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The Story of Job - His Lessons Sermon Series: The Story of Job Ryan DB Kimmel Lead Pastor Peace Church Main Passage: Job 38-42 Transcript Today is the day that the Lord has made so let us rejoice and be glad in it and everyone said... Amen We are closing up a sermon series on Job today and I'll be completely honest with you here for a moment These last five weeks as we've been walking through the story of Job. I felt like I'd been carrying two concrete blocks for the entire five weeks. And I totally recognize that all y'all don't think about the sermon every single day of your life, but I do. And as I've been thinking about this series for five weeks, it's just been like carrying these two blocks around. And today, I kind of get to set them down. But on the flip, the weight of this series is something, in a sense, we should always be carrying. But not only are we letting go of something, but my prayer is that as we come to the end of the story, we're also receiving some truth today that impacts everything about us. And I wanna start, I wanna end this series with the way that we started, by reminding us of something about the Book of Job. I fully understand that not everyone in here is at a point in their life where you need a sermon series on suffering and loss and pain. I understand that many of us are feeling like we're living our best life right now, that things are good, but I'm telling you on this side of eternity, pain and suffering are parts of the problem. And a sermon series like Joe may not feel like one that you need right now, but I'm telling you, at some point in your life, you're going to come to a point where you're going to want to revisit the truths that we talked about in this series. So here's what I'm going to say to you. Whether or not you feel like it right now, I think this is a good sermon, this is a good book of the Bible, this is a good message series to kind of put in your back pocket for when the time comes that you need to take it out and put it in your heart. Today, we see the conclusion of the Book of Job. And while we see a conclusion, I'm not sure we see full, full resolution. We see restoration in a sense, but there's a part of Job that we're always going to have to wrestle with. And even I, as I think about this message, and I think about the book of Job, and I've been immersed in it, it just feels like, you ever been so tired that you can't fall asleep? Like that's what it kind of feels like. There's just so much here, but I just can't seem to reconcile it all. It's like I have all the equations and I know the math problem, but I still can't seem to solve it. Do you know what that's called? That's called wrestling with faith. And every Christian needs to be doing it. And if you're not, then I dare say you're not growing in faith. Because here's the beautiful thing about Christianity, yes, we get to know God, but just because you get to know God doesn't mean you get to know all the answers. This is why we call it faith. And yes, I'm annoyed by popular pastors in our day who love to pose questions but never provide answers. Those guys annoy me, to be honest with you. I don't want to be that guy, but in a sense, I think there's, when we come to the book of Job, I think there is in a sense that all we can really do is sit with Job in his misery as we behold the grandeur of God together. And as we see the book of Job come to a conclusion today, I think that's what hopefully we begin to pick up. You know, the story of Job is the story of a good man who suffered immensely, but it's also the story of a man who tries to rationalize and justify his suffering, and it gets him in trouble along the way. You see, at the start of the story of Job, when he begins to suffer, we see him handle it rightly in a sense. Like, he accepts that even in the midst of his suffering, he accepts that God is good and that in this life there's gonna be good times and bad times. It's one of the beautiful things Job shows us in the beginning. But as his suffering continues, we see it continue to chip away at him. And then he has these friends of his come in and they begin to speak. And while there's some helpful things to an extent, they kind of speak out of turn and it doesn't ultimately help the situation. Because what we see is Job, he begins to question not his suffering, he begins to question God. And then he cries out to God for an answer. He wants God to respond and speak into his suffering. And then what we see is the age old proverb proved true yet again, be careful what you wish for. Because God does speak actually directly to Job, personally and profoundly. And after all this questioning and wrestling, God speaks and God begins to speak in Job chapter 38. You can turn there now if you want, but I'm going to read to you this part before we get to Job's response but here's how here's how God begins to respond to Job chapter 38 Job chapter 38 verses well I'll read verses 1 to 7 says then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge, dressed for action like a man. I will question you and you will make it known to me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding, who determined its measurements? Surely you know. Or who stretched the line up upon it? On what were its bases sunk? Or who laid its cornerstones when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. What we see here with this introduction of God beginning to respond to Job is we see God explained to Job, Job's place in the universe and Job's lack of understanding. Need I remind you that that God speaks not from a little dust devil, but out of a tornado. And if you've ever seen a tornado up close, you read the book of Job differently, or at least certainly this part. This was an overwhelming whirlwind that God speaks. And God speaks and he basically says to Job, how dare you question me when you know so little. God says, you're so smart, Job, you think you can question me? Job, tell me about when I made the world. Give me the measurements of the earth. When I made the heavens and the earth, tell me what it was like when heaven sang before me. God basically is saying to Job, Job, if you're gonna dare ask me about life's hardest questions, then you better know the answer to life's easiest ones first. And for nearly a hundred verses, this goes on from God to Job. And I love what God says in chapter 39, verse 1. Yes, God is speaking in like these grand ways, but he gets real specific. God goes on to say in 39, verse 1, he says, do you know the gestation period of the animals around you? He's saying, Job, if you don't know the simple facts about nature, how dare you question my supernatural plans? God is saying to Job, and I think it's a lesson we need to hear as well, God is saying to Job, you couldn't even win a round of jeopardy, how dare you have the audacity to question me? Some of you were just slain in the heart over that statement and some of you didn't hear what I just said, so I'm gonna say it again. God is saying you couldn't even win a round of jeopardy, how dare you think you know enough to question me." Church, to ask God why, to ask God the question why, is to seek an answer to a question that we don't even understand the premise of. So God gives a nearly 100 verse response to Job and let's see how Job responds. If you haven't yet, would you please turn to the last book of Job. We're going to read verses one to six together. And I'll tell you, as we read this passage, one of the beautiful things that we see is that we see Job's faith begin to shine again. But this time, Job's faith isn't going to shine through his repentance. So God speaks, and let's hear Job's final response, and let's hear the lessons that he learned. Would you hear the word of the Lord? Job, chapter 42, verses one to six. Then Job answered the Lord and said, I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Job is quoting God here. Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know. Again we see Job quote God. Hear and I will speak, I will question you and you will make it known to me. Job's response. I have heard of you by the hearing of an ear, but now my eyes see you. Therefore I despise myself and I repent in dust and ashes. This is God's word. Let's pray and we'll continue. Let's pray together. Father in heaven above, Lord, we come before you, the God of heaven and earth, the God who knows the answers to every question, the God who is over all, the author of life, the one who commands the stars, and yet you make yourself known to us. Lord, please would you help us by the power and the presence of your Holy Spirit to see the beauty of your truth in your word here today, and it's in the precious and powerful name of Jesus that we pray these things. And everyone said, amen. All right, so there is so, so, so much we could say about the book of Job. But as we close up and we look at this final section here, if I could give you just one thought, it'd be this. And listen, Job is a multi-layered book. If we try to make it simple, we're going to miss a lot. So this is going to be a little thicker than normal, but I think it's important to hear. If I give you one thought from this passage, it would be this. Job's response shows us that our questions of why did God allow this drives us not to more clear answers from God, but to a more profound awareness of God. As we look at our passage, we don't see Job's questions get answered, but we do see a new awareness of God from Job. So Job's response shows us that our questions of why did God allow this, it drives us not to more clear answers from God, but to a more profound awareness of God. As we look at our passage today, what we need to see is that Job, for all of his shortcomings, Job responds rightly. As we look at our passage, here's how we'd break it down this morning. Job responds rightly because he recognizes God's providence, he realizes his own ignorance, he receives God's providence. Providence, okay. Now as Christians, as you all who call yourself a Christian and who follow Jesus, as you're out there proclaiming the name of Jesus and sharing the gospel, because that's what Christians should be doing, right, as you're out there engaging the world, one of the things I've constantly said and I constantly prove true in my own life is that you need to define your terms. It's very easy in our world for two people to have a heated conversation using the same words but with different meaning. And so especially in our day and age as we Christians, as we all together get out there and share the name of Jesus, we got to make sure that we're we're defining our terms that we're having fruitful conversations. And so as we talk about this big word providence, here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna turn to your neighbor and give him your definition of Providence. Ready, go. Just kidding. Some of you are scared out of your mind. Some of you are like, let's go. Some of you are like, I need one more cup of coffee. Providence. Now, Webster's Dictionary defines it like this. Providence means divine guidance or care. Now that's a fine definition but for us Christians, we have a much fuller understanding of Providence and there's a helpful tool that helps us understand this. So real quickly, who here grew up learning and maybe even memorizing the Heidelberg Catechism? Fair amount. Alright, well you'll know this one then. Hatterberg Catechism says on Lord's Day 10, question and answers 27, it addresses this. I'll put it up here, but I'll read it for us. The question for us is, what do you understand by the providence of God? That's the question, here's the answer. The providence of God. The almighty and ever-present power of God, by which God upholds as with his hands, heaven and earth and all creatures and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty, all things in fact come to us not by chance but by his fatherly hands. Sovereign and he is in control and nothing is beyond his control. Now some of you are probably like Thanks for the theological lesson there pastor Ryan. How is this gonna matter to me tomorrow morning? Good question. I'll let Jesus answer that one Jesus says in Matthew 10 are not two sparrows sold for a penny and Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. Even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Jesus is telling us even the most minute details of creation God is intimately aware of. You best believe He's got His eyes on you, and His hand is guiding us. What the Bible tells us, what the creeds explain, and what Jesus beautifully tells us is exactly what Job says. And Job answered the Lord and said, I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Meaning God is in control and there's nothing anyone or anything can do about it. And while, yes, this doesn't ease our pain and suffering and loss. It at least lets us know that there is a good God in heaven who can bring good even from bad. And me being a father, the head of my own household, when my children don't understand why I leave the home the way I do, or why I discipline them the way I do, or why I don't give them everything they want, while my kids may not understand my decisions, I want them to take comfort that I, their father, love them and I am in control. And as we think about the reality that that is true for God our Father, that should provide some level of comfort to us faithful ones in a very confusing world. Job, Job for his moments of pride and questioning and judging God, he comes back to realize that God's in control and that he is not. Theologically, we'd put it like this. God is omnipotent, meaning he is all powerful. And because he's all powerful, he's in control. Even when suffering comes, nothing's outside of his control. So when tomorrow comes, what does this mean? It means that you have a good God in heaven, so you walk faithfully before him and trust him with the rest. You trust what he's doing. Job responds rightly because he recognizes God's providence and secondly, he realizes his own ignorance. Job starts by quoting what God had said earlier. Earlier, God said in 38 verse 2, He says, Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Job quotes God and then Job gives his answer. He says, Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand. Things too, what's the word here? Other venues say it too. What's the word here? Things too wonderful. Wonderful for me, which I did not know. Job realizes his own ignorance and he acknowledges his own pride and you know what happens? You know what we begin to see happen here? This leads to Job understanding and acceptance. When we stand puffed up in our pride, what we are doing is we are showing the world a strong connection between arrogance and ignorance, because that's what pride is. Job, in a massive demonstration of humility, he realizes his own ignorance and he confesses this before God and before the world. And so taking a cue from Job, I want to do the same before the church and before the world. If I may, I want to share the same with you, my church. I confess to you, I do not know all that there is to know. Surprise, surprise. I do not know the answer to every Bible question that a member of this church may ask. I don't want to be someone who stands up here and utters what I do not understand But I can tell you there is one who fully understands if first we say that God is omnipotent meaning he's all-powerful then we also will say that God is omniscient meaning that he is all-knowing So when we don't know and we don't understand what God is up to we need to know that God knows. And with Him being all powerful, and Him being all knowing, then we can begin to understand how we can be so trusting towards Him. And as we see God accepting God's control, and God's knowledge, we see Him realizing His own ignorance. Therefore, I have uttered things which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Job responds rightly, because he recognizes God's providence, because he realizes his own ignorance, and because he receives God's revelation. Again, Job quotes what God had said earlier. God said to Job, here, and I will speak, I will question you, and you will make it known to me. And as we get to Job's response, before we do, I just, if you're thinking, if you're sitting there thinking, Pastor Ryan, what's with all the creedal statements and these big theological words? This is all getting too heady and philosophical. If that's where you're at, let me just, let me just prepare you for Job's response, because Job's response, while poetic, is so very human. And I love his response. Job responds and says, I have heard of you by the hearing of an ear, but now my eyes see you. Job says, God, I knew of you, but now I know you. And listen, I don't think Job physically, literally saw the face of God. I think he was standing looking at a tornado, at a whirlwind. But what he is saying, Job is saying, is I've gone from needing answers from you to having an awareness of you. To truly receive God's revelation is to be in a relationship with Him. It's not just knowing about God, it's knowing God. And what we see is Job, Job is moving philosophical approach to personal awareness and that is faith. I have a friend who when this friend was 32 years old he was shot in a hunting accident and went completely blind. 32 years old, had a young wife and four small children and in a moment moment he was never able to see again. His sight was taken away in an instant. And when he realized he would never see his kids age, when he realized he would never again see his wife smile, he lost his will to live and he went to a real And then some Christian, not a pastor, mind you, and then some Christian shared the gospel with him. And he heard the gospel. And he came to know Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. He came to know God as his Father, and he started walking in step with the Holy Spirit as his advocate and comforter. This was after he had gone blind. He heard and received the gospel. You know what this guy did? He became a missionary. He went and got Bible training and missionary training and he went out on the field. I was driving with him one day in his truck. Don't worry, I was driving. He always wore these big sunglasses to hide his scars. And we were driving and I remember saying to him, I can't imagine, I can't imagine what you went through. And he said to me, Ryan, "it took me going blind to see the light." And listen to me, I know that sounds incredibly cliche, but when you sit and you hear that from a blind man, I'm telling you now, that is one of the most overwhelming things I've ever heard in my entire life. Even in this moment, I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about that conversation. As a young man, I remember sitting there thinking, this is straight out of Amazing Grace. I once was blind, but now I see. I sat there and I listened to the truth and the strength of this man's voice, and I remember thinking, I want to see God like this blind man does. I want what he has. But you know what? It took immense suffering for my friend to come to a place where he could say, it took me going blind to see the lights. And it took immense suffering for Job to say, I have heard of you, but now my eyes see you. Do you know what Job got? Do you know what Job received? He got closer to God. He got an awareness of his maker. See, at first, Job became aware of God's omnipotence, that God was all-powerful. And then we see Job become aware of God's omniscience that he's all-knowing and now Job is beginning to see God's omnipresence That God is all present everywhere all the time and you know what this means for you This means in your anxiety in your suffering in your loss in your depression in your broken marriage God is there God is present and this is the greatest revelation of all. I think one of the hardest things for Christians who can hear my voice right now and I'm speaking to you is that comfort is a defining feature of our lives and comfort is blinding but suffering is revealing. We see this in Job. Job responds rightly because he recognizes God's providence, he realizes his own ignorance, and he receives God's revelation. And lastly, Job responds rightly because he repents. He repents of his own faithlessness. You know, I talk to a lot of people about God, and if anyone tells me that they have encountered God, but repentance isn't part of their testimony? I'll be completely honest with you, I begin to question what they really encountered. Because every time I read the Scriptures, you see someone encounter God, repentance is part of the equation. Job, who was declared righteous by God, yet falls into sin during his suffering, Job encounters God and what's his response? Repentance. Therefore, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. And what we see Job doing here is what Job should have been doing all along. And this is the lesson for us. Job tried to seek answers when he should have just been sitting with God. To truly know God, to truly know God is to know that God is God and we are not. And I know that's a simple statement, but when you understand the reality of that, it changes everything. To know that God is God and you are not, and our response to him is to turn from our sin, that's called repentance, and to turn towards him. And listen, I know something that you all know as well. And you in the other venues, you know this as well. Repentance is not a fun word. Nobody likes to talk about repentance. Why? Because we want a God, we like a God who accepts us just the way we are. We don't want a God who's going to call us to repent. But let me remind you, Jesus Christ, when he started his ministry, the first thing he said, actually the very first word that Jesus said, well let's read it. Matthew 4, 17. From that time on, Jesus began to preach, saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Why does Jesus call us to repent? Because he knows that we're all a bunch of terrible wretches? Well, that's part of the equation, but there's also another reason. Because Jesus is calling us to something better, the only thing that is truly good in this world. Jesus is calling us to turn from our sin and turn towards God. Jesus is calling us to something better, something better than our desires, something better than what the world offers, something better than being accepted by popular culture. Jesus calls us into our relationship with God and that first starts by us turning from our sin as we turn towards God, a God who is good even when things are not. For Job, he repents and that's the right response. As he enters into a renewed relationship with God we see something beautiful happen. We see restoration for Job. The end of Job concludes like this, and the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than the beginning. And if you remember the beginning of Job, we actually see that the numbers here double for his animals and his property. These numbers double. Verse 12, and the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than the beginning. And he had 14,000 female donkeys. But we don't see the number of children double though. We see the exact same number of children that Job had in the beginning that he lost. And he also had seven sons and three daughters. Why doesn't God double the amount of children? Because if you lost a child, you know there's no replacing the child. God just gives Job children again. Verse 16, And after this Job lived a hundred and forty years, and he saw his sons and his sons' sons to four generations, man and full of days." What we see here is this momentary and earthly restoration of Job points to an eternal and heavenly restoration that can only be provided by Jesus. See, Job was restored, but he still went on to die, but Jesus died so that we would go on to live. For when we repent and place our faith in Jesus, we're turning from that which ultimately kills us to that which ultimately gives us ultimate life. And this happens because Jesus, who was sinless, gave his life on the cross in our place, taking our judgments, the judgment we deserve, so that when we place our faith in Jesus, recognizing and receiving what he's done for us, that's when we get grace. That's when we get forgiveness. That's when we get salvation. That's when we get hope. That's when we get to know God's unending love. And that's better than anything the world can offer you. So when Jesus calls us to repent, he's calling us to turn from that which kills us to that which gives us life. See, Job suffered when he sinned, but Jesus suffered because we sinned. And while Job's life and fortunes were restored, Jesus gave his life so that we could be spiritually, and eternally restored. Because we've all fallen and lost our place before God. And Jesus is the one who brings us back. Job, yes, was restored, but Jesus was resurrected. resurrected and Jesus' true physical resurrection is the guarantee and promise of our Restoration to our place before the God who loves us and it points to our future restoration at the final restoration of all things This is the picture of the end the culmination of our faith the restoration and the renewal of all things where everything is Headed except Christians are the ones who long for it to happen the most because this is the end of our hope. This is the destination of our faith, sitting before our God in heaven who rules and reigns because he's good and he calls to us. Christianity is truly about truly knowing God and God's love through his son Jesus. As we walk in the power of the spirits on this side of eternity, we may never get the answers to our questions, but we know the one to whom we are asking these questions. And in a sense, this is what Job shows us. Job's response shows us that our questions of why did God allow this drives us not to more clear answers from God, but to a more profound awareness of God. And our awareness of God is now fully realizing our Emmanuel, our God with us. And his name's not Job, it's Jesus. Amen. Would you please stand? Would you bow your heads and let's prepare our hearts for worship? Father we come before you, the God, Lord you reveal yourself but you don't reveal every answer to every question we ask, Lord, but what you do promises yourself. So, Father, I pray, Lord, that as we are in the midst of times of brokenness and suffering, or as we look for a day when maybe those will come. Father, I pray that all things at all times we remember that you are with us and you hold us. So, Father, I pray, Lord, that we would cast ourselves into your loving, strong arms as we remember that you are the one who is in control. And you are good all the time. And you hold us and you hold us fast. We pray these things and we sing these praises in Jesus' name. We pray these things and we sing these praises in Jesus' name. And everyone said, Amen.

