewish nation. But Jewish leaders were telling them they needed to also be circumcised or else they weren't truly following Jesus. Again, these traditions of men originally instituted by God, but they were burdening the new believers. And Paul saying, hold on, that was the old covenant. We are under the new covenant with Jesus and we are complete in him. We've had a circumcision of the heart. The work of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection is our circumcision. Through his death and resurrection, our old self has been put off. Our sin nature, our old self is gone because of his work. He made us new. He's given us new life. We don't have to have all these practices that were under the old covenant in order to be made right with him because he did the work. See, before Jesus, we were dead. We were dead in our sins. But after Jesus, we are made alive with Christ. After Jesus, we are made alive with him. This transformation of our hearts is often displayed through baptism.

And Paul talks about that. He says in verse 12, having been buried with him in baptism, which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead. We're made alive with Christ. So we also practice baptism as an expression of that reality. We go under the water to identify with Jesus's death and we come out of the water to identify with his resurrection into new life. Well, a side note, if you've never been baptized, that is the next natural step in your faith. If you have decided to follow Jesus, I would encourage you to let's look into that next option for you. You can write baptism on the card or shoot us an email and we would love to talk to you about that. Because baptism, it is showing that we identify with Jesus, that we are no longer dead in our sins, but we are alive with Christ.

Verse 14, he says, having canceled our charges of legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us, he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. Our trespasses are written out against us like a legal indictment of crimes committed or an invoice of debt owed. Our sins racked up a debt that we could not pay. We couldn't save ourselves because the reality is we can't live perfectly enough in order to earn our salvation, in order to earn our righteousness in the presence of God. We can't do that. And so the only other option is death. We pay the punishment through death, which means eternal separation from God. Neither of those options sound good to me. And Jesus said, no, that's not how it's gonna go down. I'm gonna pay the debt. I will be the one. Have you ever pulled up to a drive-through window and the person standing there says, it's already been paid. The person in front of you paid for your order. I love hearing those kinds of stories. The person who just got their order paid for did nothing to earn that. They just happened to be in the right place at the right time. But the cashier said, you owe zero. Your balance is now zero because the person in front of you paid for it. That is what Jesus did for us on a much grander scale. He didn't want to spend eternity without us. He didn't want us to stay dead in our sin. He knew he was the only option. So our sins were nailed to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made us, oh, sorry, I got it again in the head. Sorry, I saw it on the screen. It threw me off. It got me ahead. Our sins were nailed to the cross. Just like Jesus' charges were nailed to the cross above his head. See, when they practice crucifixion, they would write out the charges against the criminal and nail it above their head. But the thing is, Jesus didn't actually commit any crimes. He was perfect. So he took on our sins and he said, nail me to the cross instead. The words used in this passage regarding our sins means completely wiped out. Our balance is zero because of what he did on the cross.

Okay, now, Colossians 2:15. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. Through his death and resurrection, he disarmed the principalities and authorities of this world. See Paul already said in verse nine that he is the head over every power and authority, but now he disarmed them. He already ruled them, but now he disarmed them. See Paul often uses military language in his writings. And he mentioned in verse eight about being taken, don't be taken captive. Kind of that idea of being captive in a battle. Don't be taken captive because we are in a spiritual war. Our souls are in a spiritual war. As we said, don't be taken captive. And now he's explaining that the enemy has been disarmed. Praise Jesus. Jesus has triumphed over them. This idea of him triumphing over them. It would have brought pictures to the mind of the original readers of a procession or parade of the victorious army going through the streets, putting their enemies to shame by parading through the streets and announcing their victory. That's what Jesus did on the cross. He disarmed them and triumphed over them.

Isaiah 54:17 says, no weapon forged against you will prevail and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord. And this is their vindication from me, declares the Lord. They no longer have the weapons to use against us. They have tactics like fear and discouragement and lies. That's why Paul tells us to put on the armor of God so we can stand against the devil's schemes. But we know how it ends. No weapon formed against us can remain. We already have victory because Jesus conquered death and set us free. He has given that victory to us. He put them to public shame and he did it with the cross. The cross is a symbol of torture and death, but he took that symbol and in the upside down kingdom of God, he made it a symbol of victory. And it is a reminder for us who followed Jesus that we too are triumphant and set free. This, this truth that Paul laid out for us, this is how and where we grow our roots. This is the foundation that we build upon. If you are a newer believer, keep growing those roots. Get in the word, stay in community, grow your roots deeper into the good soil of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Remember that he is your foundation. And if you are a more mature believer, if you have followed Jesus for a long time, don't stop growing. The bigger the tree, the stronger the roots need to be. So keep growing, keep building on that foundation, but then go the next step. Find another believer who needs your guidance or your help. Walk alongside them, invite them to coffee. Talk to them, be willing to share your faith journey as they are learning and growing themselves.

And if you've never chosen to follow Jesus, maybe today's that day. Maybe you've even been walking the walk for a long time. You've been in church, you've had a Bible, you've prayed, but you've never actually surrendered your heart and life to the Lord. I'm gonna pray a prayer for us today. It'll be on the screens, but I'm gonna pray it out loud. If you've never surrendered your heart to Jesus, and you wanna do that today, pray this prayer along with me in your own heart and mind. Father in heaven, I know that I have lived for myself instead of you. I have sinned against you, but I believe Jesus died for my sin. So I confess my sin and I ask you to forgive me. I bow to you as Lord and leader of my life. Help me to live for you from this day forward. In Jesus' name, amen. If you made that commitment for the first time today, we would love to talk to you and hear from you. We wanna encourage you and resource you, help you have what you need to grow your roots deeper.

