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Self-Unaware

Know Thyself

“Self-Unaware”

September 10, 2017

Ed Young

We all want to know, deep down, who we truly are. Yet so many people have a misconception of their true identity, because they look to the wrong source of that identity. In other words, we are self-unaware. But through this message by Pastor Ed Young, we realize that the true source of our identity is the One who made us. And when we tap into God’s power of self-awareness, we discover the power and potential we were truly meant to have.

Transcript

I’ve got a question for you today. Do you know yourself? Do you know yourself? Most people are like, “oh yeah, I know myself because after all, Ed, I spend more time with myself than anyone else.”

I would argue that the majority of us don’t now ourselves like we think we know ourselves. That’s why I’m doing this series called “Know Thyself”. Socrates said it. “Man,” he said, “know thyself.”

What does it mean to know yourself? Have you ever thought about that? What does it mean to really assess your strengths and weaknesses? The context in which you find yourself. What does it mean to understand the people and their perception of you?

Well, self-awareness, that’s a phrase that we us a lot. Self-aware. Are you self-aware? Do you know yourself? Do you know yourself?

I’ve been thinking about that, and I’ve studying that. So I came up with something that hopefully you’ll understand because in a message like this that kicks off this entire series, a lot of you are saying, “I’m not going to come back for the next couple of weeks because I know myself. I mean, I’m totally self-aware. I understand my strengths and weaknesses and the context and other people.”

If that’s you, you’re self-unaware. If you think it’s for someone else, maybe your spouse, your friend, your neighbor, someone that you see across the aisle, then man, I’m telling you. It is for you. Because a series like this will sneak up on you. You’ll think it’s for someone else, but it’s for you.

So just for a second, think about yourself. You’re self-unaware if you’re a story topper. Any story toppers here? Someone says “I just got back from a cruise. I just traveled here. I just did this.” And you always, click, raise the bar and tell a story to dominate and shame the other person. You might be thinking that’s someone else.

I talked to a story topper recently. I confronted a story topper in a nice way, and this person goes, “I hate people that do that.”

I said, “Friend, you do that all the time.”

He said, “I do?”

I said, “You do.”

“I was not aware of that.”

Self-unawareness. Maybe you post a lot of selfies. Your social media feed is full of selfies. You are, my friend, self-unaware. It got quiet on that one. Very quiet. You’re self-unaware.

Oh, if you humble brag, you’re self-unaware. You know what it means to be humble and to brag? Well, let me give you an example from my life. What if I posted on my social media feed, “Just spoke to 15,000 in New Zealand at a conference #humbled?” Self-unaware. It’s funny, we think these days we can brag and do all this stuff, and if we put #blessed or #humbled then it’s okay. Well, you’re self-unaware.

You’re never wrong. You’re never really wrong. You’re self-unaware.

Maybe you’re thinking about your spouse. You’re goin’ like “woah.” No, don’t think about your spouse. It’s for you, see? It’ll sneak up on you.

You don’t take advice. If you don’t take advice, you’re self-unaware. How many times in the history of this church have I sat down with people? Maybe their marriage is hanging from a balance, and I’ve said to them, “Here are three things you need to do that will change your marriage. I’ve been doing them for 35 years. Lisa and I have a great marriage. You do these three things, and your marriage will recover, and you’ll have solidarity, man. You’ll have a difference in this relationship. If not, you’re signing up for some serious heartache.” I’ve watched so many do the exact opposite, opposite of what I said. Self-unaware.

Here’s one of my favorites. You know you’re self-unaware when you think people are thinking about you. No, they’re not. I remember Lisa and I talking to a lady. And she told us, “Whenever I walk in a room, I think everyone is looking at me.” Self-unaware.

You don’t have a filter. “You know I just say what comes to my mind. I just tell it like it is. To be honest with you,” self-unaware.

Whenever you have an issue, it’s someone else’s fault. It’s always someone else. “I’m the victim. It’s always their fault. It’s my parents’ fault. It’s my friend’s fault. I blew that knee out in college. It’s my knee’s fault. Whatever, whatever, it’s always someone else’s fault.”

Here’s another person who’s self-unaware, an over-talker. Do you know any over-talkers? When you see them coming, you’re like, “Woah!” They just talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. And they have all these transitional statements. You think they’re finished. And they keep talking. And you’re trying to break in. You’re trying to say, “I’ve got to go.” Here’s how I deal with over-talkers. I just go, “Hey, see ya.” And I just walk off. And we have some over-talkers right now, and you don’t know you’re an over-talker, but you are. You’re self-unaware.

Oh, this is kind of interesting. You know you’re self-unaware when you wear something that doesn’t complement your age, body type, or profession. Have you ever been to the beach before? Seriously, I want to walk up to some people and go, “What were you thinking when you put on that outfit?” You’re self-unaware.

Okay, here’s someone else who’s self-unaware. You’re watching sports on TV, and you say to yourself, “That could have been me.” That’ll probably happen tonight.

You know you’re self-unaware, too, if you think this is for someone else. I’m telling you. Self-awareness versus self-unawareness, it’s amazing.

Most people who think they know themselves don’t. We can only know ourselves when we know the one who knows us better than ourselves. And we allow this one, I’m talking about the one, the Lord, to know us. It only happens when we say, “God, you’re sovereign. I’m not. I admit to you, your sovereignty generally and also personally.” So we only know ourselves when we know the one, when we open our lives to know the one who knows us like we’ll never know ourselves. You’ll go through your entire life without knowing yourself, your entire existence without really knowing who you are, without really understanding your strengths and weaknesses, your perception, your context, without really understanding other people. That’s what you’re signing up for.

So this series has massive, massive implications. Do you know yourself? Are you self-aware or self-unaware? Do you know the one who knows you better than you know yourself? Because when I know the one who knows me better than I know myself, all of a sudden, I know myself. But knowing yourself is simply a benefit of being a believer. I mean, my purpose in life is not just, “Oh, I want to know myself. I want to examine my navel,” no, no, no. That’s not the purpose. The purpose is to love God with the totality of who you are, Matthew 22. Jesus said this, and love your neighbor as yourself. It’s to glorify God. It’s to reflect him. And to do that, we have to know who we are. But most of us don’t.

T.S. Today, I’m talking about a very tough subject, and I’m going to talk to you about a person who went absolutely cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. I’m going to talk to you about a person who was two cans short of a six pack. I’m going to talk to you about a person who was insane in the membrane. I’m going to talk to you about a person who was straight jacket crazy. He didn’t start off that way, but because he was so self-unaware he ended up that way.

Yet, we’re going to find out he had an amazing transformation in his life. He saw the sovereignty of God through a strange set of circumstances, through a cadre of committed people. Because he saw the sovereignty of God, the fact that God is in control, he made a decision after going through some very, very difficult times to get God on the throne of his life and to personally experience the sovereignty of God.

So I want to ask you this question. Is God sovereign in your life? Yeah, most of us would say, “God is sovereign. He’s in control.”

Is God sovereign in your life personally? Is he in control? Is he calling the shots? Here’s the sneaky thing about the subject matter I’m going to talk about today. No one in here would say, “Oh, I am on the throne of my life. I’m calling the shots. I’m sovereign.”

No one’s going to say that really. But you live like that.

Nebuchadnezzar, the all name team. “Starting at guard, Nebuchadnezzar.” I love that name, Nebuchadnezzar. His name means judgment and tears. Nebuchadnezzar, a brilliant guy, no doubt a type A personality. He led the nation of Babylon. And he had some really smart things that he did as you study him in history. One of the things he would do is he would conquer neighboring nations. He would conquer these countries. He would adopt and adapt their gods, lowercase G, bring them back to Babylon. He would also deport the best and the brightest with him, give them important positions in his kingdom, and kind of worship the gods kind of cafeteria style. “Yeah, I’ll have a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Everything is cool.”

And his empire just blew up. Nebuchadnezzar, and obviously he’s going to be this way, was totally self-unaware. Why? Well, I’m going to bring up the negative subject. Why? Why, why? Pride. Pride. You have to start with pride when you talk about self-awareness. Pride, the ride of pride. Pride is the precursor of all sins. You can’t even talk about being self-aware or being self-unaware without talking about pride.

Say pride with me. Pride is something I see in you but I don’t see in myself. Pride is blinding. Pride goes before all sin. I can’t have a burst of anger. I can’t lust. I can’t go on a greed patrol unless first of all what? Prideful.

Nebuchadnezzar was on the ride of pride, and the ride of pride is a wicked, wicked, wicked ride. He would take these neighboring nations, bring the best and the brightest to Babylon. He would bring their gods and everything was kind of rolling. He had no idea, no clue, when he captured Judah, when he dominated Jerusalem, when he brought back with him Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, fateful firemen, and Daniel; he had no idea that as he conquered them that he was bringing back Jehovah God who would one day conquer his life and live on the throne of his life.

Here is an application point. You might be here, and you’re like, “You know, I believe there’s a God.” Maybe you’re like Nebuchadnezzar. “Yeah, I believe, you know. Yeah, I sort of intellectually agree that, you know, Jesus was a real person.”

Well, if you’re in that mindset, maybe just maybe through the sovereignty of God, some people in your life have been placed in your life for you to hear the message of the Lord. Because Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and Daniel shared with Nebuchadnezzar the message of God. So the people that invited you here today or someone in your life somewhere, they’re probably here. Maybe you have a cadre of committed people in your life. Lean into them. Listen to them. Because they’re going to share with you the sovereignty of God, and then you can see how God is personally sovereign in their lives, and it’s my prayer that you’ll make the same decision that old Nebulizer made at the end of his life when he bowed the knee and said, “God you’re sovereign. And I’m not.”

But man, this guy was a major player. Well, Nebuchadnezzar brought back these people, and he had some sleep problems. I don’t know if it was sleep apnea, maybe so, but he had a sleep study done. He was having all these crazy dreams. Daniel, this Jew from Jerusalem, interpreted the dreams. And if you have your Bibles, turn to the book of Daniel.

Daniel 2:38. So this nefarious Nebuchadnezzar had a sleep study. I call this sleep study one. So here’s what Daniel said after he heard his dream, his first of a series of dreams. He said, “In your hands he has placed all mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. “

So he’s just kind of floating out, Daniel is, the concept of God to this nefarious personality. He’s just kind of saying, “Okay, God. Have you thought about God? Have you thought about Jehovah? God is sovereign.”

Then as he introduces this concept, Nebuchadnezzar does something really, really crazy. You would think he would go, “Wow. God, you know, God is sovereign, but wow, I’m not.” No. You know what he does? He goes out, Nebuchadnezzar, and he builds a 90-foot-tall by nine-foot-wide statue of himself out of gold. Let me say that again. He just goes out after this sleep study, and he goes, “You know, man, Daniel, it’s great that you’re talking about God and all that, but you know what? I love me some me.”

And he builds a 90, do you know how tall 90 feet is? It’s up there. A 90-foot gold statue of himself. And he tells everybody, “Okay, now, when the music starts,” because he brought in the Babylonian band. “When the music starts, everybody better hit their face in worship of me. Yeah, I know we got a cafeteria of gods, but everybody’s going to worship me. I love me some me. I’m the man. I’m sovereign. I’m the ruler. So when the band starts, hit the deck. Hit it, guys.”

Who was that? Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. How many people recognize that? Herb Alpert, I can’t do all of my jokes and illustrations for young people. Only about 10 people lifted their hand. Google Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Man, those people could do it, man. They could do it.

So the Babylonian band began to play. And everybody hit the deck. Because see, this guy was, yeah, this guy was bad. He said, “You know, you better hit the deck. If you don’t, I’m going to turn you into a human marshmallow, and we’ll do a human marshmallow roast in the fiery furnace.” So that gave a lot of people the desire to fall on their face and worship. “If you don’t worship the golden image, if you don’t worship me, I’ll throw you in the fiery furnace.” What motivation.

Well, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they did not bow. They were tossed into the furnace. Yet, they emerged unscathed. You couldn’t even smell smoke on them.

Oh, and now Nebuchadnezzar has a revival. Well, a small one. He goes, “Well, man, Jehovah’s something else. If anyone ever speaks against Jehovah, I’ll tear them to pieces and burn their houses down.”

Really? I mean, that’s it, Nebuchadnezzar? You’re that self-unaware? I mean, dude, listen. Daniel has interpreted your dream in the first sleep study. He’s introduced the sovereignty of God. And now, you see this miracle, and there was a fourth person in there, too. A lot of people think it was a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus in the furnace. That’s a whole other message. You look in the furnace. You throw three people in there. And there’s a fourth person in there. And they emerge, and all you’re going to say is, “Well, if you speak against him, we’ll tear you in pieces and burn your house down.”

Unbelievable. And maybe you’ve known people like that. Totally self-unaware. Totally ruling their life. Totally on the ride of pride. And they have these opportunities, do they not, to bow the knee, to follow the Lord, yet they don’t.

So this guy has another dream. This guy was a dreamer. I call it sleep study two, sleep study two. Anybody here, have you ever had a sleep study before done? Lift your hand. Okay. A lot of people, yes, God bless you. Hands are going up everywhere. I just wondered.

Well, he has another dream, and this dream is really crazy. He dreams of a giant tree reaching to the heavens. This is the Nebulizer. And he dreams that the tree fed all of these people, all of the wildlife, all of the beams, and then he dreamed a man of God came down, chopped the tree. It left a stump. Say stump. Turn to your neighbor. Say I’m stumped.

Hopefully, this message is not stumping you. But yeah, left a stump, and then, he dreamed that he became like an animal. This stuff is crazy. So he calls in Daniel. “Daniel, Daniel, interpret the dream.”

Daniel goes, “Well, I got to tell you this. I mean, I’ve got to be honest with you.”

And here’s something that we need to do if we’re self-unaware. All of us are self-unaware in certain areas. Listen to what people say to you about your issues, about your junk, about your craziness, about your anger, about your pride, about you interrupting, about you talking too much about yourself, about these risqué selfies, about, listen to people. But listen to the right people. Don’t surround yourself with sinful sympathizers. Listen to the Daniels in your life because they’re there.

So Daniel goes “Nebuchadnezzar, my man, you’re the tree. You’re going to be chopped down. And you’re going to be driven out away from everybody,” and I love this, “your hair will be like feathers of an eagle. Your claws, well, I mean, your fingernails and toenails will look like claws.”

And let me read this to you real quick. Daniel 4:24-25, “This is the interpretation, Your Majesty, and this is the decree the Most High has issued against my lord the king: 25 You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals; you will eat grass like the ox and be drenched with the dew of heaven. Seven times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and gives them to anyone he wishes.”

Woah. So Nebuchadnezzar’s probably like, “Are you kidding me? Me? A wild animal, me? Isolated, me?”

Well, think of the progression. When you have idolatry, self-worship, which self-worship is the number one worship in the world today. We worship ourselves. So before we point the finger at the 90 foot by nine foot golden statue of Nebuchadnezzar, we need to think about our own lives, self-worship. Idolatry, self-worship, putting anything in place of God leads to isolation.

You want to sign up for loneliness? You just jump on the ride of pride. And from isolation it always leads to insanity.

As I said, and I’ll say it again, if Jesus is not Lord of your life, you have a form of insanity. How can I say that? Because you, my friend, were not made to be God. I’m not made to run my life. I’m not made to be sovereign. God is.

So Nebuchadnezzar, you would think, come on, Nebuchadnezzar. Listen. Come on, my brother. Pay attention. Do something. And he has an opportunity to get his life right, but he doesn’t. He just, you know, doesn’t. And you can feel the angst in Daniel 4:27. “Therefore, Your Majesty, be pleased to accept my advice: Renounce your sins by doing what is right, and your wickedness by being kind to the oppressed. It may be that then your prosperity will continue.”

A year passes. 12 months pass. He does nothing. Nothing. How long have you tested the patience of God? How long? God has a fuse link. I don’t know how long that is for you. I don’t know. This is an opportunity that you have to get your life right, to respond to the general sovereignty of God and to make it personal, for the Lord to sit on the throne of your life. You have an opportunity right now, and I beg you to make the decision now before you do what Nebuchadnezzar did, before you get into the situation that Nebuchadnezzar did. But he didn’t.

12 months. “No, no, no, everything’s cool. That’s fine. That was kind of convicting. Jehovah, I’m thinking more and more about it, but you know, I’m the man.”

And then we have him, the prince of personal pronouns. He’s in one of his mansions, and here’s what he says in Daniel 4:30. This is so funny. 12 months pass. “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?”

Woah, and then right after that, you have something called the Bat Ḳol. The Bat Ḳol is the voice of God. It drove him into the wilderness, and that’s where he went cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, two cans short of a six pack, straight jacket crazy. Thank you for that.

When we live on auto pilot like he was, when we allow pride to get the best of us, it’ll lead to some bad places and spaces.

ILLUS: One time, Lisa and I were flying in a private plane with someone from the church, a couple of pilots. We were on our way to the East coast for a meeting, and we were just, you know, flying. Had some coffee. All of a sudden, the plane dropped 1,000 feet. Then, it was like someone kicked it. Bing, straight up it rose 1,000 feet. The pilots were freaking out. They were turning green. I looked up, and I said, after they regained control, “Are you guys okay?”

They were like, “Wow. That was so powerful, this turbulence was so intense. It knocked the autopilot off.”

In this series, I pray the autopilot is knocked off of maybe anger, maybe pride, maybe greed, maybe envy. The autopilot is not off of being that one who’s always right, that person who has no filter. So we’re going to see in Nebuchadnezzar’s life, the autopilot was knocked off, and here’s something interesting.

In Daniel 4:33, I don’t have time to go into all of it, but immediately after he heard the voice of God, boom, he was driven out into the wilderness. And he was there for a time.

And then remember I told you that stump earlier? The stump began to grow. Isn’t that great? The stump began to grow. I’m glad that God is the God of the stump. Pride will knock the props out of your life and mine every single time, and here’s what’s so funny about pride. Pride blinds us of its presence. Pride is something we see in others that we don’t see in ourselves.

And here’s what we think about pride. I know, because here’s what I think. “Oh, that person’s prideful, so loud and proud and ostentatious.” Not necessarily. Some of the quiet people I’ve known, some of the humble people I know, are the most prideful. Some of you right now are going, “Man, I’m humble.” If you’re saying that, that’s a prideful statement. Oh, you can be humble, yeah, when you humble yourself before the mighty hand of God, but the moment you start thinking, “Man, I’m humble #humbled, #blessed.” You’re prideful.

So you got to worry about your own junk, your own life, your own issues, before you start pointing out in others, and I’m great at pointing pride out in others. Yet, Nebuchadnezzar, I’m so proud of him, but he didn’t have to go through all this. But I’m so proud of him. Look at Daniel 4:34, 36-37, “At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored. Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever. His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation … At the same time that my sanity was restored, my honor and splendor were returned to me for the glory of my kingdom. My advisers and nobles sought me out, and I was restored to my throne and became even greater than before. 37 Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven, because everything he does is right and all his ways are just. And those who walk in pride he is able to humble.”

So isn’t that great? So Nebuchadnezzar got it right because generally, he saw the sovereignty of God through this cadre of committed people, through going into this situation and that situation, realizing that he does not rule jack, realizing that everything he has is from God, realizing that he really doesn’t sit on the throne, that God does, and his life was changed. That’s great.

Three things, and then we’re going to go. You ready for this? Number one, because we’re talking about self-awareness. Practice the awareness of God. Say that with me, one, two, three. Practice the awareness of God. My first step to self-awareness is practicing the awareness of God.

Have you checked out our app with our devotions that we’re writing for every single day? If you’ve not done it, there is, if you’re not having a devotional time with God, there is no way you’re ever going to know yourself, no way, no way. I’m not throwing that out to heap guilt on you. I’m saying we’ve made it easy. We have some amazing people here, pastors and leaders, who are writing these devotionals. It takes maybe five minutes a day. Just go to the app store. Type in Fellowship Church. You’ll see a little icon. It says get. Bing, and then you’ll have it. And then tomorrow morning, bing, and you can do the devotional.

Practice the awareness of God. Just think about him. Pray for people, for example, you meet. Pray, think about God. Think about his goodness. Think about his sovereignty generally and personally. Think about what you’re saying. Think about what you’re thinking. Practice the awareness of God.

Number two. Practice the awareness of the moment. We need to live in the moment, people. Say, yeah. Live in the moment. We can only really grasp the moment when we grasp the concept of God and we invite the Lord to take control of our lives and when he’s sovereign. That’s the only way we’ll milk that moment. That’s the only way. So God wants us to maybe see moments and to experience time in a unique way, and it’s because of him.

Number three, practice the awareness of listening. Listening. Are you listening? Do you listen to advice? Do you listen to the Daniels in your life? Do you listen to the worship? Do you listen to messages? Do you listen? Listen. Listen to God. Listen to others because when we do that, we’ll know God and a benefit of that is knowing ourselves.