Be Discerning Sermon Series: Words To Live By Ryan DB Kimmel Lead Pastor Peace Church Main Passage: Proverbs 24:1-4 Transcript I'm not gonna debate this, but whether or not our response to the pandemic was needed in order to save humanity, what we do know now is that it is very detrimental to the generation born during the pandemic. It's setting them back generations. Now, IQ is not the be all to end all. We know this, even the inventor of the IQ said this. But for the fact that we've seen marked increase in our average IQ over a hundred years, only to see it now begin to decline, it's concerning. And we don't know exactly why that's happening. There are theories that are coming out and maybe we'll discuss some of those during our That's a Good Question. But I don't think anyone is going to discredit this thing's contribution to that. Our phone, if you're listening on podcasts. And it's so ironic, isn't it? Isn't it so ironic because the information that is accessible through this thing is greater than all the libraries that have ever existed? And yet, is this part of the contribution to us becoming all dumber? Add to this the fact that so many people in our world are getting their worldview and their moral compass from memes and whatever is trending at the moment. It's clear we're losing something. Knowledge, intelligence, and wisdom seems to be at the top of this list. And today we're gonna march into the new year looking at wisdom. Wisdom that has stood the test of time. Today we're starting a sermon series called Words to Live By looking at wisdom the world has lost. And to do this we're gonna look at Proverbs chapter 24. So go ahead and turn in your Bibles now. If you've used the Bibles we provided, that's on page 693. But if you're using your own Bibles, put a bookmark in Proverbs 24, because that's where we are going to be for this entire series. But let's talk about Proverbs for a moment, just to kind of set the stage here. The book of Proverbs, it's a book largely of simply wise sayings, just kind of these random wise saying, these Proverbs. Now we call them Proverbs, listen here, we call them Proverbs, not promises for a reason. Because they are great principles, they're not guarantees. Listen, things don't always go well for the wise person, but that doesn't make these statements any less true. Now, this book is a compilation by King Solomon. He probably did write some of them, but we see these proverbs written in other places in history. So he compiled these words, because all truth is God's truth King Solomon being the the son of David and as you read this book It's very clear that this book is basically a curriculum for parents to train their children in the ways of wisdom and the book starts off right off the bat with something so important that kind of underlines everything about wisdom Proverbs 1:7. We see these words the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Meaning, meaning everything, everything we talk about in this series, all the wisdom and understanding all of this finds its grounding and its rooting in the fear of the Lord, meaning a reverent acknowledgements that God is greater, wiser, and above all, meaning that wisdom starts by knowing our place in the universe, that there is a God in heaven and we are not him. That is the beginning of knowledge. That's the beginning of wisdom. And I think part of the reason that we're all getting dumber is because we've forgotten our place. We think we are the smartest beings in the galaxy, and we're not. The Lord is. So church, having a holy fear of the Lord, that is the beginning of true knowledge and true wisdom. And as we see this book unfold, we come to chapter 24. And what we're going to do is we're going to cross-examine the words here at times with some of the conventional wisdom of our world and we'll see which one proves more true. So with that, would you hear the word of the Lord? Proverbs chapter 24. Today we'll start by reading the first four verses. Hear God's word. Be not envious of evil men, nor desire to be with them, for their hearts devise violence and their lips talk of trouble. By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established. By knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord remains forever. Thanks be to God. Let's pray and we'll continue. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for the truth of these words. Would you help us now by the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit to help us to not just to hear these words, but to receive them into our hearts that we might become more like our precious savior, Jesus Christ. And it's in his name we pray. And everyone said, amen and amen. So as we look at these first four verses here in Proverbs chapter 24, it may seem like there's two different thoughts going on here. Because in Proverbs, it feels like there's a lot of just like these random sayings, but here's what I'd say. If we could tie these two thoughts together in these first four verses, for something that I think we need to hear today, here's what I'd say to you, and here's our main point for today. Be discerning about the environment you keep and create. Be discerning about the environment you keep and create. Now a quick word about discernment, because that's kind of the main thrust here this morning. Discernment is noted as a spiritual gift. Discernment means to judge rightly. The Bible says that it's the ability to distinguish spirits, meaning meaning that we can know that we can know what is of God and what is not of God that we can tell the difference between good and bad between wisdom and folly but I can tell you this in my time as a pastor of all the spiritual gifts or all the personal qualities that Christians say that they have discernment is one that I hear so many people say they have but they really don't. And I say this through experience. So many people who I've talked to think they have the gift of discernment, but I've come to realize, you know what they really have? They really have an unhealthy cynicism matched with misinformed opinions. And they put those together, and they're the people who say, I know what's really going on here. And they think they can see behind a curtain that they don't even know what building it's in. Now, thankfully, those people, I'm not sure I can say to anyone here at Peace Church, but in my time as a pastor across the ages, that is something I come across every now and again. Now, listen here, we got our own sins. I'm not saying we're perfect, but I'm saying let's not people who confuse an unhealthy cynicism matched with misinformed opinions with the biblical gift of discernment. Now as we dial in, we need to truly seek a God-given discernment that informs us of what is from Him and what is not of Him. So to do this, we're going to look at our passage through two different lenses, two different ways here. Number one, be discerning about the environment you create. Let's get going. Be discerning about the environment that you keep. Look at your Bibles, look at verses one and two. If you don't have it, it'll be on the screen. Solomon tells us, "'Be not envious of evil men, nor desire to be with them, "'for their hearts devise violence "'and their lips talk of trouble.'" Okay, hold on a second here. I don't know if you realize this, but we're already into controversial territory. What do you mean evil men? I don't know if you realize this or not, but our world finds it impossible to call anyone evil. Anytime an evil man does an evil act, you know what our response is? We try to justify this, right? We talk about how people are sick or they're disturbed or it's because they were rejected by society or they're reacting to trauma. We make every excuse we can to avoid calling anyone evil so we don't have to acknowledge evil in the world so that we don't have to acknowledge the evil in our own hearts. Now if you're someone who would tell me there are no evil people in the world, then you are telling me that you've lived a privileged, comfortable life without telling me you've lived a privileged, comfortable life. When it finally came time to adopt our son, after a five year grueling process, we went to Africa. We went to Africa to adopt our son and to bring him home and we were so excited and we got there and our guide said, okay, we're going to go into the city. And here's what I can tell you about cities. Interest is up and the stock market's down, but you only get mugged. There are some country boys in here. Not a fan of really going into the city, but it was part of the package. So we went and one of the things he prepped us with is when he said, when you get down there, don't give money to the kids. We're like, what? He said, don't give money to the kids. They're gonna come up and they're gonna beg you, but don't give money to them. We got down there and sure enough, I mean, our van pulls up and these kids, cute as you've ever seen in your entire life, come up to the windows and they're banging on the windows and they're wanting money and they're like, they're taking their hand and they're putting it into their mouth like they want food so bad. And they got this desperation in their eyes and your heart is just breaking in two. And this little boy comes up to me and he's missing a hand and half of his face was burned. And I'm like, I gotta give this kid something. So I go to our guide and I'm like, please, can I just give this kid 10 bucks? And he said, that's the last one you should give money to. And I judged him at first. I said, oh, you just don't want me to give it to him because he's like, has some disability. And he said to me, these kids aren't collecting money for themselves. Someone is forcing them to do this. And this someone who's forcing them to do this this knows that if they scar or wound a child, then a bleeding heart like yours will give them more money, which just tells them to continue to do that to kids so they get more money. If you don't believe there are evil men in this world, then it's because you've been privileged enough to never have had to face it. wicked evil in the world. And we need to recognize it's out there. The biblical truth is that evil is the twisting of what is good. God created everything and he called it very good. And sin is the twisting of things until they become evil. And the great story of the Bible is the final redemption of all things when the evil people will be punished. And they will. And part of the beauty of God's story is the redemption and the renewal of all things that have been broken. And our passage is telling us be discerning about the environment you keep verse 1 Look at it says do not be envious of evil men nor desire to be with them. Don't be in the company of men or people who take part in twisting what God's good plan is Even if it's celebrated and popular. For their hearts devise violence and their lips talk of trouble. Do not admire these people, do not have an ambition to be with them. So let's take this prohibition and turn it into a proactive statement for a moment here. The people who you bring into your life, your friends, should be people who point you to what is good, who create a positive environment and promote God's plan in you. Now, if you're like me, you'd probably stop right now and be like, well, wait a second here. Hold on a minute. Jesus hung out with sinners and tax collectors. Now listen, here's what I'd say to this. This passage isn't saying that we shouldn't care for our enemies or minister to those who are opposed to us. This verse is talking about who we look up to and who we long to be like, who you follow on social media, the type of people that you want to be around. Are you around people who follow God's plan or not? Are you around people who twist God's plan? We need to be discerning about the people who influence the environment that we are in. So you need to ask yourself, do the people in your life, do they bring you closer to God or do they pull you away from Him? Yes, we are to minister to the downtrodden and the broken, and the sinners of this world. Of course, we are. But who controls the environment that you are in? One of the hardest but wisest things we can do is allow, is only to allow those in who bring us closer to God. Now, I want to stop for a moment and I want to be crystal clear about something. I have a friend in my life who is not a Christian, and I love this person, and I want this person to know Jesus. And in my years of ministering to them and sharing the gospel with them and sharing faith with them, I've come to pinpoint something that happened in their life that I think took a bitter root that has really kept them from ever embracing the Christian faith. See when they were in elementary school, they went to a Christian camp. And the camp speaker that week told all the kids, if you are a Christian, then you should not be friends with people who are not Christians. And that never sat right with him. And that told him something at a heart level about the Christian faith that he didn't want to be a part of. Now listen here, I don't think the retreat speaker actually said that. But for a fourth or fifth-grader, that's what he heard. So you need to hear me on this. I am not talking about shutting out people who don't follow God, but I am saying you don't allow them to control the environment. And if they do, then you can't be part of that. Do not desire to be with them. We need to be around those who promote the things of God. And if you can't control the environment you are in, then that should tell you something. Of the people in our lives, we need to be discerning about who controls the environment. And parents, we need to help our kids with this. I can tell you right now, as a former youth pastor, parents are not teaching their kids this lesson. Fathers are not sitting down and reading Proverbs 24:1, with their children and explaining what it means for them today as little kids or as adolescents. So what we're talking about here goes not just for the friends that we keep, but for the families that we create. So we need to be discerning about the environment we create. Look again at verses three and four. By wisdom, a house is built and by understanding it is established. By knowledge, the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches. I'm not usually like this, but I really feel like I need to share something, I need to go back for a moment. If this is rubbing against what you think should happen, I'm not saying that I'm perfectly right all the time, but I'm saying if you feel a rub, maybe that's the spirit trying to teach you something. So let's go back. Be discerning about the environment you create, verses 3 and 4. By wisdom, a house is built and by understanding it is established. By knowledge, the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches. Okay, I know I was like really loving on you guys this morning. I'm going to continue to do it. One thing I really love about our church and the people of our church, and I may be canceled for this, but I'm going to say specifically the men in our church, is that for all of our three services, at any one of our services, I know that there are enough tradesmen in those services that we could build a house by the end of the day. Where are my tradesmen at here? Where are the plumbers, electricians, construction workers, concrete guys, drywallers, you guys too? They're always a little off, right? No offense, Corey. One thing I know about the men of this church or the tradesmen of this church is that we know how to build a house. The men I'm telling you, we are called to build a home. We are called to build a home. And the men who don't know how to swing a hammer, but will pray with their kids, is more of a godly man than those who provide for their family, but don't pray with their family. Now, personally, I think men should be providing and praying with their families, but I don't fault the Christian men who aren't skilled at the trades, but who still spiritually lead. You're the type of men God wants in this world, the spiritual leaders. And if you're gifted in the trades, God bless you. God's going to use that for great things too. So men, let me speak to you for a moment. I think this verse says specifically something to men that we cannot miss. This is a message that men should be living and instilling in their children, especially their sons. Hear me on this. You are either building up or tearing down your home. It's one or the other, and there is no middle ground. I know the culture at large wants to say that men are expendable, that we really don't have any distinct value, that the future is feminine, and that men and women are interchangeable. Lies, all lies. And it's corrupting a generation who believes this. Men, hear me on this. No one can take your place in the home. It is your job and yours alone. So are you doing it? The hard reality of this is that we are either building up or tearing down our homes. And the harshest thing about this is that in our world, you can tear down your home in a day, but it takes a lifetime to build it. You know, we laugh when we say that a house is never fully finished. I mean, I built my house five years ago and I'm still putting trim up in places. Yes, in the sense that a house is never fully finished, but I'm telling you right now, a home is something we're always building. If you like to build houses, I've got a great job for you. It's building a home because we're always doing it. But how? How? How do we build a home? Now, some of us may say, because we think the Christian answer here is going to be love. How do we build a house? We build a house with love. Now listen here, love is critical. Can't do it without love. It's a necessary component. But what does our verse say? By wisdom, a house is built. By wisdom, a house is built and by understanding it is established. Meaning you have to be wise, you have to be discerning on how to build your home It's not based on our own thoughts or opinions what we feel in the moment, or whatever Most recent guest is on Oprah. We build our homes based on God's proven eternal good and holy Wisdom that's how we build homes and families that last and stand the test of time You have to discern you have to know the the forces that are against the godly home in this world. You have to know what is crushing the heart of your children or your grandchildren. You have to know what is keeping your marriage from all that God wants it to be. Men, I'll tell you now, I'll give you two things this starts with. This starts with self-control. That you have yourself under self-control. That you walk in step with the Spirit and you only go where He goes and you only say what He says. You have self-control and in a quick second is boundaries. You've got crystal clear good and godly boundaries around your home. And that is the job that I think God's called men to do as men and women partner together to keep those intact. But then we have verse 4. By knowledge, the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches. What's that all about? Okay, let's hang on to this for a second. This is not to say that if you have wisdom, that you'll have a house full of expensive furniture. But if we have wisdom that is rooted in the fear of the Lord, then we'll know how priceless it is not to have a mansion in the Hamptons but to have a holy and happy home. And we'll know how that is so much more valuable than an expensive house. That's more precious than all the money in all the world. And I'm not saying that you are called to be poor, but I am saying that you're called to have perspective, and that perspective is godly wisdom. If you look at your life and you want wisdom, then let me remind you of James 1:5. The Bible says that if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously without reproach, and it will be given to him. If you want wisdom, remember it starts with a holy fear of the Lord, humbling yourself before your heavenly Father who loves you and you ask him for wisdom. And church, this is so different from our prideful world that thinks that we can google the answers to life or that meaning is found in popular opinion. But for those who belong to the Lord, we need to remember, we need to be discerning about the environment that we keep and the environment that we create. So where do we go from here? Well, as always, we should turn to God's word. And as we do, we'll find these words from our Savior Jesus, who said to us in Matthew chapter 7, he said, everyone who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and it beat on the house but it did not fall because it had been founded on the rock." And here we see Jesus Christ himself bring up an age old teaching that we are to build our house upon wisdom from God. If you read the stories of Jesus, if you read the words of Jesus, he always responded with wisdom. He was always wise, he was intelligent, articulate. Jesus was witty at times, but he was always wise. We can lean on him and lean on his word. So here's my challenge for you. As we continue into this new year, 2023, what is your life built upon? And how you can answer that is by looking at the environment of your life. The environment of your life is indicative of the foundation it's built upon. You may think it's good, but my question for you is, is it godly? Is it godly? Is it in wisdom built upon the solid rock of Jesus Christ or not? Jesus Christ, who left the throne of heaven to be born in that manger, we just celebrated it. Starting off as a baby boy so he could live a full human life, the life that we should have lived but didn't, a life of perfect obedience, perfect love, perfect wisdom, perfect love. He lived the life that we should have but we didn't and the reason we didn't is because we got this thing in our life called sin and it twists things and it's evil and it clouds our mind and clouds our heart. See, sin, sin is a crime of our actions but it's also a condition of our heart. We all stand guilty before God. We all deserve punishment. But Jesus Christ, thanks be to God, He came to take the punishment that should have been ours. And on the cross, Jesus assumed the wrath of God that is rightfully ours. And it killed Him. And He lay dead, stone cold dead in a tomb for three days, and that's the death that we all should have died. But after three days, he rose again from the dead. See, the Word of God who was made flesh is Jesus, and he's the eternal Word of God. He defeated death, he defeated sin, and in his resurrection to new life, that is the promise and the guarantee that if we place our faith in him, then that's the new life that we get. And in this new life, we get fellowship, we get relationship with God, we get wisdom of God, and we also get communion with God, which is what we're going to celebrate now. Amen? Amen. Let's pray.