Colossians: Part 2

Colossians: Part 2 - Jesus is Enough

Colossians 1:15-23

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are continuing our Colossians series today. Pastor Lauren kicked us off last week with week one in a sermon called "Life Worthy of the Lord." If you haven't listened to it yet, I would encourage you to go back. We're going to continue today. I want to start off with a question for you guys. How many of you like to cook? Raise your hand if you are okay. Now, I've asked this question. A lot of people have conversations about cooking and I find there's a spectrum, right? There's some of us that like to follow a recipe to the tee. You bring out your recipe. Maybe you have done what some professional chefs say is the most important thing, which is to read through all of it first, not as you go along, but to read through it all at the beginning. You're prepared. You're leveling off every tablespoon. It's very exact. Then maybe on the other side of the spectrum, for those who like to cook, are those who, shall we say, are more creative and just want to ad lib? The pan is your canvas and you're the artist and you're just grabbing whatever and you're like, "That looks good, sounds good." And maybe you're somewhere in between, wherever that is.

My dad was kind of more the latter. He was our pancake guy every weekend. He made pancakes and that's pretty straightforward. He just made great pancakes. But every once in a while, he'd make scrambled eggs. And when we came down for scrambled eggs, we knew that we would never get the same scrambled eggs ever. And they were good. I don't want to say like, they were good, but we knew that if we come down and he'd be making scrambled eggs and the spice drawer was open and we're like, "All right, we don't know what he's added." And he might not know what he's added because he just kind of was like, "Yeah, sure." And self-admitted, he would say this himself, there were a few times that there were more spice than eggs and you'd take a bite and maybe there was a crunch, a lot of crunching. And we're like, "Dad, what'd you add?" And he's like, "Yeah, I'm not sure." It's open and it's over there. "Oh, nutmeg, really, nutmeg." And just a little pizzazz.

But yeah, a few times, I don't know if you've had that experience where maybe you've had a dish, you've eaten something and there's a lot, maybe you ordered something and you're like, "Man, I really wanted this, but I'm getting all this other stuff. And I'm not even tasting what I really wanted to taste." Or maybe you did it to yourself or maybe you ordered something and they did it to you and you're like, "Man, that chef just got carried away." But this happens in other areas of life too besides food, right? Maybe technology, maybe some of us are like, "Man, I just wanted a TV and I just want to turn it on and I want to be able to hit channel and scroll. But now I have to go to this app, to this app, and that app, and I have to push in this." And it's too much. It's too much. It's a lot. It also happens maybe in social conversations where you are engaging with someone in conversation and they just seem to force, like you walk away from that conversation, you're like, "Man, that was a lot of heavy stuff. And I wasn't signed up for like a big heavy conversation right now and we just got forced into going deep." Or maybe it's the other way where you're like, "Hey, I did want to talk about some real stuff and all they seemed to talk about was lighthearted weather and we never got to talk about anything real.”

It can also happen in our spiritual lives where we can happen in our Christian faith where we're trying to add too much to our faith, our understanding of faith. We try to add too much to the gospel. We try to add too much on how to get to heaven, how to live out the Christian life. And we can run the risk of going off course in our beliefs and getting away from what's truly needed and what's true to the gospel. And so the point, to the point where we believe in like the gospel and, we believe in the gospel and this and that. Where our faith and our faith practices might have started with the Bible, but we've added a bunch around it and proclaimed that all these other things are just as essential, just as important as the gospel.

As Pastor Lorne mentioned last week, this is some of what's happening in the church, in the early church, especially in Coliseum, where Paul was in prison and he heard a report about false teaching from this city. And people were saying, "Hey, Jesus was good and the gospel that he taught was good, but that's just the start. We need to add some other things to it. It's not enough." And they were saying that basically Jesus isn't enough. And we have to understand at this time in ancient culture, it was a very polytheistic view, right? Polytheism, the worship of many gods. We are monotheistic, the worship of one god. But embracing polytheism is what helped the Roman Empire spread and to have such a strong empire. As they were conquered different nations, they didn't say, "Hey, you got to get rid of your religion." They would say, "Hey, you can keep your religion. You just got to add our Roman gods to who you worship, especially Caesar." And then people are like, "Okay, that's fine. Well, we've already got a bunch of gods. We'll add a few more. That's fantastic." And so it just helped them spread. So the culture at the time was very polytheistic.

And even in our modern world today, we have people with similar tendencies who just kind of gather everything that's out there and just accumulate different beliefs and worship practices and styles. I was having a conversation sometime last year at this point and met a guy and just kind of casually mentioned that I was a pastor. And he was like, "Oh, I believe in God." And things can get squirrely when you mention that you're a pastor. And when they say they believe in God, I'm always kind of like, "Okay, well, I don't know what God. And let's see what you're talking about." So there's some follow-up questions. And come to find out, he did believe in his words, "Some of the Bible." So I was like, "Oh, okay, some of the Bible. You're familiar with the Bible." But I'm also Wiccan. And I also have these, I really like these Buddhist practices. And I was like, "Okay, gotcha. Yeah, I'm starting to understand." And again, just like it's the gospel and, right, this and a bunch of other stuff. Maybe you know some people who claim to believe in God, but once you get below the surface and you see who they worship or how they worship, your mind is, the flags are going off of like, "This isn't exactly what the Bible says. It's not aligned with the gospel." And so this is the situation that Paul is hearing. He's in prison, but he's heard that this is happening. And even from the church leaders, it wasn't just in the city, it was the church leaders who were sharing this. And he's like, "We gotta address this. This has gotta stop." They were saying the person and work of Jesus isn't enough. And it was like they were in the kitchen and they're at church and they're just like, "Yeah, we'll start here, but we're gonna add this. We're gonna add this.”

