Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Good morning.
[00:00:04] I love having friends. That's fun. All right, I'm going to pray for us. Dear Father, thank you for this day. Thank you that you are a God who is more than enough. I pray that this morning you would fill our hearts with your goodness, your glory, and your love. I pray, Father, that your spirit would be evidently at work in our lives and our hearts and our minds that give out this beautiful gospel that you've shared with us. Help us, I pray in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:00:31] So I love a good story. If you've known me before, I read voraciously. Sometimes I watch tv. I like to read first. But every once in a while a tv show will capture my interest. And I love if you ever watched a show and you're watching it for like a couple of seasons, and then all of a sudden they tie one big idea together and you're like, whoa, I didn't see that coming. But all the pieces were there. And I love you can stream everything right now so you can go back and rewatch it and see all the things that you miss. Is there any doctor who fans?
[00:01:04] Wow.
[00:01:07] We start over. There's this really cool tv show called Doctor who.
[00:01:12] BBC. It ran like 50 years ago, and then they redid it. It's super cheesy Sci-Fi but it's really cool if you get invested in the story. And one of the things that they love to do is have this storyline that seems like it's all these crazy different things happening. And then at the end, like a couple episodes before the end of the season, everything comes back together and you're like, wow, it's this huge story and I missed it.
[00:01:38] You can feel free to watch it if you don't like it, no problem. There's other stuff. Okay. I say that because sometimes we read the Bible and we see these individual stories and we're like, oh, it's like a good idea or some good advice here. And we miss the big story that's running all the way through the Bible from beginning to end. The Bible isn't just a collection of random stories or random ideas to make you feel good or live a good life. That happens. But the story is one big idea of who God is and how he works from creation all the way through until actually where we are today. We see the story of God's goodness and grace, and it all comes together in the person of Jesus Christ. I'm going to try to weave some of this together for us, and I'm going to start at this little book in the Old Testament called Hosea. Now, sometimes Hosea is an easy book to miss. If you ever grew up learning about the structure of the Bible, you learned about the major prophets or the minor prophets. Sometimes in your Bible, it's broken down that way. It's hard because I wouldn't want to be called minor, would you? It has nothing to do with content. It only has to do with size. Jeremiah is a major content. He's got, like 52 chapters where the Book of Hosea is considered minor because it only has 14. A better way to understand the structure of the prophets in the Bible, because sometimes you're cooking along, you're reading the beginning, it gets a little wonky there, but then you pick up with the kings, and you're like, okay, this is some story, this is some action. And then you're like, whoa, where did this come from? No idea what it means. Okay, a little bit of structure. When you read the prophets, there's three different kinds of prophets. They all are called by God to share this message, and they're speaking to a specific nation of people, God's chosen people, Israel. And the first group of prophets we encounter, they're talking to God's people before they get sent into exile, which we know from this standpoint of history. They're saying to the people of Israel, like, it's not too late to turn back to God. We can turn the ship. Things aren't going in the right way, but we can still be these people that God called us to be. And then you keep reading, and there's a second group of prophets, and they're in exile. Things went bad. Our country fell apart. We got invaded. We've got carried off. We're so far from home. But God hasn't forgotten us. Live in the city before the city, build it there, make peace there. God hasn't forgotten us. He will bring us home one day. And then you get the post exile prophets. Like that happens. God keeps his promise and they go back to Jerusalem, and it's a mess. And they're trying to rebuild the city and rebuild the temple and the walls for safety. And the prophets are saying, let's just learn from our past. Let's learn what happened last time when we turned away from God, and let's not turn away from God. Let's not get distracted. Let's stay the course. So this little book of Hosea, in that context, he's a prophet speaking to the people of Israel, God's chosen people before exile. And what happened, if you read, know, you've got David, you've got Saul first, and then David and then Solomon. And then you get into the king's books, and you're like, who are these people?