PODCAST That's a Good Question Who Are the gods? The Unsettling Reality of Psalm 82 February 18, 2025 Jon Delger & Ryan DB Kimmel Listen to this Episode Hey, welcome to That's a Good Question, the podcast where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. We are a podcast of Resound Media, a place you can trust to find great resources for the Christian life and church leadership. You can always submit questions that we answer on this show to resoundmedia.cc . If you find this resource helpful, please rate and review the podcast so more people can encounter the life-changing truth of God's Word. Also, if you know somebody who can benefit from today's topic or has questions like the ones that we're answering, please share this episode with them. My name's John and I'm here today with Ryan. Yeah, I'm Pastor Ryan from Peace Church. It's been a while since I've been on the podcast. Welcome back, it has been a little while. Thanks, man. Pastor Ryan's back today to get to talk about an exciting topic in scripture, one of those verses that can be really tricky to understand, one that people have questions about, one that you got to preach on not too long ago, and people did have questions about it. Psalm 82, if you wanna look it up, or if you wanna look it up later and follow along with us as we talk about it. But the question we're gonna talk about is this. Jesus says, and the psalmist says, Jesus in the New Testament, psalmist in the Old Testament, talks about gods. And so the question is, are there other gods? Who are these gods? And what in the world is Psalm 82 all about, or John 10, where Jesus quotes Psalm 82 in the New Testament? So, what's this all about? Yeah, so, Psalm 82 is a short psalm written by Asaph, and what's unique about Psalm 82 is that it's unlike other psalms in the sense that there's a lot that's ascribed to God that God's saying, God's quoting, quoting God, God is speaking in the two issues or the two phrases that people typically get hung up on and debate over. The first one, I'd say probably the more prevalent one comes from verse 6 where the quote says, I said, you are gods, son of the most high, all of you. So who are the gods? Who is God speaking to that he would call other people or beings gods? And then kind of the other question that comes with that comes actually earlier in the psalm starts right off the bat when it says, God has taken his place. This is verse one. God has taken his place in the divine council. So the question that is often debated is what is the divine council and what does God mean by your gods? And one of the things that we talk about is that when you come to a passage that's confusing, we typically go right to the particulars. What does this phrase mean? What does this word mean? And those are important questions and we need to ask those questions. But I would say, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, I think we need to step back and ask a more broad question first. What is this passage or what is this verse? What is this chapter? What is this quote actually saying? What's the main idea behind this? And then from that, once we get that squared away, then we can start asking some of the particular ones. Right, right. Whenever we're coming to the Bible, that's one of the things, we try to come to it with our own questions, with our own presuppositions. Instead, what we say many times on this podcast is that we need to come to it just like any other book and read it start to finish, or at least the passage, from the beginning to the end, and understand the overall context of what in the world is going on. Usually the words we use to talk about how you study the Bible is observe, interpret, apply, okay? And the first step is observe, which basically means just read it. You know, read it and notice. Actually read the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't just jump right to, ooh, it says gods with an S on the end. What's that all about? Now I'm gonna go to Google or YouTube and I'm gonna hear a bunch of crazy theories, which you can and that can be fun, but I mean, read the text and figure out what it means. So that's where we've got to start, is just reading the text. So what is the context of Psalm 82? What in the world is going on? What's the overall point of Psalm 82? Yeah. So when we preached this a few sermons ago, it was under the whole notion of the call of God upon His people to uphold His justice in the world. And one of the defining markers of God's justice is that we care for the widows and the orphans. This actually came from a pro-life sermon that we preached, again, a few sermons ago. But this whole notion of the gods, lowercase g gods, and divine counsel wasn't something we could totally flesh out in the sermon, which is why we wanted to revisit it, because people had questions, and rightfully so. So the overarching idea of Psalm 82 is that God is bringing judgment because those who are meant to represent and uphold and enact his justice are not doing so. And one of the ways that God levels an accusation against them is that the widows and orphans are being taken care of. And so the underlying principle, the overarching thrust of Psalm 82 is that God wants his justice enacted on the planet and throughout the world. And he has ordained people or beings, we'll get into that, to ensure that that happens. And when those agents of His justice do not uphold His justice, God will bring His judgment upon them. So, the overarching premise of Psalm 82, the overarching focus, is that God wants His justice to prevail on the planet. And that His justice, verse 3, the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy. Deliver them from the hand of the wicked. This is what God wants on the planet. He wants justice. He wants people treated rightly and fairly and kindly. And he is ordained. Again, we'll get into what he means. Who is the divine counsel? Who's God's? But either way, God is ordained means through other agents to ensure that this happens. And when it doesn't happen, God gets pretty upset. So, right. So, and that's the question that is who is he criticizing is he criticizing angels demons Satan or human beings or what in the world are these people he's criticizing Yep. And so that's where again. That's where the context you have to hold it within the broader context pull out individual words pull out individual phrasing and you can you can go almost anywhere, but when you look at the totality of Psalm 82 and it's not long. It's what is it eight verses eight verses isn't again on the one hand, it doesn't give you a lot to deal with on the other hand. It's nice and succinct right and so I tend to think and this is where I ultimately land and I think Jesus and when Jesus quotes us in John 10, he further underlines this that that God is speaking amidst the divine counsel of which he is the overarching authority. The divine counsel is the human rulers and agents that He has ordained on the planet to ensure that His justice prevails and goes forth. And so, why does He say that they are gods? Well, I would say, and I think the argument here is not necessarily that because they are divine, but because they have a divine appointment. That they are given a divine appointment from God to do His good, divine, eternal, heavenly work in the world. And so the divine counsel, I think, is just that. It's the human authorities that God is allowing to have rule over the people. When they fail to bring us justice, he's going to bring judgment. So that's what I would say Psalm 82 is about. So what would you say about the fact that this sounds a little bit like Job 1 or Ezekiel or some of the other passages that are referring to more like heavenly realms. Yeah, so again, yeah, so you see this, I would say primarily in Job 1, Ezekiel, I think it's Ezekiel 10, Revelation 14, 15, and 19 speak of in the presence of God, there's other beings, obviously speaking within heaven. I would say that those are obviously depictions of a real place in heaven and then within God's within God's presence that there are other angelic heavenly beings that aren't fully described. We've done who are the who are the twenty-four elders before the throne room who are the the the living or what are the living creatures obviously Ezekiel speaks of the cherubim and there's seraphim and there's other sort of angelic beings. I think in those places you can hold those within the context of those passages to figure out what they mean. I would just say though, Psalm 82, poetic description of God wanting his justice to prevail, not necessarily for me to be used as a tool to help explain these other scenarios or settings. The term divine counsel, at least in the ESV, I think this is the only time you see that actual phrase. So we can't necessarily apply that to other settings that we think feel similar. Sure. But I'd say that this, the divine council, is God's representation of people that he's divinely appointed. Not necessarily speaking of God entering his own throne room amidst of these other supernatural beings. Right. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, it is a helpful principle in Scripture. Scripture interprets Scripture. So looking to other passages of the Bible that seem similar to help you figure out what a passage, a tough passage means, that is a good principle. But then you have to look and say, is this actually similar or is it not? And do those similarities mean that it means the same thing or could it not? So it's not always easy to quite figure out how those references actually relate back. And that's where you just gotta do the hard but also say the fun work of just cross-referencing scripture. So going back then, okay, so we can take this in isolation, Psalm 82, and I think it's clear – maybe not clear. I think that's the easy summation of this passage is what we're talking about. But the beauty is that we actually get Jesus quoting this. So we get even more insight into what Asaph and the Holy Spirit are revealing for us in this passage because Jesus goes on to speak about it. Do you want me to lay out the context of John 10? You want to share? You can lay out the context and I've got it here. I can read those two verses real quick where he specifically quotes it, yeah. So basically in John 10, what you see is that Jesus is out and about and the Jews begin to, the crowds of the Jews begin to press him to get him to confess if he is the Christ or not. Like, they're like, sick, we're tired of making you, making us wait, you know, quit making us wait. Reveal to us, are you the Christ or not? And then Jesus is like, if you've been watching me and listening to me and seeing my works, it's been pretty clear. And then he says something to the effect of, but the reason that you don't see is because you're not part of my flock. My flock knows my voice. And then he goes on to even say, he speaks of the fact that those who are part of his flock, God will never let them go. They'll never fall away. And then he says, the thing that gets him in abundant trouble is when Jesus says, for I and the Father are one. Right, right. So he says, yeah, so they wanna stone him. He says, I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you gonna stone me? Epic line. For which of these good things that I've done are you gonna kill me? Then the Jews answer, it's not for good work that we're going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you being a man make yourself God. And then here's where he quotes Psalm 82 in verse 34. Jesus answers them, is it not written in your law, I said you are gods. So there's the Psalm 82 quote. If he called them gods to whom the word of God came and scripture cannot be broken, do you say of him whom the father consecrated and sent into the world, you are blaspheming because I said I am the Son of God. Yeah, so there's a lot there and like Jesus, he was the ultimate master on this, being able to pack so much meaning into so few words. There's so much going on there with what Jesus is saying. So I'd say the first thing he says, he quotes Psalm 82 and then he talks about how that was given to people for whom the Word of God came. Right, I think that's kind of like the first giveaway as to the meaning of Psalm 82, I think, is how Jesus frames it. He starts talking about these guys, he said, to whom the word of God came, and scripture cannot be broken. So he's already starting sort of inferring that these are simply men to whom the word of God came. He's already kind of implying that in Jesus' response there. Yeah, and I think for me that's the exclamation mark, not even the period, just the exclamation mark. The divine counsel in Psalm 82 is referring to human agents who are meant to represent God's justice. So, what does Jesus do with this passage, though? He's seemingly, at face value, using it to defend himself against these accusations, but I think there's actually something a little bit deeper going on. Jesus is saying, here's how I'd say it, Jesus is saying that Psalm 82 was spoken to men, even though they are called gods. Again, this should clear up any, for me, this clears up any notion about what the divine counsel is. Jesus is using this not to justify that any human is God. What he's saying is that if God is going to say this to human agents, you are gods. How much more do I have a right to actually say that I am God, because I'm the Father One, because I am the Son of God. So I would say Jesus is using this not to necessarily defend himself or even necessarily to confirm his words. He's using it to draw a contrast to say if God can say this to his own human authorities, how much more do I have a right to say this because I am the Son of God. Me and the Father are one. We share the same essence. And so, and of course that doesn't satisfy the Jews. They double down and want to... Yeah, and I think there's even some irony, I think, which we could talk more about later, but I think in Jesus is making a claim about himself, but I think he's also using the irony of Psalm 82, you know, he's talking to these Jewish leaders and he's quoting a passage that is criticizing Jewish leaders in Psalm 82. So I think there's even some, you know, if those guys who are Jesus' original audience, if they were to reflect deeper, they might actually realize that Jesus is even sort of prophetically calling them out because they are ironically the ones who are doing what Psalm 82 says of their inverting justice. Yeah. I think also part of the problem is, and I heard a guy speak on this, is just this is where things get lost in translation between the Hebrew will use to speak of God, such as Elohim and Adonai, versus in English, we kind of have the one word God, and that one word comes with tons of meaning and weight. And that's why in English, we'll try to differentiate between capital G God and lowercase g gods. So you have to think about what would be the parallel there in Hebrew, and I think that's where you just have to look at the different the context and the different words that are used. But again I think the Jesus claims to be God. You know people want to know where does Jesus ever say he's God? John 10 30 he says I and the Father are one. I don't know how much more black and white you can actually be on that. And if you think if we English speakers and readers think that that's some sort of code or he's backing away from that. The Jews knew exactly what Jesus was saying. They were willing to kill him on the spot for saying that. And that's where Jesus quotes of all the Psalms, he quotes Psalm 82. And again, I think what Jesus is saying here, he's like, you guys are getting hung up that I called myself God. The Psalms even say this to human agents. How much more am I able to say I am God because I truly am God's son, I truly am one with the Father. And so for me then, the question is, okay, so how and where do people misapply or misinterpret Psalm 82? And where can that often lead to trouble? There are religions within our proximity that think that we are gods, or that we're lowercase gods. And I don't know enough about their theology to say they're drawing it from this, but I can see how they would want to infer that if you completely ignore the context. Sure. But one of the things we want to underscore is that neither the Psalm nor Jesus nor anywhere in the Bible does it ever say that we are that we are gods, uppercase or lowercase g, or that we'll ever become uppercase or lowercase g gods. We are made in the image of God and that's beautiful and profound, but in this passage Jesus is not ascribing divinity to people, nor is Asaph in the original psalm. Right, I mean that's a pretty dangerous theology. Unfortunately, I've heard that from, you know, I could think of who you're, you know, referring to, but I think of one as well. I mean, even people in the prosperity gospel circle, it's kind of a, you know, little God theology is what it's been called. The idea that we have authority like Jesus had authority, you know, that's not what Jesus is saying here, and that's not what the Bible is teaching. So it makes me think of, too, I'm looking at Psalm 82 here, and I'm just thinking about kind of the background, the biblical background behind some of these, you know, the, you are God's sons of the most high. I'm thinking of where in the Bible does it actually, it does, you know, allude to some human beings being referred to that way. So I think of like 2 Samuel 7. I think of the covenant with David. Right, when God makes a promise to David that his sons are going to be like God's own sons. Right, so the Bible does talk this way, but it has a very specific meaning. Like you said, a divine appointment. It's not that we have divine, like that we're on level with God, but that we have a calling from God. Right, God had a specific calling for David as the king. He had a specific calling for David's sons to be the kings of his people. And then of course, ultimately, that's Jesus. Jesus is the king over God's people. Or I think of even Adam, you know, kind of fits into this, you know, Adam and Eve, Adam. I think of, right, his genealogy in the New Testament. You know, son of Adam, son of God is the beginning of that or the end of that genealogy, it traces all the way back. So we do have in the Bible these examples of people being called sons of God. Yeah, yeah. But it's for a very specific reason. Yeah, and I think that goes back to our identity in God, our relationship to God, not something that's inherent into our DNA. But I can see why this would be very attractive theology to people, that we get to become gods, or we get to become authoritative like God. But that's not what's being said here. When the Bible talks about in other places about those who are the sons of God, for me that that's not denoting who we are internally. That for me is denoting the notion of the relationship that we get to have with God. That we're not his slaves. That we are his sons. That we are his sons and daughters. And again it goes back to the notion that we are made in his image. And so beautiful passage, beautiful context. Jesus clarifies, but we must underscore this is never to be used in the notion that what the psalmist is saying, what Jesus is inferring is that we ourselves are divine or will become divine. But we can have beautifully divine appointments, divine appointments. But again, our sons and daughters, that that sonship. Our adoption is is denoting the relationship we have with our Father in heaven. Yeah. So, as we've been sitting here talking here in the last couple seconds, I thought I'd just search, just to confirm what you and I were thinking about what people are saying about this verse, and sure enough. So, you know, you and I were referring to the prosperity gospel on the one hand, talking about sort of what's been called little God theology. On the other hand, Mormonism and some of their theology. And sure enough, both of those false theologies use Psalm 82 and John 10 to explain their theology. So Creflo Dollar is one example. Talks about John 10, talks about Jesus saying, I said you are gods, talks about how God produces, yeah, we call them men, but he says that they are, in effect, little gods. So sure enough, I mean, this is the, you know, a wrong reading of this passage is... Detrimental. Yeah. It's detrimental to your theology, it's detrimental to your anthropology. That's just, it's just