But again, you’ll never know yourself until you know God. But the main thing is to know God. I want to understand my bandwidth, my potential. I won’t understand my purpose, my plan. I won’t understand it until I say, “God, you know what? Everything is yours. I humble myself before your mighty hand.”

That is what it means to be self-aware. God is sovereign. Generally, God is sovereign. Specifically, he’s on the throne of my life. I can assess my strengths and weaknesses, my context, and the context of others as I walk in humility. But it all begins with pride. Let’s pray.

 

[Ed ends in closing prayer.]

Open Heart: Part 3 – Whole-Hearted

Open Heart

“Whole-Hearted”

August 27, 2017

By Ed Young

For our hearts to function properly, they need to be whole and complete. This is not only true physically, it is true spiritually. When a heart is broken, life ceases to exist. This, too, is not only true physically, it is true spiritually.

In this message, Pastor Ed Young unpacks the powerful truth that we all have a broken and segmented heart. But it is not something we can fix on our own; God is the only One who can repair it. And when we come to understand His plan for our lives and accept the work He has done to repair our broken hearts, we discover the amazing reality that we never have to live again with a broken heart. We can live whole-hearted!

Transcript

Well it happened. At 12:11 a.m. on the 25th of August, Lisa and I became grandparents. The most beautiful baby in the world, Sterling Lee Hughes was born and we’re so, so excited. Grandparents. You might be going, there’s no way you’re a grandfather. As young as you look? As dynamic, there’s no way! Well, yes, there’s a way. I’m just prematurely gray. That’s all, that’s all. Anyway, there’s nothing like childbirth. We all have a birthday, we do. You might be wondering, man, Ed, how old are you? Well, it’s important for you to remember my birthday, I appreciate that. It’s March 16, 1961. I’m a ‘61 model. When’s your birthday? Let’s all say our birthdays out loud on the count of 3. 1-2-3. Yeah, yeah. I can hear you down in Miami, at our beautiful campus in Southwest Florida, Fellowship Northport. I can hear that. Celina/Prosper, Dallas, Fort Worth, Southlake/Keller, even all the way at beautiful Allaso Ranch, because I want to welcome everyone who’s here today. Thank you, guys, for being here. I really, really appreciate it. We’re in a series called Open Heart. Open Heart.

We’ve been saying around here, and this is kind of different maybe for some of you to absorb this. Jesus is the supernatural surgeon. That’s right, he’s a doctor. He was called the Great Physician. The Bible, I’m talking about the Word of God, the Scripture is a scalpel, a scalpel. This book convicts, this book cuts, this book performs surgery, does it not?

I had heart surgery 12 weeks ago. They cracked open my chest, cut me from stem to stern. I had to go through some pain, yet I’m better on the other side. I feel great.

So often that’s the way the Bible works in all of our lives. And quite frankly that’s why a lot of people don’t like to come to church. They don’t want to have surgery performed. But if they’ll stay with it, what’s gonna happen? Miracles will happen, supernatural stuff will happen. Because our heart is the hope of the world. Our heart, your heart, my heart, is basically a home for Jesus. Isn’t that cool? So today we want to do some open heart surgery because of our surgeon, because of the Scripture, and because of the potential of our heart.

Now when I say the word ‘heart’ I’m not talking about that fist-sized muscle, that vital organ incarcerated in your ribcage or mine. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about another kind of heart. We use the word heart. She has heart. He has heart. Go with your heart, we say. What does it mean when someone says heart? It simply means the seat of self. Your intellect, your spirituality, the essence of who you are, that’s what I’m talking about. That’s what Jesus is driving at. That’s why he’s the surgeon. That’s why our heart has such potential and that’s why Scripture is so convicting.

You know when people come to church they have one of three reactions. They either get mad, and I’ve had people get mad before. They’ll get mad, offended from the Word of God, because basically I have nothing to say by myself. Zero. I mean, I can’t wax eloquently about anything really. Yet I’m called to preach and teach the Word of God. And when I preach and teach the Word of God, which I’ve done for 27 years, oh yeah. God uses my vocal cords and he has something to say. So I have nothing to say by myself, the Bible, the Word of God, the blessed blade has everything to say and sometimes people get mad. And I say to them, “Hey, don’t get mad at me. If you have a problem, ask God about it. Don’t send me a scathing e-mail, try a knee-mail.” And just say, “God, here it is…” but it’s OK to get mad. I’ve gotten mad before. Wow, it’s convicting! Oh, that hurt! You know? And then we will move so often from madness to sadness, and part of repentance is godly sorrow. It’s feeling, and we know in our heart of hearts, we’ve hurt the heart of God. So if you’ll, even if you’re mad, just hang around here. You’ll move from madness to sadness, then on the other side there’ll be gladness, there really, really will. God wants to perform surgery. He has your best interest in mine.

Likewise, the surgeon that operated on me, he’s one of the best when it comes to mitral valve surgeons in the world. I researched him and amazingly I got in to him. He did not perform this surgery for his benefit. He wasn’t saying to himself, “Wow, I can make more money.” I mean, he’s got a lot of that. He’s not worried about acclaim. He goes all over the world. He’s operated on emperors and kings and queens and celebrities and even a regular guy like me. He did, though, say when he looked at my heart that there was more love in my heart than any other person he’s ever operated on in his life. Anyway, so he did that to help me. So the Master Surgeon, the Supernatural Surgeon, the Lord Jesus himself, he is performing surgery for your best interest and mine. Isn’t that cool? That’s great.

ILLUS: So today, I just want to tell you about some things. Now, if you’re a believer, if your heart beats fast for the Lord, if you know him personally, you can use this to share this with others, because I’ve given everyone a little map, a message map. Take out your message map whether you’re here or at one of our many locations. You can wave it, yeah, way up it the balcony. I see you, man. Awesome. Good to see you guys. You know, when I was a teenager my father is also a pastor, I used to sit with Lisa (I hate to confess this) way up in the balcony kinda hidden from him. Hold hands, I even would steal a kiss now and then during his message. But I always would kiss her in church, just a quick kiss, when dad would look down. Boom, that’d be the kiss and he wouldn’t see it. So I want to do some drawing.

The first one I want to draw is, and again, connect the dots because that’s what we’re doing today. For some of you, you’ll be like, I’ve never connected the dots. OK, I’m gonna do a little drawing for you, the heart. The heart, and God, man. Basically we know the first thing the Bible talks about is the fact that God is a God of love. Say it with me. God is a God of love. God loves you and me with his whole heart. We didn’t deserve it yet we’re made in God’s image. Genesis 1:31, let’s read it together and fill in the blanks. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”

Everybody is made in the image of God. You’ve never looked at someone who does not matter to God. People say, well I just don’t matter. I’m a no-count. I’m alone. Are you kidding me? You are valuable! So valuable, in fact if we knew how valuable we were we’d fry circuits. That’s how valuable we are. You have a one-of-a-kind laugh, a one-of-a-kind smile, a one-of-a-kind personality, just like Sterling, our granddaughter is a unique human being. You’re unique as well. You’re made in the image of God. The potential in your life and mine is unlimited. Well, back in the day everything was synced up. I’m talking about back in the Garden, man, we had it going on with God. It was perfect. Our heart beat in sync with God. And God gave man all of these choices. I like to say squillions of choices. God just did that because of his love and because he desired a relationship with man and everything was perfect. But we had a choice. You wouldn’t believe it. We had squillions of choices, yet God said, hey, don’t jack with the fruit on the tree in the middle of the Garden and what do you think happened? Well, I’ll talk about that in a second.

Jesus said in John 10:10, “I’ve come that they might have life and have it to the full.” This is the life that God intended us to have. This wholeness, this health in our heart, but what did we do? We chose to turn our heart from God and <heartbeat sound effect> follow the beat of our own heart, which we’re going to find out led to a flat-line existence. Man chose to look away from God.

If you look in the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, the first time that man looked away from God for his significance, that is when sin entered the game. And the Bible says man and woman tried to cover their nakedness. I mean, they were walking around nude in the Garden, that’s how amazing it was. So Eve literally tried to cover her carcass with a shopping spree to Neiman-Marcus. That was funny. That’s what she did, yet they began to blame each other. God confronted them because of their sin, because of their failure. They began to play the blame game and they blamed each other, and finally they blamed the serpent and the serpent didn’t have a leg to stand on. Well, I’m on a roll. Help me! That was good. No love, no laughter. Man, I can’t make these things up. I had to work on that timing. So man sinned and sin is just what we do.

So if you’re taking notes the first thing I want you to write down is that God loves us with all of his heart. Yet, man chose to rebel against God. Man chose to do his own thing his own way so we broke the heart of God. Sin. What is sin? What is sin anyway? Sin, in the original language, is pronounced hamartia. It is an archery term. You’ve got a bull’s eye, you know? Someone shooting an arrow. If the arrow hits right here it’s still hasn’t hit the target. God’s standard of goodness is perfect. He’s holy. He’s just. He can’t even wink at sin. He can’t say, “boys will be boys. Girls will be girls. If you keep your nose clean, if you’re better than the other person…” No, no. God is holy. So back in the day everything was just copasetic. It was perfect. It was like we were synchronized. Our hearts were beating together. Yet we have a choice, love has a choice. God chose to love us, did he not? And we have a choice. We’re not robots. The 70’s. Michael Jackson. I can’t moonwalk, though. That’s pathetic. So even if you miss the mark, let’s call this mark God’s standard of goodness, GSG. Even if you miss the mark 1/100th of an inch, or if you’re way out here, you’ve still sinned. Because the word hamartia is an archery term, it’s missing the target.

When our granddaughter gets older we’re not gonna have her sinning lessons. We’re not gonna say it’s our goal for you to be an AAU sinner, or to be in Club Sin. No, she just knows how to do it. People are like, “No, I tell you, dude. I think babies when they’re born are all good.” They have a lot of good things but if you don’t believe in the sin nature just crank out a couple of kids and just watch them.

No one taught me how to lie. I remember my first lie. I mean, I remember like it was yesterday. No one taught me how to say bad words, I just learned it. I just knew how to say bad words. No one taught me how to think impure thoughts. Have you ever thought about that? Who taught me that? It’s sin! So, we miss God’s standard of goodness. We miss it. So no one taught me that and sin separates us from God. God-man. Because of sin we deserve eternal separation from God. Romans 3:23, let’s read it together at all campuses. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” <arrow shooting sound effect>

We’re in trouble! I’m a self-centered sinner, I’ll admit it. So are you. People say the church is full of hypocrites. No, we’re not full because there’s always room for more. We’re all hypocrites. That’s what’s so funny. I’m a hypocrite, I’ll say it right now.

I mean, for example, the Bible says in Ephesians that I am to love Lisa like Christ loved the church. Have I always loved her that way? Perfectly? Heck no. Ask her. I’ve said I want to love Lisa like Christ loved the church. Thirty-five years ago in front of a pastor, I will love Lisa like Christ loved the church, but I haven’t so I’m a hypocrite. I think it’s really refreshing to say I’m a hypocrite. Now, hopefully I’m not the level of hypocrite that I used to be. Hopefully God’s improving me by his grace from the inside, out but don’t ever say, “oh, he’s just a hypocrite.”

I have this tendency, so do you, to compare and contrast yourself with others. I want to say to myself, “Lord, I mean, yeah I’ve got a couple of X’s on the moral scorecard but compared to my neighbor down the street, I’m looking pretty sweet!” And yeah, maybe I am better, a nicer guy than my neighbor, maybe I am. But you know what? Sin is sin. So we have a problem. We have a problem.

So at this point God could have said, well, too bad, so sad. Check out Romans 6:23. You’re not gonna see this on a coffee mug. “For the wages (I’m on a roll, I’m telling you. I’m a grandfather now). For the wages of sin is death.”

Ed, come on now. Death? Are you talking about flatline?

Well, here’s what I’m talking about right here. This flatline would be Hell. Whoa, you might be saying. Hell? Oh my gosh, Hell, the H-word? That’s right, Hell. God does not send anyone to Hell. Let me say it again. <rewind sound effect> God does not send anyone to Hell. We make that what? Choice. God chose to love us. We’ve chosen to rebel against him. Do you realize that it’s God’s will for everyone to become a believer? Every single person, it’s God’s will, for all of us to become believers. John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave…” Right? The world. So God wants all of us to become believers. So if you end up going to Hell you’re going against the grain of God. You’re going against the will of God to go to Hell. Yet what did man do? Man said, you know what, I’m not gonna follow God’s heartbeat, I’m gonna follow my own heartbeat. And when man followed his own heartbeat you have brokenness and you have some serious heart failure, am I right? Because of sin.

So what has man done? Oh, man has tried to bridge the brokenness to God. So we try religion. We try moralism. We try politics. We try this or that. Religion is basically a colossal construction project from man’s side to God’s side but we don’t have the tools, we don’t have the ingenuity to bridge the gap over brokenness. I want to be philosophical. I want to be better than the next person. If I erase the world from wars or racism or whatever, and all those things are great, but it’s not gonna get you to God.

So people have tried and these things fall short. <falling sound effect> They fall short. This is a cosmic chasm. Sin has separated us from God. So God cannot look at sin. There are the eyes of God. He can’t even glance at it because he is holy. What did God do? Let me just read a couple more verses so we can fill in the blanks because I don’t want to leave any blank unfilled, because invariably I do, I’ll leave a blank unfilled and someone will come up, “You forgot this.” Oh yeah, I did, I forgot it. I want to make sure that I’m being very thorough. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That’s Romans 3:23. Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin …” You could say the compensation for our conduct , sin, is condemnation, death. The #1 cause of death, by the way, is heart disease. And the #1 cause of death is heart disease. Proverbs 14:12, isn’t this true? “There’s a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”

So again, we broke God’s heart. The bridge does not bridge the brokenness. It’s time to take off our hardhats, take off the tool belts, and go, “God, I don’t deserve anything. I deserve eternal separation from you.” That’s why I want to draw the next thing.

Sin. Sin separates and alienates. It’s doomy and gloomy, is it not? It keeps us from this incredible life that God offers. Well, the Scripture says this about the situation, because this is the good news. First thing, if you’re taking notes, God loves us with all of his heart. The second thing, man broke his heart because of our heart failure. We failed to live up to God’s standards, obviously. We deserve a flat line existence in forever. #3 – God’s solution to our pollution, or you could say God’s solution to our heart failure, is Jesus. So what did God do? God saw this situation and John 3:16, “For God so loved the world in this way that he gave his one and only (what?) Son.”

1 Corinthians 15:3-4, “Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures (the Bible), he was buried and raised on the third day according to the (what? Let’s say it together) Scriptures.”

The blessed blade. The supernatural scalpel. 2 Corinthians 5:21. You know what? Let’s all read this together. I want to read this together. 1-2-3. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

So what did God do? God sent Jesus and Jesus gave his heart. I mean, he put it on the line. He gave all of his heart. He put his heart on the cross voluntarily and he bridged the gap. Jesus bridged the gap from God to man. He did it. Jesus did. We don’t deserve it, yet he totally and completely identified with us. He became the righteousness that we don’t deserve. He was totally holy, totally pure, again, as the Scripture said, totally righteous.

So Jesus satisfied the demands of God. Remember, God cannot look at sin so we deserve eternal separation from him. God, because of his irrational, one-of-a-kind love, because he wanted to give us an opportunity to reclaim what we screwed up in the Garden, God sent Jesus to give his heart, his perfect heart, for you and me and for this great exchange to take place. Our guilt for his grace, our sin for the Savior, our lives for the Lordship of Jesus. Isn’t that awesome? So now when God looks at us, if we’ve appropriated this, if we’ve arranged for this to happen, so now when God looks at us what does he see? He sees the righteousness of Christ.

So let’s draw one more. Are you ready? I can tell. Again, we’re connecting the dots, are we not? Here’s the last thing. Ezekiel 36:26, powerful, before I draw. “I’ll give you a new (say it with me) heart and put a new (what?) Spirit in you. (Let’s keep going.) I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

Whoa. So, now we have sin, of course, let’s keep with our theme. And we have Jesus. Romans 10:9, “If you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be (what?) saved.” Saved, rescued.

2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation, the old has passed away and the new has come.” So Jesus, wow, Jesus died on the cross for our sins. So if we ask – watch this now, very important when I draw this – if we ask Jesus in our heart, a heart transfer takes place, a heart transplant takes place.

I read the first heart transplant happened in 1982. Well, that was true physically but spiritually it’s been happening for 2,000 years. God has arranged a heart transplant. I mean, it’s the greatest deal. Jesus in your heart or my heart. If you’ve made this decision, if you’ve arranged for this, if you’ve chosen this, because it’s your choice or my choice.

I mean, I could have looked at my surgeon and said, “I’m not gonna have surgery.” But I had about six months to live in the same condition I was in. You can look at me, because I’ve taught you God’s word, what it says about how to have the heart that God wants you to have in your life. You can look at me and go, “You know what? Forget it. I’m gonna do what I want to do.”

That’s your prerogative. I implore you, though. I beg you. I pray, we’ve been praying for you, to make this decision to invite Jesus in your heart, to give you a new heart. Because he has done the work to take all of your sin, all of your guilt, all of my sin, all of my guilt upon himself and I’ve made that choice to receive him. So if you’ve made that choice, take this little handout with you. It’s gonna be in our app, and share it with someone. So often people don’t know how to become a Christian. It’s the essence of that the Bible is about. The Bible is about Jesus, the Bible is the word of God, and Jesus is called the Word of God in the Scriptures. So you’re teaching people, you can share with people in a visual way with the hard copy or on our app about how to become a Christian, how to become a believer. And I’m not talking about religion here, I’m talking about a relationship.

So now let me talk to you, because we have a lot of people here and a lot of people at all of our environments, who have never made this decision. You’ve never made this choice to ask Jesus Christ to come into your life. If you look at Jesus he always compared himself to stuff that would penetrate. Water of life, water penetrates the soil. I’m the Bread of Life, bread penetrates our body when we eat it. Jesus wants to penetrate your life and mine to give us a new heart and a new life. Have you made that decision? Because if you’re born once you die twice. If you’re born physically one time and you’re not spiritually reborn, you die and only God knows that day and time. And then you die because you’re in eternity separate from God in a place called Hell. However, if you’re born twice, a physical birthday and a spiritual birthday, you die once. Are you ready to die? You’re not ready to live until you’re ready to die.

And it’s stunning over the years. I was just thinking recently about how many people have come to Fellowship over the years and how many times I’ve heard about someone passing away like the week after I’ve preached a message like this. And I say to myself, I wonder, I wonder if they’ve arranged for this heart transplant to take place. So I want to give you an opportunity to make that decision right now. If you’ve never made that decision, and it’s simply a prayer, a choice, I want to give you a chance to do that. We all have a birthday physically. Do you have a birthday spiritually? Let’s make sure that we do. Would you bow your heads with me for a moment.

I want to pray a prayer, and this is a prayer that I prayed years ago when I arranged this situation, this heart transplant to happen in my life. And right now you might be saying to yourself, well Ed I’m not ready to make this decision. You know what? You’re never gonna be ready. You’re never really to get married. You’re never really read to have kids. You’re never really ready to be a grandparent. No, no, no. But you have an opportunity right now to allow this heart transplant to take place. I’m just simply telling you what God has told us through his word.

So just pray this prayer. And the moment you pray this prayer Jesus will do the heart transplant thing, supernatural. You might be way up there in the balcony, you might be on the back row. In Miami, you might be in one of our overflow rooms in Fort Worth. You just pray this prayer with me and God will come into your life. Just say this to yourself. God, I believe you love me and you want my heart to beat for you, but I’ve failed you. I’ve sinned. But I believe to the best of my ability, I believe it. And here’s what Jesus said about belief. If you have the belief of a mustard seed, that’s a tiny seed, that’s enough, even if you have doubt. We all have doubts, it’s time to step out, to diesel through the doubt. So God, I believe you love me but I admit to you that I’ve sinned and my sins have separated me from you. And I acknowledge the fact, I accept the fact, I believe that you sent Jesus to bridge the gap, to die on the cross for my sins, and right now I ask Jesus into my heart. Jesus, give me a new heart, perform a heart transplant.

If you prayed that prayer with me, if you meant them to the best of your ability, as our heads are bowed and our eyes are closed, here and at all of our different churches, just lift your hand with me, just lift your hand. All right, I got you. Guys, ladies, awesome. Lift your hand. I got it. Yep. In the back, way up in the balcony, yes, way up there. Wow. Awesome. To the side, the side, lift your hand. I prayed this prayer with you, Ed. This is my moment, this is my spiritual birthday.