[00:04:59] Right after Solomon, that golden period of kingship in Israel changes. The kingdom fractures. There's a civil war. They have a north and they have a south. And the northern kingdom, Israel, Hosea speaking a specific message to them. So here they are. They're living in these two different places. You can read about the kings. It's interesting because when you read about the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah, the first thing you learn is a description on what kind of king they were. And when you read about the northern kings, they unfortunately declined further and further and further away from God. Usually they're described this way. He did what was evil in the Lord's sight, or you have the add on. He refused to turn from the sins that his ancestor, and it's one of the original kings, had led Israel to commit. And so this happens king after king. And here we are somewhere in, like, the mid 700 bc, and Hosea is speaking to these people whose leaders have just turned further and further away from God. But here's what stands out about the book of Hosea. If you've read this before, you're with me so far. If you haven't, no problem.
[00:06:07] Hosea marries a woman who's completely unfaithful to him. She cheats on him. They have kids. He doesn't even know if the kids are his.
[00:06:16] And if anybody's ever been hurt or betrayed before, you feel the pain of that. You feel the tragedy of that. And through the life of Hosea, God speaks this incredible reality and painful truth to his people. Just as Hosea's wife had been unfaithful to him, God's people had been unfaithful to God.
[00:06:38] And Israel was supposed to be this nation set apart. Hey, side note, if you were ever walking through something hard and saying, how in the world could God do something good here? God taught a whole nation through one man's heartbreak. But that's like two more sermons. We're not going to go there. I'm going to stay on focus. Israel is supposed to be this nation set apart for God. You can read about their history all the way back to when God showed up, right? He creates the world.
[00:07:04] There's sin, there's damage, it's broken, but his purpose isn't disposed. He's still got this good plan, and he shows up in the life of a man named Abraham, and he says, to Abraham, who has no kids, you're going to have kids. And he makes this incredible promise that you're going to be this great family, and a nation's going to come from you, and I'm going to be your God, and you're going to be my people. And it's this promise of relation. There's intimacy in the relationship between God and his people. And you're going to come into this great land and you're going to be this awesome blessing to the people all around you because of how you live in this land. So you read through the Old Testament and there's kind of this tension, like, are they going to do what they promised to do? Are they going to keep the law that God's given them? Are they going to be a blessing to the nations around them? And the story continues, and then they're enslaved in Egypt and God rescues them. Remember, Moses rises up as this great prophet and he leads them out of slavery. But here you have a nation of people that comes from a heritage of slavery. Who are they going to become next? So what's powerful and easy to miss is sometimes we read the book of Exodus and there's these cool stories and then there's these rules, and we're like, I don't know what it all means. Look at what God does. He shows up and he freezes people. He rescues them from a situation they cannot rescue themselves from. Then he gives them this law and says, here's how you're going to be set apart in the world, how this culture you're going to become, you're not going to be like everybody else. You're going to be this holy people, because I'm a holy God. But then, oh, yeah, by the way, none of us can keep the law perfectly. There's going to be this system of sacrifices and tabernacles. So when you don't get it right and you offer a guilt offering, a sin, offering all of these different ways to help you into this relationship with God. But you know what? Do you see that context? Freedom and grace came first, then the law. God always shows grace first. The purpose of the law was never to save the people. God already saved them. The purpose of the law was never like, rack up your merit points and just show cultures how good you are and all the right things you do. The purpose of it was always to have a relationship with God. Now here we are, all these years later, God's people became this incredible nation. They have this beautiful city and beautiful temples, and people travel from far and wide to see what's happening here.
[00:09:33] But the leadership turns further and further away from God. They decline further and further away from the people that God had created them to be. They pick up the most horrible, atrocious practices from the world around them, and it just gets uglier and uglier. And Hosea stands up in this and he says, there's no faithfulness, there's no kindness, there's no knowledge of God in this land set apart for God. He says to the people, he says, instead of being a blessing and setting an example to the nations, you've picked up these horrible practices in your heart. You've gone after lesser things and betrayed God in the same way that Hosea had been hurt and betrayed by his wife. The people turned their backs on God. He said, you've exchanged the glory of God for the shame of idols.
[00:10:35] And even yet, Hosea calls them back to God. This is what he says. It's a really cool verse tucked away in Hosea six six.