And so let's read what Paul says in response to that. If you guys want to turn in your Bibles to Colossians 1, it'll be in verse 15. It'll be up on the screen. Chapter 1, verse 15 through 23. It reads, "The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in Him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities. All things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything He might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior, but now He has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you wholly in His sight without blemish and free from accusation. If you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel, this is the gospel that you have heard that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven and of which I, Paul, have become a servant.”

You guys pray with me one more time. God, thank You for Your Word. What a gift to know the truth. And God, I pray that You would speak to us this morning, God, that we would know You in a deeper way, come to understand You and who You are and what You do. And I pray that we would leave this morning with a deeper faith, a stronger faith, and a deeper appreciation for the work that You have done on the cross and that You are doing in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. And God, I pray for everyone in this room. And I just sense that there's a lot on people's hearts and minds, and we all come with a certain burden. And I pray that You would help us right now to lay that before You, to surrender that to You, God, to trust You with whatever it is that we're going through, and to recognize that You are God over all, and that Jesus, You are enough. So I pray this in Your holy name. Amen.

Paul's point is that Jesus is enough. Nothing needs to, and really nothing can be, added to the person and work of Christ. As the Lord over all creation, He is more than enough for every believer. And this morning, I want to go verse by verse and dive deeper into Paul's response to what is happening in the early church. And again, a theme, I can't, if you only take one thing away, Jesus is enough. And I love how it continues this thread that we've had in our church over the last several months and several series of having Sundays where we just focus in on who God is or who Christ is. We've done this in our Advent series and our Christian-ish series, and now in our Colossians series, where we just get to have a Sunday where we just get to better know who God is and come to a deeper appreciation and knowledge where we can give Him more of our lives and worship Him in a deeper way. So that's going to be our morning today. The first thing we see in our section here is Jesus' work as creator and sustainer. Jesus' work as creator and sustainer. In these verses, Paul begins addressing the polytheism at the time. And he tells us that God not only created what no other God could do, but He also sustains His work. It counters this thought that we, you might have heard today, where God, maybe people might say like God might have created the world, but then He just stepped away from it. He hasn't been in touch with it since. And this says, no, He created and He sustains. He holds it all together.

Verse 15, it says, "The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation." That first phrase, "the image of the invisible God," this is garden language. What I mean by that is the Garden of Eden. The very beginning of the Bible, we hear that man was woman and man were created in God's image. And so this is again, bringing us back to tying this all in. Paul's trying to paint this whole picture in firstborn. It says, "the firstborn over all creation." This does not mean that Jesus was the first thing created. I think some people can read that and misinterpret that as like, "Oh, so God was there, then He created Jesus." No, not what he is saying. The firstborn in ancient culture was the one who had inherited the power and everything that the father had, the firstborn also had that privilege. And so that's the image that Paul is trying to convey here. It speaks to Jesus's sovereignty and supremacy over creation. He is the new and better Adam, the one with no sin, who has a perfect and harmonious relationship with God. And so he reigns over all creation.

Verse 16 says, "For in Him, all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through Him and for Him." So Paul is saying that Jesus was there at creation. He was there creating. And all of creation glorified Him because He created it all. The physical, the spiritual, the visible, the invisible, the natural and the supernatural, Jesus is over it all. Everything and everyone is subject to His authority and power. Now, this doesn't mean that we don't live in a world of sin. We do it. And it doesn't mean that Jesus is controlling everything like a puppeteer. That's not. We have free will in this world. People can and do deny God, reject God, rebel against God every moment of every day. But Paul is simply stating that Jesus reigns over it all and nothing and no one is outside His power and rule.

Verse 17 says, "He is before all things, and in Him, all things hold together." This is, I think, one of my favorite verses in the entire Bible and my favorite verse in Colossians. "In Him, all things hold together." I just think of the news headlines that we hear so often. How often do we hear things like, "The rainforest is going to be gone in 15 years." Or, "The glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, ecosystems are collapsing, pollution is killing our oceans." It's very like the world is just falling apart. Now, don't get me wrong. All those are concerning and deeply like that's, I don't know how all that works. I just know that it's bad. And as Christians, I think we should care about the environment. We are partners with God to rule and reign over creation. We are partners with Him. So I do love hearing positive headlines about that where someone's created helpful ways to clean up the oceans or how deserts that have been expanding and the sands are just getting wider and wider and how people have started to be able to figure out how to plant things in the desert and reclaim. That's incredible. I love that. But whatever the headline, concern is a healthy response. But concern doesn't need to grow to hopelessness or doom and gloom demeanor because we believe that Jesus is holding all things together. That means He's actively, ongoingly, continuously holding our world together, working through humanity, but also supernaturally in ways that we cannot see. He is holding this world together. And that doesn't just mean the physical world, things that we, the world that we live in, but the world leaders and the powers that be, religious cults or terrorist groups that are hell-bent on hurting others for a better world, to the angry people in our neighborhoods who are so divisive on next door, you know, sometimes I wonder how this world hasn't fallen apart more and how there isn't more chaos and how people haven't succumbed more to the sin and selfishness that runs rampant in our society. And some people would say, well, it's because there's good people out there. It's the good in us that keeps this world together. And I, maybe there's some truth to that, but I know that we're all sinners, all of us, even the best of us are sinners. And so I attribute it to the goodness and grace of God, Christ's sovereignty over the entire world, humanity too. He is holding this world together.