OK, I’m gonna ask you as our heads are bowed and our eyes are closed, if you lifted your hand for the first time I’m gonna ask you to do something bold. We’re gonna dim the lights and those of us who are followers of Christ, I want us to pray. I’m gonna ask you if you raised your hand to step out and walk down the aisles at all of our different environments and stand down front. You might be saying, Ed why? That’s because every time Jesus called someone to himself he did it publicly and we’re going to invite you to do that. Because he’s God and he knew when we do that we go on record. Think about all the public things we do to signify defining moments. Graduations, weddings, whatever, we don’t do those privately. Yeah, they’re private decisions but we go public with them. So when I close this prayer down by saying amen, when I close this prayer down don’t hesitate. I want you to walk forward. You might be way in the balcony, that’s cool. We’ll wait for you down front. Again, you might be in one of the overflow rooms in one of our campuses, or maybe you’re in the front row or back row, don’t hesitate. You walk forward. You’re saying Jesus, I put my flag up. I put my hand up, my life up, for you.

Father we ask all these things, get ready when I say amen, we ask all these things in the name of Jesus, our living Lord. You ready? Amen. You come as God leads. Don’t hesitate.

For our hearts to function properly, they need to be whole and complete. This is not only true physically, it is true spiritually. When a heart is broken, life ceases to exist. This, too, is not only true physically, it is true spiritually.

In this message, Pastor Ed Young unpacks the powerful truth that we all have a broken and segmented heart. But it is not something we can fix on our own; God is the only One who can repair it. And when we come to understand His plan for our lives and accept the work He has done to repair our broken hearts, we discover the amazing reality that we never have to live again with a broken heart. We can live whole-hearted!

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Three Steps To A Great First Impression

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1510757776303{margin-bottom: 30px !important;}”]Did you know that your first time guest experience begins BEFORE anyone even walks through your church doors? In this 4 minute interview, I break down our first time guest protocol with the one and only Tianne Moon, who leads out in our hospitality area. Don’t wait for your first big fall kick-off weekend to get this going. Work now to inspect and elevate your first time guest experience![/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” content_placement=”middle” css=”.vc_custom_1514910419532{margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_inner offset=”vc_col-lg-12 vc_col-md-12 vc_col-xs-12″][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1510757851195{margin-bottom: 30px !important;}”]

Three Steps To A Great First Impression:

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1. The Person is More Important Than the Process. 

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]It’s vital to have a solid plan in place for guests – from the moment they drive on campus to the follow-up call they receive that week from your team. But, take time this week to inspect your guest flow and make sure it’s personal – the volunteers teams, how you collect information, who is calling them and is it timely? Download our FREE Weekly Reach Report.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_row_inner equal_height=”yes” content_placement=”middle” css=”.vc_custom_1514910425516{margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_inner offset=”vc_col-lg-12 vc_col-md-12 vc_col-xs-12″][vc_column_text]

2. Put Your Best Foot Forward.

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Spring cleaning should also take place in the fall. Clean your facility from top to bottom and update your signage for a fresh look. Take your hospitality to another level with special treats, schedule your sharpest volunteers, and make your experience unforgettable!

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3. Tell Them Why They Should Come Back. 

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Don’t be passive about this. It’s the best hour of their week and it’ll be here again in 6 days. Spice things up with giveaways or a porch party. If it’s membership class weekend, serve a fun meal. Depending on your schedule, you can also tease your next series.

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Your God Is Too Small: Doubting Faith

YOUR GOD IS TOO SMALL

Doubting Faith

July 20, 2008

Ben Young

Do you feel like you are stuck in a prison of doubt or questioning? Are you waiting day after day for God to answer you, to heal you, to free you from your prison? In the third sermon of this series, Ben continues his discussion of his own personal journey of doubt and how God worked in His life to bring clarity to ambiguity, answers to questions, and understanding to uncertainty. He will lay out a few keys that unlocked different doors in his life that led him out of the prison of doubt.

Last week was a great Sunday in that we had an opportunity to write our own Psalms. Everyone here had the opportunity to write a question that they had for God or maybe a doubt that they had about God. Maybe you don’t even believe God is there. You could have written that down on your card. The card said, “God” comma, and we left the card blank for most of the service. Then we filled it out at the end. Literally, there were thousands and thousands of cards.

These are all the questions represented, and I’m reading my way through every one of them. There are thousands and thousands of questions. It’s going to take me a while, but I appreciate your willingness to ask these questions. I’m praying over all of them and want to read them all.

Next week, speaking of questions, we’re going to do something different during our teaching time. We’re going to have a time of open Q&A. I primarily designed the Q&A for people who are more skeptical in nature. Maybe you have some friends, co-workers, or family members who have questions about God, who don’t believe the way you believe, or maybe they just want to ask some questions. I invited a friend of mine, William Dembski, to come and be my guest next week to help me answer some questions. Dr. Dembski has a Ph.D. in philosophy, a Ph.D. in mathematics, a Master’s in statistics, an Undergraduate degree in psychology, and a M.Div. from Princeton. He’s an idiot! But anyway, he’s only a little bit older than me—that makes him what, about 38? He’s a great guy, and he’ll be here through this time of open forum—questions and answers, it’s going to be a great Sunday. You’ll enjoy hearing what Bill has to say.

Speaking of questions, there was a guy a long time ago who had a really good question. I’ve had the same question. It’s found in the Bible in Matthew 11. Matthew is the very first book in the New Testament. The guy who had a question was named John. This is not the John who wrote the Gospel of John. This is the John who had the funny last name—The Baptist. I see John the Baptist as some type of proto-rapper individual. He was just out there a little bit. He lived out in the desert, eating locust and wild honey, wore weird clothes, and said strange and disturbing things. John was not a Baptist, nor a Catholic. That was just his name, because that was his method of dunking people. So John the Baptist has this question. It’s an interesting question. It’s a question that a lot of us have asked before.

I’ve asked it a lot. It’s in Matthew 11, “After Jesus had finished instructing His twelve disciples, He went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee. When John (that’s John the Baptist) heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask Him, ‘Are you the One who was to come, or should we expect someone else?’”

Back then, for centuries, the Jews had been expecting a Messiah to come deliver them from their oppressors. In this context, the oppressors were the Romans. They believed the Messiah would come set up this golden age where He would restore the Davidic Kingdom, and then would reign and rule from Israel for eons to come! John was wondering, “Are You the One?” Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see; the blind receive sight, the lame walk, and those who have leprosy are cured! The deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor! Blessed and happy is the man who does not fall away on account of Me!”

Now, if you’re an inquisitive person, and I know you are, you’re wondering, “Why is John in the pokey? Why is he in prison?” Well, I kind of like to see it like this: We sometimes read the Bible and make it too archaic; I kind of like to report the story as if we were watching Entertainment Tonight, or perhaps TMZ. I know none of you watch that. It starts off like this: “Yeah, what have you got?” “You’re not going to believe this, but I’ve got King Herod! He has taken his brother’s wife to be his own wife!” “Man, you’ve got to be kidding me!” “No, I’m not kidding. And get this, there is some crazy, whacked out evangelist guy who called him out on it. Now Herod has thrown this evangelist guy, John the something-or-other, into prison!” “You’ve got to be kidding?” That’s why John was there. That’s the gossip that was buzzing around Palestine around that time. John the Baptist was a guy who was famous—a celebrity in his own right. He was thrown into prison because he called out this so-called King Herod for his adultery and unfaithfulness.

John is in prison and he’s waiting. I’m sure he was thinking, “Oh, don’t worry! I’m going to get out of here. You see, Jesus—He’s the Messiah. He’s the One who’s going to spring me out of this joint and He’s also my cousin. It’s going to happen.” He just waited and waited and waited, but nothing happened. So John just continued to wait, “Jesus is going to get me out. He’s going to kick the Romans out of power! We’re going to be in power. We’re going to have the political power. We’re going to take over this world, and things are going to be great just like the prophets of old said.” He waited day after day, but nothing happened.

Finally, it says here, John began to question. I like what one commentator said, “Here you have in Matthew 11, not the beginning of some pristine faith, but actually you have the inception of doubt.” You have this guy, John the Baptist asking, “God, why am I here?” “John, you are here to prepare the way for the Messiah!” That’s what John had been doing his entire life. He had been saying, “Hey, you better get right because the Messiah is coming. You better get your act together. You better start repenting. He’s coming.” Then when He came, he said, “There He is right there!” “You’re talking Yeshua from Nazareth?” “Yeah—Jesus from Nazareth!” “Are you kidding?” “He is the Messiah! He will take away the sins of the world!” Then he comes and baptizes Jesus! John the Baptist is one of the most important prophets and figures in the entire Bible. He was so large and so big, people wondered, “Is John the Baptist the one?” Other people wondered, “Is he Elijah come back to life?” Or perhaps he had come back in a different form, because Elijah didn’t die. People were wondering this about John the Baptist; but here’s John the Baptist, this big wig stuck in prison, and he is doubting. He is wavering. Someone asked Jesus, “Are you the one? Or should we expect someone, or something else?”

John doubted in prison. In my life and my journey, I was stuck in the prison of doubt. We all have our prisons, right? We all have our cells; things that we’re stuck in. Have you ever been where John the Baptist is? Hey—you’re here, you’re enslaved, you feel like you’re in this prison, whether it’s a sickness, trial, or a question? You are wondering, “Hey God! When are you going to answer me? God, when are You going to heal me? I’m waiting God for You to set me free and answer me!” You wait day after day, month after month, but nothing happens. That’s what was happening to John the Baptist. He doubted. That’s what was happening to me.

Last week, I left my story where I was in graduate school in seminary, and I was drowning in a sea of doubt. Now I’m kind of changing metaphors on us. I was really imprisoned by these doubts and questions I had about the existence of God, or the non-existence of God, or the Bible, or the Bhagavad-Gita, or the Koran, or the Torah—whatever holy book you want; or maybe Darwin had it right, and I was locked in this prison of doubt for a long time.

I think it’s important to note that there are different kinds of doubt. There is healthy doubt, to use therapeutic language. There is healthy doubt, and there is unhealthy doubt. The healthy doubt is just doubt. It’s just asking good questions like some of the questions that people gave last week, which were simply good questions. I like what Fred Buechner said about doubt, “Whether your faith is that there is a God, or that there is not a God; if you don’t have any doubts, you are either kidding yourself, or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.” So there are good doubts; there are great questions that you and I can ask and they kind of serve as ants in the pants that keep us itching and moving to find out and seek out answers.

I would say if you have some good healthy doubts and good questions; don’t be intellectually lazy, or theologically lazy or slothful. Look for answers to those questions. There is good doubt.

Then there is bad doubt. There is unhealthy doubt. It’s like anything when you think about it. If you’re angry, and it’s good to be angry—the Bible says be angry; yet don’t sin. Be sensitive! But if you’re too sensitive, or too angry, that can lead to depression. Fear is a good thing. I want my children to be afraid of certain things. Fear is a good thing, but if you have too much fear in your life, what happens? You become paranoid. It’s the same thing with doubt. Doubt can be healthy; doubt can be good; doubt can be a part of faith. That’s why I called this message Doubting Faith. It’s a double entendre. But doubt can warp, and it can turn into something that can be deadly; it can be almost diabolical; it can definitely be debilitating. It can take you to a place where you don’t want to go, and it took me to a place where I felt like I was in prison. Though I could get out of myself, there were still other aspects of this prison that I had to go through, and I always had that ball and chain of questioning, of doubt, of analyzing and of uncertainty dragging around on my ankle. Kind of like the same deal Martha Stewart had when she got out of prison—the little anklet. I was dragging this thing around, and I couldn’t get free. I wanted to get out of this prison; but I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t do it. It’s the dark side of doubt when it immobilizes and paralyzes you, and you live in a state of constant ambiguity and uncertainty.

Let me read you a question, a doubt. It says, “So many unanswered questions live within me; afraid to uncover them because of the blasphemy. If there be God, please forgive me when I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven. There is so much convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. I am told God loves me; and yet the reality of darkness, and coldness, and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul!”

Who do you think wrote that? By the way—that card didn’t come from one of these buckets, but it belongs here. Mother Theresa wrote that. She was a pretty strong lady of faith and courage, but she had times in her life, many, many times for many decades when she had extreme doubt and despair. When you’re stuck in the prison, you want to get out, don’t you? I do! You’re trapped in prison! “I’ve got to get out, and find my way through the wall! Somehow, some way, I’m going to dig may way through with a little chisel and a hammer, and I’m going to cover that up with a poster, and I’m going to get out that way. Or I’m going to jump in the old laundry truck when they come through. I’m going to get out of this prison.” I was the same way, “I’ve got to get out of this prison of doubt. I can’t live here. I can’t live like this. I am going absolutely nutty, bonkers, and crazy. Either I want to be in, with God; or out, without God. This in between is worthless.”

I tried many things to get out. The first thing I tried was discipline. If I could simply be more disciplined and read the Bible more, and pray more; then that will get me out of doubt! I remember in my apartment years ago, I had this closet. I could actually walk inside it, and that’s where I prayed. The Bible says “Pray in your closet”, so I prayed in my closet. I read my Bible in my closet. But as much as I read the Bible, and as much as I prayed; it didn’t work. I thought I’d be disciplined through obedience. So I did whatever God told me to do! If I was driving on the freeway, and there were hitchhikers—I pulled over and they jumped in. “Where are you going?” “I don’t know!”

I remember one time, I was at this park near my apartment, and there was this guy who was a street person. He was drunk, and I started a conversation with him. I remember he had Mad Dog 20-20. I don’t know why I remembered that; but it’s not my favorite drink. Anyway, I took that Mad Dog 20-20 and poured it out, threw it out in this pond, and we began to talk. He needed a place to stay, and I said, “Why don’t you stay at my place, my apartment?” So I invited him over to my apartment. I think he spent the night there. It was so funny—my roommate had not a clue. He woke up in the morning, and there was this guy on the couch.

So I tried reading the Bible, and discipline and prayer, and helping people who were hurting. All those things are good, by the way! I encourage you to read the Bible as much as you can; to pray as much as you can; and to do things for people who are hurting as much as you can. Yet, at the same time, as I did these things, my motives were tweaked, and that still didn’t get rid of the doubt!  That still didn’t free me from this prison that I was in.

I also thought I might be demonic, so I tried to get a demon cast out of me. I went down front at a church. The guy was praying for people, and it didn’t take, or the demon didn’t leave, if it was demonic! I wish it would have been! It would have been a lot easier if you could just kind of go, “Get out!” Or, “Get off! Stop this doubting!” But it didn’t work that way, and it just kind of persisted there…

What I tried the most during this time, and it’s what I think a lot of people try, both those who had considered themselves philosophical naturalists and atheists, or Christians, is that I really wanted this iron-clad certainty. I thought to myself, “If I can have certainty; if I can have rock-solid certainty about the existence of God; about the veracity of Scripture; about the reality of Jesus Christ; then all my doubts would be gone. Rock-solid certainty. But I discovered that certainty—the kind of certainty that a lot of us crave and want—it’s really a myth. That kind of certainty doesn’t exist.

As I really read the Bible, there’s a place in the Bible in II Corinthians, chapter 5 where it says, “You should walk by certainty, not by sight.” No—it doesn’t’ say that, right? It says, “You should walk by faith, not by sight.” Walk by faith; not by certainty.

When I heard that, years ago I was stuck in the prison of doubt going, “Hey—let me out of here!” I didn’t like it. Because every time I would come to church; any time I would get around Christians, they were saying, “Well, that’s great. You can do this, you can have this. All you’ve got to do is have faith. Right. God’s going to do this in your life! He’s going to do this, and this…All you need to do is have faith.” I was saying, “Whoo—I’ve got that. Faith is what I don’t have. Faith is what I want. If I had faith, I wouldn’t be in this prison! I wouldn’t have these problems. I understand that. Give me the faith, right?” But I really didn’t want faith, looking back on it, I wanted certainty.

By the way—no one has this rock-solid, absolute certainty. Not the so-called intellectual, academic who thinks God is anything but a fairy tale. Not the fundamentalist, Bible-toting, pew jumping, chandelier swinging Christian. So don’t be led—“Well, there are people in the Western World—there are people of facts who live by their minds and reason; and there are people of faith!”  Bologna. Everybody, every belief system has faith and facts! Certainty is a myth. I couldn’t get out. Certainty did not get me out. I thought I had certainty for a while. I read a lot of books, but I couldn’t get there. So, I was still stuck. I like what Anne Lamott said, “The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.”

Now, about this time, something happened in my life, and I should say not something, but someone happened in my life – questions and doubt are very personal. If you come from a Christian background, you know that you can have a personal relationship with God, though at times it seems very impersonal, doesn’t it? You can have a personal relationship with God, so doubting is the personal thing; the existence, or non-existence of God. So when I began to get free from this prison of doubt, it was someone rather than some thing.

As I was getting ready for this weekend, there were probably twelve to fifteen keys that unlocked different doors in my life that led me out of the prison of doubt! Don’t panic, don’t worry! I’m only going to deal with probably three keys, quickly, for you guys this morning.

The first key began when I started listening to this radio show during chapel. Seminary is kind of a strange graduate school situation. You have chapel at 10:00 every day, Monday through Friday. So instead of going to chapel, I skipped! I was a bad Christian, a bad future preacher.

I skipped—I don’t know why I did; I just did. I would get in my car and listen to this fuzzy, AM radio station. I would tune to this guy by the name of Malcolm Smith. Malcolm was a guy originally from England, and he was simply a Bible teacher. But he taught about the same thing almost every single day. He sounded so smart with his British accent, and I had heard this word he talked about so many, many times; but it had never really sunk into me. When this word, and the reality of this word, or the Person behind this word began to sink into my heart, and my mind; it began to slowly, slowly open and push open the door, or one of the doors of the prison of doubt. There were other chambers I had to get through; but the word, the first key was the key of charis.

Derek Webb is a friend of my brother’s, who was in the band known as Caedmon’s Call, and he has the word charis tattooed on his thumb. Now I’m not into tattoos per se, but if you’re going to get one, that’s not a bad one. Charis. Now maybe you’re wondering what the word charis means? Charis is the Greek word for the word grace. So every day, Malcolm Smith would end up talking in some way or another about charis, about grace. What is grace? Grace is God’s undeserved blessing or favor in our lives. I began to discover slowly that I was a wreck. I was a wretch. I was a sinner. I was sick. I was a doubter. I was a skeptic. I was an idiot. I was all these different things; therefore, I qualified for charis, or grace.

Now you say, “That sounds pretty depressing. That sounds really negative!” No it’s not. What did Jesus say? “It’s the sick people who need the doctor!” See, the problem in my life for so long was, I didn’t think I was sick. But it was through charis, through grace that I realized I was sick, broken, and that I did need a rescuer, a Savior! Charis began to work in my life, and I began to not only think, but to feel and know that Jesus Christ actually came, died, and rose again for me, and that He really did forgive me of all my sins. I realized that God is even big enough to forgive the sins of Christians, which was quite a relief to me; because I did all my great, glorious, pretty cool sinning as a Christian. Sorry—that’s just the way it worked out. I don’t mean to mess with your theology. God can forgive even Christians. That was a good thing to know. I also knew that I could be a child of God, and I also knew that God would accept me perfectly, because He accepted me not on the basis of what I had done, but on the basis of what He did through Christ. Then I realized too—we’re getting too much here—sorry. But it relates to grace, and that is that this Gospel, this grace is completely outside of me! It is external from me! It is objective in one sense. It can’t be touched. It has nothing to do with me on some level, which is a great relief. That’s a whole other message. Anyway, it was great. It’s charis, it’s grace. It’s outside of me and had nothing to do with me. It’s what Christ did. My righteousness and my acceptance—all of this is outside of me. It is external.

That’s a great thing, because so many times, I based my life and my spirituality on my emotions, on my circumstances. It’s good to know that my acceptance and your acceptance is outside. It’s in Christ.

The first key was grace, charis. The second key goes back to verse 3 in our text when John asked, “Are you the One, or should we wait for someone else?” The second key is Christ. Christ! I believe what God’s Word teaches about Christ, that God—ultimate reality, Heaven, has actually come to earth in a real life human being. God went to a lot of trouble to become a human being, and I think we forget about that. Christ freed me up. John who wrote the Gospel said, “In the beginning was the Logic. In the beginning was the Reason, and the Reason was with God, and He was God! The Reason, the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us, and we have seen His Glory, the Glory of the One and Only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth!” Paul said, “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all Creation; for by Him all things were created; things in this temporal realm on earth; things in Heaven whether thrones, or powers, or rulers or authorities—all things were created by Him, Christ, and through Him. Through Christ, all things hold together!” It’s amazing! God come to earth in a person? How can all that happen? How is that possible? Christ! The Incarnation was a major key, and it’s still a major key that pulled me out of that prison.