clearly not what's being said here. What ends up happening, and I think every religion does this to some extent, I think even Christians fall prey to this, is you have an idea, you have a theology and you import it into the text, rather than let the text shape your theology. Again, it's an extremely attractive notion that you are gods or you can become gods or you have a divinity and you need to be awakened. But that's just clearly not what's being said here. I mean, even when I go back and reading Psalm 82 again, and I just preached on it, but going back and read it again, it just comes so much more together when you think about God is holding people to account that he's placed in authority to see his justice and act. He's raised up and given these people divine appointments, and he calls them gods that they have such a high level job to do to see God's justice and act. But then he says, again, verse six and seven, I said, you are God's sons of the most high. All of you, verse seven, nevertheless, like men, you shall die and fall like any prince. So you're going to die like people. You're going to fall like any other prince does, even though I've given you this high authority and given you this great responsibility and this divine appointments to enact my justice in the world, you fail to do it. Therefore, your divine appointments, your high authority will mean nothing. You're going to die like any man. You're going to fall like any prince does. The the text is clearly saying and Jesus himself goes on to say, this is not referring to other spiritual beings or humans that will become some sort of divine being or some sort of lowercase g god. It's speaking about people that god is using to enact his justice in this world. They fail to do so and now god's gonna bring judgment to it and also, I mean, whether or not you become divine or not, or you are divine, or you are capital G, or lowercase g, God, that completely misses the whole point of Psalm 82, which is what we said in the very beginning. You have to look at what's the overarching thought behind Psalm 82, is that God's justice is not being upheld, and he's gonna bring judgment for it. Prosperity Gospels and the Mormons wanna just completely ignore the overarching thought of Psalm 82, pick out a verse and pour a meaning into it, to develop a religion around it, and it is leading people astray. And this is why biblical literacy, understanding proper exegesis and proper hermeneutics is so incredibly important. And basically what we're saying is let scripture interpret scripture. We let scripture interpret scripture. When you let God's word speak for itself and clarify itself, you get beautiful theology that enriches people, that sees God's justice in act, and when you import your own theology, you lead people astray and it's dangerous. And it's sad, and it's really sad. I don't know much about the Creflo Dollar that you mentioned. I mean, I've heard his name before. I know a little bit more about the Mormons, but either way. Well, I think one of the things that's a little bit ironic is, you know, so we've got these leaders, these false teachers, right, using a passage to actually make much of us, whereas I think the actual point of the passage, especially in Psalm 82, is kind of the opposite. It's actually a bit of a smackdown from God to those who are supposed to be leaders that are misusing God's authority, that are abusing those who are under their care. You know, I just… So look at the very last verse of Psalm 82. Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit all the nations. God is the victor, God is the one who wins, God is the judge, God is the one who gets it all in the end. Yeah, I mean I think one of the applications of this passage should be just the high level of responsibility, the high level of judgment that is out there for those who are in leadership roles. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And not even just in the church, but in the world in general. You know, Psalm 82 is talking about, do you have justice to the weak and the fatherless, maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Okay, so he's talking about, I mean, he's primarily talking to leaders within Israel caring for their people, but also, I mean, it's broadly applicable to other leaders. But, you know, this is something that, you know, statesmen, right, you know, governors, congressmen, senators, presidents, kings, queens, we should hear this and tremble and just think about, am I living out God's call to justice for the people under my care? That's one of the most basic applications that you could have from Psalm 82. But also, like you said, just the high place of God, that God is the one who is the King of Kings, who's actually in control, not us but him. Yeah, beautiful powerful passage. Hopefully that we've helped some people to clarify what this means. Again, when you pull out phrasing out of context without understanding what the context actually is, it's going to get really confusing. But if you put things in context, patiently walk through the text, I think the clarity of the text comes through. This is not speaking about us becoming gods, this is speaking about God holding judgment for those who are meant to uphold his justice but don't. And so that's a call for all of us, with whatever position of authority we have, are you an agent of God's good justice in this world or not? Yeah, so the original context of the sermon, like you shared already, was a pro-life message. So when you hear in Psalm 82, those who are weak and fatherless, those who are afflicted and destitute, weak and needy, one of the first people you think of, right, is the unborn. Yeah, absolutely, the unborn. We see right there, give justice to the weak and the fatherless. In our pro-life message, we argue the fact that there are many people who fit this description in our world, but not least of which is the unborn. They are weak and they are fatherless because, at least in the American context, the laws have said that the father has no rights for the unborn child, that our culture and our laws have said that the life of that unborn child is up to the woman, it's up to the mother. The father has no rights. And so in a sense, you could say that the unborn child is fatherless. The father has no rights over it, over that child. So we have to give justice to the weak and to the fatherless, and for us that means we think that the heart of the father is to see children be born and to champion the cause to be pro-life. And so when we see Psalm 82, and it's a great psalm of justice, oh, by the way, I should mention, Bono from U2 was asked, I can't remember the exact interview, but they basically said if someone wanted to start reading the Bible, where would you point them to? An interviewer asked Bono, this singer of U2, and he pointed to Psalm 82. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Even in the midst of talking about the divine counsel and you are gods and some of those crazy phrasing that we don't necessarily understand at face value, he said point them to Psalm 82 because it's all about God's justice. And his argument basically was we want to show people a picture of how good God is and what God wants for this world and what God wants is justice. And so Bono pointed to Psalm 82 and I heard this laying like a couple years ago. So that was stuck in the back of my mind. So when we came to time to preach on our pro-life message, I was like, you know, this is a, being pro-life has justice as a primary theme for why we're so passionately pro-life. And that interview came to mind, so I said, let's do Psalm 82 for this one. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. And we've done other episodes on the show here as well about pro-life. I think going back actually to St. Theodore Life Sunday, I think we did one or two episodes talking specifically about that topic. So if you want to hear more on that topic explained more carefully about the whole argument and thinking it through carefully from a biblical perspective, feel free to check out that argument. Check out Pastor Ryan's sermon at the Peace Church website. Yeah, but also I also want to really emphasize, and I think it's important to underscore this always when Christians speak of being pro-life, for us being pro-life, that does not end when the child's born. For us, that very much continues, that we want to see the mother and the child both being taken care of, both have what they need. This is God's call to justice, justice for the weak and the fatherless, maintain the rights of the afflicted and the destitute. So many single moms fall into this category with her children and her unborn children. So we want to definitely be caring for both. I know that we're getting a little off topic from the notion of what does God mean by you are gods, but since we're on the topic of pro-life, I think it's important for Christians in our world when we speak about this to always clarify. We care for the unborn child and we care for the child when that child's born and the mother as well. Yeah. This is God's call for justice in the world. Awesome. Well, Pastor Ryan, thanks for the great conversation. Yeah, Pastor John, thanks. Good to join you. Thanks everybody for listening. I hope you have an awesome week. Do us a favor, like, follow, subscribe, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, subscribe Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Resoundmedia.CC . Have an awesome week, everybody. Have an awesome week, everybody. Bye!

PODCAST That's a Good Question Be the Hands and Feet: A Conversation with Jeff Medders December 31, 2024 Jon Delger & Mitchell Leach Listen to this Episode Hey, welcome to That's a Good Question, the place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. We are a podcast of Resound Media, a place you can trust to find great resources for the Christian life and church leadership. You can always submit questions that we answer on this show to resoundmedia.cc/questions. If you find this resource helpful, do us a favor, rate and review the podcast so more people can encounter the life-changing truth of God's Word. Also, if you know someone who could benefit from today's episode or that has questions like the ones that we're answering on the episode, please share this episode with them. My name is John. I'm here today with Mitch. Yeah, and I have the privilege of introducing Jeff Meadors. Jeff is the Director of Theology and Content for the SEND Network. He's a preacher, podcast, and author of multiple books, including Humble Calvinism and The Soul Winning Church. Jeff, it's great to have you on the podcast. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the listeners about yourself? Oh my goodness. Well, you know, I would say I'm not an incredibly interesting person. I am an avid endorsement, which suits Houston well. It's usually too hot most of the time to do anything. But today is actually a beautiful day. So maybe I'll go outside and get the mail or something like that. But I love to play Mario Kart with my kids and Mario Party. And so I love to work the clock at my son's basketball games at his school. So on any given night, you may find me tracking the points for the visitors and the home teams. That's awesome. Yeah, we love basketball, so. Well, you wouldn't do so bad here where we're at then. It's 11 degrees outside here in Michigan, and so being an indoorsman's a good sport to be. Yeah, yeah, there we go. I probably fit in perfect. Yeah, totally. Well, hey, we're excited to talk today about the soul winning church, and about some evangelism, and things like that in the church. Before we get too far into it, I wanna hear about your co-author a little bit, Jeff. What led you guys to write this book? I actually, this morning, I listened to a podcast that you and he did, because I'll be honest, I saw his credentials on the book, and I saw Seminary President, and I thought, well, this guy is probably a really boring guy, right? I mean, no offense to our seminary professor friends, but they're usually not the most exciting people. But, man, he was a fiery guy. He was talking about sharing the gospel and the hood and stuff like that. I mean, how do you guys know each other and what led you to write the book? Yeah, I'd say it goes back, oh my goodness, I mean, maybe five, ten years, way back down at Acts 29. He was pastoring a church in Acts 29 up in Camden, New Jersey. I was pastoring a church in the Houston area. And we just kind of met at events, started talking, hanging out, becoming friends. And then when we both started working at X29, we got really close, just working together on a bunch of different projects, going through, you know, speaking at different events together for A29. So we've kind of been in that church planning world together for a while and really just kind of hit it off. I mean, I kind of told him he kind of, you know, Doug's a little bit older than me, not a lot older, but we call him our spiritual uncle, our kids call him Uncle Doug. And so, you know, great, just a great brother for, you know, getting advice and talking about sports and talking about food and just, you know, we became good friends. And the book came about through us on the phone one day, kind of just griping about different things that we are seeing church planters were doing and were not doing, things we wanted to grow in our own teaching and grow in our developing in, like, what do we need to be doing? And we just, you know, cause we're also with Baptists and like, well, I think they gotta be doing this. And then we started alliterating these things and then that's how kind of really how the book came about. And so, so Doug, yeah, he is, he is not your typical president of anything that you could think of. He's, he's very loud. He's very funny. He's very charismatic. He's just a great guy. I think he is the king of illustrations. Hearing him preach, he will come up with some of the zaniest and most profound analogies. So if you're interested in learning more about them, you should go to Grimke Seminary and you can see more about Doug and what they're doing over there in Richmond, Virginia. That's awesome. Yeah, from the little bit that I heard, man, a guy who has huge passion for preaching the gospel anywhere and everywhere. So that's awesome. Yeah, and I'll say it's often said about him is that you don't just meet him, you experience him. I can see that. He's very, very unique. That's awesome. Well, I already used the naughty word here on the podcast a couple of times, that word evangelism. So hopefully our audience didn't already tune out and say I'm afraid of the guilt I'm gonna feel or I'm afraid of the things I'm gonna hear. Jeff, you wanna tell us about why, so why are people so afraid of that word? Why do churches struggle so much to cultivate a culture of evangelism or as you guys rename it, soul winning? I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Why do churches struggle so much for that? Yeah, I think it is one of those areas that is difficult. It's much easier to read your Bible. It's much easier to attend Sunday worship and attend a small group or any of any other elements of the Christian life. Those seem to be not as challenging as taking the gospel to a hostile culture, to a hostile environment. And so I think there is kind of that fear that comes with it of I don't want to have to confront idolatry. I don't have to confront lies. I don't have to confront other aspects that are all bundled up in telling someone that Jesus is the way, the truth, and life, and that no one can get to the Father but by them. So I think there is kind of that fear of some of the retaliation that comes with evangelism. And then secondly, I think there's also the fear of inadequacy and incompetency, that maybe I don't know the right thing to say, or I don't know how to frame the argument, and I'm nervous. And so there's also, so it's kind of the externals and the internals of evangelism. And then I think there's a third one, the kind of ecclesial dimension, as I think often is people are not really trained on and discipled in how to share the gospel and how to evangelize. It is something that we do in the Christian life. And when we teach people how to read the Bible, we teach people how to talk about Jesus and to teach them in a way that's encouraging, that's uplifting. And I love the way that my friend and Ph.D. mentor, Donald Whitney, he says about all the spiritual disciplines of the Christian life, and he includes evangelism as one of them. He says that whatever we do and how we teach and frame and disciple and train, that if If it's not easy, and at least in one sense, he said, I don't think we're doing it right. Because Jesus said, my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. So there's still a yoke, there's still a burden, there's still these factors, but with Christ, they're easy, they're light. And so if we make them too complicated, I don't think it's the way of Christ. So part of what we wanted to do in the book is to uncomplicate evangelism that I think anybody that reads a soul winning church, I don't think you're going to be blown away about like, we found some magic bullets, we found some hidden verses in the Bible. And none of that's, this is all stuff you know, this is all stuff you've seen, this is probably all stuff you've heard. But we wanted to condense it, simplify it and put it into one aspect of being a soul winning church. So we changed the word, brought back an old word that you'll find in Charles Spurgeon and others throughout church history that highlights two aspects that you guys have mentioned. One is the soul part. It's like we're talking with people who have actual souls that will spend eternity in heaven or in hell. That will either be enjoying the presence of Christ or will be under the wrath of God for eternity. And so this is not just, oh, let's make sure we check our discipline box that we evangelize this week. No, it's way more than that. There are people's souls here that we're discussing and souls that we're talking to. So we care about their eternity. And the second part, soul winning, is we, well, I want to win you to Christ. I do want to see you get born again. I don't just want to tell you the truth and move on. I want you to be born again by the power of the Spirit. I want you to be convinced of these things in the scriptures. And we know that only happens by the Spirit. And so we want Jesus to bring people in and we want people to come to know him. And it's got to be a whole culture. It can't just be, okay, we'll make an evangelism team. And it can't just be the pastors of the church. It needs to be the entire church. As Spurgeon says, every Christian is a missionary or he is an imposter. Yeah, yeah. So if somebody were to raise the objection to that and say, well, I don't have, you know, I mean, you mentioned the spiritual discipline of evangelism, if I don't have the gift of evangelism, what would you say real quickly to somebody who says, I don't have the gift of evangelism, so this isn't for me? Yeah, I would say, man, I'm so thrilled that you are that dialed in to already knowing your spiritual gifts. How did you, yeah, how did you come about that and what are your other ones? So let's flourish in those. How did you discern those? How did you determine those? So praise God for that. And then secondly, I would say, it's also a command. So there are some that have the gift of preaching and teaching, and they are preachers and teachers, and they do that. But Christians are also commanded to admonish one another, sing to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and let the word of Christ dwell richly in their hearts so they could exhort and encourage and help one another with God's word. So every Christian is called to handle the word of God in a way that's edifying. So yeah, you may not have the gift of evangelism, but Paul does tell Timothy, do the work of an evangelist, right? So if we take that verse and say, well, maybe Timothy views himself as, I don't have the gift of evangelism. Well, he still tells Timothy, do the work of an evangelist, do the work of one. And there's all kinds of other verses like in the chapter in the book on personal evangelism. We use a text that typically isn't thought about for personal evangelism to show you are called to proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. And so what would it look like for you to talk about the amazingness of Jesus to people? You're called to do that. Yeah. One of the ironies I always feel as a pastor is, on the one hand, I totally understand how people feel inadequate to share the gospel. I get that. I get the feelings of fear, of rejection, of, well, what if they bring up an objection that I don't know the answer to? I understand that. But at the same time, I sort of feel this, there's an irony in that. I'm like, well, I'm a pastor and you think that I should go and do this because I'd be equipped for it. But the irony is that nobody will listen to me because I'm a pastor. You know, they're like, of course you're going to say that, you know, you're a pastor. Right. You're, you know, as a Christian out in the workplace, you're out in your neighborhood or whatever, your testimony is actually much more, usually much more effective than mine because you're out there living life right alongside of them and they're like, oh, well you believe in this Jesus guy and you care and you're passionate about it enough to share it with me. So it's kind of ironic sometimes that, yeah, I might have studied harder and have some more apologetic answers, but actually I think you're probably more effective out there because you're right there next to them. They feel like you're their peer and they're ready to hear from you. Yeah, can I jump on something that you said earlier? You're talking about like the gift of evangelism and you equated it to singing. Do you think that's a fair comparison to say even like, you know, there are some people who are probably clearly more gifted than others in singing and yet we're all called to sing, you know, to worship together when we join together. Do you feel like that's a good comparison? Yeah, yeah, I think that is a fair, I do meet people that, man, they are gifted, called evangelists. Yeah. And they have kind of that spiritual makeup to where they seem to have their antenna up more. They seem to be able to make connections winsomely and lovingly and to unbelievers faster. And it's just like a reflex. They just, they go there. Now that could also just be from years of training and praying and growing into Christ likeness. But I do think there is a similarity. We could also use the analogy of pastoring. Yeah, pastors are called uniquely to care for the whole church of God, who they're passing, shepherd the flock of God that is among you, to care for those that are among you. Well, and so we go from that to the wide, the wide application. Well, then you also have Christians who are also called to care for one another, love one another, bear one another's burdens, weep together, rejoice together. So there's also that dynamic of Hebrews 10 to care for one another, exhort one another every day, as long as it's called today, and not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some. And so there's both of these elements. There's kind of the large application and then I think the day to day application. So I think for people who are like, well, I don't really feel called to it. Yeah, you may not have that. I'm going to go be an evangelist. I'm going to be baptizing and sharing the gospel with hundreds of people every year and all that. You may not. But people, you have the small application of other texts, other verses, other ways to obey Christ. Then I think also there's the more natural, you know, we talk about what we're excited about. Yeah. Awesome. In the book, I actually love the way you describe personal evangelism, one of the six principles. Can you, just for our listeners, what did you title that chapter? Tell us a quick snippet of it, because I remember it just being so simple and organic, the way you framed it. Yeah, you may have to help me. It's been so long since I wrote it. I don't remember. I don't remember what it says. So, okay, I think it's, so that's six Ps for the whole book. And the first one is praying for conversions. The second one is the posture of a soul winning church. The third key is the preparing for new converts. That's through good works and kind of rolling out that red carpet doing good works, setting up gospel conversations. And then for personal evangelism, we defined it as just telling people how awesome Jesus is. That's the part that I remember. I couldn't remember exactly the chapter title, but that's the part I remember. Just telling people how awesome Jesus is. That was the concept that I walked away with. That's a beautiful, simple principle for how to go about it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, it's, we can, we can really like muddy the waters of evangelism by feeling like, okay, I need to talk about this and you talk about this. I can talk about this cultural issue, talk about that. Well, that, that may happen, but at bare minimum, I mean, at foundation, begin with, here's how Jesus is amazing. And you could talk about his love, talk about his mercy. So we base all this on 1 Peter 2, 9. You've been called out of darkness into his marvelous light to proclaim the excellencies of him who's called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. That's the text. And so to begin with, proclaim his excellencies. Yeah. Like how excellent is Jesus? How amazing is Christ? Talk about proclaim those things. And definitely we should be talking about the cross, what he did for us, dying for our sins and our place being our substitute, that he would take our shame and our condemnation and our guilt and our, our full on wretchedness, and that he would die for us to redeem us, to take those things away from us and exchange with us his righteousness, his perfection, his holiness, his right standing before the Father. And now He's risen from the dead, His cerebral cortex turned back on Easter morning and blood's pumping through His veins again like a busy subway tunnel. And He's alive in the heavenly places. Like that Jesus is a great friend, that He is our Lord, our King, that He raises a man from the dead. He puts a man's ear back on that's been cut off. He heals a woman who's had medical issue for many, many, many years. And he does all of this not looking for a boomerang payback, but because he is a God of grace and mercy. Yeah. I think Jesus is just so amazing that if we could proclaim his excellencies, have a personal, we know Jesus, we use the phrase, our personal Lord and Savior, which is great, but also have him be your like, your personal subject, like he's got to be personal to you too. He's a real life, real life, living, breathing person that has a personality has all the things that just like you and us, you and I, like all of us, we've got personalities, we've got likes and dislikes, and there are things that are intriguing about us and interesting. And Jesus is the same way. And I think the more we could talk about the amazingness of Christ, like the analogy I use in the book is Jenny's ice cream. Do you guys have Jenny's ice cream up there? Have you had it up in Michigan? Okay, well, they got it at Whole Foods, I think they got it at Kroger, maybe Target. It's a boutique, fancy schmancy ice cream. It's very good. And what I like about it is, when you eat Ben and Jerry's or eat some other kind of specialty ice cream, there's good bites and there's other bites where you're kind of like, where's the stuff? There's no fudge swirl, there's no potato crumble, there's no crackling pretzels in here. What are we doing? But in Jenny's, guys, I mean, in Jenny's ice cream, every bite is omnipresent. That's awesome. It's, the flavors are all there. It's amazing. And so we went to the shop in Houston with some friends, and as we were eating it, I was just blown away by how good this is. And we, you know, the next day I'm telling people, you got to go get this stuff. You got to, I mean, I'm talking, I talk about it in a book. I'm talking about it in a podcast. Why? Well, because I enjoyed it. You know, like what didn't happen was the manager at Jenny's and city center of Houston didn't have to tell me as I was leaving, Hey, want to let you know, it seems like you enjoyed it, but here's a pamphlet for how to talk about our ice cream compared to all the other ice creams of the world and how to how to talk to people who are going to object to Jenny's ice cream. Like none of that had to happen. Right. Because enjoyment is the accelerant in evangelism. Yeah. That's that's huge for us to see that enjoyment is the accelerant in evangelism, that the more we're enjoying Christ, enjoying His grace, enjoying the Word, enjoying the Father, enjoying the Holy Spirit, then evangelism becomes a natural overflow out of enjoyment. Right. And when people do, you know, so you share your enjoyment in Jesus, and when people do raise some of the tough objections or tough questions, I think it's okay to just say, well, you know what, I don't know a great answer to that right now, but I'd be happy to come back to you with an answer, you know? Yeah. So just leading off with, yeah, your joy in Jesus, and if they raise tough questions, just be honest and just say, you know, I don't know a great answer to that, but here's maybe what I think, or let me talk to my pastor or read a book or something and get back to you. I think that's a great way to go. Yeah, absolutely, because clearly they don't know. So for you to say you don't know is like, well, I guess we're on the same footing here. Right, right. You're not like, oh man, I should have known. They don't know. You're right on the same bus with them. The difference is that we know who's driving, that Jesus is in control. So yeah, don't worry about that. So Jeff, thinking about, so beyond the individual, to hold churches and having a culture of evangelism in churches, can you paint a picture for us? What does it look like in a church to have a culture of soul winning of evangelism? I think it begins with, it does begin with the pastors for sure, begins there. It can't stay there. That's kind of the key, is that if you just have the pastors evangelizing, the pastors are the one leading people to Christ, they're doing all the baptisms, all the testimonies are connected to them. I mean, praise the Lord, but we want the whole church to be doing those exact same things. So I think the pastors are kind of like the pace car for evangelism, for setting that tone, setting that culture. And so I think you lead by example, you lead by telling stories, you lead by training, and all that stuff is great. But you also wanna see some ownership of it throughout the church too. What happens, maybe could you give us a warning of when churches don't have a culture of evangelism or they don't have the heart for it, what's the danger in missing this? I think one of the dangers is there's multiple for sure. And so in no particular order, I think one of them is a danger is that if the church continues to grow and there's not this culture of evangelism, seeking the lost, new converts. What's really happening then in this growth is just transfer growth from other churches. Now, maybe Christians are moving in to the city, moving into that part of town, and like, oh, we're coming from Alabama, and we just moved to North Carolina. Like, okay, great, yeah, man, find a healthy, you know, gospel-centered church that's gonna serve you, and all that, and you can grow, and all that. But part of it is you want to be a church that's also on mission. And so if a church is just growing by transfer growth, like, I just don't think that's healthy. What should be happening is the mission mode, that when a church has mission and it stays in there, it wants to see people come to know Christ, it's fulfilling the Great Commission, walking in the Great Commission to make disciples, that's not just growing disciples, it's making them, seeing people get born again and then teaching them how to walk with Jesus. But so a church that's not in mission mode and just stays in maintenance mode, what will eventually happen is that church will then slowly ebb into museum mode. It's filled with memories of the past. Yeah. Remember those years, remember that, and there's no new stories, no new testimonies, no new converts. So they're really missing out, I think, on the full picture of what it means to be the local church. So those would be some of my fears and concerns. And I think it also kind of stunts our own, not just church-wide growth, but also our own individual spiritual formation. That to become like Christ, to be more like Christ, is to also be on mission for Christ. The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. And so we're going to be like Christ, we're going to tell them about the Son of Man who came to seek and save the lost. So we go out and seek and point people to Christ. So we want to be a part of saving them too, as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9, he says, I become all things to all people that I might by all means save some. So that he feels this dimension of, well, I want to be a part of saving people. He says that I might save some. Well, we know that Paul is not the one saving them. That's the same guy that wrote Romans 8 and Romans 9 and Ephesians 1. Yeah. So it's like this, there is no duality between the high view of God's sovereignty and high urgency and soul winning. So I think if we're missing out on that we're stunting our own spiritual growth, our own formation. Yeah. And we need to be encouraged. So if a pastor or an elder, Sunday school teacher, church leader listening, if they're trying to evaluate how are they doing and how's their church doing, what kind of, how could they go about evaluating their own their own church in relation to this? Yeah I would say there is a survey in the back of the book. I think it's in the conclusion, maybe, that's got the six chapters and then a grid laid out from like one to ten, where you could kind of just, there's no perfect way to score this, just kind of your own, like, yeah, I think we're here. Like, how often are we praying for conversions? How often do I? When's the last time I prayed for somebody to get saved? When's the last time I prayed for my own boldness and evangelism? Do we have any elements and environments on our Sunday morning or in our week for praying for new converts? Is it an agenda item on every staff or every pastor's, every elder meeting? Is that on there? And just kind of looking at what's the culture? Would people look at your church and think, man, that is a church that prays, that prays for the lost. So it kind of begin there. And then you think about what's our posture? Are we known for this? Are we known for that? How do we prepare for conversions? Are we doing good work? So we engage in our community? Or is it with gospel intention as well? Or is it just, yeah, we do a couple things, we send some money, and that's it. Then, I mean, personal evangelism, that's the easiest one to really grade on your own is like, do I do this? Yeah. Do we see it reflected in the baptisms of our church? Well, that's something I think it's so easy to be like, well, somebody in my church is doing this. You know, this personal evangelism thing. Well, I'm not doing it, but somebody in my church is doing it. This is happening. Yeah, that's great. You gotta ask the question yourself, am I doing this? Am I actually practicing what we're preaching here. Yeah. And I don't want it to be, I don't know, I think the Lord wants it to be definitely not to be like a condemnation, guilt inducing kind of thing, because we we all have areas in our Christian life where like, yeah, I'm not where I want to be. So, of course, it's not it should not be totally surprising that we look at areas of our Christian life and of our church life and go, yeah, we got some growth to do. Yeah, of course we do. So take the next step. So last question I want to ask you, Jeff, is tie the string for us from what we're talking about now, soul winning to church planting, which is something that you spend a lot of time for yourself doing. And it's something that we're passionate as well. We have the privilege of being part of a church that's getting to plant churches right now and praise God for that. But tie the string for us from this everyday evangelism going on in the church to church planting. Church planting, biblical church planting. What we are trying to do at Syn Network here with the Southern Baptist Convention and the North American Mission Board, biblical church planting is not just service starting. And that is often a lot of what happens in North America is guys think I'm going to get my Squarespace site. I'm going to get my donut wall. I'm going to get our sweet graphics and check-in system. We're going to launch this service and boom, boom, boom. That no, that that is just not biblical. It's not the way it operates. That may have worked in the United States for a while, but that's beginning to work less and less. And thanks be to God for that. Because we need biblical church planting that doesn't just want to be involved in the sheep trade market, swapping sheep to the newer, cooler church that serves, you know, that has a barista on Sunday mornings. What we want to see is the church that is involved in the miracle market of people being raised from the dead. And that happens through evangelism. And so soul winning is really the first ministry. Evangelism really is the first step in church planting. Amen. Awesome. Well, Jeff, thanks so much for the conversation. We appreciate it a ton. Everybody who's listening, thank you so much. You can find Jeff. Where can you find Jeff online? You can find me, let's see, probably first would be jametters.com. You can find me there and other books and all that other good stuff. Then you can find a link to my Substack newsletter. You can go there, but it's also spiritualtheology.net. If you enjoy Charles Spurgeon, you may enjoy that. I do a Spurgeon Saturday. Share a great Spurgeon quote. Every Saturday, yeah. Yeah, so you can go find that. You can also find me on Twitter, at Mr. Meaders, and you can find Instagram, threads, at Jeff Meaders. All that good stuff's there. And then the New Churches podcast. So if you're into church planning and you're interested, definitely go check out the New Churches podcast. We just wrapped up a season going through the book of Titus and applying it to church planners. And you can find articles and everything that I edit and write at newchurches.com. Perfect. Can I ask one more question? Is there any, are there any other projects that you're working on right now that you can share with us that we can look forward to? Yeah, yeah, I'd be happy to. Thanks, thanks brother. I have a new book coming out in January called The Risen King. It's 40 devotions for Easter with Charles Spurgeon. Oh, awesome. So I took a bunch of different excerpts and things from old Chuck and compiled them, put them together to make it feel like a brand new book from him on a devotional for Easter. I'm doing some study notes right now in a new, I don't even know, hopefully I can share this, in a new ESV study Bible for kids. Very cool. That's coming out in a few years. Yeah, so I'm thankful to be doing Song of Songs. And I know. I may have first and second Thessalonians. What an easy assignment. Song of Songs for kids. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I think they asked me because I'm doing my PhD work. I'm almost about to, getting close to graduating, PhD work in Charles Spurgeon in the Song of Solomon. That's what my dissertation is on. So definitely a Christ-centered, Christ-focused interpretation of those. Then I have another book, another Spurgeon book, The Newborn King. That'll come out in 2026. So very like The Risen King. This will be 25 devotions for Advent that'll come out. And then I'm working on an ebook through new churches called Theology for Church Planters and my dissertation and two projects that I'd be a co-editor on that I'm not ready to share yet. But hopefully. Lots of writing going on. Yeah, yeah, too much, too much. Hopefully in the next year, maybe in late 2025, I can share more. Very cool, awesome. Well, thanks again, Jeff, and thanks to everybody who's listening. You can always follow resound media at resound media CC or Instagram YouTube or tick-tock. Have a great week everybody CC or Instagram YouTube or tick-tock. Have a great week everybody Bye!