[00:10:44] This is God speaking to the people through Hosea. I desire mercy, not sacrifice, acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings. Through Hosea, God saying to his people, I want you to show love more than I want you to be out there offering sacrifices. I want you to know me more than I desire burnt offerings. So Hosea is pushing back at the people. Like you can say, you're doing all of the right things. Where's your heart, your mercy, your knowledge of God? God wants you to be a people who shows mercy, not just people who show up and do their religious duty. He wants you to be a people who knows God, not just checks off. I did my weekly religious ritual this week.
[00:11:33] He creates this contrast, how easy it is to say the rules, check the right things done, and miss a relationship with an awesome good God, how easy it is to say I do the right thing, I follow the rules and miss what God wants to do. Uniquely, inside each and every one of us, we can get so focused on what we're doing that we miss God.
[00:12:01] We miss who he is and what he can do. So Hosea steps into this, and he challenges the heart of the people of Israel, and he challenges us today. When we think about what it means to really be a follower of Jesus Christ, what does that mean? When somebody asks you like, oh, you go to church, oh, you're a Christian, what does that mean? How do we describe what it looks like to follow God?
[00:12:26] And it really centralizes where our heart is focused. If my heart is focused on what I do, what I can do, what I'm able of? Or is my heart focused on who God is and what he can do? All right, stay with me for a second, because this is where it gets good.
[00:12:47] Some 700 ish years later, Jesus shows up, and he's got his ministry happening. When you read the gospels, you can read about Jesus teaching and healing and helping people and the gospel of Matthew. Matthew actually tells us that Jesus refers back to this passage in Hosea two times. And it's interesting because the first time he refers to it is actually when he calls Matthew to follow him. Matthew's a tax collector. Remember, we learned about tax collectors. They weren't really liked people. And so Jesus shows up and he says, matthew, follow me. And Matthew does. And then Matthew invites Jesus back to his home to have a meal with him. And the disciples come. And Matthew's got some friends there, other tax collectors, other people who are considered disreputable sinners. And you have religious people around the Pharisees, and they look at Jesus hanging out with Matthew and these tax collectors, and they look at Matthew and Jesus and all these people hanging out together, and they're like, who's Jesus? He shouldn't be hanging out with those kind of people, scum people beneath them, people they considered less than. And because Jesus is brilliant, he knows what's going on. And he says to them, hosea, learn the meaning of this. I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices. Jesus says, I've come to call not those who think they're righteous, but those who know they're sinners.
[00:14:18] And then again, Jesus is out with his disciples. And Matthew says, they're walking through some fields of grain. It's the Sabbath day. They're hungry. As they walk through these fields of grain, they pluck off some of the pieces of it and start eating it. And there are the Pharisees, and they're like, what are you doing? You're breaking the law. You're breaking the rules. You shouldn't be doing this. You're harvesting grain that's clearly against the rules for the Sabbath. And again, Jesus quotes Hosea, I want you to show mercy, not sacrifices, for the son of man is lord even over the Sabbath? Okay, that's a big picture. Let me put it together for us. A prophet from about 2700 years ago, Jesus about 2000 years ago, and then us today. What does this all mean?
[00:15:07] Every one of us is capable of missing what it means to really know God. We all are. It doesn't matter if we were the people of Israel 2700 years ago. It doesn't matter if we were alive when Jesus came into town or if we are here today. We can all get so easily wrapped up in the exterior that we miss the heart of Christ in all of us. Think about it. It's easy to clean up the outside, right? It's easy to say, I'm a good person. I follow the rules, I do the right things. I show up, I know the songs. I know the verses I can quote with the best of them. I read my bible. I don't do the bad things. Remember Dallas Willard, the gospel of sin management, the do's and the don'ts. I have a good reputation. I'm all put together. I show up at church on Sunday with my life is perfect face, right? Doesn't matter what happened yesterday.
[00:16:01] I can clean up the exterior. And we don't see what's really happening in the heart. You know what Jesus said that is? He actually said this to the religious people. He said, your whitewashed tombs, the outside you've made, look beautiful. And inside it's rotting away with death and decay. But so many of us see the outside exterior and say, oh, that looks good. That must be what it means to be all put together. And we miss the heart of Jesus Christ for humanity and for us. We miss that inside my heart. The places I am just as able as you to hide from everybody else, that's the place where God wants to meet me most. The darkest corners of my heart, those aren't the places meant to be swept under the corner and hid. Christ shows up and says, right there, that's where we're going to do some work today.