I got a letter, or correspondence I should say, about a year ago from a guy who was locked in the prison of doubt. I don’t know him personally, but through correspondence, he seemed like a great Christian guy! He’s married and has kids. He grew up in a Christian home, and went to a Christian university. He was very active in his church, and was giving and was involved in missions, the whole deal. But about four or five years ago, he started reading all these books. He sent me a list—120 to 150 books. I’m talking about very difficult, tough, scientific, philosophic rationalistic books; both Christian and atheistic. In the process, this guy lost his faith and became an atheist. He hasn’t told many people. He lives in a different state. I entered into the dialogue with him, and I wrote this down for him, because when I talked to him on the phone, I wanted to share this with him. I want to read you my response that I gave to this guy. I said, “Christianity is a story, and not an argument. Christianity is a story about Jesus. It’s that complex; and yet that simple. Like me, you don’t want to live out the implications of your new-found faith in lucky mud. That’s why you stay married, and that’s why you love your kids. That’s why you still love your wife, though she doesn’t get you at all right now. Maybe by committing more leaps of faith than a fundamentalist Baptist layman, you can contrive the compelling argument to stay committed to the blobs of matter you call your wife and kids.

But at the end of the day, that’s not the real reason you stay. Like I used to be, you are torn, split, conflicted, filled with cognitive dissonance, doubting and despair. Yes, I know. I’ve been there.  You’re not a committed atheist at all. What you believe is what you do. Faith is more than mere mental cognition, or agreement to the fact. Faith is what you did last month. That’s why I call you a doubter and not an unbeliever. You still go to church and appreciate sermons on grace, tithing, etc…Every book you’ve read (these are books he read in his research that led him to atheism) is about a person with a story—a story, a world view that affects everything about how they research, what they research, and why they research. No one is honest. No one is a true seeker. No one is objective. This is where post-modern epistemological humility helps. Read Michael Polanyi. That’s why I threw out Jones and other apologists at the time of my extreme doubt, disbelief and despair. I said to myself, ‘They’, referring to Christian apologists, are biased. All their research is biased. Everyone they interview is biased. Give me some objective researchers. But, after rubbing shoulders with, and talking to, and debating some of these scientists who are not believers; I found them to be just as biased, or more biased than the Christian apologist! No one researches in a vacuum. There is no such thing as brute facts. No brute facts. Only God has that ability. If I were not a Christian, I would be a cynic, or a Buddhist. That’s just me. I wouldn’t be a philosophical naturalist. Again, I’m more philosophical because I believe it’s broader and addresses the human problem holistically. Like the old me, you are a rationalist; Dakar, Hume, Russell. Unlike the new me, you are not at a place to accept paradox, or mystery, and your belief system at this point, though you were already doing that, but just don’t see it. Like the old me, you’re almost completely ignoring starting points, the will, emotions, life stations, family dynamics, the history of Christianity, the history of philosophy, the history of how science came to be, and the inability to produce a credible and livable world view. A two year old, or a village idiot with a good sense of humor – Bill Maher, and Christopher Hitchens – can deconstruct. It takes a whole lot more to build something.”

“You really need to rethink Jesus! Sorry—it’s that simple. Though the liar, lunatic Lord argument has its holes; it’s ultimately about Him. At the end of the day, I like Jesus. I like what He said. I like what He did. I like how He died. I like how He came back to life. I like the movement He started; the movement, not all the people in it. I really do! I like how He doesn’t fit neatly into mine, or any other box. I like Him; but He still shocks me and challenges me beyond words. Because of what I do, I’ve been able to talk with, and get to know some extremely bright, degreed people over the years; to eat with them, debate them, to question them, and to have them question me. I’m not that impressed anymore. It helps, but I’m not that impressed, or intimidated. Again, I may die with Soren Kierkegaard, or Karl Bart, and that’s okay.”

The last key is commitment, and risk. G. K. Chesterton said, “What’s the purpose of an open mouth but to chomp down on something? Some food? What’s the purpose of having an open mind, or being open minded if not to close your mind down on someone, or something, and then live your life on the basis of that commitment and risk?”

If you are a searcher; if you are a seeker; if you are a Christian, Jesus is well worth the risk. He’s alive! He can change your heart. He can answer a lot of your questions. Some of the questions He won’t answer, but He’ll give you the charis.

Dear God, thank You that You are indescribable, and You are so much more than we can imagine. God, You are so big; yet You became so small in Jesus. God, may we never cease to be blown away by that reality.

God, I thank You that You are a God who accepts where we are with all of our questions, and all of our doubts, and all of our pains. God, for some of us here, doubt is not even an issue! We all have our own issues, our own prisons that we find ourselves in. Give freedom here, today, Lord, to people who need to be free. Give answers to those who need answers, and give mystery to those who need mystery.

God, I pray that You would help us all to be seekers of You, and seekers of truth. For those who are here who would say, “I’m open minded. I’m still circling the airport.” I pray God that You would help them land, somewhere, some day. God, some need to do that today. They need to walk down these aisles and say, “I want God to set me free! I’ve tried to get myself out of the prison I’m in, and I can’t do it. I want Him to set me free.” Lord, may they walk and come down front today. In Jesus name…Amen.

You Say You Want a New Year’s Revolution

Every New Year, people around the world vow that things will be different moving forward. We promise ourselves that we’ll lose weight, or stop a bad habit, or start a new routine. But so often, our New Year’s Resolutions fall short of our expectations. Too often, we find out very quickly that we don’t have the strength to change on our own. The good news is, God does have the ability to radically change us.

In this series, Pastor Ed Young reminds us that while yearly resolutions are good, a God-led revolution is great! You say you want to change? You say you want to improve? Then get ready for a New Year’s Revolution!

The Rhythm of Christmas

The Rhythm of Christmas

“God is the God of Christmas”

By Ed Young

December 2016

Transcript

Intro option A:

<start clapping a beat and have everyone join in and then stop. Then do a more complicated beat and have people join in that. Then have everyone stop.>

Think about it. While you are clapping with me, you’re experiencing rhythm. I gave you a pattern, and you simply followed that. And that’s what rhythm is all about.

Intro option B:

I like to call myself a frustrated drummer. I’ve always been drawn to the drums. I don’t know why, but maybe because they set the pace. They’re sort of the context for all the songs.

Drums are definitely a primitive instrument, arguably the oldest instrument. They date back to 4000 BC.

I remember as a 5-year-old kid going to a high school football game and begging my parents to take me by the band as it entered the stadium, and they were playing the drum line.

From there they gave me a snare drum for Christmas. And then years later they gave me a drum set – red sparkle.

I played the drums a lot, but I stopped abruptly when I was in about the 5th grade. After my parents got me the drums, I guess I was in the 2nd grade, my teacher allowed me to set my drums up in the auditorium at our little elementary school and play a drum solo for everyone. I still remember what I played! Sadly, I haven’t really improved since then.

Now, instead of playing the drums, I just kind of tap my fingers all the time, constantly. Sometimes I’ll play rhythm games with my family if we’re on a road trip or whatever. I’ll say, “match my rhythm.” And I’ll see if they can match what I do. And I might play that game with you right now!

<match the rhythm game>

Rhythm is interesting. When do you beat? When do you rest? When to strike; when not to. When do you play? When do you say, “no, I’m not going to play”?

T.S. If you apply what we just did in your life, you could experience the ultimate rhythm that God has for you. You can avoid a lot of drama, trauma, anxiety, and anger. You can keep from wasting time. You can find things like the ultimate spouse, career path, joy, and freedom.

Think about the pace, the rhythm your life is following. The pattern. The sound. The tempo. You can tell a lot about where a person has been and where a person is going by their rhythm.

Illus: Lisa and I love dogs. And our dogs have a certain rhythm. We have a Doberman, a maltipoo, and a golden doodle. We wake up in the morning, they go outside. They come back in. We feed them and give them water. Two of the dogs fall asleep in our family room; the other little maltipoo always comes to my office with me as I study. The dogs love to bark at people walking down our street. And they also play a lot together. When I come home, they greet me. When I eat, they surround me. When it gets dark I say, “let’s go night-night!” And they all trot into our bedroom. That’s a rhythm that Lisa and I are very aware of.

The rub comes in, the problem is, a lot of us don’t really pay attention to our rhythm. We don’t realize we’re going through life in a certain rhythm. We sometimes see our lives as a series of unrelated, random beats. And we don’t learn from the past like we should. And we don’t get on track for the future like we wish we could.

Maybe you’ve gone through a series of bad relationships, and you think it’s just bad luck. Could it be there’s a certain rhythm you have to your dating life, certain patterns? And the reason you keep having the same results is because you haven’t changed your rhythm.

Maybe you’re struggling with you job, with finding a career path that suits you. Could it be there’s a certain rhythm you have in your commitment to work, your perspective on authority? The reason you keep having the same results is because you haven’t changed your rhythm.

Here’s the bottom line. You can’t always change your reality. But you can change your rhythm. And the results of that can change your reality.

Romans 12:2 says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

So I don’t know what rhythm your life is following. But I can guarantee you that we’re all playing to the beat of a certain rhythm. And that rhythm will determine the results of our lives. But here’s the amazing thing. Rhythm can change. You can have tempo changes, meter changes, pattern changes. And although you may feel powerless to changing your reality, you should try changing your rhythm to see how the results of that change your reality.

God is the God of rhythm.

Our body is a rhythm machine. Look at the rhythm of our skeletal system, our muscular system, our cardiovascular system, our respiratory system. Our heart has a rhythm. Our breath has a rhythm. Our walk has a rhythm. Our run has a rhythm. Everything has a rhythm.

The earth has a rhythm. Our orbit has a rhythm. Our solar system has a rhythm. Our universe has a rhythm. Look at the rhythm of our planet. Look at the rhythm of the calendar. Look at the rhythm of the seasons.

Illus: my mother has been in ICU for the past several weeks. And I’ve gone down to see her. And I’m just astonished at all of the machines, all of the technology she’s wired into. All of it is all about rhythm.

Where does the rhythm come from? It comes from the divine drummer – God. He breathed rhythm into the lungs of man. And man pretty much lived by God’s rhythm until they decided to march to the beat of their own drum. So often, I think, we worship the drum beat instead of the drummer. They got out of rhythm. They took the sticks from God, and the result was chaotic.

Rhythm, I think it is easy to see and say, is built into the human soul. God started the beat. We’re made for rhythm. All of our lives are lived by a certain rhythm. Yet, rhythm out of context is chaos.

God began the rhythm. That’s where the rhythm started. Rhythm has to start somewhere. This divine drummer, if you will, laid down the rhythm. And man followed the rhythm. Yet, the bible tells us that man got off rhythm due to his rebellion.

The first man and first woman were living by God’s pattern, his rhythm. Then they decided to march to the beat of their own drum. And we see God continuing his beat throughout the old testament. Yet, man was living, in essence, the way he wanted to.

Then, though, the rhythm stopped.

When you play the drums, you have to know when to strike the drum and when to rest, when to stop. So between the old and new testaments, there were 400 years of silence. God was changing his rhythm. His rhythm isn’t about religion, and people weren’t getting it. So God changed his rhythm. He gave us a relational rhythm. And that’s what the rhythm of Christmas is all about.

God gave us a new rhythm, first found in the heartbeat of Jesus. <clap a heartbeat rhythm> je-sus. Je-sus. Je-sus. The rhythm of Christmas is about Jesus. It’s about allowing Jesus to sit on the drum throne of our lives.

Rhythm is meaningless without context. It’s kind of like a word. If I say the word “ring” you don’t know what I mean. That could mean a lot of different things, depending on its context. The same is true with rhythm. If I give you a rhythm you have no idea where it starts and ends, or how it’s supposed to fit into a song. Not until you hear it in its context.

Jesus is the context to God’s rhythm. Without Jesus, God’s rhythm seems like nothing but patterns, a religious rhythm. “do this and don’t do that.” But with Jesus you see God’s love and his plan, and you realize that God’s plan was, is, and will always be relational.

In Matthew 11:28-30 (MSG) Jesus said, ““are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.””

He’s not talking about “come here and I’ll show you a pattern for your life.” I mean, that’s part of it. But he wants to show you love, mercy, and forgiveness.

It’s like the command, “love your neighbor as yourself.” Well, what if my neighbor is an idiot? Without Jesus that command can seem nearly impossible. But with Jesus, I’m reminded that I’m not perfect; yet, Jesus died for me. I didn’t deserve it. So Jesus gives the command a certain context, where now it becomes achievable. And I can change my rhythm and the results can change my reality.

Jesus knows the patterns that propel us into power and purpose. He knows the rhythm that will rock us into a reality, because he is the rock of all ages like we’ve never dreamed. His rhythm is relational, not religious. All we have to do is give him the sticks and let him sit on the drum throne of our lives.

So all of our lives are moving to a certain rhythm, a certain beat. And while we may not be able to change our reality, we can change our rhythm. And the results of that will change our reality.

But the rhythm of Christmas isn’t about our pace, nor just our patterns. The rhythm of Christmas is about a person. Christ’s rhythm is rudimentary. He’s the foundation of our lives and existence.

In John 1:1-3, “in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. 2 he was with God in the beginning. 3 through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.”

“word” here is “logos”. It’s the Greek word for the indwelling logic, or rational order of things. Jesus is the word, the one who gives our lives foundation, revealing to us the logic of God and bringing rational order to our lives.

John 1:11-13, “he came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”

Jesus gave us the right to become children of God. His rhythm is regenerating. He resets us and makes us new. We all know what it feels like to march to the beat of our own drum. He gives us the opportunity to play to the beat of a different drum.

in John 1:14, “The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son, who came from the father, full of grace and truth.”

Christ’s rhythm is relational. He meets us right where we are with grace and truth.

The woman at the well had a rhythm which is what led to her having multiple husbands. Jesus changed her rhythm by introducing her to something, really someone that broke her pattern and changed her rhythm.

A drummer is the foundation of a band. The rhythm is the foundation of the song. It’s what keeps everything organized and held together. Take rhythm out, you’ve got chaos.

Colossians 1:15-18 (MSG), “for everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.”

That sounds like rhythm, does it not? Jesus sets the rhythm. We find our purpose. And our lives go from chaotic to organized and secure when we revolve our life around his rhythm.

Maybe you say, “Ed, my life is sort of out of sync. My marriage, my family. I’m lonely. I’m depressed.”

You have a certain rhythm, but Jesus’ rhythm will put your rhythm into context, and that can change your reality.

Maybe as you look at your life you say to yourself, “wow. I just don’t feel like I have any syncopation. There’s no real purpose. The pattern I’m living by is preposterous.”

All of us have this rhythm of rebellion. We’ve said, “you know, I want to march to the beat of my own drum.” So we’re out of sync because of sin.

God kept his beat, though. In the old testament, think about his people, Israel. During the Egyptian slavery, he kept his beat. The prophets. All of them knew a new beat was coming. They predicted it; they anticipated it.

in Galatians 4:4-5 (NKJV), “but when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.”

“At just the right time.” God started a new beat. The heartbeat of heaven. Jesus.

That’s rhythm. And that’s the rhythm of Christmas. Jesus was born of a woman. He experienced the rhythm of man. He was born under the law. The law was a system of rules and regulations that no man could keep. Yet, Jesus fulfilled the law perfectly. He had perfect rhythm.

You know, rhythm is intrinsic. As I’ve said, our bodies are systems of rhythm. Our planet, solar system, and universe are all about rhythm. There are rhythms of seasons, month and year, our calendar, our day has a rhythm. We walk, we run, we work. There’s a rhythm to life and death. A rhythm in conversation. A rhythm in childbirth. And there’s also a rhythm of Christmas. Christ’s heartbeat changed the world.

There were different beats, Christmas beats, in the rhythm of the first Christmas.

The wise men, as they travelled from afar, had that consistent beat in the rhythm of their steps.

Herod had a rhythm. His steps were hard and angry steps.

The angels didn’t step. They just flew around.

The shepherds had a fast rhythm as they walked to the manger.

God stepped to rhythm down the staircase of heaven with a baby in his arms.

God’s groove, the bible’s beat, the rhythm of Christmas. When that rhythm – je-sus – stated, that magnificent movement, that pace, the geological plates of the world began to shift.

We hear our sovereign, singular savior’s sound. The sound of his heart. Feel the flow, the pattern, the tempo. His heartbeat beats for the world.

John 3:16, “for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Jesus was conceived by the holy spirit, and the heartbeat of heaven began to pump blood through his veins.

God set forth that rhythm, and the rhythm, when Jesus was conceived by the holy spirit in Mary; that rhythm began to beat. Je-sus. Je-sus. Je-sus.

God says, “I’ll let you in on my rhythm. There is a place for my pace in your soul.”

Illus: my mother has been in critical condition for a while. I flew down to Houston on Monday and was with her in ICU. On Tuesday I was with her. I held her hand and although she can’t talk, she squeezed my hand three times. I knew what that meant. “I love you.” And then I responded “I love you, too.”

Tap-tap-tap. That’s what Jesus does. Then he waits for our response. Tap-tap-tap, tap. “I love you, too.”

Rhythm is simply a strong, regular, repeated pattern of movement or sound. Who started this repeated pattern of movement or sound? God, the divine drummer. Again, the beat didn’t come from nothing. No wonder they call it the big bang!

God, though, being God, did not beat it into our heads. He just has that consistent relational rhythm. His heart beats fast for you and me. God’s heart beats fast for the world. That’s the message of Christmas.

We’re rhythmic beings. And we get in sync with the savior. We follow the beat of the babe from Bethlehem when we give him the sticks of our lives, when we say, “you sit on the throne.”

So we simply either join in on his rhythm or not. When I throw down a beat in the car, my kids either follow me or not.

Christmas is all about rhythm. From the syncopation of shoppers frantically buying presents to the beat of bells. The cadence of Christmas carols heard in shopping malls everywhere. Without realizing it, we find ourselves caught up and allowing the up tempo living in the temporal to crowd out the great gift.

In rhythm, timing is everything. If you’re a drummer in the band, you have a very important job. You set the tempo and you keep in time so the band is in sync with what you play. Timing is everything.

Everyone knew that God was going to send a new rhythm to reconcile and redeem the world. This word “rhythm” is derived from “rhythmos” which means “a measured motion.”

God measured out all of his options before putting his plan into motion. He thought long and hard, because there was a divine dilemma. What would God do about the sin problem in the world? Would he wipe us out? Or would he bring us back into rhythm?

Then, on that first Christmas, he put that measured plan into motion as God showed the greatest display of rhythm the world has ever seen. When Christ was born, his heartbeat signaled a new rhythm that would revolutionize the world.

Jesus lived for 33 years. The average person has 115,200 heartbeats every day. That’s over 42 million heartbeats in a year. Jesus had over 1.38 billion heartbeats (1,387,584,000). But on the cross, after he perfectly followed the beat of the law, the heartbeat of heaven came to a halt. It appeared the beat had suffered the ultimate defeat.

But on that third day, it began to beat again – so loud, so majestic, so full that Jesus burst forth with resurrection power. God has always had his finger on the pulse of the world.

There was a rhythm that changed the world. [heartbeat sound]. A rhythm found inside the heart of a newborn child that grew to become a man [heartbeat sound]. That would stand up to religion. [heartbeat sound]. That would defeat the devil and sin. [heartbeat sound]. That would live a perfect life. [heartbeat sound]. That would die a sacrificial death. [heartbeat sound]. And then stop.

That rose again. [heartbeat sound]. Je-sus. Je-sus.

When you can’t feel anything else, you can always feel the beat. Je-sus. Je-sus. Je-sus.

No rhythm, no life. Know rhythm, know life.

A woman thinks she’s pregnant. She goes to the doctor, and what does the doctor say? “I hear a heartbeat.” Do you hear God’s heartbeat?

Every year, Christmas is a time of celebration. It’s a time when friends and family gather to remember all they have been blessed with, and they look ahead to what is still to come. But the joy of Christmas isn’t just about one day.

In this Christmas message, Pastor Ed Young will help us experience the true rhythm of Christmas and discover how it can set the tone for the rest of our lives!

Words That Can Change Your Life: Part 2 – Yes

WORDS THAT CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE

“YES”

ED YOUNG

NOVEMBER 9, 1997

It’s just a little word, one that rolls off our tongues dozens of times a day.  In our commitment free culture, though, we basically have neutered this word, stripped it, gutted it and hollowed it out.  The word I am referring to is the word, yes.  Yes is a word of affirmation, agreement and acknowledgment.  It is a word of decision and commitment.  But sadly, in our litigation littered world, we have to be very careful when we say this word.  There are such huge implications of using this tiny word that it takes clauses and clusters of attorneys just to protect us.

I think that since the dawn of human history but especially since the word yes has been birthed into our personal vocabulary, we have all struggled with its use.  That is why Jesus said in Matthew 5:37, “Let your yes be yes.”  In other words, say it and stick by it.  This word has the ability and power to change your life.  Let your yes be yes.