PODCAST Retiring and Aspiring Exploring the Idea of the Unforgivable Sin March 11, 2024 Mitchell Leach & Logan Bailey Listen to this Episode Mitchell So Hey everyone, welcome to That's a Good Question, a podcast of Peace Church and a part of Resound Media. You can find more great content for the Christian life and church leaders at resoundmedia.cc . That's a Good Question is a place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. I'm Mitch, and you can always submit questions to peacechurch.cc/questions . Today I'm here with Pastor Logan. Logan Hello! Mitchell I'm filling in for Pastor Jon because he is sick and we are wishing him well and he'll be back next week. We are just two weeks away from Holy Week and we would love to answer questions about Holy Week, Good Friday, Easter, and etc. So send them. We would love to have those questions back on here in the coming weeks. But let's jump into this week's questions. We're ready. And these are all centered around kind of the unforgivable sin. So let's jump into this first question. In 1 John 5, John talks about the sin that leads to death and the sin that does not lead to death. What is sin that leads to death? 1 John 5, 16-17 says this, 16 If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. 17 All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death. Question #1: What is sin that leads to death? Logan And this clearly has to do or is related to the unforgivable sin. That's what 1 John is talking about is there is a sin that leads to death. There is a sin that you can commit that you cannot be forgiven for. And I think that it's scary to think about that. There are people throughout history that you can look up and read about, or people that we even know in our own experience who are terrified that we've committed this unforgivable sin. In other places in Scripture, it's referred to as blaspheming the Holy Spirit, which I know the next question asks more specifically about. But this idea of sin that leads to death, sin that doesn't lead to death, my first thought right off the gate is, praise God that there is a sin. There are sins that don't lead to death because there's forgiveness of sin. It's not saying, John is not saying there is sin that you can commit that doesn't damn you to hell. Not all sins are equal. I know it's a cliche that people say. Like murder is worse than being angry at someone, but both sins are damnable. Because every sin, regardless of what it is, can send you to hell. Taking fruit off a tree when God told not to was enough to damn Adam and Eve, barring one thing, the forgiveness of their God. And so praise God that we have forgiveness from sin in Jesus Christ. MitchellYeah, absolutely. I think this is such an important question. What is this sin that leads to death? It's not the first time that this is asked. In fact, in the Heidelberg, the Heidelberg kind of summarizes this question. Mitchell 87 says this, Can those be saved who do not turn to God from their ungrateful and unrepentant ways? See, I love that because sin is something that leads to death. The wages of sin is death. The only escape from that is the forgiveness of God. And so that points out that the unforgiveness, sin that leads to death is sin that is not forgiven. Yeah. Logan Which then leads right into unforgivable sin. That would be a sin that leads to death. I think that it's awesome whenever we quote the Heidelberg or the Belgic Confession or the Canons of Dort, because if you go on our website right now and you go to our Statements of Faith, it'll point you to those three documents. We call them the three forms of unity. So I love whenever we can bring them out. Mitchell And they're not the Bible, but they've stood the test of time. They help us to understand the Bible better. They're always rooted in Scripture. They're awesome. So can you read that one more time? I think it's more helpful than words we give. Logan Yeah, no, absolutely. Mitchell Yeah. Can those be saved who do not turn to God from their ungrateful and unrepentant ways? That's the question and the answer is this. By no means, Scripture tells us that no unchaste person, no idolater, no adulterer, thief, or no covetous person, no drunkard, slanderer, or robber, or alike these shall enter the kingdom of heaven. The hope and the good news of this, it sounds scary, it sounds like bad news, but the good news of this is that this is not a one-time thing. This is not a sin that you could not knowingly commit. This is a sin that is a deliberate refusal to believe in Jesus, to follow his commands, and to love the brothers. Specifically in this passage, that's what it's talking about. I love how William Tyndale, he's the guy who first translated the Bible into English, so he's got some pretty good stuff to say, but he said, this is a sin which is resisting grace and fighting against mercy. I love just how simple that is. It's resisting grace and fighting against mercy. Logan I think that is almost spot on. Praise God there is grace. Reading the Bible, being around church enough, you think an unforgivable sin? Mitchell Yeah. Logan That sounds crazy, but we just get, like, the crazy thing is that there's any forgiveness at all. The crazy thing is that there is any sin that could not lead to death. Like, praise God, there is forgiveness. And so, I love that quote, because it's pointing out, hey, there's an unforgivable sin because there's a such thing as grace and there's a such thing as mercy from our God. And if you are rejecting those things, then you'll miss out on the glorious, all just incredible, awe-inspiring forgiveness that does exist. So if you're rejecting the forgiveness… If you hate His forgiveness, if you hate His mercy, He says, all right, you don't get it. Mitchell The second question is this, what does it mean to blasphemy for a second. It sounds like a big church word. But if someone was to ask you, what is blasphemy, you teach to students. Say a student were to ask you, what is blasphemy?It sounds like a big church word. What would you say? Question #2: What is blasphemy? Logan Yeah, someone in our church came up and asked, what does blasphemy mean? There's a few different words that you could use. of being against, like speaking words of, I'm against the Holy Spirit. Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit would be, I'm against the Holy Spirit. I'm offending the Holy Spirit. Yeah. Mitchell Yeah. I've always thought of blasphemy as a way, specifically against God, it's when someone says something untrue, hurtful about God, and they're doing it on purpose to show that they don't respect Him. Logan I like that, yeah, respect is a good, yeah, I think, word as well. I think that for people that might be afraid of having committed the unforgivable sin, having blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, if you're afraid of it, you probably haven't done it. And I like actually what Augustine says. Augustine makes the point that the unforgivable sin, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit isn't a single act as much as it is a state of your heart, a hardness of heart that continues and lasts and is unchanging despite, like you just referenced, Tyndale said, the grace and mercy of God. So a hardness of heart that is unchanging, doesn't soften. The idea of you afraid, have I offended, have I blasphemed, have I committed the unforgivable sin? That's a sign that you haven't, because that's a sign of a soft heart, that you're actually, you don't want to offend God. That means the state of your heart is one that is soft and is open to repentance. Mitchell Yeah. And so this idea all comes from Mark chapter 3. It's also in Matthew, but here's the passage where this is coming from, the idea of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Verse 28 says this, Truly I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemes they utter. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin, for they were saying he has an unclean spirit. And this is all couched in a story where this is huge. The context of this is huge. People are assaulting Jesus' character by saying that he does miracles on behalf of Beelzebub or on behalf of the devil, and then this is Jesus' response. So it kind of seems kind of crazy even hearing those two things together, but I'd love for you to unpack that. Oh, man. I think you just did a good job of explaining the context. Logan He is speaking to religious leaders when he says this, he has them in mind, he's looking at them and saying, if there is an unpardonable sin, right after they are accusing him of casting out demons by demons. So that would be like the blasphemy, right? Speaking against the Holy Spirit's work, speaking against the Holy Spirit's ministry. I think that right before this encounter, at least in Matthew's account, Matthew 12, 28, before Jesus says anything about the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, he says this, if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you they are saying it's by demons that he casts out demons Yeah, that is attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to demons. Yeah, that is a clear picture of a Speaking against the ministry of God. And it's not a single act as much as it is a sign of their unrepentant heart that they are standing before God God the Son, who is doing the ministry of God the Holy Spirit and God the Father, right? God is doing things and they're attributing what God is doing to Satan. Mitchell Yeah, something that's clearly divine, that's clearly of God saying, nope, this is demonic, this is evil, it's a wholehearted rejection of good. Yeah. The state of their heart is one of rejection, not repentance. And that's the difference because he says, if the spirit of God, or if it is by the spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God is here. The kingdom of God has come upon you. There's two things that can happen when the kingdom of God shows up, forgiveness or damnation. And the state of your heart is showing signs of eternal ruin. You are headed towards damnation because you are refusing the repentance I'm offering. Yeah, they've seen an act of the Holy Spirit. They've seen something amazing. And they're saying no. And they're like, no, don't like it. Yeah, and that's, I think, a really clear way to say, bringing that into our context, what happens in our hearts when we see something clearly of the Holy Spirit, do we run towards it or reject it and run away from it? The ministry of the Holy Spirit. Yeah, unfortunately, this passage has a lot of baggage that comes along with it. There have been some unfaithful people, pastors, that have interpreted this. So let me just ask this question. What would be some sins that are forgivable that some people have called the unforgivable sin? One of the big classic ones is suicide. The idea that, I think this is maybe more of a Catholic thing, but the idea that you need your final confession before you die. And the idea is if someone's committing suicide, they can't have that, and therefore they're... Logan Yeah, I think that that's probably the best example, unless you have more, but that does sound like a good example of what could be falsely called the unforgivable sin. I mean, you look at Judas, who he goes and kills himself after betraying Jesus, while Peter, after betraying Jesus, runs back to Jesus. Man, that scene, that idea that Jesus is on the beach, he's on the boat, he sees Jesus, he's jumping in the water, everyone else is sailing back, he's swimming back. Peter ran back to Jesus after sinning against him. Judas ran from Jesus after sinning against him. And his suicide wasn't the unforgivable sin, but it's demonstrating we know the state or we see signs of what the state of Judas's heart was Mm-hmm, and it wasn't repentance. It was rejection. Mitchell Yeah, some other ones would be like murder or adultery denying Jesus under the threat of persecution or taking the Lord's name in vain. These were all examples that I saw throughout Yeah, those are those we have biblical evidence that those are forgiven Yeah, and that was what everyone said as I was putting this together. They're like, yeah, these are forgivable. I mean, you think about murder and adultery. I mean, prime example would be David. He committed both of those and God forgave him. God, David is a man after God's own heart, not because he was sinless, but because he knew how to repent. Yeah, I think this part of the conversation highlights, like, it's not about thinking of what single acts are the most heinous, because that dismisses the fact that we opened with of any sin. It's not that all sins are equally sinful or bad, right? Like, again, murder's worse than anger, but both, any sin, no matter what it is, is a rejection of God's holiness, it's a rejection of God's goodness, it's a negligence to honor Him. Any sin is enough to damn you, because every sin leads to death. That is what sin earns you, is death. And so, when we try to rank sins and see which one crosses that line, I think it misses the point that every sin crosses that line. Logan Yeah, absolutely. Mitchell I think one of the confusing ones for people, I've heard this, I remember growing up in youth group and hearing this, like, if you deny Jesus, he'll deny you. There's a passage in Matthew that says something like that. There's one in 1 Timothy 2, I think. Yeah. Yeah, and the idea of like, well, if I deny Jesus, well, under persecution, like so, you know, the classic line, someone to put a gun to your head and say, you know, you have to deny Jesus or you'll die. You know, what if someone made the wrong choice there? Is that the unforgivable sin? And I would say, no, you look at Peter. Yes, he denied him, not just once, but three times. And here's a good point to make. It's sin. Bad things to do. Logan And that just brings us back to, man, sin is sin, and it is worthy of eternal separation, eternal ruin. And praise God there's forgiveness. That's the point that I hope we end on in our minds and our hearts is that the crazy thing isn't that there's an unpardonable sin. The crazy thing, man, is that there's forgiveness at all. Yeah, yeah, I love that. Mitchell How about this, let's clearly and succinctly just clear this for anyone who's listening right now. If we were gonna say what is the unforgivable sin in a sentence, what would you say? Logan In my own, I mean, I think we've said it in great ways. Tim Dale's quote we can end on as well, but one way I've said it before is the unforgivable sin is the rejection of forgiveness. Yeah, I would say the refusal of repentance. Mitchell Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a sin that makes it impossible for you to repent is what I wrote down because I thought that's, you know, that is in a sense a sin and that is the one that makes, you know, it's not a thing that you can fall into. It's something that, man, if I were committing this sin, I wouldn't even care. Logan It's a state of your heart of like this lack of caring. This lack of recognition that the Spirit offers forgiveness. Mitchell If I was going to come to you and say, hey, I think you're committing the unforgivable sin, and you weren't, you'd be like, oh, you know, like, let's talk about it. But if you were like, I could be, I don't want that like You worry you'd be like I don't care like I don't have to say like that's that's you know Logan That heart posture that you can yeah and a sign that you don't have that You know that heart posture is when you hear about the possibility of a non-forgivable sin you're concerned, but you've done it Mitchell Yeah, I think every Christian is concerned about this has some anxiety every true Christian feels this way which is a sign Logan Yeah, you can't yeah, which is a really good sign it's saying and Mitchell I think that's something that we've all felt I remember being in middle school and being afraid that I've committed this hmm I'll say some bad ideas of what it was yeah but how about this let's end with this what are some comfort for those who believe that they've committed this that are anxious about this yeah you haven't Logan If you're anxious about it that you haven'tIf you have a soft enough heart to think man, I don't want to offend God I don't want to refuse him and his desire to save me. Then you haven't I mean that's a state of your heart that is actually softened. Mm-hmm Maybe there's still it's still more room for repentance And that's I mean praise God that he's always working on us to be sanctified and further repent, but that's a sign that you have a soft heart, that you're not rejecting the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. Mitchell Yeah. I just think of the start of that passage, right? All sins will be forgiven in the children of man, and whatever blasphemes they utter. Like, what a beautiful promise from God. Every sin can be forgiven. Right. And then he goes into it, except for the one. Rejection of it. Logan Rejection of forgiveness. Could you read Tyndale's quote one more time? I think that's really good. Mitchell Yeah, he says this, the unforgivable sin is one which is resisting grace and fighting against mercy. I love the resisting and fighting. It 's not a one-time act. It is a continual posture of your heart. It's a lifelong approach to God and who he is. There's no reason it would change once you die. We know that when we all die, we stand before Jesus, and your heart, most likely, won't change in the meantime. Logan People in hell don't want God, that's why they're in hell. Mitchell The beautiful truth is that we can hang our hat on, all sins will be forgiven. And that's the gospel in a sense, is that Jesus went to the cross to take your place. So that one day when you're judged, you'll be judged as Christ should be, right? Because he was judged as you should have been. Logan Yeah, that's good. Mitchell Yeah. That's really good. We can have forgiveness because he got our justice. Logan If every sin is the dishonoring of God, the rejection of His goodness, the refusal to see His holiness, you know, the long list of that, of what sin is, praise God that He sanctifies us to see His goodness and see His holiness. And yeah, whoever's blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, committing an unforgiven sin, as you said, as Tyndale said, fighting against seeing the truth, resisting against seeing the truth of God's goodness and the beauty of the forgiveness he offers. Mitchell Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you for listening. Thank you for submitting your questions. We love hearing them. We love hearing them. Again, you can submit your questions to peacechurch.cc or wherever you listen to podcasts.