[00:16:59] So when he says, I desire mercy, not sacrifice, what does he mean? Sometimes we hear words at church and they kind of become just church words, right? What does it actually mean to have a heart of mercy? If you look up mercy, it means kindness, goodwill to people who are hurting. But it's also partnered with a desire to help, which is compassion. Empathy is I feel bad because you're hurting. It just makes me feel bad. But compassion is, I don't just feel bad. I want to take action and help and do something about it. And that's mercy. You see it partnered with kindness and love. Sometimes you see it partnered with this really, really cool world word called forbearance, which is an older word, but it's really like patient. Forbearance is this idea. You don't enforce something.
[00:17:48] Maybe it's a debt or a right or obligation it's due. You but you don't enforce it. Now, when we say these words, these reflect the heart of Jesus Christ.
[00:18:02] Love and kindness, mercy and compassion, patient forbearance and forgiveness. That's how Christ reaches and how he helps every one of us.
[00:18:16] But somewhere along the way, religion becomes one thing and the gospel becomes another, and we miss who Christ is and what he came to do. See, religion's easy. I can make up religion. It's what I can do. It's my list, my rules, my interpretation. But the gospel is something else entirely, and it's all resting in who Christ is and what he has done. Now, religion, right? My religious duty, the religion I follow, it puts me at the heart of everything. What I do, right, what I do to earn my way, what I do to prove I'm worth it, it's fine. I'm good, how hard I work. But the gospel flips that upside down and puts Christ right at the center of everything. Please hear me. If you've never been able to talk about the gospel or define the gospel before, let me make it super simple for us. Here's the heart of the gospel. I am saved not by my effort, but the effort of Jesus Christ. I'm saved not by my good works, but by the work of Jesus Christ that flows good into me. Very simple. The gospel is not what I have done, but what Christ has done for you and I.
[00:19:41] Everything finds its yes in Jesus Christ. When you read the Old Testament and the laws and the sacrifices, they were always supposed to point us to Jesus Christ. Read the book of Hebrews. It's so fascinating how it connects all these big ideas you read in the Old Testament. Every one of the sacrifices points to some aspect of how Jesus came to save us, to deal with our guilt, to heal our relationships, to become the ultimate sacrifice that didn't have to be repeated again and again and again so that sins could be forgiven forever.
[00:20:13] Friends, every other religion says this is how you get to God. Every other religion has some teacher that shows up and says, let me show you what you need to do to earn your salvation, to earn your way to God, to earn your path forward, right? But Christianity, the heart of the gospel, is different, and it's different because of Jesus Christ.
[00:20:34] The gospel isn't. Here's what you do to earn God's approval. Here's what you do to earn your way to living the life eternal. Here is what makes everything different about Christianity. Only in Christianity do we have God come to us. When Jesus shows up, we don't earn our way to God we can't. Christ comes to us to make a way that we can be with God. Christ comes to us to be God with us, that through him we can be saved. Do you know what's so fascinating? You read through the Old Testament, and there's this tension of, here's the rules. Are they conditional or unconditional? Conditional, meaning if you obey, it goes good. If you don't obey, it goes bad or unconditional, God's just going to love you anyways. Sometimes we feel that tension today, right? Is God going to love me if I do the wrong thing? Is my relationship to God contingent on doing the right thing or the wrong thing? And there's always this tension, and it never really gets satisfied until Jesus Christ. You know why? Jesus Christ followed the law perfectly. He didn't receive a blessing. He received a curse. He received the curse by dying on the cross in our place so that you and I, who could never fulfill the law completely, would be blessed through Jesus Christ.
[00:21:57] That's God's goodness and his faithfulness and the story he's been telling from the beginning of time. Through the work of Christ, through Christ's sacrifice, we're saved. And you know what? God frees us first.
[00:22:12] He doesn't say, do this, and then you'll be saved. He says, believe in me and you'll be saved. And it's the grace of Christ that changes everything.