I am in a series of talks called “Words That Can Change Your Life”.  Last week it was, I love you.  Today it is yes.  That kind of sounds like a country-western song, doesn’t it?  “Last week I loved you, today its yes……twang, twang, twang.”  Anyway, yes can transform or deform any life here.  Most of us are far too familiar with the scar tissue of saying an inappropriate yes.  A lot of us have said yes to the wrong things at the wrong time and in the wrong way.  The Bible is packed full of people who said yes to the wrong things at the wrong time.

Cain said yes to the jolt of jealousy, which led to the first homicide.  Moses said yes to that tug of anger, which thwarted his Promised Land pursuits.  Esau said yes to the seductive call of selfishness, which resulted in him selling his own birthright for a bowl of gumbo.  Who can forget Samson’s yes to the destructive relational patterns with Delilah?  And King David’s yes to the lure of lust caused him to never be what God wanted him to be as a leader, as a man and a father.  We can say yes to the wrong things at the wrong times.

We can also say yes in the wrong ways.  We are pros in saying those empty yeses, for instance, that yes when we don’t really mean it.  “Oh, yeah, I’ll be there”.  We have no intention of showing up, but we say yes anyway.  We love to articulate those empty, non-committal, hollowed out, gutted out, neutered yeses.  Let your yes be yes.

I have got to ask you.  Is your yes a yes?  You see we serve a word-keeping God, a God who says something and stands behind it, a God who says yes and backs it up.  And God simply says to you and to me to say yes to what He has said yes to.  In other words we are to say yes to the right things, at the right time and in the right way.  And if we say yes to what God says yes to, that is saying yes to God’s priorities.  I love the word priority because prior is part of the word.  There is no use debating or speculating what your priorities should or should not be.  They were set forth prior to your birth.  Before you were even a gleam in your father’s eye on a cold winter’s night, your priorities were set in stone.  Before your mom even dealt with morning sickness during the first trimester, your priorities were set.  God has said yes to certain areas of your life and my life and He wants us simply to agree with Him.  He wants us to say yes, too.

Now some of you are saying that that is tough to do, that you don’t have the power within yourself, the strength, the intestinal fortitude to carry it out.  Well, let me tell you how good God is.  The moment we establish a personal relationship with Christ, and many here have made that commitment, He places the person of the Holy Spirit in the depth of our being.  The Holy Spirit is committed, in fact it is His priority, to get us to say yes to what God says yes to.   And that is exciting.  So Christianity is not a solo sport, we have got some cosmic help.  If you are a Christ-follower, you know what I am talking about.  If you are not, listen because the moment you bow the knee and become a Christ-follower, you will feel this presence within your life.

During the few moments that remain, I want us to talk about four yesses, four big time yesses that God wants us to say.  First, He wants us to say yes to developing a deep and dynamic relationship with Him.  It is impossible to develop a great connection with Christ off the cuff, on the fly or on the run.  We have got to be systematic.  We have got to be intentional.  It takes discipline.  We have got to say yes the day before we actually meet with God.  You see, God wants me to meet with Him every day.  He wants you to meet with Him everyday.  He has an agenda especially for me and especially for you.  And if we don’t meet with Him, talk to Him, pray to Him, study His word, we are going to miss out on the abundant and adventurous life that we wants us to live.

I think that Jesus said it best in Matthew 6:33.  “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you.”  So if I am going to truly soar in my relationship with God, I have got to spend quality moments with Him.  I don’t know about you but when I miss two or three days of spending time with God, I experience a kind of free fall into the abyss of rebellion.  I’m surprised at my depravity.  Maybe you are not like me, but quite frankly, I don’t see how you survive in your relationship with God if you don’t meet with Him regularly and systematically.  Now I don’t decide to meet with God when I wake up.  I don’t say, “Well, OK, I’m up and today I am going to meet with God.  Sometime I am going to meet with God.  When it works out with my schedule, when everything is A-OK, then I will meet with God.”  I have got to say yes the night before.  That is a disciplined yes.  “Yes, I am going to wake up a little bit earlier, yes I will bring my journal, yes I will begin to write down my prayers to Him.”  Now if you are kind of new to studying the Bible or prayer, we have a class especially designed for you.  We teach it once a month.  It is called Starting Point.  It is led by Pastor Owen Goff.  It teaches you how to read the Bible, how to communicate with Christ.  And if you want a more in-depth study on prayer, get the tapes “Praying For Keeps”, a sermon series which I did about a year ago.  Learning more of these subjects will serve you well.  You will see a deep and dynamic relationship begin to develop with the God of the universe.  What an awesome thing to realize.  God is saying yes every day to meeting with you and meeting with me.  The question is, are we going to keep this appointment or are we going to say, “Yeah, God, I’ll be there.”  even if we don’t mean it.

We also have to be committed to that which is most near and dear to the heart of God.  If we are going to get to know Him, we have got to be committed; we have got to say yes to the church.  Why should we say yes to the church?  What are the benefits of the church?  Here are just a couple of quick ones.  The church enables me to join a community of fellow strugglers who can assist me and come along side me during the trials and troubles of life.  I don’t know how I could have survived over the last seven years without many of you who have helped me, assisted me, encouraged me and challenged me through difficult times.  Yes, you have been there for the good times too, but also for the tough moments.  There is nothing like it.  And if you don’t have this built into your life, I don’t know how you will “do life”.   I really, really don’t.

Thursday, I called a young couple in our church who were walking through a terrible tragedy.  I talked to the husband.  His voice was breaking but the first words that he said to me were, “Ed, I cannot tell you how much our friends who we have met in the Fellowship have helped us.   They prayed for us, have come here to the hospital to see us.  It has been unbelievable.”  That is what I am talking about.  Is your yes a true yes?

One of the biggest frustrations that we as a leadership team deal with here at our church is trying to build the church and develop programs around people who say yes but don’t really back it up.  People say “Yes, I will help in the Nursery.”  “Yes, I will help with traffic control.”  “Yes, I will get involved with the athletic ministry.”  “Yes, I will become a part of the home teams.”  “Yes, I will participate in a bible class.”  “Yes, I will really get engaged in Women’s Ministry.”  But rarely do they stand beside and behind the yesses.  Usually there are empty chairs, empty spots, forms filled out but no one showing up.  We have got to let our yes be yes.

Another benefit of being a part of the church is that it enables you and me to build a base of faith that will serve us now and help and encourage generations to come.  It is sort of like an anchor.  It anchors you and your family and you can build on it in the future.  Show me a great family and more often then not, way back there generations ago you had someone who was really involved in a local church.  Have you said yes to really committing to the church?

I know with the winter approaching and on rainy days it is so nice just to lie in the rack, wake up late and not make it to church.  You may say to yourself that missing church will give you more time to spend with your family.  Also, you may say you will be able to watch all the pre-game shows of the football contests.  But don’t buy into that.  Be here when we have services.  Something supernatural takes place when we open God’s word en masse.  Something supernatural takes place when we sing to Him.  Something supernatural takes place when we come together as brothers and sisters in Christ.  Don’t miss it.  Build your life around it and it will serve you well.

Another benefit of the church is that we can be a part of something that will last forever.  We can be a part of something that will be here when we are gone.  We can be a part of helping fragmented families, troubled teens and clueless children.  We can help.  Too many of us get involved in building mountains of nothingness.  We think that it is really something until the years roll by and we look back and realize that we have spent all of our time on nothingness.  We are talking about building stuff in the lives of people.  Education is not the answer.  Some of the most educated people I know are some of the wackiest I know.  Legislation is not the answer.  Look at Washington, DC.  Only transformation is it.  I sincerely believe that the church is the hope of the world.  Have you said yes to Christ and yes to the church?

Eighteen months ago I had a spiritually intensive conversation with a man in a Mexican restaurant nearby.  Over our meal I challenged him about Christ and the church.  He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, “Ed, I want to say yes to the Lord and yes to the Fellowship.”  I talked to him about what his commitment meant and the benefits of the church that I just shared with you.  Eighteen months have passed.  And this guy is nowhere to be found.  I’ll call him John.  A couple of weeks ago I saw John at a gym where I work out.  I walked up to him and said, “John, how is it going?”  He answered, “Oh, its going pretty well.”  I said, “John, do you remember the conversation that we had eighteen months ago?  Remember your commitment to Christ and the church?”  He said, “Yes.”  I asked, “What is the deal?  Where are you?  John, you were talking about your struggles in marriage, parenting hurdles and career pressures.  Yet, you are nowhere to be found.  It is not going to come together for you until you stand behind your yes to Christ and your yes to the church.”  As I walked off do you know what the last words he said to me were?  “Ed, I have got to go out of town for a couple of weeks, but yes, I’m going to start coming.  Yes, I am going to start doing what I know God wants me to do in my marriage, with my children and in my career.”  I’ve not seen him and it breaks my heart.  Let your yes be yes.  Say yes to developing a deep and dynamic relationship with God.

Secondly, we have to say yes, a resounding yes, to the most strategic relationships in our lives.  Let’s talk about marriage.  We have got to say yes to our mate through thick and thin, through sickness and health through poverty and wealth.  We have got to say yes.  I am tired of people giving God and others this line.  “Well, I said yes years ago in the church, but I didn’t really mean it.  I was kind of coerced and forced to say it.”  Well, don’t throw that weak junk up to yourself, to others and to God.  You are lying.  Tell the truth about your condition.  You backed out on the commitment.  Your yes was not a yes.  God will forgive you.  God will restore you.  But it is time to say yes and do life right.  And when God brings that special someone into your life, say yes and stick with it.  I know I have got to say yes regularly and routinely to a date night at least once a week with Lisa.  I need to say yes to a once-a-year trip when just the two of us get away together.  I have got to say yes to developing a deep relationship spiritually that goes beneath the surface.  I have got to say yes to resolving conflicts and handling them that day.  I have got to say yes and the Holy Spirit helps me.  He elbows me sometimes.

Last week I said some hurtful things to Lisa in front of our four children.  I was in the wrong.  I was selfish.  I said some things that I should not have said.  When I said them, I knew I was wrong but it kind of felt good to say them.  After awhile, the Holy Spirit began to let me know that I had messed up in front of the children and in front of the most important woman in my life.  He urged me to say yes to settling the conflict.

I said to myself, “Well, I’ll do so.   Once the kids go to bed, I’ll settle the score with Lisa.”  But I felt Him saying, “Ed, you said the hurtful things in front of the kids, apologize to her in front of them.”  Then I though about the fact that the twins are three, my son, five and my oldest daughter, eleven.  But I felt nudge and when I couldn’t stand it any more, I said, “Lisa, I am sorry.  I was totally wrong and I want to apologize to you Laurie, to you Landra, to you EJ, and to you Lee Beth.  I said a hurtful thing to your Mom and I was wrong.  These words were tough to say but I am glad that I said them.  Because I sincerely believe that words like this mark our children more then anything that we could ever tell them or more than anything that we could ever give them.  They saw commitment.  They saw conflict resolution.  They saw love.  And they saw life lived on the rugged plains of reality.

Now don’t sit there an say, “Oh, I bet he is just a perfect husband.  He is a pastor.”  No, I am a fellow struggler like you.  But I will tell you one thing.  I have improved in this area by the grace of God, and because I spend time with Him daily, and am sensitive to the elbowing of the Holy Spirit.   Are you saying yes to your spouse?  Are you saying yes to your kids?  How about it parents?  Are you most concerned about setting sale records at work, and being a five handicap golfer or are you saying that you will spend quality time with your family and that you will show them that your yes means yes.

I read a while ago that the toughest problems children have to deal with are broken promises from their parents.  “Someday I will take you fishing.”  “Someday we will go outside and throw a football around.”  “Someday I will take you camping.”  Let your yes be yes.

People ask me a lot about my background, specifically about my parents.  They may know that my middle brother, Ben, 34, is a pastor of the largest singles area in any church in the country and the only guy with a nationally syndicated Christian talk show just for singles.  They may know that my youngest brother, Cliff, is the lead singer in one of the up and coming Christian alternative bands.  Then they meet me and say that my parents did great with two out of three.  Kidding.  They ask  what our parents did that influenced the three of us to end up in Christian work.  Sometimes the questioner takes out a pen or pencil for the purpose of recording the great wisdom.  But is it very simple.  My parents said a couple of important yeses and they stood behind them.  They said yes to developing a deep and dynamic relationship with God.  That was their top priority.  Secondly, they said yes to us.  We were right behind their relationship.  I knew it was God first, their marriage next and that we came in third.  It meant the world to my brothers and I.  I have found out that if we say yes to everything, that we become over-committed, over-scheduled and over-stimulated and we will blow a gasket.  We have got to say a couple of calculated yeses in some of these areas that we are talking about today and then what God will do is just staggering.

Thirdly, we have got to say yes to reaching our marketplace potential.  Work is a gift from God.  We were created in the image of a God who works and we have a desire for work and work is good.  Work is not sin.  Work is not judgment.  Adam and Eve worked before sin came into the picture.  They did yard work in the garden.  Well the Bible comes along and says this in Colossians 3:23.  “Whatever you do, do your work heartily as for the Lord rather than men.”  In other words, whatever you do in the marketplace, do it for God.  We have people who are part of this church who throw passes, others perform surgeries, others close deals, others install air conditioning units, others preach sermons, others sell medical supplies, others teach students.  Whatever you do, do your work as for the Lord.

Are you setting the morality standards around the office?  Are you leading out in working diligently?  Are you truly concerned about the people you rub elbows with daily?  Do you share Christ when He gives you the opportunity to do so?  I know how it is.  After you have worked in a job for awhile, you know how to get by with the least work possible.  You know how to perform those subtle forms of self-promotion in front of your superior.  You know how to involve yourself in office chatter to kind of tear apart the boss.  Is your yes a true yes in the market place?  Are you the one leading out to the best of your ability on any given project?  Do you say yes to working for God in the project?  Say yes to reaching your marketplace potential.  God rewards diligent workers.

Fourthly, we have got to say yes to mindful money management.  Our money matters to God.  Now some of you are thinking that you don’t make that much, that you don’t have to worry about money management.  At the end of the month, there is nothing left.  So who cares, you’ll just spend it, it’s gone, no worry.  If you make a little bit you should be more strategic and more intentional and more mindful of money management.  The Bible says that our giving patterns, our saving patterns and our spending patterns should be acts of worship to God.

Now others here have been blessed financially.  You have so many resources that you don’t worry about money management.  You buy what you want to.  You travel where you want to.  Money is just kind of flowing for you.  You also have to be intentional and mindful about your money.  We have to steward our resources very, very carefully.  The Bible says that we should say yes to what God says yes to financially speaking.  The priorities concerning money are threefold.  First, we are to make money to give.  Second, we are to make money to save.  Third, we are to make money to spend.  But we reverse that, don’t we?  We first make it to spend, then we make it to save and if we have enough left over, we kind of tip God now and then.

Let’s talk about giving because God wants the purposes of this church to move out and to become what He wants them to be.  The only way it will happen is when people who love Him given generously to kingdom causes, to the local church.

Last week Lisa and I were doing one of our date nights and I had forgotten to go to the bank.  I had no cash.  I knew that our eleven year old, Lee Beth, had some cash in her wallet.  I said, “Lee Beth, we are going to the movies and it starts at five.  Can I please borrow some money from you?  I need about $30.”  Do you know what she told me?  She said, “Dad, I don’t like to lend money.”  I said, “Lee Beth, please, I did not have time to go to the bank.  I need the money.”  She said, “Dad…”  But then reluctantly she walked into her room and got her wallet, which she had hidden well.  She began to count the money.  She asked again if I couldn’t get to the bank.  But I told her I couldn’t and that I would pay her back really quickly.  She gave it to me.  Actually I had to kind of pull it from her grasp.  LeeBeth didn’t understand two basic things.  First, if I wanted to, I am strong enough to take the wallet from her and all the money in it.  Secondly, she didn’t understand that I was the one who gave her the money in the first place.

Then I thought about how we treat our Heavenly Father.  God says that He wants us to give some money, that He will bless us for it.  But we say no to God, that we don’t lend money.  We tell Him that we have made it, we can spend it, and we can save it.  It is ours.  Who are you trying to kid?  If God wanted to, He could take it all at once.  We fail to understand that.  We also, like LeeBeth, don’t understand that God is the one who gave it to us anyway.  All we are doing is giving back what is His.  Have you said yes to giving?  I have heard a lot of people say that they will say yes to giving when the deal comes through, when everything is A-OK, next year when they begin to really make it.

How about saving?  If you want to read a great book on money management, read the book of Proverbs.  We are to save our money.  Our saving goal should be at least 10% of what we make in order to get our money working for us.  I meet people all the time who say that one day they will start saving.  One day.

Then I meet others who say that they are going to quit their drive-by spending.  Have you been by Grapevine Mills Mall yet?  I walked in there the other day.  It was incredible.  It is not an outlet mall.  Let me tell you that.  The whole place is calling for you to spend.  The stores are saying spend money…..spend money…..spend money.  A lot of us are overextended and we are drowning in the seas of debt.  We float with interest on this credit card and that credit card.  Credit cards make poor flotation devices, don’t they?  Start now.  Say, “God, I will say yes to mindful, strategic money management.”  Say yes to what God says yes to.  Let your yes be yes.

Hecknology: Part 3 – The Use of Technology

Our world of technology leads to some phenomenal results. Some of the greatest advancements of our time have happened because of it. But there are also some dangerous pitfalls that come with technology.

In the final message of the series, Pastor Ed Young unpacks how we can experience balance in an often unbalanced world of technology. And we discover how to use technology to connect with the life God has for us rather than allowing it to use us.

Hecknology

Technology opens up the opportunity for us to connect with more people and to have more influence than ever before. It gives us the ability to instantly make our world a better place. But is there a dangerous side to the connectivity and availability we have to anyone, anywhere at any time?

In this new series, Pastor Ed Young unpacks the advantages and pitfalls of technology and social media. He shows us how to take our connection to the world beyond a momentary conversation. And shows us how to utilize technology to make the kind of lasting difference God wants us to make in our world today.

Words To Live By: Part 2 – Happily Ever After

WORDS TO LIVE BY

THREE OF THE GREATEST VERSES OF THE BIBLE

“HAPPILY EVER AFTER:  REVELATION 21:4”

PASTOR ED YOUNG

MARCH 28, 1993

Our six-year old daughter, Lee Beth, is like most children.  Before Christmas rolls around, she has a long list of what she wants, and she gave us this list of Barbie dolls and other different books, The Berenstein Bears, and on and on.  One thing though that she wanted and told us about day after day, “Mommy, Daddy, I want a Bible with soft pages.”  We said, “Soft pages?  What do you mean, Lee Beth?”  “You know, kind of like you and Daddy have, that kind of move around with the wind and they’re real thin?”  And she began to look through my wife’s Bible and she got back to the section that had the maps, Palestine, where Christ journeyed.  She thumbed through about three maps and then she looked up at my wife with those big, brown eyes and she said, “Mommy, which one of these maps shows you how to get to heaven?”  Eternity.  Heaven.  That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Ecclesiastes 3:11, a very profound verse, a powerful verse.  Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has made everything beautiful in its time.  He has also set eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom what God has done from the beginning.”  The Word of God tells us that the Lord has set eternity in your heart and in my heart.  The Bible says we are created in the image of God.  Thus, being in the image of God, being created by an eternal God, we have eternity set in our hearts.   We know there’s life beyond the grave.  Think about the books you grew up with, or the movies you see now, or the novels that you might thumb through.  Usually, the basic plot is this, good against evil and they butt heads during the book.  It looks like evil will win out, but suddenly, right at the last, the good side prevails and they live happily ever after or they ride off into the sunset or they get married and we go, “Ahhh!”  We’re built, we’re designed, we’re fashioned to live happily ever after.  Eternity.

Jesus talked about eternity throughout The New Testament.  In fact, two-thirds of Christ’s teaching revolved around the after-life.  The book of Acts, the apostles, two-thirds of their messages talked about eternity.  In Mark 10, a man walks up to Christ one day.  He is beautifully-dressed, jewels sewn into his clothing.  I call him the man who had it all, and he wants to talk to Christ because he feels like something is beyond his grasp.  If you look at this passage of Scripture, you see the theme of the conversation, eternal life.  This man who had it all, as he talked to Jesus, realized he didn’t have enough because he didn’t have eternal life.

In John 3, another man cruised up to Christ.  This man was a member of the Sanhedrin, one of the top religious groups of the day, a brilliant man, and I call him the man who knows it all.  He talked to Jesus and what did the conversation revolve around?  Eternal life.  After he talked to Jesus about eternal life, this man who thought he knew it all, realized he didn’t know enough if his eternity was not secure.

In Luke 23, the thief on the cross was hanging there suspended between heaven and earth.  He was the man I say who had done it all, and after he talked to Christ about eternity, he realized he hadn’t done enough.