From Rejected to Restored Sermon Series: The Reversal Ryan DB Kimmel Lead Pastor Peace Church Main Passage: John 5:1-18 Transcript Today is the day that the Lord has made. So let us rejoice and be glad in it. And everyone said, amen, amen. So today we are talking about one of those just classic stories of Jesus. It has all the makings of a great Jesus story. He heals a man and then the religious people get all upset and they try to kill him for it. But then rather than backing down, Jesus doubles down because that's our Jesus. Amen. Amen. We are in our Easter and Lent sermon series as we're walking through the Gospel of John together, as we're looking at this this notion here that Jesus brings about the great reversal, how he brings us back to everything good. And in this series, as we walk through the Gospel of John together, we're seeing does not just stop what sin has done, but by the power of the gospel, he restores what is broken. It's today, we're looking at this notion here of going from rejected to restored. From rejected to restored. Go ahead, if you have your Bibles, please turn to John chapter five. Now that's on page 1132, if you wanna use the Bibles that are here. Now if you are following along with our Lent reading as we walk through the Gospel of John, as we do daily readings in this gospel, you'll notice that the passage that we're going to look at today was the passage that we read yesterday together through this reading. And if you read it yesterday, you might have noticed something that I've got to take a moment and just acknowledge. If you did the reading yesterday, or even if you begin to look at the passage now, as we look at verses 1 to 18, you may notice that for many Bibles, most Bibles, including the Bibles that we use here at Peace Church, verse 4 is missing. It goes right from verse 3 to verse 5. Now, the reason that verse 4 is omitted is because the oldest manuscripts we have, meaning those documents that are closest to when John wrote his, the copies that we have, they don't include this verse. And so what we're trying to do, we're just trying to be more in alignment with what John the apostle actually wrote. And so the ESV Bibles that we use here, that's one of our preferred translations, the English Standard Version, it does not include this verse, but it does make note of it in the margin. It's a verse that provides some interesting details to the story, but it does not appear to be part of the original writing as John first composed the Gospel of John. So, we make note of it, but we don't include it as being part of the divinely inspired Word of God. So hear me, no one's trying to hide it or suppress it. It's noted in the Bibles. It's there if you want to read it. We'll make mention to what it says. But again, we just don't believe it was part of what John originally wrote. And so with that, we are gonna read verses one to 18 together, that's a little bit longer of a passage. And so I would ask you, if you are able, would you please stand for the reading of God's word? Would you hear the gospel of John, chapter five, verses one to 18? Would you hear God's word? After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, an Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, and paralyzed, one man who had been an invalid for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, do you want to be healed? The sick man answered him, sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up. And while I am going, another steps down before me. Jesus said to him, get up, take your bed and walk. And at once the man was healed and he took up his bed and walked. Now that was the Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, it is a Sabbath, it's not lawful for you to take up your bed. But he answered them, the man who healed me, that man said to me, take up your bed and walk. And they asked him, who is the man that said to you, take up your bed and walk? Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn as there was a crowd in the place. Afterwards, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, see, you are well. Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you. The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him. And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, My Father is working until now, and I am working. This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. Amen, this is God's word. Would you please remain standing as we say a quick prayer. Father, we pray that you would bless our time here this morning with the moving of the spirits and with the knowledge of your gospel truth. Be with us as we learn from your word and as we learn all the more about the power of the gospel, our savior. For it's in his name that we pray these things in Jesus mighty name. And everyone said, amen, amen. Go ahead and have a seat here. So as we walk through this passage today and we learn this story from the life of Jesus, we're going to focus on this one main idea here today. And that's the fact that the gospel. The next one will say the gospel brings us from rejected to restored. Now, again, let's make it clear. Not going from condemned to clean, but rejected to restored. Because Jesus brings about the true reversal of things. But here's an interesting note about this passage. If you like history, you're gonna love this. So, this passage in particular, for a long time, was used as a passage to try to prove that the Bible is not historically reliable. Now, see what had happened was that John gives us a pretty specifically detailed description of where this took place. But the problem was, is we didn't really see a place like that in Jerusalem. Again, John's really detailed here. He gives specifics. It's in Jerusalem. It's by the sheep gate. This is where sheep were brought in to be prepared for sacrifice. It was a pool, so water was there, right? And it says it was also surrounded by five-roofed colonnades. Now, a colonnade is like a portico or like a porch. So we have some pretty detailed description here, except there wasn't a place like that found in Jerusalem. So for many, many years, liberal historians and liberal theologians would say, see, the Bible is not historically reliable. Until guess what? We found it. See, what had happened was in the 400s AD, during the Byzantine Empire, because this was a holy place where Jesus performed a miracle, what they did was they built a little church over this section of Jerusalem, over this little pooled area. I don't know why they would do those things back in the day, but they did. This was the 400s AD, and about 200 years later, roughly in the 600s AD, 614 to be specific, the Persian Empire came in and sacked Jerusalem and they destroyed this little church. And so the rubble from the church caved in upon this pool. And there it sat, undisturbed and undiscovered for 1200 years, until archeologists began to dig out Jerusalem and they discovered this very unique setting with this pool and these five porticos. And because of John's detailed description that matched perfectly, archaeologists realized, this is the pool of Bethesda. And it was because of John's detailed description. My friends, the Bible is historically reliable. Reliable. And more than that, it's true. Its message is true. Its message is trustworthy. It will stand the test of time. It will outlast you, it will outlast me. And that's why its truth is so important for us to know because it gives us something eternal. They said, see, the Bible isn't historically reliable, and they were wrong. This is where Jesus himself stood and performed a miracle. So my friends, trust the word of God. It stood the test of time and it's true, and it's message is true. And this morning we're gonna look at this message here that the gospel brings us from rejected to restored. So let's look at three things from this passage. And the first one is this, Christ sees you when you are unnoticed. Christ sees you when you are unnoticed. So here's, let's walk through the story. So Jesus and his crew, they go to Jerusalem for a festival and they come upon this pool called Bethesda. In the original language that meant house of mercy. Now here's what was going on with this pool. It had been come to be to be believed that an angel at certain times would stir up this pool and when the pool was stirred the first person who got in would be healed. Now there's not much to go on in history as to know where that legend or that story or that belief arose, but when archaeologists discovered the pool of Bethesda, they also found near that pool some marble carvings from outside the Jewish faith that denoted that this pool performed miracles. So people even outside the Jewish faith believe that there was something unique about this pool. Again, we don't have much history to understand why they believed that. But either way, Jesus comes up to this pool. There are many people there. But Jesus sees this one man who apparently was sick and could not walk. This man waited and wanted to be the first person in the pool, but it was not going to happen because no one was going to help him. He was overlooked, ignored, forgotten, rejected. This was truly a marginalized man. We talk these days a lot about marginalized people. The thing though about that is, as I said, marginalized people. You thought of somebody, but you need to understand, when we talk about marginalized people, we're talking about those people that nobody thinks about and that's this guy He was passed over he was stepped over Like literally he was this he was at the bottom of the barrel But Jesus comes and when everyone else had ignored him when everyone else was stepping over him Jesus sees him Because that's who Jesus is. So my friends, if you are feeling like you have no place, that you're rejected, that you're ignored, that everyone just passes by or passes over you, let me just tell you right now, the Son of God sees you. Because Jesus sees you when you are unnoticed. Look at verse three, and there lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, and paralyzed. And one man who was there had been an invalid for 38 years. This man was sick. We don't know exactly what. We just know that he was sick and unable to walk. And he was like this for nearly four decades. This was a man who knew pain, humiliation, rejection like so few of us do. Verse 6, when Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there already for a long time, he said to him, do you want to be healed? Hold on a second. Like it's like, Jesus, are you kidding? Of course he wants to be healed. What else do you think he's doing here? Now, if you thought that, then let me just say this, my friend, I don't know if you know this or not, but some people act like they want help, but they really don't. Many people, they just want a handout. They don't actually want help or healing. Surprise, surprise. People come to the church and they want us to give them money. They look at a large church like Peace and they think that we just are overflowing with cash or something. And we're just gonna freely just give it to anyone. Now listen, when people come to the church and they want help, I need you to know as a lead pastor, we do not respond with judgment. We respond with kindness and a willingness to help. When people come and they want to seek help, of course we want to help them. And we say that we want to help you. We want to help you more than you actually realize. We don't want to just pay your bills. We want to help you get to a better place in life. You think people stick around after that? Not very many. We want to help. We're commanded to help. We are blessed and we want to help, but we wanna do more than just pass out money. We wanna help people get out of their situations, not just continue to support a lifestyle that keeps them in the down and out. Notice, Jesus does not ask this man, do you wanna get into the pool? He asks him, do you want to be healed? This is key, because many people, they just wanna get into the pool. They just want the handout. They just want to do what they think is the next thing. They don't have a bigger vision for their life or their life situation or how the gospel can bring them into a better and a larger healing to their lives. Jesus asks, do you want to be healed? Look at how the man responds. Verse 7, the sick man answered him sir I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred while I'm going another steps down before me Did you notice this Jesus asks about healing and this man can only think about the pool Now listen, you have to have empathy for this man He wants to be healed But he's going about it the only way that he knows or has access to and yet Jesus is trying to show him something bigger and better. Jesus is essentially saying to this man, you don't need the pool, you need me. Verse 8 and 9, Jesus said to him, Get up, take up your bed and walk. And at once the man was healed and he took up his bed and walked. Because my friends, Christ sees you when you are unnoticed. But also, Christ serves you when you are unknowing. As if a miracle wasn't cool enough, here's where the story takes a different turn. Verse nine continues by saying, now that day was the Sabbath. Dun dun dun. Uh oh, take note here my friends. The Jews were not allowed to work, not even allowed to carry things on the Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, It's the Sabbath, and it's not lawful for you to take up your bed. Verse 11. But he answered them, The man who healed me, that man said to me, Take up your bed and walk. They asked him, Who is the man that said to you, take up your bed and walk? Take notice, they don't even mention the miracle. They don't want to mention the miracle. They don't want to mention the good things that God's doing. They just want to know if this man broke the law or not. Verse 13, now the man who had been healed did not know who it was for Jesus had withdrawn as there was a crowd in the place. Jesus healed this man and the man didn't even know it was Jesus. And I think for many of us, it's the same. We don't realize God working in our lives in that moment. Many of us have to get through, look back, and then we see it was God working all along. My prayer is that you have the eyes to see right now in the moment that God is moving in your life. But if it takes you getting through it and looking back to see, then I pray you have the eyes then to see it. But notice, Jesus does find this guy a little bit later, but look where? Verse 14, afterward, Jesus found him at the pool? No, at the temple. Did you notice this? Because I love this, don't miss this. This man went to the pool, let's just call it the pool of superstition. This man went to the pool of superstition to get healed. But when he was truly healed, he did not stay at that pool. He went to the temple. Why? Because he went to worship God. My friends, is that your response when good things happen to you? Do you go to the church and give gratitude and give thanks to God for what he's done? Afterwards, verse 14, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, See, you are well. Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you. Time out. Time out. Big time, time out. We have to handle this verse carefully, otherwise we are liable to seriously misapply what's going on here. We really have to understand what Jesus is saying here. Jesus is not saying that because he sinned he was an invalid for 40 years. What Jesus is saying, what he's telling the man, is that sin brings destruction and ruin to our lives. Jesus is saying to this man, I've healed you, so don't go and continue to live a life of sin because sin will lead you to a place that's worse than what I found you. So you need to understand that Jesus' work in our lives is not to give us what we want. What that man wanted was to get into the pool. Jesus does not come into our lives to give us what we want. He comes into our lives to give us something better, to give us healing, to heal us, to save us, and to give us a mission and a purpose in life where we do not sin anymore but we go and we live as people who are made whole, holy, and righteous. People who are restored to God so that we can live rightly with God. Jesus said to the man, see you are well. Sin no more. But now that the man is healed and he knows who saved him and who healed him, look at verse 15. That man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who healed him. And this gets Jesus in hot water because he healed, because he did a miracle on the Sabbath. Oh, my friends, can you imagine being so religious and legalistic that miracles are considered a crime? If that sounds crazy to you, and that may sound crazy to you, but I wonder how many good things that God calls us to do that might be considered a crime if they go against our laws. Well, you may scoff and say, well, the Pharisees, they were following man-made laws. All laws are man-made. American law is man-made. I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying at some point you have to realize at the end of the day where does your ultimate allegiance lie? if it's right before God, should not we do it even if it gets us in trouble? If it's wrong before God, should we stand, celebrate, and enforce it? Jesus Christ was doing miracles. He was doing good things in God's name, and they said that's illegal. That's against our laws. And I'll just ask you, if you were in this story, which side would you have been on? Listen, we often ask that question, right? You don't want to be on the wrong side of history. I'll tell you right now, I don't care what side of history I'm on. I don't care what future people think of me. I care what God thinks. My allegiance is to Him. I stand before Him at the end of the days, not before future people. I don't care what side of history I'm on. I want to be on God's side. I want to be on the side of Jesus Jesus was doing good things and they said it's illegal. I'm asking you. What side do you want to be on my friends? We are faced with this every day Which side do you want to be on following God's righteous law or our own man-made ones again? I'm not calling anyone or telling anyone to break the law But I am asking you to consider, where does your ultimate allegiance lie? Now listen, this is a thought experiment, and I understand that we stand dangerously close to the edge of a cultural cliff. And I'm not going to push anyone off it, and I'm not going to ask anyone to jump. I just want you to consider this, so I'll say it again. How many good, godly things are considered a crime because they go against our law? And on the flip, how many things are legal that are actually sinful? Let me just say, dads, that's a great conversation to have with your kids on the ride home. And right now, I think some of us are trying to think, what am I getting at, who am I pointing at? I'm pointing at everyone right now, especially the guy in the mirror, but I'm pointing at both sides of the political and cultural divide right now. Because both of us, all of us, fall short of this. And so this is why I'm here to tell you that only Jesus can heal us personally, only Jesus can heal us culturally. Only Jesus can heal us because only Jesus can save us. That's the last thing we're going to look at. Christ saves you when you are unable. Verse 16, And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. Meaning, these guys were showing their true colors, and Jesus knows that they are coming after him, and so does Jesus back down? No, he presses in. He does not back down. Verse 17, but Jesus answered them, my father is working until now, and I am working. Jesus is like, you want to persecute me because I did a miracle on the Sabbath. I love how Jesus responds here. He sort of rubs it into them. Notice he keeps using the word working the thing you weren't supposed to do on the Sabbath. He said, God is constantly working, even on the Sabbath, and God's my father, so I will constantly be working, even if it's on the Sabbath. I love Jesus Christ, I'll just be honest with you. This is why I follow him, he's amazing. Working, he says this, the thing you weren't supposed to do on the Sabbath. And with that, they go from wanting to persecute him, now they want to kill him. But listen to me, it's not just because he was breaking their Sabbath law. Verse 18 tells us, this is why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own father, making himself equal with God. So Jesus goes from, in their mind, breaking the Sabbath law, to tried and true, utter, blatant blasphemy. The officials went from wanting to arrest Jesus to wanting to kill him. Because the Jews, we may miss this with our modern ears, we may not understand what's going on here, but the Jews knew exactly what Jesus meant when he said this. He was making himself equal with God, thereby calling himself God. But we must understand this, my friends, if Christ is not God, he is not able to save you. Because Jesus Christ was fully man, this made him be able to pay for human sin. But because he was God, this made him able to pay for all of human sin. Because Christ is God, and he does not just heal us in the moment, doctors can do that. Jesus restores us for eternity. Christ showed that he was able to do this by healing a man who had been sick and neglected for almost 40 years, but Christ proved it once and for all with his own resurrection from the dead. So my friends, here's the gospel, that Christ died for our sins and on the third day rose again from the dead so that we could go from being rejected by God because of our sin to restore fully into the family of God where we can now experience the love of God and worship him freely as we were meant to do. Let me just level with you for a moment. As I look out here and I see faces of my church family and I know some of the pain that some of us are dealing with. I know that in the gospel, God's promises may not feel like they are ever going to be immediately fulfilled. We may not see immediate healing, but God's promises, hear me, are bigger and more eternal than this momentary life. You are not made just to get into the pool. You are made to be healed forever. And we find our eternal healing and restoration through the gospel when we let Christ do that work in his work in our lives. And the story that we looked at today is a true account from history, a place that you can actually go visit and stand. And while it's a true account from history, you need to understand this this little story shows us so much about ourselves as well This story is about a man Broken and unable to save himself rejected by all and yet Christ comes to offer him healing But listen to me Jesus does not just awake something inside of us So that this man can so that we or this man can heal himself. Christ heals this man when he could not heal himself. And then Christ calls him to stand, go, and sin no more, restoring him to good health. My friends, this is a picture of us, broken by our sin that we honestly love so much. And because we love our sin and give ourselves to sin, God rejects that and rejects us. But yet, Christ comes in and saves us, undoes the work of sin in our life so that we could be welcomed back into the family of God, we could be welcomed back into the presence of God, and Christ calls us to stand up. Don't let sin bring you down anymore. Stand up, go, walk, and sin no more. And what Christ does is not just restore us to health, he restores us to God Himself. You know, I, as a pastor here, I get up on most Sundays, for some reason you keep coming in here and you preach. And I'll be honest with you, every single week, every single Sunday morning, I think and pray this all at the same time. Lord, why would this sermon matter to anyone tomorrow morning? We're here on Sunday morning, but I want to say something that's going to matter to you tomorrow morning. And I ask God to answer that prayer, and I don't know if He does or not. I pray that He does sometimes. But when it comes to this passage, well-known Bible story many of us learned in Sunday school. Why would this matter to you tomorrow morning? Here's what I want you to remember tomorrow morning. When the media wants to tell you the sky is falling, when you're unsure of what to do next, when you get lost in the daily grind of life, I want you to remember this there is a God in heaven who sent his son to die for you So that by the power of the gospel you can understand that you are not rejected by the king of kings You are not rejected by the God of the universe anymore. You are restored to him Because that's who you are in Christ so no matter what the world wants to tell you or say to you Christ has a better word and And that word is that you are welcomed back into the family. You are restored as a son or daughter in the kingdom of God. And that should matter to you more than anything else come tomorrow morning. You are rejected no more, but now finally, fully and forever restored, restored to God so that you can truly know his love, so that you can truly worship him freely. And this happens through Christ, by Christ, because He has brought us from being rejected to restored. And this happens through Christ, by Christ, because He has brought us from being rejected to restored. And all God's people said, Amen. And Amen.