So I want to pause right there after this first couple of verses, this section, and seeing Christ as our creator and sustainer, I want to ask us, who is holding your world together? Who is holding your life together? Is it Jesus or is it you? Are you trying to do it all? Are you trying to white knuckle your way through this life? Are you carrying everything that is going on in your life and saying, I will figure this out, I will do it. Or do you depend on and rely on and surrender to Jesus and let him sustain you? Who is more than capable, who loves you more than anyone else, who is holding the entire world together. And so certainly he can hold your life together. So who is holding your world together right now? So we continue the next section that Paul gets into, we see Jesus' work on the cross. In these verses, we see that Christ is the leader of the church and it is only in and through him that the body of Christ, the church, can mature and develop and grow.

Verse 18 says, "And he is the head of the body, the church, he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy." So it mentions the head of the church. This is an analogy that the Bible uses, Jesus taught on it, Paul teaches on it. We think of the church as a physical body. Some of us are an arm or a leg or a tendon, a ligament, an elbow, whatever it may be. Paul is saying Jesus is the head. He is the most important part. And he is affirming, and it says that he is also in the beginning and the firstborn of the dead. Paul is affirming here, sorry, the resurrection of Christ. Because some didn't think that he actually died, and so he's saying no, he did die. And he's affirming that Christ died and rose. And he's sharing the hope that we as Christians have in Christ's resurrection. As we share in Christ's death, he dies the death that we deserve. We will not be defeated by death at the end of our time here on earth. Our physical bodies will die, but we know that we will have eternal life with God in heaven. And Jesus is the first one to go through that and then ascend into heaven. And so that's the firstborn. He's the first one to do it. He paves the way, and we get to follow him.

Verse 19 says, "For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him." God was fully present in Christ. Christ was fully God and fully man. And Paul helps connect in the people's minds the realization and fulfillment of what God had been doing with Israel for centuries upon centuries. I think this is so fascinating. In the Old Testament, God dwelled in the tabernacle. So Israel was in Egypt. God brought them out of Egypt and brings them to the wilderness. And in the ancient times, people thought that all deities lived in the high places. So mountaintops were often associated with like up on that mountain. That's where this God dwells. And so God, Yahweh, brings Israel out to the desert, into the wilderness, and gathers them. And then he's up on the mountain, Mount Sinai. And he talks with Moses for a bit. He met them on the mountain. But God didn't stay on the mountain. He goes down and he makes plans to dwell with his people. This is one of the biggest indicators to Israel at the time that this God is different. This God doesn't stay up on the mountain away from us. This God comes and dwells with us. So he instructed Israel to build a tabernacle, which is a tent temple. So eventually they were going to have the temple, but they were in the wilderness. They weren't in the promised land yet. So he's like, "Hey, until we get there, build a tent for me. I'll come down and I'll dwell in this tent." So God came down and filled the tabernacle with his glory as a sign of his presence among the people. And the prophet Isaiah interprets this cloud that fills the tent as the Holy Spirit. Now, does this sound familiar to our reality today? This act was God's gracious act of friendship to Israel. And it's the same gracious act of friendship to us today. Jesus is the fulfillment of what God had been doing for centuries, embodied in flesh, incarnate.As John chapter 1, verse 14 says, "The word became flesh and dwelt among us." So Jesus came down to dwell with humanity like never before. They had had a taste of it in the Old Testament with God in the tabernacle, but now Jesus had come down in person. And why? Why did he do this?

Verse 20, "So through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross." He did this to reconcile us to God, to offer opportunity for a restored relationship with God, to how it was before sin entered the world. Theologian John Barry says, "The purpose of Christ's death on the cross was to bring all things created by Christ and for Christ into harmonious relationship." I love that, harmonious relationship. Because the entire world was touched by sin, marred by sin, affected by sin, every part from us as humanity to the ground that we walk on. And Christ came to redeem and to restore. And it's only through Christ's sacrifice that there is hope. Only through his blood on the cross, like that hymn that maybe you're familiar with, only through the blood. It's only through Christ's sacrifice on the cross that we can have a relationship with God. Only through Christ and Christ alone that we can live a life to the fullest and have hope of eternal life. Christ died so that we can live in harmony with God.

So I just want to ask this question right now, as we reflect on these verses and why Christ came and the possible harmony that we can have with God. Are you, right now in life, as you reflect on where you're at, what's going on, are you living in harmony with God? Do you live realizing that Christ died on the cross for you? That you might have a harmonious relationship with God? That your only hope is in the work of the cross. Nothing else on this earth, as good as it sounds, as helpful as it may appear, nothing can save you but Christ. His death equals your salvation. It's the only way. It's the only way to live a harmonious life. And so are you living in harmony with God? Paul continues. In the last section of our passage this morning, we see Jesus' transformational work in us. So we've seen him as creator and sustainer. We've seen what he did on the cross. And now Paul goes into what he does in our lives. Paul addresses the past, present, and future for believers. Past is our former reality, our sinful life. He addresses our present, which is our ongoing rescue. And he addresses the future, our hope of heaven. All of creation, humanity included, awaits the consummation of Christ's work when there is no more sin in the world, when Christ returns again. But until then, we wait with hope and we live for him. If believers, if we are to be presented as holy and blameless and above reproach, then we must continue to be stable and steadfast in our faith.