A man who had it all and didn’t have enough.  The man who knew it all, he didn’t know enough.  The man who had done it all, he hadn’t done enough.  Where are you in this situation?  Do you know that Christ has set eternity in your hearts?  How is it affecting the way you live?  Do you have your eternal security sealed or is it still hanging in the balance?

People often ask me, “Ed, do you enjoy preaching?  Do you enjoy teaching?”  Not always, and especially today when I’m going to talk about some things that are very difficult for me to discuss with you.  However, I’m under the authority of the Bible and the Holy Spirit has told me, not audibly, but in my spirit, to tell you these things.  So I don’t always enjoy speaking, especially concerning hell, and we’re going to talk about that.

The Bible is very candid, folks.  It says categorically, there is life after death.  The Bible never mentions reincarnation.  It never mentions purgatory.  It never mentions some limbo state.  It never mentions after we die we can wheel and deal or you can work out a special situation with God.  The Scriptures tell us in no uncertain terms that we will all live forever in one of two places, in heaven or in hell.

Let’s talk a little bit about heaven and hell because there’s a lot of misconceptions, myths, and jokes floating around about the two subjects.  Like the one I heard this week.  A pastor and an airline pilot, they were best friends and miraculously, they died on the same day and they float up to heaven and there’s St. Peter at the gates getting ready to welcome the pastor and the airline pilot.  St. Peter said, “Pastor, let me escort you to your new home,” and he takes the pastor to the back part of heaven, through a couple of pastures, down a dirt road, to this little, dilapidated shack.  “Pastor, that’s your home for eternity.”

He’s thinking to himself, “Wow!  I heard about there being mansions in heaven.  What’s the deal?”  “Mr. Pilot, let me show you your place.  You’ve been with American Airlines for 15 years and here it is.”  He escorts him to a mansion that would make Robin Leach drool.  Beautiful home!  An estate!  As St. Peter is leaving this mansion, the airline pilot says, “St. Peter, excuse me.  I have one question.  Why is my pastor living in a shack and I am in this mansion?”  St. Peter said, “That’s simple, Mr. Pilot.  You put the fear of God much more into people’s lives through your landing than the pastor did through his messages, so you have the nice place.”  (Laughter)

Most of what we know about heaven comes from the book of Revelation.  The book of Revelation, not Revelations.  The Apostle John had the task of describing something that was not human in humanistic terms.  Inspired by the Holy Spirit, John had a glimpse of heaven and he was limited by language and had to explain it so we could get a little grasp on eternity.  I believe if we really knew how magnificent heaven was, we would not want to live on this earth.  We would be taking our lives in record numbers in order to get there.  That’s how great it is.

John used, as most biblical scholars agree, a linguistic tool called anthropomorphism.  That’s a fancy way of saying he describes something that was supernatural in natural terms.  And let me cite a few of the anthropomorphistic terms and will explain them and what they mean in the original language and hopefully clear up some misconceptions about heaven.  See the verse behind me, Revelation 21:4?  In this series, we’re talking about three of the greatest verses in the Bible, and today we’re talking about living happily ever after.

Revelation 21:4, “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow or crying, neither shall there be any more pain for the former things are passed away.”  In heaven, we will have new bodies that will not be limited by the laws of nature.  If you ever wanted to jump like Air Jordan and play golf like Freddie Couples, heaven might be the place.  We’ll be able to recognize loved ones.  It’s going to be a place that words cannot describe.  Let’s cite a couple of terms, and write these down on your bulletin if you would like.

You hear heaven in the book of Revelation referred to as a city.  You’ve heard that.  A city.  Most people, when they hear the word “city,” they think somewhere out there in space is a sign that says, “Heaven, Population 20.3 Billion,” and there’s skyscrapers, the heavenly Galleria, soccer fields and freeways.  That’s not what the word “city” means.  In the word “city,” John was getting at the word “community, fellowship, camaraderie with Christians, with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ like we’ve never, ever known before.”  Think about the best friend you’ve ever had.  When you’re together sometimes, time just flies.  Multiply that by a billion and then do that to the billionth power and you have just a sliver of what it’s going to be like.  We’ll have fellowship and intimacy with God that we can never have here on this earth because there are tears, because there is death, because there is sorrow as Revelation 21:4 tells us.  Heaven is a city.

The book of Revelation also says heaven has walls around it.  Is that talking about a security system?  Iron gates?  A guard saying (beeping sound) “Do you have a sticker on your car?  Do you live in this particular neighborhood or complex?  What’s your name?”  The word “walls” means there will be sovereign security.  We’ll be totally secure in heaven.  We don’t have to worry about being violated, about feeling vulnerable.  The book of Revelation also says there will be rivers of flowing water.  I always say, “Lord, I hope it’s stacked with Florida bass in heaven.”  What does that mean?  Rivers flowing?  It denotes eternity.  It denotes that it will never be dry.  It denotes new discoveries, excitement, purposes for your life and my life, continuing forever and ever; and forever and ever is one long time, isn’t it?

Mansions.  You’ve heard that.  I’ve heard some people say, “I’m not into mansions, Ed.  I’m into cabins or condos or I’m into camping.”  That’s what I like.  Or “What type of wallpaper?  How about the square footage?  English Tudor?  What’s the deal?  Is this a custom home?”  The word “mansions” in John 14:2, Jesus is telling us He is going to personally see to our accommodations.  Personally, to your accommodations, to my accommodations.  Christ would say, “That’s it.”  So we have nothing to worry about.

Let me give you another one.  In the book of Revelation, John describes white robes and that makes the most fashion-conscious here shudder.  “White robes!  I hope they’re designer.  Are they tailored?  My earrings don’t go with white.”  White robes refer to being clothed in the righteousness of Christ.  We’ll be pure.  We’ll be holy.  That’s what it means.  Crowns are mentioned.  That means rewards will be given out.  We’ll be treated like royalty.  How about harps?  Someone told me a couple of weeks ago, “Ed, I’d rather spend a wet weekend in Waxahachie than a million years in a harp class.  I’m not into harp music.  I like country-western music and that’s not really me.”  A teenager told me, “I wish instead of a harp it was an electric guitar or electronic drums, a synthesizer.”  There will be music.  There will be music like you’ve never known.  Take Isaiah 6.  It says right now the angels are singing, “Worthy, worthy, worthy is the Lamb.”

In 1979, the Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series.  The theme of their path to the world championship in baseball is this, “We are family.  I’ve got all my sisters with me,” and the whole place would rock back and forth, 80,000 people in Pittsburgh.  How about 80 million Christians singing “Amazing Grace”?  How about 80 million Christians singing, “How Great Thou Art”?  Think about it.  Awesome.

That’s why the Apostle Paul said in Philippians 1:23, “I’m torn between the two.  I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far, but it’s more necessary for you that I remain in the body.”  That’s why he also said in 1 Corinthians 15:55, “Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?”

Most of you are saying, “Great, Ed.  I’m a Christian.  I’ve accepted Christ.  My destiny is heaven.  How though, does that affect me right now?  How should I then live?”  Colossians 3:2 tells us.  Remember Ecclesiastes 3:11, “God has set eternity in our hearts”?  Colossians 3:2 says, “Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things,” because eternity has been set in our hearts, we should set our minds on things above, not on things below.

I have one question.  If you believe this, raise your hand: Is it possible to be in two places at one time?  Would you lift your hand.  It is possible to be in two places at one time.  I was in Algebra class in the 11th grade.  I made a “D” in the class.  I’m not proud of that, but the reason is that I would sit there in Algebra while the teacher was going over all these numbers and formulas and this and that, and my body was there, but my mind was on the lake catching about a four-pound bass.  One day I was shocked back into reality when my teacher said, “Ed, where are you?  Where’s your head?”  I thought, “If she only knew.”

You’re driving to work this week on 635, 114, 121; you’re cruising.  Hey, your body, it’s in the car.  Your mind, though, “There he is approaching the 7th tee box.  He’s pulling out Big Bertha.  About a 434-yard par course.  Dog leg right.”  Whoosh!  Oh, look at the ball go.  Jim, he has such power off the tee box.  It’s incredible.  And suddenly, you’re shocked back into reality because someone behind you is talking about your mother and you’re going, “Why?”  (Laughter)

Two places at one time.  I see it happening right now (Laughter).  I’ve been talking twelve minutes and I never like to go over 25 minutes because the attention span starts to drift, even mine drifts up here.  I’m teasing.  But I see that glazed look on your face.  Right now we have people at the mall.  Some are already at Luby’s.  “I’ll have the carrots, thank you.”  That’s what Jesus is telling us.  He’s saying, “I want you to be a Christian in two places at one time.”  Your body is here, but your mind, your heart is set on eternity.  When we do that, it changes the entire perspective.  How do we do that?  How do we set our minds on eternity?

Number one.  Put on the eternal lenses.  That’s right.  Put on the eternal lenses.  If I take these lenses off, I see color.  In fact, in the front row, I can even tell the expression from up here.  I can.  I really can.  When I put these on, I see everyone in vivid color.  The smiles.  The nods.  We don’t have very many wrinkles here in this crowd.  When I put on the Lord Jesus Christ’s eternal lenses, when I look at things from an eternal perspective, it changes the way I look at individuals, the way I see the future, the way I treat you, because the decisions I make on this side of the grave affect where I will spend eternity on that side of the grave, and that’s why I became a Christian at a very young age.  I came to the profound conclusion that I’m going to live a lot longer in eternity than I am here and I made a decision for Christ.  Put on those eternal lenses.

Second, I’ve got to own the fact that I’m going to live happily ever after if I know Christ.  It doesn’t matter what situation you are in, how much you’re suffering, whatever you’ve gone through, it’s going to get better.  Say that with me.   “It’s going to get better.”   Did you hear me?  If you know Christ, it’s going to get better.  That’s right.  It’s going to get better!

The third way to set our hearts and minds in heaven is with our bodies here.  We’ve got to live each day like it’s the last day of our lives.  We don’t know when we’re going to be called home.  We don’t know when Christ is coming back.  The Bible says He will come as a thief in the night.  No one knows.  Is there anything in your life that you would be embarrassed about if Christ were to come back while you were involved in this particular activity?  Anything?  If there is in your life or my life, we need to get rid of it and replace it with something good.

The sad thing about all this is this particular fact.  So many men and women will become so wrapped up in trying to have it all, know it all and do it all, that they will dance around the bloodstained cross, and they will say, “I’ll deal with that later, God.  I’ll deal with that at a more convenient time.  I’ll have my security nailed in a couple of months.”  However, they never really get around to it.

We’ve talked about heaven.  Let’s look at the flip side.  Let’s talk about hell.  I don’t like to talk about hell, but Christ talked more about hell than any other person in the Bible, and the problem in a lot of our churches is we’ve “air-conditioned” hell.  Hell is a real place.  In heaven, it’s a city.  We talked about that.  Community.  We are together.  In hell, there’s no community.  Isolation.  A man named Jim said, “Ed, I’d rather spend eternity in hell because all my friends will be there.”  If your friends are in hell, you won’t know it.  Isolation.

We said in heaven, walls, security.  In hell, vulnerability.  Maybe a good explanation would be if you could live in South Central Los Angeles without any locks on your doors or windows.  No security system whatsoever.  I think you would feel a little violated.

No rivers in hell.  New discoveries every day in heaven.  In hell, vast wasteland.  Garbage.  Isolation.  Nothingness.  No roads.  You will be your naked, ugly, sinful self.  How about music?  No music.  There will be sounds though.  The Bible says, “Weeping and gnashing of teeth.”  I’ve been at the hospital before, late at night, when I’ve heard someone cry out through the corridors and it echoes back and forth, and that’s just a taste of what hell’s going to be like.

The Bible says when Christ comes back, many who have made bad decisions on this earth will run to the mountains and they will want the mountains to fall on them because they see what’s going to happen to them.  It’s God’s desire that we all spend eternity with Him.  Don’t ever say, “How can a good and holy, righteous God send someone to hell?  If God’s going to send someone to hell, I don’t want any part of that.”  How many times have you heard that?

Let me settle that issue right now.  Take your Bibles and turn to 2 Peter 3:9.  God doesn’t send anyone to hell.  We have freedom of choice.  We have an option and I want to place the responsibility of this message squarely on your lap today and let you deal with it.  2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise as some understand slowness.  He is patient, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone (not some) to come to repentance.”  1 Timothy 2: 4, “God our Savior wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”  John 3:16, a verse we’ll study next week, “For God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish.”

What’s God’s desire?  That we will not perish.  What if God would have said, “Okay, here’s heaven and here’s hell; there’s a way to get to hell, but there’s no way you can get to heaven.”  What if God had said that?  God didn’t say that.  God said, “I love you.  I’ve made you with a purpose.  I want you to spend eternity with me.  In fact, I can’t even think about how terrible it’s going to be to spend eternity away from my children.”  So God has provided a great place, a place we cannot even describe with words, called “heaven.”  We’ll recognize loved ones who know Christ there, and He’s provided a way.  He tells us it’s your responsibility to receive what I have done for you.

What did God do?  He commissioned the second person of the Trinity, Jesus, to spill His blood on the cross for your sins and mine.  If we accept that (it’s our choice) if we receive that, then we get to heaven; and heaven begins the moment you bow the knee to Christ.  It begins right here.  But we’ll be perfected—new bodies, a total package—once we graduate from this life to the next.  Do you have that eternal perspective?

My grandfather was not a Christian until he was 52 years old and a couple of years after he became a Christian, he died on the operating table and they brought him back and he told my father, my uncle and his wife, “I was in heaven.  In fact, I was a baby then and heaven was so great I didn’t want to come back.”  They said, “You’ve got to go back, Homer,” and he said, “I don’t want to go back.”  From that day forward (you know many people like this, just read some of the books) from that day forward, he lived with an eternal perspective.

What are you going to do?  What are you going to do?  Are you going to say, “I don’t want anything to do with Christ.  I don’t want anything to do with His blood.  I don’t want anything to do with church, with the Word of God.  I don’t want anything to do with accepting what God did for me.  I’ll do my own thing.”  If you have that rationale, that thought, when you die, you’re going to face a holy God and God’s going to say to you, “You know I loved you and you mean so much to me and I tried to speak to your life, but you danced around, you put it off, you didn’t want any part of me on earth and you’ll have no part of me or my Son in eternity and I’ve designed a place for you.”  It’s hell.

It’s our choice.  It’s our choice.  And it scares me to know that I’m talking to some people right here in this Arts Center, you’re on your way to hell.  Now, I don’t like to say that, but that is fact.  If you were to die right now, you would not spend eternity with Christ.  You would spend eternity in isolation, a Christless eternity.  We’re not talking about Tiddlywinks here, Monopoly, Candyland.  We’re talking about life and death.  So people’s eternity is hanging in the balance.

Also, there are some Christians here, and your mind, your heart, is on earthly things instead of on eternal things.  Two groups of people struggling here, but especially those people who don’t know Christ.  Where are you?  Where are you?

You remember Lee Beth looking through the maps?  “Where is the map to heaven?  Where is it?  Show me the map to heaven?”  To conclude this message, I want to show you the directions to heaven.  Four directions to heaven and there are four statements right out of God’s Word and I’m going to ask you to bow your heads right now with me.  No one moving at all.  Bow your heads and close your eyes just for a second.  I’m going to ask you, this church to say these statements to God.  For many people, it will be a reaffirmation, for others it might be the first time you ever meant business with God and sealed your eternity.  God wants to meet you right where you are.

Repeat these statements right after me.  First I’ll read it and then I’ll read it again and you say it with me as I read it the second time.  Here’s the first statement, straight out of the Bible, “Lord, I admit to you now, that I am a sinner.”  Here’s the second statement, “I humbly ask for your forgiveness.”  Here’s the third statement, “I claim Christ as my Savior.”  Hey, we all know Christ is the Savior.  Is He your Savior?  Here’s the fourth statement, and this is the toughest one.  “I have placed myself under the authority of Christ and His Word.”

WOW Relationships of Jesus: Part 3 – Jesus with a Troubled Man

WOW Relationships of Jesus

Jesus with a Troubled Man

January 25, 2009

Ben Young

God doesn’t want us to be in bondage, He doesn’t want us to be enslaved; He desires for us to be free. So, how do we get free? How do we keep Satan from keeping us in bondage? We need something explosive to combat the power of the enemy and our tendency to do our own thing. In the third message of this series, join Ben as he looks closely at the story of Legion, a troubled man whom Jesus set free. He will illustrate how we can use C-4 in our own lives, it is moldable and malleable to deal with whatever issue that has us enslaved and trapped.

Some years ago, I used to do a radio show called “The Single Connection.” Some of you have been around to remember that show, although no one listened to it! But anyway, back then, it was actually nationally syndicated because it was on Sunday nights, and Sunday night is trash time for most radio stations. So we were on nation-wide.

I was writing books at that time on dating and relationships, and I was doing a lot of traveling. I would fly into a city on a Friday night, speak that night and a couple or three times on Saturday; fly back Saturday, come back Sunday morning and preach Sunday morning and Sunday night, and do the radio show for another two hours! That was back on the edge of burn out; but I don’t do that anymore! When I’d travel a lot, I found myself sitting on a lot of airplanes in all the airports.

How many of you travel a lot during the week or the month? Raise your hand! A lot of us here do. I used to, and I would sit there and think about some weird stuff, like the safety regulations that they would always have to go through. By the way, I hate to break it to you if you’re scared of flying; but I think those safety regulations by and large are bogus! No, they are! You’re flying at 37,000 feet, going about 800 miles an hour. If that plane goes down baby, it is over! The idea that we’re going to land in water and your little life preserver is going to go “poof,” and you can blow into it—it doesn’t inflate. You’ll have the wherewithal to grab your oxygen mask and put it on yourself first before you…That’s just not going to happen! You’re going to fall like a rock from the sky, and the Gulf of Mexico is going to be like hitting cement, all right? It’s just over! The idea that your seat cushion is going to be used as a flotation device…I’m going to be using it for something else on the way down to the end of my life! It’s not going to happen! All this other stuff too, like, “Be sure your seat backs are in the upright position.” What is this? Right? Live, die. Live, die! What is the FAA doing the next morning as they’re going through and looking at the charred remains of the plane? “See this one, 4-A? If they’d only had their tray table in the upright position!”

Anyway, I know that safety and security rules are there for a reason, but I think a lot of it is because we’re in this kind of hyper-security environment that we live in and have grown up around. People even wear helmets today riding bicycles! I didn’t do that when I was a kid; but I think the whole airline deal is to give you the illusion of security, right?

To me, it gives you kind of a false sense of security that no matter what happens, everything’s going to be okay! I think a lot of times, we walk around in our world and our lives, and we live with this similar kind of illusion. In other words, we live unaware that there are forces outside of us that are way beyond our control. There are forces and actually powers that happen everywhere in many places, and in many lives that can wreak absolute havoc in our lives.

Today, I want to talk to you about some of those powers, and about how they work a little bit, and about what you can do to prevent them from really troubling your life. There is a story that is in the Gospel of Mark, so if you have a Bible, you can open to Mark. If not, it will be on the screen in front of you, Mark chapter 5.

If you’ve never read the Bible before, and you want to read a little bit about Jesus and His story; if you like action, then read the book of Mark! Mark is all about action! Action, action, we want action! It’s an action-packed book! It’s fast, and it’s furious, and it’s full of action!

Matthew is loud, right? Matthew shouts at you; he yells at you; he tells you to hit a brace and get your life in order! Luke is the doctor. He’s more detailed oriented, and more the detailed historian. If you’re into philosophy, then I’d encourage you to read John. I don’t know why I said that—it’s free! But anyway, here’s Mark, chapter 5. Here’s the action story. This is really a frightening story on some level, but it’s also a very encouraging story on another level. Let’s listen to it here:

Mark 5, “They went across the lake (they being the disciples and Jesus) to the region of the Gerasenes. When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet Him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him any more, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs, and in the hills, he would cry out and cut himself with stones.”

Let me take a brief time out here, okay? Some of you are probably already lost and are saying, “Okay, now we’ve gone from real life to science fiction land!” Let me just give you a brief story to tell you that this is not science fiction; this is the real deal. Some of these things still happen today.

I have a friend of mine who was a member of our church for many, many years. He worked with HPD S.W.A.T. Narcotics—big, tough guy; first guy in, and the last guy out. He told me this story years ago about a guy, this drug addict that they tried to apprehend, who weighed about 125 lbs. Paris Hilton, Mary Kate and Ashley were muscular compared to this guy.

This guy was really a skinny little wimp! Here came these big S.W.A.T. guys, 210, 220, 235 pounds in full riot gear, jumping on this guy. They’re trained to subdue people, and this guy is throwing them off just like I would throw off a two pound weight—just chunking them off of him! Boom, boom! They couldn’t subdue this guy! How do you explain that? Again, my friend who is a cop and is also a Christian says, “That’s the power of the devil. You can’t explain it any other way, how two to four huge, trained S.W.A.T. guys can’t subdue a guy who is only 125 pounds, rolled up in a rug at the time.” Amazing!