[00:22:22] But we're human beings, and we like control. So what do we do? We wrestle the control back from God, and we get this confused in different ways. And some of us grew up on this steadfast diet of guilt, and that guilt is a hard thing to shake. I've had so many conversations with my friends, and they're like, so guilty. And I'm like, why are you guilty? They're like, I just can't shake it. Like, jesus died so you don't have to be guilty anymore. But our tradition, our rules, our obligation is so buried deep inside of us, we live that guilt. If you don't do the right thing, God doesn't love you. If you don't do the right practices, the right rituals, you're going to hell. Some of us grew up on a pretty good steadfast diet of hell and damnation.
[00:23:09] We saw those movies about what it looks like to be left behind, and we're a little traumatized still, right?
[00:23:16] Or somewhere along the way, we found Christ and something changed in us and our life started to change. But somewhere along the way, it got muddled and I started to feel like more of a good person and less of a bad person. And my good personness started to dominate my conversations. Well, just do what I do. And if you did what I did, then God would save you too. Or my rightness became my argument towards everything else. And my rightness became my way of squashing other people who didn't agree with me. Or my rightness became my way of dominating or power or control.
[00:23:52] Of course God saved me. Why wouldn't he? I'm a good person. And we muddle up the heart of the gospel and we move away from the heart of God. And this is where this shows up most, which is why it's so important.
[00:24:07] It shows up in how we treat people. It's why hosea talked about it, why Christ talked about it, and why we're talking about it today. Us versus them was never the heart of Jesus Christ.
[00:24:19] Study the scriptures. When Christ showed up, he could have come any way he wanted to. He could have dominated roman power. He could have raised an army. He could have changed the world.
[00:24:30] But he didn't do it through violence.
[00:24:33] He didn't do it through war. He didn't do it through shame and oppression and guilt. You know how he did it?
[00:24:42] Through mercy and sacrifice and forgiveness.
[00:24:47] When Jesus was here teaching and healing, he saw the religious people in all their grandeur, in all their places of authority, in all their heights. And look at how great we are and our fancy rules and our fancy robes.
[00:25:04] And they were the ones he was the most critical of. It shocks me every time. Jesus didn't go to the temple and raise up followers. He taught there tons of times. But there were priests and high priests and religious leaders and elders and pharisees and sadducees. There were all these people. And look, some of them we do read about turning to Christ, but not many. The people Christ called were the tax collectors and the sinners and the blue collar workers. And there was educated and uneducated and men and women. It disrupted anybody's view of what they thought a coming messiah would be.
[00:25:42] And Jesus poked holes again and again and again and again. You've missed it. You've made your rightness what you lord over other people. And it's made you racially proud. It's made you segregated. It's made you mean and cruel and unkind. And he said, I didn't come to call the righteous. I came to call the people who know they're sinners.
[00:26:06] Because here's the truth, friends. No matter where we started, no matter where we are or how far we have yet to go. We're all sinners saved by grace. Every one of us are sinners. I can work hard to be the best girl I want to be. I know Christ is at work in me because I don't want to be the same person I was before. There's a different impulse in my heart, but I still have work to do. There's still parts of me that it's like you don't know Jesus at all. Who are you?
[00:26:35] But all of us are that way. It's never been us versus them.
[00:26:41] It's all of us standing together and as loudly as we can, saying, without the loving grace of mercy of Jesus Christ, I would not be who I am today.
[00:26:52] I mean, think about this. When we read sometimes in the New Testament, it's a little bit like, here's the religious leaders, and they're so die hard with their rules and their traditions and how things are supposed to be, and they actually say to Jesus, who wrote the law, you're breaking the law. They're actually telling the creator of everything. You're not getting it right. There's literally no better of a definition of being more religious than Christ than that. But, guys, we do the same thing. We have moments where we're saying, well, you're not doing it right. You're not following the rules. The traditions, they had added so many traditions to the law by this point. They created, like, this is exact work you can't do on the Sabbath. They made it harder to follow Christ than Christ ever made it to follow him. And yet we do the same thing today. We create all these traditions. We get caught up in all of doing things a certain way, the right way, and we miss the heart of Christ. Why was the law given? Why was the Sabbath even a thing? Why was it special? Why did it mean something? All of it was to connect us to a relationship to Jesus Christ, to know him, that as we know him, he works in our hearts, and we become more and more like him.