So Paul says in verse 21, "Once you were alienated from God and you were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior." Right? This is everyone's reality. We are sinners. And just as Adam and Eve were cast out from the garden because of their sin, we are born into a reality without harmonious relationship with God. So how do we gain that necessary right standing with God again? Well, it's through Christ and only Christ, verse 22. "But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight without blemish and free from accusation." I keep saying this, but it's worth repeating. Christ's work on the cross has done it all. There is nothing else needed, nothing to be added to get us into heaven, to get us into have a relationship with God. Christ is sufficient. And I don't mean that in the, like, he's fine. Like, it's okay. It's just enough. Like that negative connotation of sufficient. I mean, he is supremely sufficient. Jesus is enough. He is more than enough. Paul mentions here Christ's physical body. And again, this is Paul's way of just addressing some rumors out there at the time that Jesus didn't have a physical body. So what he endured and what he did wasn't all that special. But we know that Christ was fully God, fully man, had a physical body. And so he endured the pain, the torture, the suffering, and he died a gruesome, cruel death. And he did this to present you holy in the sight of God without blemish and free from accusation. Jesus did this so that the reality mentioned in verse 21, us lacking a harmonious relationship with God, could be flipped, could be undone. And that way, we don't have to remain banished from God's presence, but we can enjoy intimacy and personal relationship with God, the Lord of all. And again, what Christ did on the cross is the only thing that can change that status, our status with God. That phrase, free from accusation, is because as sinners, when God looks at us, all he sees is our sin. As great of a life as you can live, all he sees when he looks at you is your sin. But once we are saved, that means that Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, is now dwelling in us. And so when God looks at us, he sees the perfection of Christ, blameless, holy, free from accusation. And because of Christ, we are then able to be in his presence.

Verse 23 says, "If you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel." Paul is addressing the crossroads that the church in Colossae is at. With what they're doing, the practices that they're involved with, he's charging them to continue to trust Christ and live out the gospel message. It's that live out the gospel message and how you live your life. Every part of it must honor and worship God. They have to stop observing and practicing the different rules and traditions which threaten to lead them away from Jesus. He's saying that Jesus, or he's saying that faith in Christ isn't simply a way of entering God's kingdom, it's the way of life within the kingdom. Let me repeat that. Paul is saying that faith in Christ isn't simply a way of entering God's kingdom, it's the way of life within the kingdom. This is so important. This means faith in Christ doesn't just change where we go after we die, it changes how we live now. The way we live our life today should be changed because of Christ dwelling in us.

So I want to ask this final question. What crossroads are you at in life? What is the spirit calling you away from in order to pursue God fully? I don't know what other spiritual practices and habits or religions that you may have come from or are with right now. We all had different upbringings and grew up in different scenarios and so I think at this point in life we've been in touch with several other faith traditions. I think Paul is asking us just to hold everything up to the gospel and say, "Does this, whatever you're doing in life, does it align with what the gospel says?" And if you haven't taken the time to kind of assess what you do and how you live out your faith, I would encourage you to do that this week. What does your faith practice look like? Yes, you go to church, maybe you pray, but maybe there's some other things that are woven in there, or maybe some thoughts of when things get tough or whatever it is, and I tend to think this, hold that all up to the gospel and say, "Is this what Christ demands of me and how I live my life?" The gospel tells us what it means to follow Jesus. The gospel tells us what it means to be saved. The gospel tells us who Jesus is and that he is enough. As we close, I just want to say that we pastors are here for you, and we want to walk alongside you as we all walk together towards God. And our prayer is that God is working in each and every one of you to grow in your knowledge and faith in him, that we know better through time how he is the creator and sustainer of this world, of the world that we live in, that we know better his work on the cross and all that truly happened from his death and resurrection, and we know better through his spirit, the transformational work that happens in our hearts, and that we would all come to a place where we know and believe and live out of faith where Christ is enough and that Christ is over everything. I pray that that would be true for us, that we would know that deeply this week.

Would you guys pray with me? God, pray that your word would be a swift word passing from our ears to our hearts and from our hearts to our words and our actions, that we may be transformed to be more like Christ inside and out. And so as the rains don't return empty but yield life, we pray that your word would do the same and not return empty, but do what it was given for, which is to produce Christ-like life within us and from us. God, I pray that you would this week reveal to us ways in which we are not living in step with you. And God, that you would give us the courage and the strength to repent of things we need to repent from, that you would give us insight and wisdom on how to chase you and pursue you with everything that we have. And God, I pray for those of us who are dealing with doubt, that we don't know for sure if you are enough, that you would reassure us, give us the faith to believe and live every day knowing that you are enough, you are more than enough. Strengthen us, God, through your Holy Spirit. Give us what we need, that we would depend on you daily. We love you, God. We pray this in your name. Amen.

Colossians: Part 1

Colossians: Part 1 - A Life Worthy of the Lord

Colossians 1:1-14

SERMON TRANSCRIPT

We are going to be in the book of Colossians, which I'm very excited about. I don't think I've actually had the opportunity to begin a series. So I'm happy to be here with you today and get to kick off a new series with you. So Colossians is a beautiful book. It's in the New Testament. It is a letter to one of the churches that Paul writes. And it is just so rich with theology and with learning more about who God is and how we respond to that and what our lives look like after learning more about Jesus. And so I really am just excited for us to learn and grow and kind of see how we as a church body, a Spring Valley church, and individually grow our faith deeper through this series. So we just finished our Christian-ish series. That was how we kicked off the year. And you know, that one was like a hurt so good kind of series. It really pushed us, I think, and I think it was really necessary. But that one was a little bit more about how we get off the fence, the importance of going all in on Jesus, of not having a lukewarm faith. And so Colossians is a little bit more about how we then go deeper. So we've said yes to Jesus. We've gone all in. Now, how do we go deeper with Him and in our relationship with Him? We really want to learn how to grow those roots deeper.