So, these things still happen today. They are anomalies, but they still happen today. Meanwhile, let’s check back in with our guy. All right! Just didn’t want to lose you!

“When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell at his feet in front of Him.” Isn’t it interesting that for the last three months we’ve looked at the WOW statements of Jesus, and the WOW relationships; you find a lot of people falling at the feet of Jesus! Different kinds of people; rich people, poor people, prostitutes, all kinds of folks, demon possessed. They just—wham! Fall at the feet of Jesus.

“He shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won’t torture me!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Come out of this man, you evil spirit!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ ‘My name is Legion,’ he replied, ‘For we are many.’ He begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area. A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. The demons begged Jesus, ‘Send us among the pigs! Allow us to go into them!’ He gave them permission, and the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.” (There will be no barbeque dinner after church today!)

“Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and the countryside, and the people went to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon possessed man, and told about the pigs as well. Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region. As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon possessed begged to go with Him. Jesus did not let him go, but he said, ‘Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how He has had mercy on you.’

So the man went away and began to tell people in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and all the people were amazed.” Wow! That’s a pretty radical story!

Now before we talk about the implication to the story and the whole issue of the demonic, and how that influences us; let’s unpack this story a little bit. It’s significant when it says in the very first verse that Jesus went to the region of the Gerasenes. This is the first time Jesus had done a miracle in a predominantly Gentile area. Jesus was called primarily to the Jews and to the nation of Israel. He did very little with the Gentiles initially. So he does this miracle in this region. He sees this guy who I guess is called Legion. Legion is a military term the Romans used to describe a number of soldiers. It could be anywhere from three to six thousand soldiers. So this guy was tormented by three to six thousand evil spirits and demons. He would live among the tombs, and he would run around. They would try to chain him and they couldn’t! He would break lose like that drug addict I talked about with my friend. They couldn’t subdue this guy, and it was wild and crazy! But somehow, he had some shred of sanity left in him to actually put himself at the feet of Jesus. Jesus takes the demons and casts them into the pigs.

Now, the pigs ran and drowned themselves, and when the people of the town heard about this, they weren’t too happy! For us, it’s like, “We have to do fried chicken, and seafood and barbeque!” That’s the way we kind of see it through our lens. But listen—2,000 pigs represented their economy! So it was about the economy going to the tank or drowning—you know, they watched these little pigs drown! “There goes my 401 K!”

Then it says the town’s people were what? When they saw what had happened, they saw this guy who had been a maniac and had been possessed by these demons. It was like the movie called The Exorcist. Now this person is calm…It says they were afraid! They were afraid because of the power of God, first of all. They were afraid, secondly, because Jesus is bad for business! “Go to another region! Find some cows, or some chickens and do the same thing over there! Go back to Nazareth! We’ve got our own situations here!” They wanted Him to leave. Again, this story is an exception, and not a norm.

I’ll tell you a story that happened to me about twelve years ago. I don’t tell a lot of stories like this primarily, because a lot of them don’t happen to me; but this was an unusual encounter. I was leading a Wednesday night worship service in our old sanctuary years ago, and I was doing the Lord’s Supper. On the second row, I could hear someone grumbling. As I continued to do the Lord’s Supper, I could hear someone kind of growling to my right, and then a few words.

Afterwards, some people brought me this guy, and I went into a room with some other pastors, and this guy was, to the best of my knowledge and ability to discern, possessed by demons. We talked to him; we talked to these demons. We tried to the best of our ability with the knowledge we had of Scripture, and the stories of Jesus, to cast the demons out of this guy. I don’t know if we did or if we didn’t. I know years later, the guy seemed healthy and normal, I believe. But let me tell you something: That’s really the only encounter I’ve had with someone who I would consider possessed. I’ve seen many people say, “Well, I think I’ve got a demon, blah, blah, blah…” They probably don’t.

When I was young and wanted to conquer the world; I wanted to cast out a demon, until I actually confronted demons, and then I realized, “No, I don’t want to be in that business unless God calls me to it.” But I want to tell you, the power of the devil, and the power of Satan is real. For those of you who may not know me, and this is your first time to come to Second; I’m not an “easy believe” kind of person. I’m pretty skeptical and analytical by nature; so for me to say that is almost like the devil has to appear to me with a red pitchfork and poke me in the rump! I’m pretty skeptical. But I’ve seen the power of the devil, and it’s unbelievable. I’ve seen what he’s done and what he can do in someone’s life when they give him total access.

I think that when you hear a story like this, a couple of things happen. You wonder, “Can this happen to me?” Or say, maybe you’re here and you consider yourself a Christ follower. “Can a Christ follower be possessed by a demon?” I don’t think a Christ follower can be possessed by a demon. One of the definitions for “possession” is to be owned. So if I’ve asked God to come into my life and I’ve trusted Christ; I’m owned by God. So no, I don’t believe demons can possess a believer. Can a demon wield incredible influence over a believer? Yes. Can he gain a stronghold in your life or my life when we give him access to do so? Yes! Satan and his demons are real and powerful forces, and we need to be aware. We don’t need to walk around our lives with an illusion of safety and security if we’re allowing him access and entrance into our lives.

One of the ways he wreaks havoc in our lives is through unconfessed anger and bitterness. In Ephesians 4:26 and following, it says, “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” By the way, it’s not a sin to be angry. The phrase before that says “Be angry; yet do not sin.” But if you have unhealthy, sinful, or bitter anger that you stuff and keep inside of you, and you don’t resolve that conflict with whoever you are conflicted with; somehow, someway—the Bible doesn’t explain how—you are giving the enemy, the devil a chance to gain a foothold and to have major influence over your life.

Once he gains influence, he will create confusion; he will create lies, and he will bring destruction. He’ll try to bring destruction and disaster into your life if you don’t take heed and do something about it.

We can relate to Legion, because on some level, we all have things that we’re dealing with, right? We have the world, which is not the world in general, but the world’s system. We have our own flesh, if you would, that wants to be selfish and doing our own thing. Then we have these demons and devils that can tempt, sway us, and lead us at times…But like Legion, if we feel like we have an issue, or we feel like we are trapped or enslaved by something; what do we desire the most? We desire to be free! We desire to be free…See, God sent His Son into the world, not to condemn you, John 3:17. He didn’t send Jesus into the world to rain on your parade, and to spoil all the fun that you want to have! He didn’t send His Son into the world to give you more rules on top of you! He sent His Son into the world to set you free! He doesn’t want us to be in bondage! He doesn’t want us to be enslaved! He doesn’t want us to carry around a ball and chain, and shackles like this. He doesn’t want us to live that way! He has created us to be free!

So we all have troubles like Legion. We have our issues. To use a modern vernacular, we all have our “demons,” right? (We kind of mean that tongue and cheek.) So how do we get set free? Well, we need something explosive! We need something explosive to combat the power of the enemy and our own tendency to do our own thing, and to do stupid things, irresponsible things, sinful things. We need an explosive power! You know what we need? We need something called C-4.

I need your help here! I know we have some folks here who have been in the military, or are currently in the military. Just raise your hand. If you’re in the military, raise your hand please! I want to call on you. I want you to tell me what C-4 is. Yes sir, right there! Say it again? C-4 is plastic explosives! Yes. Sir, what is your name? Paul? Okay—Paul, I’m Ben, it’s nice to meet you! Paul, help me out again, okay? This is the second part of the test. What is the advantage of C-4, besides being able to blow things up? What is the advantage of this type of explosive? What’s one of the advantages? You can set it on fire, and it won’t blow up. What else? Electrical discharges—what else? It’s fun! Can someone else in the military tell me an advantage of C-4? There’s one more advantage. He’s named several, obviously. He’s actually played with the stuff! I won’t continue that…it’s confidential! Help me out, sir! You can mold it! Thank you very much! You can mold C-4 to fit any kind of shape, and put it into cracks and crevices, and dark places, and it still goes BAM!

The C-4 that I’m going to talk about here that can set us free is moldable and malleable to deal with whatever issue, and whatever stuff you feel has you enslaved and trapped.

The first “C” in the C-4, and I encourage you to take notes if you’re not doing that, is conviction. You’ve got to have conviction. This man, Legion, who had all these troubles, and all these demons, somehow had the wherewithal at least to throw himself at the feet of Jesus. He did something that was wrong! Everything wasn’t okay. He threw himself at the feet of Jesus! He was convicted.

Now, here’s the tough thing about conviction, and I’ve experienced this in my own life, and I’ve experienced this in the life of trying to help others. You can’t convict somebody, and I can’t convict somebody of the junk in their life. Have you noticed that? Can’t do it! It doesn’t work! Only God can do that. Your parents can’t do it for you. Grounding, though you needed to be grounded, didn’t do it for you. Getting that ticket didn’t do it for you. Missing that day of work and lying about it didn’t do it for you. You’re still not convicted! Only God can convict you. When God convicts you, He is convicting you not to get “on you”—He is convicting you and me of something that has us that He wants to break us free from. But you’ve got to be convicted. You say, “Well, I’m not convicted.” Well, pray the prayer that’s kind of at the end of Psalm 139. “Lord, search my heart. See if there is any evil way in me” or what’s going on, and allow the spotlight of God’s holiness to shine down in your life in the dark places, and the cracks and crevices. Then when God tells you what’s going on, and you probably know anyway; that leads to the second “C” in C-4, and that is confession.

When we talk about confession, immediately, we go to some Roman Catholic paradigm of going into this cathedral church, and there’s this guy there all dressed in black and white—“Forgive me, Father, for I’ve sinned…” When was the time of your last confession? “It’s been a long time, Father…” It’s not that! By the way, I think confession is a beautiful thing in what the Catholic Church does in that realm. However, that’s not what I’m talking about per se. When I talk about confession, I’m talking about “owning” it; owning whatever it is that’s wreaking havoc in your life. Owning whatever it is that God’s bringing to your mind right now that has you.

When Legion knelt at the feet of Jesus, the Lord finally asked him this one question. What was it? “What is your name?” So when God convicts us, we have to name it. It’s like that slide back there that says, “I am enslaved to ________. I am captivated by _______.” Fill in the blank…lust, greed, pornography, beauty, vanity, money, food, depression, fear. What is it? Fill in the blank. Maybe you need to use the back side of your paper for this test. Maybe you’ve got more than one thing going on; but you’ve got to confess it. You’ve got to own it.

You’ve got to name it by name. “Oh, I can handle it! I can handle this…” You probably can’t. “Oh, it’s really not that big a deal! It’s not that big a deal…” It probably is. It’s going to take C-4—BOOM! To explode that out of your life so you can be free.

Let me say this parenthetically: I’ve seen this happen before on a handful of occasions; someone who was majorly addicted, majorly enslaved to whatever issues you can name. They gave their heart and life to Christ, and BAM! Gone! Never desired to drink or get drunk again. Never desired to do cocaine again. Never desired to steal again. Never desired to do whatever it was they were doing. Never! It was just gone, cold turkey! Christ sets them free immediately! That’s only in about 2% of the people I’ve seen in my experience. For most of us, you’ve got to fight for freedom! It’s an ongoing fight, an ongoing process, an ongoing use of this very moldable, explosive C-4 of conviction and confession that helps you get free.

The third “C” in the C-4 is the Cross. It’s the Cross! The Cross seemed to be pretty important to Paul. Paul was addressing a church in Corinth, which had some major league, whacky-tobaccy, cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs issues. We don’t have time to get into this. Google Corinth and their problems if you want to after church; but here’s what Paul said. Here is what his focus was. All these problems were going on in Corinth; but here is what he said in I Corinthians 1:18, “For the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” POG in the KOG – Power of God in the Kingdom of God. I Corinthians 2:1-2—“When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

Paul is the guy that was involved in killing Christians before his conversion experience, by the way. He had a lot to be forgiven of, didn’t he? We all do…Galatians 6:14, “May I never boast except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

When we go to the Cross; when we really go to the Cross, we experience the incredible forgiveness and cleansing of God from within, and from without. Jesus sent these demons into the pigs, and they were drowned in the lake! God says He will take our sins on the Cross, and He will drown them in the sea of His forgetfulness.

For you business men and women out there, you’re probably thinking, “Wait a minute! Jesus just wiped out the economy of this area! That’s not very ethical of Jesus. Why did he kill their economy?” I don’t know. Maybe one of the reasons why was to show that one man’s life is worth the entire economy of a town. The crowd, once again in all those stories; they wanted to maintain the status quo. “It’s okay! Let’s have this crazy, mean, demonic, lunatic running around and cutting himself, and doing all this nutty stuff! Let’s have that as long as we have our cash!” Jesus came and… No. He said, “His freedom, this man’s freedom is worth more than the economy of this town.” You say, “Well, I don’t feel like I’m worth very much, and I have a very low self-esteem. It’s so low that I can play handball against the curb! I mean, it’s low!” Listen—God loves you so much that Jesus died in your place! Look at the economy of your life from God’s point of view. How much is something worth? How much is this platform, this pulpit worth? A hundred bucks? Two hundred bucks? No! It’s worth however much someone is willing to pay for it. How much is your life worth? It’s worth the death and the blood spilled of the very Son of God! God, help us to get the reality of Your forgiveness and love into our minds, and into our hearts. The Cross has the power to forgive, cleanse and restore, and to set us free! It’s huge; it’s a part of this C-4.

The fourth “C” in the C-4 is critical. Do you know what it is? Community. Trusted community. Whatever it is that’s going on in your life; you’re not going to get rid of it, you’re not going to be conquered by it; you’re not going to experience freedom from it by doing it by yourself. Not gonna happen!

I talked to a friend of mine who is a very gifted Christian counselor. He said, “You know, Ben, I’ve never known anyone to get over any problem of any significance by themselves.” “Oh, I can do this by myself!” No you can’t—you can’t! You’re going to need help from others; help from trusted community; two or three friends who really follow Christ and have really lived it out who you can go to, and confess to, and confide in who can help you in this process.

At our church, we have large gatherings like we’re having here on Sunday mornings, but we also have medium-sized gatherings in our Bible study classes. We have small groups that come out of the Bible study classes. We have support groups, and twelve-step groups. We have LPC, licensed professional counselors on our staff. All to help us in dealing with the problems and the things that enslave us, to help set us free! They are all there, right there for you, right there for us. You’re not going to conquer this; you’re not going to get free by yourself. It’s not gonna happen.

Even Gilligan had the Skipper! Batman had Robin! Malone had Stockton! I mean, come on! Even before the Fall, Adam had Eve, and Eve had Adam! Freedom! C-4 freedom comes from the community, the body of Christ.

We can’t go to the area of the Gerasenes and wait, and here comes Jesus in this speedboat across, and—“Set me free!” It doesn’t work that way! Now He has manifested Himself through the local church. We are His hands, we are His feet, we are the body of Christ, though a broken expression of it! But we experience the presence of Christ, the healing of Christ, the freedom of Christ in local community. It’s the way God designed it.

It’s weird and a little strange, thinking about the downside of airplane security and all that. I was reading this story, and I asked, “I wonder what Legion’s new name was?” As you read the Bible a little bit, you know that when God changes your name, He usually tells you what it’s going to be, right? “Saul, you will be named Paul! Simon! You’ll now be known as the Rock, Peter! Abram, you will now be known as Abraham, the father of many nations.” I wonder what Legions new name was after he was set free? I wonder, what your new name could be when the C-4 explodes in your life and begins to set you free? I heard a song a long time ago that said, “Everyone wants to be closer to free.”

Dear God, I thank You so much that You are God, and we are not, and we just continue to bump our heads against the concrete in the ceilings and walls to figure that out. God, I thank You that mercy and grace is at the center of the universe, and not karma. I thank You that You have come to set us free! God, so many times, we just kind of mess around and play around, and play church. We just play games. You kind of hit us and say, “No more games! It’s time to get real, and it’s time to watch My power unleashed in your life.”

God, I pray for those here today who need to have an in-break of Your grace in their life. God, may they stand and come down these aisles today; Lord, give them the power in a few moments to stand and to come down front and say, “You know what? I want God to set me free today! I want Him to set me free. I want to come to Him. I want to experience Him. I want to have a new name, a new life, and a new beginning.” May they stand and come down front today. May today be the day, right now.

Right now, this is one of the best times in our service, because God gives us an opportunity to respond in the moment to what He’s doing. If you are here and you need to know Him; you need to experience an in-break of His freedom, power, and grace; I want to invite you as the band sings to make your way out from where you are seated. Make your way down one of these aisles. As He leads, and as the band plays; don’t miss this opportunity, this window of freedom! You stand and come.

WOW Statements of Jesus: Part 5 – The Worst Sinner Question

WOW STATEMENTS OF JESUS

The Worst Sinner Question

December 7, 2008

Ben Young

The word repent has negative connotations that follow it; it gets a bad rap in our society. However, Jesus addresses the urgency and importance of repentance throughout the Gospels. In Luke 13:1 and following Jesus is calling His listeners, us, to be urgent today about the action that we take because real life, eternal life is long. In the final message of this series, Ben will unpack this radical passage of Scripture and explain why Jesus speaks with such urgency about repentance.

I’ve got two daughters now that are 10 and 13, and I’ll tell you the amazing thing about kids: They start off as these cute little squishy, chubby little things, and when they get older, all you do is feed them milk and peanut butter sandwiches, and they grow up! People don’t think about how miraculous that is. Just peanut butter, literally, three meals a day, for years and years!

I like sandwiches sometimes. When I was a little kid, my mom would make us peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Have you ever had those? Raise your hand! Yes, I see those hands! Sometimes for an extra dose, she’d put some mayonnaise on there! Yeah, it was delicious! What kind of sandwiches do you like now? I need some testifying. Just raise your hand and tell us what your favorite sandwich is here. I’m sorry I can’t call on you in the E Gym. Just kind of pretend and work with us! Right there on the front row! Roast beef sandwich. I like that! I Iike the French dip sandwich too—it’s kind of the same. Boca burgers! All right! Health food! How about right there? A butter sandwich? Wow! You are a health nut! I want to eat with you! Okay, go ahead! Tuna fish and pickle. Tuna fish is good. It has a good source of protein.

As I was preparing for this sermon, I thought about sandwiches. What we’re talking about today is what we started the year off with in 2008. It really started off at the end of 2007. Now as I look, we’ve gone full circle and have gone all the way through this journey, and it’s like God has us back in the same place. So perhaps through this sandwich, or bookends if you like that better; He is trying to deliver a message to us. I’ll tell you what the sandwich is in a little bit, but it’s good. It’s meaty.

We’re talking about the WOW statements of Jesus. Last week if you were here, we talked about the tenth leper and how we wanted to be like him and stay in a place before God where we’re in a constant state of gratitude and thankfulness, regardless of what’s going on in our bodies, our lives, or our circumstances. We want to maintain the attitude of gratitude and to really have sincere thanks unto God as a powerful, powerful way of living out the K.O.G., the Kingdom of God.

If you have a Bible, turn with me to the Book of Luke. If you don’t have a Bible, you can cheat and look on your neighbor’s paper. If not, the passage will appear on the screen behind me in just a few seconds.

Luke 13:1 and following, “There were some present at the time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, ‘Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you No! But unless you repent, you too will perish! Or those eighteen who died when the tower of Siloam fell on them? Do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will perish.’ Then He told this parable: ‘A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard. He went to look for fruit on it, but he did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, “For three years now, I’ve been coming to look for fruit on the fig tree, and I haven’t found any! Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?” “Sir”, the man replied. “Leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it, and if it bears fruit next year, fine. If not, then cut it down.”’”

When I read this passage, I was kind of like “Whooa! What is going on here?” You have this situation, this bloody massacre at the Temple. You have this natural disaster; this tower falling on these people and it seems like Jesus really doesn’t care! He’s like Brad Pitt after he and Jennifer broke up! He’s lost His sensitivity chip, His compassion! What is going on? Jesus seems rather harsh here. He doesn’t seem to be dealing with the situation at hand. Then to add mystery or an enigma to it; He adds on this parable about a fig tree that’s not producing figs, and it’s going to get cut down, and there’s a negotiation. Hey—give it one more year, and we won’t cut it down! It’s just kind of a random passage, and it makes Jesus look pretty harsh.

We have to talk about what’s going on here. What is happening is, you have these people coming up to Jesus to report the news to Him. We’re surrounded by news today! I mean it’s crazy! We used to have just Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, and Peter Jennings. We used to just have three major networks; now we have news twenty-four seven. People talk to us about politics and the economy. We have news about the weather; people pontificating about it, predicting it. You have sports! Oh my goodness! All the sports networks, sport news, sport interpretation. “Let’s talk about that trade they made in the lower Minor Leagues for the Astros!” Good night! Get a life! So we have all these people—and I love sports, but come on!