[00:28:08] Look, I want to say this today because I don't want us to get lost in the religiosity of today. I want us to stand firm in the heart of the gospel, because that's who God calls us to be. That's who God created us to be, and in his good grace. Listen, friends, every one of us can do better. Let me give you a couple of ideas how to make this tangible. It starts with Jesus Christ. All of us need the loving help of Jesus Christ. We need his grace. We need his guidance. We need his teaching, and we need his directions. I'm going to give you an idea from Timothy Keller, because he is one of the most brilliant people I know that spoke about Jesus Christ. He says nearly everyone defines sin as breaking a list of rules. Jesus, though, shows us that a man who has violated virtually nothing on the list of moral misbehaviors can be every bit as lost as the most profligate, immoral person. Because sin is not just breaking the rules. It's putting yourself in the place of God as savior, Lord, and judge. Jesus doesn't divide the world into the moral good guys and the immoral bad guys. He shows us that everyone is dedicated to a project of self salvation, to using God and others in order to get power and control for themselves. We're just going about it in different ways.
[00:29:29] Jesus shows us the God of great expenditure, who is nothing if not prodigal, toward us, his children. God's reckless grace is our greatest hope, a life changing experience. He not only loves the wild, living, free spirited people, but also the hardened religion people.
[00:29:48] You know what Timothy Keller so brilliantly says?
[00:29:52] We can miss Christ in two different ways, right? Both of them put us right in the center of the world. We are in charge of it all. Now, some of us doing that by saying, I can do whatever I want, you can't tell me what to do. That might be your truth, but it's not my truth. That might be your way, but it's not my way. Or some of us doing that by saying, I follow all the rules. Now, God, you have to do what I want you to do. We use our rightness to manipulate God into being who we think God should be, so he has to do what we want him to do. But Keller brings us back to the heart of Jesus Christ.
[00:30:31] He loves you personally, greatly. Where you are today. He demonstrates his love for us in this while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Maybe you need to disrupt your view of what sin is.
[00:30:48] Maybe your view of sin was wrong.
[00:30:54] Maybe your view of sin let you off the hook too much.
[00:30:58] Maybe your view of sin created an us versus them inside your heart, and it affects how you treat people.
[00:31:06] Let me show you the heart of Christ.
[00:31:09] While we were sinners, Christ died for us.
[00:31:14] While we were smack dab in the biggest mess we could ever make, Christ showed up to help. Not when we were perfect, not when we had it all right or got it all together. Not even we finally stopped being a jerk, not when we gave up everything, but right where we are. Christ loves us, and gave his life for us.
[00:31:36] Some of you need to hear this today.
[00:31:38] God couldn't love you more, and there's nothing you could do to make him love you less.
[00:31:45] Because God's love isn't conditioned on me. He set his love on us because it's who he is.
[00:31:55] It isn't fickle, it isn't opinion based or emotion based like us.
[00:32:02] It isn't conditional. It. It's not about good days or bad days. It's every day. The love of God is constant and true.
[00:32:15] Maybe that's not the God you grew up with. Maybe that's not the Christ you've met or heard about. Maybe the christ you heard about sounds really, really different. And I'm sorry, but can I tell you the truth today, the absolute truth? There is a God who created everything.
[00:32:34] He didn't need us, but we need him.
[00:32:38] He loves us. And his love isn't conditional or based on us doing all the right or all the wrong things. His love is set upon us because it's who he is.
[00:32:52] When we know that God, that's a God I want to follow, that's a God I want to do life with. That's the God that I want to be more like every single day. But I gotta spend time with him, because no matter what the voices have said, every one of us has the ability to know him better. Today. There's nothing standing in the way between you and myself getting to know Jesus Christ better.
[00:33:19] There's nothing standing in the way of you opening up your Bible and spending some time with Jesus Christ. Read the gospels, hear what he said, see what he did, see who he was with, see what he taught us, that we might learn to know him more. Because as we know Jesus Christ more, here's what happens next. It shows up in a heart of humility within each and every one of us.