So I want to give us a little bit of background information on the book of Colossians for those that maybe don't know or aren't familiar. But it is, as I said, it is a letter written from the Apostle Paul to the church in Colossae. Now, side note, some people say Coloss, some people say Colossae, some people say Colossae. I have no idea what the actual way of saying it is, but we're going to say Colossae today, okay? So just so you have a heads up, there's three of us preaching on this same book, so we might say a little bit differently. But I'm going to say Colossae just for some continuity here. But Paul actually never met the church in Colossae. Typically, his other books, he was writing to the churches that he began. He started them, he went on several missionary journeys and he started multiple churches. But he didn't actually start the church in Colossae. And so there was a man named Epaphras who was a Colossian, and it's believed that he went to Ephesus. Ephesus is a place where Paul started a church, it's where we get the book of Ephesians. And it's believed that Epaphras heard Paul preaching in Ephesus and then took the gospel back and started a church in Colossae. So here we find that Epaphras has gone to Rome and is giving Paul an update on the church. Now, why Rome? Well, Paul is in prison in Rome. He is currently in prison because he is proclaiming that Jesus is the risen Lord and the Romans don't like it. So he is in prison for the gospel. But that doesn't let him stop, that doesn't stop him, he doesn't let it stop him from encouraging the church worldwide. So Epaphras brings the news to Paul that the church is growing, but they are having some struggles.

And so Paul writes to them, and Paul is encouraged to hear that the gospel is spreading throughout Colossae, but, you know, worldwide. And so that is encouraging to him as he is suffering in chains for the gospel. But he also really wants to respond to the issues of their day. And so the book of Colossians is really Paul, first of all, encouraging them to address the cultural problems that they are facing. It's a little unsure of what specifically the problems were, but one of the prevailing theories was that there was false prophets teaching and preaching things that were against the true gospel. They were tempting the Colossians to turn away from what they knew by preaching a false gospel. So Paul encourages them to address this issue head on. And then the second thing he does is he challenges them to a greater level of devotion to Jesus. And really these things are interconnected, because when we are coming against the cultural issues of our day, when we are standing firm on the truth of the gospel and not letting it tempt us to turn away from it, we will naturally grow deeper in our faith. And then as we grow deeper in our faith and we become stronger, we are more equipped to continue to stand firm against the issues we face and the temptations that come against us. So these are really interconnected ideas. As we will see throughout the book and this series, Christ, Paul acknowledges and says over and over again how Christ is the center of everything. He's the reason for everything. He's above everything. And when a person encounters Jesus, they do not leave the same way. Now, let me be clear. A person can encounter Jesus and choose to keep living the same way. They can choose to not leave a life of sin or allow their encounter to transform them. But when they encounter Jesus, there is an invitation to live differently. And so the person who does choose to be transformed, to be changed by the gospel, will be marked by a different way of living. They will turn from their sin. They will respond to life situations differently. They will show up in the world as a changed person because they encountered Jesus and chose to let him transform their hearts.

There's a popular resource called The Bible Project. I encourage you look it up. Us as a staff use it a lot to learn more about the Bible and books of the Bible specifically. But they have kind of a, they described the big idea of Colossians, and I thought it was really helpful. So I want to read it for us today. No part of human existence remains untouched by the loving, liberating rule of the risen Jesus. We are invited to live a new creation life here and now because the new creation began arriving when Jesus rose from the dead. So even now, even here on earth in our broken and hurting world, we can live as a new creation. Because for those of us who are in Christ, who have decided to follow Jesus, who have allowed him into our lives and made, we've made him Lord of our life. We are a new creation right now. Yes, the new heaven and the new earth is coming, but even now we can live as a new creation. That reality is available to us even now. So we're going to be in the book of Colossians for the next several weeks. But today we're just going to be on in verse or in the first chapter. We're not going to go past the first 14 verses. So we're in a park there today, but we're really going to set the groundwork for this whole series and kind of begin with the end in mind.

We want us to walk away from this series knowing Jesus better. And to see how a follower of Jesus is to live and operate in the world once they have been transformed by the gospel. So that's where we're headed. That's where we want to go. So if you would turn with me to the book of Colossians, it's in the New Testament. It's right after Philippians, if you get to 1 Thessalonians, you've gone too far. But you can turn there in your Bibles. There's Bibles in the seats underneath. We'll have it on the screens as well. But we're just going to read right now. We're going to start in verses one through six. So read along with me. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God and Timothy, our brother, to God's holy people in Colossae, the faithful brothers and sisters in Christ. Grace and peace to you from God our Father. We always thank God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God's people. The faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you. In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God's grace. So Paul starts out by commending them for their faith and love for God's people. And he notes here in these first few verses where their faith and love come from. Verse five says the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel. It comes from their hope. Their faith and love come from hope. Specifically the hope of heaven and the hope of salvation.

These are the things, hope is the thing that bolsters our faith and love. When we have the hope of salvation because we know that Jesus died for us and rose again, that gives us hope and it bolsters our faith and love for God's people. And when we remember the hope of eternal life, the hope of heaven, that because of that gift of salvation, we get to spend eternity with Jesus, again, that's going to keep bolstering our faith and our love. So he commends them for their faith and love, but Paul knows that while their faith and love is strong, they need encouragement and they need to be challenged in the issues that they're facing. So he goes on, he shares their things for them and for what they are doing with the gospel. But then he writes a prayer. He tells them, I pray for you and I'm going to tell you what I pray about.