Here is what’s happening: You have the reporters if you would, people coming up to Jesus with some news. They said, “Hey Jesus! Did you hear about the guys that got slashed in the Synagogue? Pilate did it!” What had happened, Galileans were pretty tough people. They were pretty zealous as they wanted to rebel against Rome. Word had gotten out that Pilate had taken some of the cash, some of the money from the Synagogue to use it probably to support one of his armies. So the Galileans who had protested this were going to church in a worship service like this one, and it was during the time of giving sacrifices. So it would be like us going to the Lord’s Supper Table, or communion where you have the cup and the bread. While they were doing that, some of Pilate’s henchmen came out and took their Yamaka off and boom, boom, boom! They just blew these people away, and their blood spilled over and mixed with the Lord’s Supper Table. That was the first situation Jesus dealt with—a bloody massacre, a drive-by shooting at church!

The second situation, Jesus brings up. He said, “Hey, how about what happened a while back with that tower that fell over? A natural disaster! These eighteen workers were guilty.”

These reporters wanted Jesus to deal with the whole problem of evil and suffering; the issue of theodicy. If there is a good God and all-powerful God; how do you explain the evil and suffering in the world? They really are kind of pushing Jesus to answer the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Based on what Jesus says, what we can learn from this passage is this: There is a right way and a wrong way to deal with falling towers, because that is the issue at hand here.

The first wrong way to deal with falling towers is to say that suffering is the result of sin. This is kind of the religious view. This is the “Isn’t that special” kind of view; kind of the church-lady view. “Oh, it must have been Satan! You’re living a bad life! You’re going to get cursed!” That is a kind of religious mentality of legalism. You know, “If I do good things; good things will happen to me. If I do bad things; bad things will happen to me. If I see something going on in a friend’s life, or a family member’s life; it must be because they’ve done something wrong.

Now, let me say this: There are times where suffering is a direct result from sin. We’ve all experienced that. When someone has too much to drink, they get behind the wheel of a car and they kill someone…that’s the result of someone’s sin. When someone doesn’t read the warning label on the Camel Unfiltered Cigarettes and they get cancer; that’s the result of them not heeding the warning sign. So some suffering is the result of sin, but not always! Not at all…

There is a line in the song Butterfly Kisses, and when I first heard this song, I’d been married a couple of years but didn’t have any kids yet. I heard it on the radio, and I was like please!! Pass the cheese pizza! That is the cheesiest, smarmiest, campiest song I have ever heard! Then about two years later, my wife gave birth to this beautiful little baby girl, our first-born child. I was driving down the road, and she was in the back seat in her car seat. She had this cute little chubby pudge face, and I looked in the rearview mirror, and Bob Carlisle came on the radio with Butterfly Kisses. He hadn’t finished two lines, and I was boo-hooing like a baby!

I had to check myself to see that I wasn’t going soft or light in the loafer, so I called a friend of mine who played pro-football as an offensive lineman. I said, “Man, have you heard Butterfly Kisses?” “Oh yeah (between sobs), I’ve heard it!” So, I didn’t feel so bad.

Just to stave off any e-mails or letters; I like the song Butterfly Kisses. It’s a very emotional song that tugs at your heartstrings if you have a daughter. But there’s a line in there that kind of reflects this kind of religious view toward suffering and life. He says, “In all that I’ve done wrong, I know that I must have done something right, to deserve a hug every morning, and butterfly kisses at night.” Now, I know Bob was only trying rhyme, but that’s a wrong mentality. It’s the mentality that if I do good things, good things will happen to me; if I do bad things, then bad things will happen to me. Suffering is caused by sin.

Another wrong way to look at falling towers and suffering is that suffering is random. Some say suffering is just random; it’s just an accident. Richard Dawkins, who wrote the New York Times best-selling book God Delusion, is a Darwinian fundamentalist, naturalist, and atheist. Here is what he said in a book he wrote years ago called Out of Eden, talking about suffering here from an irreligious or non-religious point of view: “In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt. Other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it; not any justice. The universe we observe is precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, and no other good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows, nor cares; DNA just is.”

So Dawkins, and Sam Harris, and other people coming from an atheistic or agnostic perspective would say, “Suffering simply is.” All the suffering, all the pain, all the evil, and all the towers falling on us we feel in our lives; they are simply the dance of DNA. That may read well in a textbook; it may sound great on a debate on CNN or FOX; but in the real world, explaining the problem of evil and suffering as the dance of DNA as a random chance simply doesn’t wash!

Tell that to the person who’s been raped, that her attacker was just responding to the dance of his DNA. Tell that to the person who was molested—“Oh, that was just the dance of DNA.” Tell that to the person that has been abused, or someone has left them—“That was just the dance of their DNA. Tough luck.” Doesn’t work! There is a right way, and a wrong way to deal with towers falling on us. Some would say the religious view—it’s always because of sin. “You must have done something wrong to deserve that; or you did something right.” Suffering is the dance of DNA.

Listen: The life of Jesus cuts through both of those options. It refutes both those wrong options. Think about it! Jesus lived a perfect life, and Jesus suffered with great purpose. So Jesus, the Son of God, showed us what God is like, but He also showed us what it is like to be really human. He lived a perfect life, and yet He experienced horrendous abuse, betrayal, and suffering. At the same time, Jesus suffered with a purpose. It was not random, because He is God who became flesh. He entered into our suffering and pain for us! So when we go to God in prayer; when we go to God when the towers fall on us, we’re not going to a God who doesn’t understand. We don’t go to a God who is “way up there at a distance,” the Old Man upstairs, the power, the force. No, we go to a God who is powerful and is up there, who is transcendent, but who has come down to earth and who has entered into our pain and suffering. He didn’t just tell us how to relieve pain and suffering as Buddha did, no! He entered in and took the pain for us! He took the argument a step further…

So the fact that Jesus died and his death and life was one of suffering with a purpose refutes those two religious and irreligious arguments. Towers, towers, towers… They fall on everyone, don’t they? Live long enough, and a tower is going to fall on you. When a tower falls on us, the first thing we want to do is cry out, “Why God? Why? Why did You let my dad leave us when I was just a little kid? God, why did you allow my friend, my close friend to die at such a young age? God, why do I have this disease in my body that I’ve got to fight and struggle against? God, why?” The Bible is full of those “why” questions. Job is the oldest Book in the Bible, and he asks that question, “God, why?” I encourage you to read the Psalms. If a big, huge tower is falling on you, it’s full of asking God “why?” We’re asking God why when we’re bleeding, and hurting, and crying out. We need to run to the church. We need to run to people in the community. We need to run to pastors and counselors—people who have been through that and can be with us, embrace us, and listen to us.

However, in the context of this passage, this is not what Jesus is dealing with. Jesus is not really dealing with the whole issue of the problem with evil and suffering. He’s not doing that. He talks about that in other places. He’s doing something else. He’s talking to us about the right way to deal with falling towers.

To understand what Jesus is talking about in this passage where He seems to have lost that compassion/sensitivity chip; we have to go back to Luke, chapter 12. Remember when you’re reading and studying the Bible and you see something, you’re like “Hmmmm, what does that mean?” The best thing to do is read the verses before it, the verses after it, and if you still can’t figure it out, read the chapter before it and the one after it. If you still can’t figure it out; read the entire book! Then you read the entire New Testament and entire Bible. It will take you awhile; but the bottom line is this: context is king!

Let’s go back to Luke 12. Jesus tells the story about this rich rancher. This guy was killing it! He was making money hand over fist. Everything was working for him in the stock market. He thought that was going to last forever! He had all this cash; he had all this money! He had so much cash flow and deals, he was simply going to live high on the hog and live off the interest! Things were great for this rich rancher! But Jesus said as this guy was thinking to himself, “You know, next year, I’m just gonna live off the fat and the interest.” Jesus said, “You idiot! Don’t you know tonight you’re going to have a heart attack, and you’re going to have to give an account for your entire life before God?”

So the context of this passage here in Luke 13 is one of urgency. Luke says that Jesus had His face set toward Jerusalem. He was going to the Cross, okay? He was telling the people there about the K.O.G., the Kingdom of God, and He was urgent about His message. He wanted them to see this urgency in the context of the uncertainties of life, because life is very uncertain. It is very unpredictable, and sometimes, it comes to us, and it appears all these things are happening in our lives in a random way. We never know how much time we have. So Jesus is calling His listeners as He’s calling us today, to be urgent about the action that we take.

Then we look further, and we see the sandwich finally, the other piece of bread that we started off with in 2007. What’s the message? The message is one word, throwing out the “R” word—repent. That’s what He says. If you can dial back about twelve months ago, we looked at the first command that Jesus gave when he resigned from the carpentry company He was working with at about the age of 30; when He walked off the work site there. The book of Mark tells us He went around and said, “The time has come! The K.O.G. is at hand! The Kingdom of God is at hand! Repent and believe the Good News!”

We have to realize also, who is Jesus talking to? He is talking not to the down-and-out. He’s not talking or consoling the people who lost loved ones in the slaughter in the Synagogue by Pilate’s henchmen. I don’t think He’s comforting the family members of the people who the tower fell on, the tower of Siloam. No, no! He’s talking to the people who have not experienced the tower falling on them yet. These people are good people. They are religious people. They are Bible-believing people. They are Bible memorizing people. They are people of prayer, and He is calling them to repent. Repent!

Now, repent gets a bad rap in our society, doesn’t it? When you think of repent, what do you think about? You think of some downtown city in New York or Houston, and somebody, some really mean guy, usually some big ole white dude with a big, red face and a big ole black, King-James Bible. He’s pounding that and says, “Repent ye sinners! Turn or burn! You’re gonna fry like a sausage in hell!” The guy is just letting people have it as they’re trying to get to work, and go their way, and not spill their Starbucks on their suit. So many times when we hear the word repent, we think of it in purely negative terms.

The Amplified Bible says this. It should be on the screen here. “Repent means to change your mind for the better, and heartily amend your ways with an abhorrence of your past sins…” So repentance is like you’re going this way. You repent and do a 180, and you go this way. When you repent, you turn away from something, and in some cases someone in your life who you know is wrong for you. They may be destructive and the relationship is unhealthy for you. You turn away from that and go in a different direction. That’s what it means to repent. It means to turn away.

Jesus is telling His listeners—“Turn away now.” They wanted to deal with Jesus—“Hey, let’s talk about the problem with evil and suffering, and why bad things happen to good people…” Jesus said, “I’m not going to deal with that now. I’ve got a guy coming along named Paul who hates us now, but he’s going to like us. He’s going to deal with that better!” Jesus said, “I want to deal with your heart, because I’m more concerned about the bitterness and hatred in your heart than I am about the people killed by Pilate. I’m more concerned that you need to turn right now away from what’s going on in your life that‘s wrong. I want to deal with you now!”

Jesus is great at Judo! He used someone else’s energy against them. He uses this rapport and uses it against them. He reframes the question. He does an intellectual boomerang and just totally catches His listeners off guard and hits them in the heart, instead of the head. He says, “Unless you repent; unless you turn away, you’re going to experience some devastating consequences, now and forever.”

They have a saying “Life is short.” You know what? Life is long! Life is short, right? That’s existentialism! “Life is short! You’re gonna die! You’d better really make that choice! Authenticate yourself!” No, life is long! Life is forever! We’re going to live some place forever, and ever, and ever, and ever! Yeah, this life is short; but real life, eternal life is a long time. Jesus says to turn away and repent. He says to do it today.

As I’ve been teaching today, there have been some things that might have popped up in your mind or your heart that you know you need to turn away from. You know you need to repent from them. You need to repent today; not tomorrow. Not, “Oh, that’s a good idea! I’m gonna do that on Tuesday at 4:00!” Or young people—not “After I sew my wild oats. Then I’ll get right with God!” Or this is better—“When things slow down, then I’m gonna…” I’ve kind of noticed, things have not slowed down for me yet. I’ve been waiting for things to slow down. All we have is now. All we have is this moment, and God gives us this moment and this window of opportunity to turn away and repent, and to come to Him. That’s what He wants us to do. That’s a part of being in the K.O.G., the Kingdom of God. Gratitude, living in the spirit of Thanksgiving, that’s not just a November thing—the turkey, dressing and football! No! That is a life-long deal. If I’m going to be in the Kingdom of God, I’ve got to learn how to have gratitude in the midst of my life. I’ve got to learn how to repent, how to turn away, how to turn away when God tells me, “Hey, this is wrong in your life.” It may be an action; it may be a relationship; it may be an attitude. He says, “You’ve got to turn away from that now! All you have is now!”

Then Jesus throws in the fig tree story. What’s that all about? The fig tree wasn’t producing fruit. That represents you and me! God is the owner of this vineyard, and He’s looking down. He says, “All right, I’ve been waiting on this guy/gal for a long time! I don’t see any fruit! Bam! I’m going to cut it down.” The gardener comes and negotiates with him, “Don’t cut it down.”

By the way—Matthew and Mark, “Just cut it down!” There’s not a year. Luke is kind of wanting to show the grace of God, working through the Apostles, working through the preaching of Peter and Paul in the Book of Acts, and before the fall of the Temple in 70 A.D., so he adds on this deal where, “Hey—one more year! Give us one more year! We’re going to fertilize and put some manure here and put on our John Deere hat and our tractor, and we’re going to make this thing grow. If it doesn’t grow after that, okay, chop it down!”

But what is this? The fig tree story is a story of God extending grace! He’s saying, “Listen: God’s giving you another opportunity before He chops down the tree.” Here’s what is just wild.

This is one thing I guess I wouldn’t believe unless I’d seen it—I’m sorry. But you can’t repent and turn to God when you want to. You can’t! There are windows of opportunity that God gives you in your life to turn, and turn away; and sometimes that window is shut, and you can’t do it! I’ve been with people on their death bed. I’ve seen it happen! They really, really wanted to turn to God. They really, really wanted to turn away. I mean they’re about to die! Can’t do it. The window’s not open. It says repent today while you still have time. I’m giving you another window; I’m giving you another opportunity just like this fig tree to grow, to produce.

I like what Peter says in II Peter 3:9. He says, “The Lord is not slow about His promise as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” God is patient.

Listen: Don’t mistake space, or room to repent as permission to sin. Maybe you’re doing your own thing, man, and you’ve got this little deal going on the side, and you’ve yet to experience the full ramifications and full consequences of this little pocket in your life; this attitude, this lifestyle. You think because the consequences aren’t kicking in yet, you can continue to do whatever it is you’re doing! No, no, no! Don’t mistake room to repent for permission to sin! Don’t do it!

Here’s the deal too: It’s a lot easier to hear a message like this; it’s easy for me to do that and say, “You know what, that was a good message for my neighbor! I wish my neighbor had been here to hear that!” Or, “There’s a jerk at work that I have to put up with! Oh, does he need to be here to hear this. He needs to repent. There’s this girl at school who is in the popular crowd. She’s so stuck up! Good night! She needs a 15 foot pole to pick her nose, and she needs to be here to repent!” No. Maybe they do! But do you know who needs to repent? You. Repentance is the door and the path to the K.O.G. Repentance is how we get into a relationship with God. Repentance is how we grow in a relationship with God. It’s the door and the path.

Martin Luther, when he nailed those 95 theses of protest on the Wittenberg Door in the 16th century said this about repentance in the 95 theses: “Our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” It’s a part of being in the K.O.G. It’s part of following Christ, a continually turning away, turning away when God points something out and convicts you; when He shouts at you! When He whispers to you to turn away now.

The good news about repentance is that we’re not just turning away—“OOOhhh, I got to leave this! Oh, it’s so negative! I got to…” No, no, no! What did Jesus say in Mark? Turn away and what? Believe the Good News. So we turn away from whatever this is—you fill in the blank, and we embrace the Good News! The Gospel means the proclamation of Good News! What is the Good News?

There is a lot of good news. First of all, the ultimate big tower will not fall upon you, because it has already fallen upon Jesus. Isn’t that great? The ultimate big tower—BAM! The hammer of God’s judgment upon your life, and upon my life as a sinner will not fall upon you because it has already fallen upon Jesus. Jesus took the big tower for us.

Think about it this way: How many times in your life have you lied and not paid the full consequences for it? How many times have you lusted and not paid the full consequences for it? How many times have you coveted, wanting something that wasn’t yours and not paid the full consequences for it? How many times have you been angry and not paid the full consequences for it? How many times have you been disobedient and not paid the full consequences for it? That’s because Jesus has taken the big tower for you! Like the old hymn says, “Jesus Paid it All.” The great news about embracing the Good News is that not only does He forgive us and wipe out our sin, but He gives to us Christ’s very righteousness.

I’m going to pick on Baptists for a moment. Baptists are big on, “Hey, come on! You gotta walk down the aisle! He’ll take away your sins! You can be forgiven! You gotta repent! You can be forgiven!” That’s great to be forgiven! We live in a very unforgiving world and unforgiving culture. It’s great to be forgiven; but there’s so much more, because what does God say? Not only does He forgive us, but He gives us Christ’s very righteousness. So it’s an exchange! We give God our sin and our guilt; He gives us Christ’s righteousness, His perfect law-keeping! We have an F on our report card.

I remember playing basketball in the 9th grade in South Carolina, and a friend of mine got an F, and the coach was checking grades, and he put a plus, an F+. Isn’t that great? The coach looked—“F+? Ronald, what’s that?” We have an F+ on our report card. We trust in Christ. He has an A+ in His moral track record, and that’s credited into our account.

The Gospel is this: It’s not that you give to God a record of righteousness to be saved, or made right. You have to receive from God a record of righteousness in order to be saved. That’s good news! Not only are we forgiven and are given righteousness; God accepts us as if we’re Jesus and had lived His perfect life. He also puts the big power inside of our lives.

The big tower fell on Jesus; and the big power, God’s Spirit lives inside of your life and inside of my life. I can’t explain that! It’s supernatural until you’ve experienced God’s power working in you, living inside of you! It’s unbelievable!

Paul says in Romans 8 the same power that raised Jesus from the dead; that same power dwells inside of you, and dwells inside of me if we’re a Christ follower. Jesus said this, “Apart from Me, you can do some things…” No, He didn’t say that! He said, “Apart from Me, you can do a little bit…” No! He said, “Apart from Me, you can do nothing! Nothing!” But through Christ, I can do all things, everything through Him; through His Spirit, through His power. Listen: If I’m not conscious, without driving in the big power of God’s Spirit; I can’t negotiate Houston traffic in a healthy way. I can’t do it. I’m not spiritual enough to put the Jesus fish on my car yet. I’m not there yet! To love the way I need to love; to work the way I need to work; to manage life, I’ve got to have the big power of God’s Spirit dwelling inside of me! That’s what happens. His power comes to live inside of us, to help us live out this radical lifestyle of grace and truth in the K.O.G. The big tower fell upon Him, so it doesn’t ultimately fall upon us. The big power of God’s Spirit comes inside of us to live in us and give us life, hope and energy. God just doesn’t leave us to our own devices. It wouldn’t work!

I like Peter in the Bible. He’s great! You’ve got to like him! He’s so bold, stepping out there. Jesus says, “I’m gonna die!” “I’m gonna die with You, Lord! All these other people that are cowards… But not me!” “Oh no, no, no, Peter!” Jesus says, “Wake up, buddy! You’re going to deny me three times before the cock crows!” Peter denies Him. Peter fails, but Peter gets back up. He fails, but he gets back up. Even after Pentecost, he preached this great sermon and thousands came to Christ, but he still has all this racial prejudice working inside of him. What’s up with that, Peter? But he keeps on following Him, and he keeps on trusting. He keeps on getting filled with the Spirit.

Peter wrote these words about repentance that are really good. This is the love here, right? Where’s the love in the message? Where’s the love in repentance, turning away and embracing? Where’s the love? It’s right here! Check it out. Here it is—Acts 3:19—“Repent then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord.” I like hat. So that times of refreshing, times of refreshing that come from the Lord. That’s Good News! That’s a good sandwich.

Dear God, I thank You that You are a good God. God, I thank You that You give us windows of opportunity to turn away, and to turn towards You. God, I thank You that there are sinners here in this gym today, because I’m here, and we’re all here. We were all beggars in search of bread, and all of us need to turn to You today.

God, some people here today have never really turned to You. In other words, they’re not in the door yet. They may think they’re in the door, but they’ve not opened the door of the grace, truth and reality of Who You are, and they need to stand and walk down front today, Father. There are some men here who need to stand up and walk down front. There are some students and some singles that need to stand and walk down front and say, “I’m not playing games any more. I’m turning away from the junk in my life, and I’m embracing this Good News. I don’t understand it all. I still have doubts. I still have fears, but I know that I’ve got to follow God. I’ve got to have Him in my life, and I’ve got to be on this path.” Father, may they stand and come down front today, those who need to make that commitment.