[00:33:44] Here's the truth. Religion leads to pride because it's based on what I can do. And when I do something good, I'm proud of it. And I want to be like, did you see how good I was there? They asked a hard question, and I knew the answer. Bam, right? Who's religious now, right, sorry. I've had to take hard tests, and knowing the answers was really, really hard. I've never felt more religious than in the moment when I got asked a hard question and I knew the answer.
[00:34:09] All right, but that leads to pride in me, my accomplishments, what I can do, what I have done, what I get right, and it leads to painful shame and hidden secrets of all the places that I think don't measure up and aren't good enough. But knowing Christ always leads to humility, because here's the truth for all of us. On the one hand, I am so messed up that Jesus Christ had to die to save me.
[00:34:38] But on the other, I'm so loved that he willingly and lovingly did it.
[00:34:44] That leads to humility, because it's all based on Christ. He gave his life that you and I might be saved, and we might live in the heart of the gospel, not that we would become more religious. He gave his life that we might be his people, and he would be our God. And the world could see how loving and wonderful and good and great our God is through people just like you and I. Not through pride, but humility. Religion is fueled by pride because it's all me focused. But following Christ is marked by humility, because I can't ever forget, what did Jesus Christ do to save a girl like me?
[00:35:30] Pride leads to arrogance, and it leads to self righteousness, and it leads to posturing. I've always got to have the right posture so people see how good I am and defensiveness. Don't challenge me. I'm right, you're wrong. Right? That's pride.
[00:35:45] But humility pokes holes in that every day of the week. Dan Ryland, in his book the Confident leader, this is how we described humility.
[00:35:54] It isn't thinking poorly of yourself. It's thinking honestly about yourself. Humility isn't weakness. It's strength under control. It's a good balance of genuine self awareness, God's gifts within you, and maturity.
[00:36:10] Humility isn't just being a floor mat, just thinking about yourself a little bit less. It's creating space in your mind to say, I am not the center of the universe. There are other people in this universe with me, and they have feelings, and they have opinions, and they have experience, and they have life.
[00:36:30] I am not at the center, and it challenges our selfishness and our pride and our arrogance. Who I am should reflect the one that I follow. Who I am should reflect the one that has the strongest voice in my life. And if Christ is who I'm following, then my life should reflect his humility. There's never been one more humble than Jesus Christ. He humbled himself by coming into this world, taking on the form of a human, a servant, and giving his life on the cross. For us friends, he gave the best of himself and took on him the worst of us all. And we follow his example by practicing humility. We don't look to raise ourselves up and get more attention. We say, how can I raise up the people around me? It's not about how I feel any given moment. It's how can I show kindness and compassion and mercy again, challenging my heart. It's not about me. Even when it feels all about me, it's not about me.
[00:37:38] It's asking honestly, is there anywhere in my life, in my heart that's being led by pride right now because it's time to do something about it? Is there anywhere in my life where I catch myself being self righteous and looking down on other people? Those kind of people, however you term those kind of people right there is where I need Christ's help the most.
[00:38:02] Look at what you say just on any given week, what are the words that come out of your mouth? Look at how you argue when you're trying to prove a point. Look at who you're with and what you post on social media.
[00:38:16] Does it reflect your own pride or the humility in the heart of Jesus Christ?
[00:38:23] The more time I spend with him, the more he's at work in my heart, calling me to live out the gospel.
[00:38:32] Not because I'm trying to prove to anybody that I'm good enough or worth enough friends.
[00:38:38] Christ already said we were.
[00:38:41] He already said you are more than enough when he gave his life for us and we can count on him. And then finally, when I know Christ, it leads humility and it leads to service. What does Christ show us? The greatest work the world has ever seen came in the form of service. For the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom. For many, the greatest act of love came through Christ surrendering his life on our behalf, not for anything that I could do for him, but because of his great love for us. There's nothing equal that we can do to what Christ has done for us.
[00:39:23] But he never asked us to.
[00:39:26] He never called us to. He said, go out and serve one another. Go out and love one another. Here's how the world's going to know your mind by how you love one another.