So let's pick up in verse nine. It says, "For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way, bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." Amen.

So Paul prays for the Colossians to have knowledge and wisdom and understanding from the Spirit. Not from themselves, not from the culture around them, not from the false prophets who are trying to preach a different gospel, but from the Spirit. Knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is typically referenced as having information, and wisdom is knowing what to do with that information. So the Colossians knew the gospel. They had heard it, they had accepted it, they had started their church. They knew the gospel. So they had some knowledge, but Paul is saying, "I want you, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to grow in knowledge and increase in wisdom so you know what to do with the truth that you have. You know how to stand firm against the issues of your day because of the truth you already have.”

He prays for knowledge and wisdom and understanding from the Spirit so that... I love these little connectors. They're all throughout the Bible. You have "therefore," you have "so that," you have "if/then." All of these things are a literary device to get your attention to know that something else is happening. So it helps me anyways to pay a little bit more attention. That we're not just growing in knowledge and wisdom and understanding for the sake of knowing more things, but there's a reason. So that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please Him in every way. That's the goal. That is the goal of the Christian life. Once you have accepted Jesus, that's goal number one, but then the next one is to live a life worthy of the Lord and please Him in every way. So what is every way?

Well, thankfully, Paul gave us a list. He said, "Bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father." Awesome. But what does this mean? We love a list. At least for me, I like checking things off my to-do list. Am I bearing fruit? Am I growing in the knowledge of God? You know, we have a list, but we need to know what to do with this. And also, Paul's writing to the Colossians. So what does that mean for us? Something that I want us to remember as we study the book of Colossians and really as we read the Bible in its entirety, is I want us to remember that some scripture is descriptive. It is describing a certain situation based on a person in a place and time under certain circumstances. I think of the Israelites. God told them to go pick manna up off the ground every day to provide food for them. That is descriptive. It is describing something that happened. Please don't go pick up food off the ground and eat it. That is not for you. Okay? That scripture is not for you. Not in that way. That is a descriptive of the circumstances that they were facing in that time and place. But a lot of scripture is also prescriptive, meaning it was written for an original audience, and in this case, the Colossians. But it is also for all believers spanning space and time. And in this case, this is for us too. And the reason I know that is because Paul is talking about what the Holy Spirit is doing in their lives. And we still have the Holy Spirit today. We all have access to the Holy Spirit when we invite Him into our life. So in this case, we are looking at some prescriptive texts here that we can glean from in our Christian walk today. So the first one, "Bearing Fruit in Every Good Work.”

Pastor Chris talked last week about abiding. Abiding in the vine, who is Christ? And when we abide, we bear fruit. Now to be clear, it is the Holy Spirit bearing fruit in us. We are not the ones doing the bearing. We are not the ones doing the producing. We are the ones abiding. And by abiding, that fruit is produced in our lives. Galatians 5:22-23 talks about the fruit of the Holy Spirit. It says, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, or forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things, there is no law." These are the spiritual fruit that is produced in us when we abide. And Paul is saying that one of the ways we live a life worthy of the Lord is by bearing this fruit. When we have fruit, spiritual fruit, produced in our lives, it is proof of our faith and of the work that God is doing in our hearts. But he specifically says, "Bearing fruit in every good work." Not in some good work, not in a few things, but in every good work. That is the big and the small, the seemingly important and the seemingly insignificant. The platforms and the parenting, the promotions and the walking the dog, whatever it is that we do in the big and the small, we are called to bear fruit or really allow the Holy Spirit to bear fruit in us. The second thing that Paul talks about is growing in the knowledge of God. Again, this knowledge, getting more information. This isn't just specifically knowing more facts about God.

Okay, the more we know about God, the more we study His word, He reveals Himself so much in His word. And so the more we know about God, the deeper our faith is able to grow. When you get to know a person, you're much more connected. You're closer to them. You're more related to them. You're able to feel more connected and have a deeper relationship with them. You can know facts about someone and not really know them personally. You can know facts about your favorite sports team or an athlete. Shout out Super Bowl for those who celebrate. You can know a favorite celebrity, an actress or actor or a musician. You can know all kinds of facts about them, but you don't know them. And so Paul is saying, grow in your knowledge of who God is and get to know Him. Be in conversation with Him. Read His word so that your faith can be deepened and that you can live a life worthy of Him.

Jeremiah 9:23-24 says, "This is what the Lord says. Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this, that they have the understanding to know Me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth. For in these I delight, declares the Lord." We are called to know God, to know His character, to know what He loves, what He delights in, what He hates, what breaks His heart. These are the things that we can know about God. We're not going to know everything, and that's a good thing. I don't want to serve a God that I can figure out, but we are called, and He desires for us to know Him. That's why He gave us His word. John 17:3 says, "Now this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." That is eternal life, is knowing Him. Seems pretty important. The third thing He says is being strengthened, specifically to endure and have patience. I don't know about y'all, but on a job interview when asked what my strengths are, I have never said endurance or patience. Maybe there's some of you out there who have. That is not me. Endurance and patience is something that many of us are weak in, that we need to be strengthened in. Why do we need endurance though? Well, Paul talks a lot about running the race, the spiritual race that we run, and it is a long road. It is not a short trip. It is a long road. And so we need endurance to stay the course, to keep going. We need patience when there are bumps in the road, when things don't go our way.