[00:39:39] Make people feel welcome, just like Christ welcomed you. Make people feel loved, just like Christ loved you. Remember that we're all sinners, saved by grace. On my best day and my worst day, I still need Jesus Christ. And we're broken people called to serve broken people.
[00:40:01] And when Christ came in as king of kings and Lord of lords, he showed up in the world of his broken people. And he didn't squash us into following him. He didn't humiliate us into becoming his followers. He didn't shame us into obedience. What did he do? He loved us. He served us. He invited us to be on the team. At my worst, Jesus Christ is at his best. At my worst, Christ found me. He called me. He called us. And please hear me when I say this. The greatest work any of us are ever going to accomplish in this world, it's not going to come through power over other people. It's not going to come through position or superiority or pride or arrogance or authority. It's going to come through sharing the exact, gentle, compassionate love of Jesus Christ that he shared with us. We serve because Christ first served us. We love because Christ first loved us. We encourage because God has been encouraging us throughout all of history. We show up with humility because Christ taught us what it means to be humble. We live generously because of how generous Christ has been to us. And if I'm ever in a situation where I'm not sure what to do, I'm not sure how to act or what choice to make, I look to Christ for my answer. And our friend Andy Stanley, a pastor in Georgia, said it best. What does love require of me here? Every time, every time I'm in a situation, what does love require of me? Not what's going to benefit me the most or prove that I'm right and somebody else is wrong, not what's going to cost me the least.
[00:41:37] But how do I act in a way that is most loving? Because that's who Christ is and that's what he taught us and he showed us. And when you bring a heart of humility and service to what you do, it's going to change everything.
[00:41:50] Try it this week. Go home. And the people that God gave you to love tell yourself, I'm here to serve them with humility every single day.
[00:42:01] You know, the best example you can set for your kids is loving them with a heart of humility and service. The best relationship you can create with your spouse is through a heart of humility and service. I don't care what they do. I don't care what they say. I don't care how they act. You can't control them. You know who you can control?
[00:42:20] You.
[00:42:21] And you can show up with a heart filled with Christ. He loved me and called me to love others. Go to work with a heart of humility and service. It's not about me. I'm here to serve. I'm here to help. I'm here to work. I'm here to do my job, and I'm here to do it well. Show the church with a heart of humility and service. We're all here doing our best, aren't we? I don't know what you brought in with you today, but I know I've showed up with church and I've had bad days, and people being kind makes a huge difference. Be kind to somebody at church. Go out into the community. One of my favorite teams that I get to be on, besides playing with baby Seala sometimes on Sundays. That's a good team to be on.
[00:43:04] We do our food distribution in old Brooklyn once a month, and I see hundreds and hundreds of people.
[00:43:12] I am better. I know there's people who are hungry, and I know there's people who need food, and I do it because that's the right thing to do. I'm better. Better because of the time I get to spend with my friends. Last month, there was this little boy, and he was jumping out of the window just to hug me and tell me how much he loved me. I'd never met him before. He was this delightful little human being. But you know what? My heart needed to be hugged and told that I was loved. God helped me in that moment. You serving somewhere is going to grow your faith and your heart for Christ in a way that nothing else could. What if this year, friends, we just stepped into the goodness and the faithfulness of God? I don't care what the world says. I don't what culture says. I don't care what any bad idea anybody's ever had about God. If it's up to me, this year, today I want to share the heart of Jesus Christ. I want to share the gospel that nothing stands in the way of people seeing what an awesome God we know. Maybe the greatest good you can do this year is just to be kind, to show mercy, say something good about God. So through you, people can see there is hope, and it's found in the awesome, loving arms of Jesus Christ. Dear Father, I pray that you would help us. I recognize how hard this can sometimes be, but I pray that you would challenge our hearts today. I pray, Father, where we've gotten lost in the idea of what it means to follow you, that you would forgive us. I pray, Father, where we've never stepped up and said yes to believing and following you, you would challenge us today to take that first step of faith. I pray that in all of these things, Father, that we would never forget who you are and the great promise you've given us in Jesus Christ. That we are loved, we are seen, we are known, and we are valued. I pray that we would be a people who show your mercy again and again and again. And through us, the heart of the gospel. Your good word and good name would be lifted high. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