Thankfully though, it is God who strengthens us in these things. Ephesians 3:16 says, "I pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being." We don't have to white knuckle it. We don't have to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We don't have to be our own hero or our own savior. We just have to be willing to let the Spirit strengthen us. Are we sensing a theme here? That is the Spirit working in us to do these things. Finally, Paul says, "Giving joyful thanks." I really appreciate this extra adjective that he puts in there, because the reality is we can give thanks half-heartedly. "Jesus, thank you for this food. Amen." We said thanks. I think of my kids sometimes, especially when they're little, and we're trying to teach them theirs, "Hey, say thank you." They get it. They say thank you. They get it out there. But we can even say thank you and genuinely mean it without letting the gratitude transform our hearts. And so Paul is saying, "Give thanks and do it joyfully. Let it change who you are." Paul is constantly giving thanks. He starts just about every letter with some version of, "I give thanks to God every time I think of you." He's constantly thanking God for people, and then he'll often thank the people he's writing to for their efforts in spreading the gospel. And the man lived through some wild times. We were just talking about this in youth group a couple weeks ago. Of all the things that Paul went through, he was shipwrecked multiple times. He was stoned. He was bitten by a snake. He was in prison several times. He suffered a lot for the sake of the gospel, but he constantly gave thanks. And why? Why should we give joyful thanks? It's because when we are giving joyful thanks over time and consistently, it shifts our perspective. It shifts our eyes up out of our circumstances and on the one who is above all of them. And really, it expands joy in our hearts when we practice thanksgiving. And I know that when we do these things, when we are bearing fruit, when we are growing in the knowledge of God, when we are giving joyful thanks and being strengthened, this pleases the Father. So we pray for knowledge and wisdom and understanding from the Spirit. We pray that we are transformed from the inside out so that we will live differently. And we will live a life worthy of the Lord and pleasing to Him in every way.

Well, after this section, Paul tells the Colossians and us as well, that the Father has qualified you to receive the inheritance of His kingdom. Colossians 1:12-14 says, "In giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of His holy people in the kingdom of light. For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." The Colossians were not Jews. They were not part of the holy nation of Israel that God had set apart in the Old Testament. They were Gentiles, just like you and I are. But thankfully, by God's grace, He invited them and us into His kingdom of light. He rescued them out of the darkness of sin and the hold that Satan had on them. He redeemed them and forgave them. And Paul is telling them, "You've already been rescued. Don't go back there. Don't listen to these false prophets that are telling you things that you know are not true, that are going against the Bible, that are going against the gospel that you heard and believed. You've already been rescued. Don't go back to the chains. Don't go back to the sin that keeps you in bondage." This idea of the dominion of darkness, this power of darkness is a sinister force. It is like combat in the spiritual realm. It is real. There is a spiritual darkness. And I don't say that we should live in fear because we have the power of the Holy Spirit in us. But it is real. And we have an enemy of our souls who wants nothing but to kill, steal, and destroy. And he does this through his power of darkness. One commentary I read this week was speaking to the effects of the power of darkness. And I thought it was really poignant, so I wanted to read it for us. It says, "The power of darkness lulls us to sleep. The power of darkness is skilled at concealment. The power of darkness afflicts and depresses man. The power of darkness can fascinate us. The power of darkness emboldens some men." It lulls us to sleep, making us believe that it's not that serious. It's sneaky. It operates in concealment and under the guise of goodness. It oppresses us by afflicting us with depression and anxiety and mental illness. Maybe even physical illness for some. It can also fascinate us. We are fascinated with things of darkness. We are fascinated with the sin thing that we can't have. And it can embolden some to believe that they can toe the line and walk with Christ while also dabbling in the darkness.

Thankfully, though, we have been rescued. We've been rescued from this power of darkness, and we no longer have to live in bondage to it. It does not control us. It is real, and there are times that we will have to fight. That's why Paul tells us to put on the armor of God. But we are not slaves to it anymore. We don't have to go back to it. Charles Spurgeon, a theologian, said, "Beloved, we still are tempted by Satan, but we are not under his power. We have to fight with him, but we are not his slaves. He is not our king. He has no rights over us. We do not obey him. We will not listen to his temptations." By God's grace, we are no longer bound to the power of darkness. By the shed blood of Jesus, we've been set free, and we should act like it. Verse 14 says that in the Son of God, in Jesus, the son he loves, we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins. Redemption is more like a legal term that we have been released by legal ransom. His death is our ransom. We're free. We're debt free. And then forgiveness here means ascending away. Jesus's death sent away our sins from us. The Psalm says that as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us. So because we are redeemed and forgiven, we are legally set free from the debt of sin, and then we are spiritually free through the sending away of our sins. We are able to live free by the power of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit wants to increase us in knowledge and wisdom and understanding. He has promised that if we will abide, he will produce that fruit in our lives. And he will empower us to live a life worthy of our Lord that is pleasing to him. This is how we walk out our faith. This is how we live differently. This is how we live a life worthy of Jesus. And this is how we show the world that Christ is truly above everything.

I'm going to pray for us, and the band's going to come up. We're going to head into our time of prayer that Andre spoke about earlier. He and I will be up at the front. We would love the opportunity to pray over you. Bob and Chris are going to be in the back if you would rather be in the back and not have any eyes on you. But don't let that stop you. We're just praying. There's nothing magical about it. It's just taking our praise and our needs to God. And we just want to come alongside you and do that with you. The Bible says where two or three are gathered, he is there. He's here, friends. Let's just talk to him. Let us pray for you. God, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you have given us your word to learn more about you, to grow deeper in our relationship with you. We thank you that we don't have to stay the same. That once we have encountered you, you make us new and we are a new creation and we can operate like that here and now. Lord, we ask by the power of the Holy Spirit that you would cultivate these things in our lives, that you would help us to live differently, living a life worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We love you, Jesus. Amen.