The Story of Job - His Suffering Sermon Series: The Story of Job Ryan DB Kimmel Lead Pastor Peace Church Main Passage: Job 2:1-10 Transcript Today is the day that the Lord has made. So let us rejoice and be glad in it. And everyone said, Amen. And Amen. I hope you can say that in your days of suffering. And as I said, this is a weighty and weighty topic. And so before we feel the weight of this, I thought maybe we start on a lighter note with just, some fun facts as we get going with this heavy topic of Job. So I'm gonna give you some fun facts here this morning, and because we're reading a book of the Bible, let's stick with the theme of books. So here are some fun facts, and if these ever come in handy to you one day when you're on Jeopardy, take a guess, what was the first book written on a typewriter? Any guesses? Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain. Interesting. Now this one is going to expose who the weird people are and they don't care that people know that they're weird, but is there anyone here, and it goes to the other venues too, you love the smell of old books. Yep, see, there are always a few. Do you know there's actually a word for that? I don't know if I'm saying it right, but bibliomania? I think that's how you say it. So right now, the top three most-read books in the world. The Bible, no surprise there. The second one is probably one that actually on this side of the pond we're not super familiar with, but worldwide it's one of the most read books. It's the quotations from the chairman Mao Zedong. And then third, I guess is more of a series than a book. Anyone want to take a guess? Harry Potter. I heard that. Alright, last one. The last fun fact is the cue segue. Did you know that the Book of Job is one of the oldest books of the Bible? And it is quite possibly the first one that was actually written down. This is interesting because of the subject matter, right? Because it's such a weighty topic dealing with suffering and it's caused so many questions and yet it is a book that has clearly stood the test of time. It has affected and challenged and encouraged people across continents, centuries, languages, cultural divides. Job is amazing and it's an amazingly complex book, but it stood the test of time. But I would say, I would say especially for us here who are 21st-century Americans, I would say that we, compared to all people throughout human history, I dare say that we have even harder time with this story than most. And here's why. Because largely, as a people, we're unaccustomed, we're not accustomed to suffering. Suffering's not a way of life for us. And I'm not diminishing those who have suffered in this world, but I'm saying largely as a people, suffering is not a part of the American ethos. We are people who do not have wants, largely. We're people who have what we need. We've had comfortable lives. We're among the richest people who have ever lived on the face of the planet. And you best believe that affects how we consider and relate to God. That you better believe that informs how we have come to understand how God works. We are a people who think because of our life of seeming pleasure and supply and lack of wants, well, Well, surely, surely then that means that God wouldn't give us anything other than our best life now. And the people who think that are going to have an incredibly hard time, more than most, with a story like Job, because Job is so challenging to that notion. So let's get there now. Would you please turn in your Bibles to Job chapter 2. We're in the second part of this five-week series, Job Chapter 2. That's on page 529 if you want to use the Bibles we provided. Before we really sink into our text, I want to take a moment and just kind of walk through the first part of chapter 2, just kind of frame, give us a frame of reference. So as you're turning there, Job chapter 2 verse 1, it says this, it says, again, again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came among them to present himself to the Lord. Okay, so to clarify, the sons of God, we talked about this last week, the sons of God are, this is a spiritual setting, these are spiritual beings. We don't know exactly what they are, maybe they are angels, we see the devil come into this presence, the devil is a fallen angel, doesn't specify that, but what we see is this is God's what we've known as the divine counsel not because God's seeking their wisdom but because God has created these spiritual beings to see his will enacted upon creation and reality. But Satan enters and we see a conversation that reflects what we saw last week with Job chapter 1 verse 2 "and the Lord said to Satan from where have you come from Satan answered the Lord from going to and fro on the earth, and walking up and down it. And the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil? He holds fast to his integrity." Stop right there. So God is saying, pointing back to how Job has survived his first round of loss and suffering. But he's done this by maintaining his faith in God and his integrity as a man. God says he still holds fast to his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason. So again, here we see that God specifies that Job in a sense did not deserve this, which shows us that there is something much larger, much deeper at play here. Verse four, "then Satan answered the Lord and said, skin for skin, all that a man has, he will give for his life, but stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh and he will curse you to his face." Okay, stop right there. Do you see what Satan is saying to God? Satan is saying to God, God, you know that the heart of man, the heart of humankind, is ultimately selfish. At the end of the day, all they really care about is themselves. The reason Job passed the first test is that you wouldn't let me attack him. But God, you attack Job? That's when you'll see him curse you. That's when you'll see his faith fail. "And the Lord said to Satan, behold, he is in your hand. Only spare his life." So God permits this. But we also see God put limitations on this, which shows us that God is still in control. But unlike last time, we see the devil here go right to work. Verse 7, "So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he, Job, took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes." So here we see Job in his lowest moment because the devil always kicks you when you're down. Satan so physically afflicts Job with this skin disease, whatever it is, that it literally feels better to Job to take shards of broken pottery and to scrape his skin. That feels better than the sores. That's how terrible an agony he is in. Job took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes shows us that Job is grieving because ash represents devastation. And Job is showing us that he literally and symbolically is sitting in the midst of his devastation as he is mourning the loss of everything. And I would probably say particularly, especially his children. But it's these next two verses, verses nine and 10, that I really want to spend time digging into this morning. So again, Job is at his lowest moment. He's in pain. He's lost it all. He's lost his children. He's covered in a skin disease. And then look what happens. That's where we're going to pick up. So would you hear the word of the Lord? Job chapter two, verses nine and 10. "Then his wife said to him, Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die. But he said to her, You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil? In all of this Job did not sin with his lips." Amen. This is God's word. Let's pray and we'll continue. Let's pray. Father God in heaven, above, Lord, we need your guidance of your Holy Spirit as we read from your Word. So we ask, Holy Spirit, that you'd meet with us now in the words that you've inspired. Father, help us to see your truths in this as we grow closer to you and as we grow more into the image of our precious Savior and your son Jesus, in whose name we pray. And everyone said, amen and amen. So as we look at this, there's one thing, in particular, I want to make sure that I underscore for us here this morning as we walk through this passage, and it's this. In times of suffering, Job did not rely on a story like his. He relied on his faith. You may not be in a time of suffering, but you may be one day. And I hope you rely on and hold on to this, that Job didn't rely on a story like his. He relied on his faith. Before Job, we don't really see a story like Job. So it wasn't an inspiring story that got Job through his suffering. It was God. It was his faith it revealed so much about the strength of his faith and I think this points out one of the things that's really hard about life in many ways pain teaches us what peace cannot so often pain makes us remember, peace helps us forget. My father tragically died before I even turned two years old and my 23-year-old mom was left alone with me and my infant sister. I grew up with scars from wounds I don't remember feeling. And so I didn't necessarily grow up with pain, but I did grow up asking painful questions sooner than most. And for those of you who have lost loved ones, especially tragically, we know something. We know that sometimes death teaches us about life in ways that life can't. And when we come to a story like Job, in ways that life can't. And when we come to a story like Job, I think one of the biggest questions we have, and probably the question we have for a story like Job, is why? Why? Why did this happen? Why did God allow this? And do you want to know my answer? My ultimate answer is, I don't know why. I can tell you my reformed Stoic theological mind, I can give you an answer that in some way a greater good was to come out of this, in some way God was more glorified in this, and I do think that's the answer, but my human mind says I don't know why, I just see what. I see what came from this. I see a truth more fully known, I see a truth more fully revealed. I see a pathway to deal with pain and suffering and loss. But it's through faith in God, I don't know how people in this world endure pain and loss without God. And you best believe that faith, while it causes, while it provides comforts, it often causes questions. If you're doing faith right, it provides questions and tension and there's mystery that we have to sit with in a sense But it's all through faith in God. Listen to me not a god who stood by Helpless as Job suffered but a God who permitted this to happen and listen to me. I'd rather that be the case I'd rather have to deal with the mystery of a God who allowed this to happen than believe in a God who is too weak to stop it. So as we walk through these two verses, these two very profound verses, I want to pull out a few things for us this morning. And it's how suffering reveals so much. First thing I think we're going to see is that suffering reveals the difference between integrity versus independence, faithfulness versus foolishness, perspective versus entitlement, and innocence versus excuses. So first thing, suffering, it grows our faith by revealing the difference between integrity and independence. Verse nine, then his wife said to him, do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die. So here we see Job's wife finally makes her appearance and oh, what an appearance it is. But let us not forget, this woman not only lost her way of life, this woman lost all of her children. This woman lost 10 children. This woman is broken in half. She's empty, she's angry, she's lost her passion for life, she's lost her will to live. I know my wife, I don't know how this woman is even standing right now. And her husband, she sees her husband who's also at his lowest point, but she sees him holding onto his faith and that embitters her. She's hating life right now and she wants Job to hate life too. So do not judge Job's wife because what she says to Job while wicked and from a place of pain, what she says comes from something that's so true. Look what she says, let's study this for a moment. Then his wife said to him, do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die. Okay, now we all know that the story of Job is like an onion and there's many layers here, but so here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna peel back a bunch of layers right now and we're gonna go deep into this story. So stay with me. She says, do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die. So did you notice, did you notice that Job's wife, she rightly connects the strength of Job's character, which is his integrity, with the core of Job's character, which is his faith. She's connecting these two. She knows that Job's identity is his faith. And his faith forms his identity, which is manifested in his integrity the job's wife is saying That for job to reject his integrity. It's the same thing as job rejecting his faith For job to reject his faith is for job to reject his very identity. Those things are intertwined and indistinguishable so church and Friends who are here, please don't lose me on this one. This is such a critical point to show how different Job is handling this pain and suffering than his wife. And I say most of the people on this planet. Job knows that to be true to himself, he must first be true to God. Now, follow me on this for Job's true identity is found in God and this my friends flies in the face of prevailing culture. Our culture's mantra can be summarized like this, to thine own self be true. Our world has taken that to mean in order for you. But what we see in Job is that for him to be true to who he is, he must firstly be true to God. And parents and grandparents, take this home. Stop telling your kids to be true to God. Because when they are firstly true to God, that's when they find out who they are truly meant to be. An identity apart from God is idolatry. And that makes us the God, the lowercase g God of our lives, and we are terrible, terrible gods to ourselves and terrible gods to each other. Only in God can we find out who we are truly meant to be. We are His design. And we are more true to ourself when we are firstly true to who God is creating us to be. Job's wife says, do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die. Job's wife is saying to Job, give up on your character, give up on your faith. Because Job's wife knows that for him those things are the same. His faith forms his character, his identity. Job's integrity, hear me in this, Job's integrity comes from his dependence on God, not his independence from God. For Job to be until you find yourself in the Lord. But our world thinks you need to reject God and to reject His plan and to reject His design for you to be free to who you are. And what I'm saying to you is that the opposite is true. That you'll never know who you truly are until you find yourself in the Lord. Job lost it all. He didn't lose himself because his true self was found in God. It's not about who you say you are. It's about who God says you are. Job's wife says, curse God and die. Verse 10, "but then he said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women would speak," which leads to number two, Suffering reveals the difference between foolishness and faithfulness So Job is teaching us a very profound truth here. He says, turning your back on God in your suffering is foolish. Notice though, notice though, Job, the righteous man, he doesn't call his wife a fool. He just says what she is saying is foolish. That turning your back on God is foolishness. Why? Because when we turn our back on God, when we turn from God, we turn to that which is less. Less good, less holy, less helpful, less true. Job's wife is acting as a foolish woman. But remember number one, please don't judge her, but also notice that Job doesn't belittle her or call her a name. He calls her out by saying, what you're saying is foolish, because what Job's wife doing, what Job's wife is doing right now is something that we all need to be aware of, and I'm pretty sure most of you are aware of this modern day proverb. We see this in Job's wife. You know this common phrase, that hurt people hurt people. Have you guys heard that before? Like those who are hurting end up hurting others. Job's wife is like the archetype of this. She's in pain, she's in anguish, she's hurting, she's lashing out. She wants Job to hurt too. She lost all 10 of her children. So remember, in our times of suffering, we need to act out of faithfulness, not foolishness. Because the heart that is hurt, it first needs to lament, and it needs to heal. Because before it does that, it can be a very dangerous thing, as we see in Job's wife. Suffering also reveals something else about the human heart. And that's the difference between perspective and entitlement. And what we see here, in this next line, is we see a verse that our world is emotionally incapable of comprehending. Job says, shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive evil? Alright, let's just stop here for a second, because the word evil here, that presents some questions, doesn't it? So, I'll try to do this really, real briefly here. But the ancient Hebrew, what this was written in, it was a very limited language, limited in its range of word, unlike English, the most wordy language of all time, we can nuance what we want to say with particular words. The ancient languages didn't have that breadth of vocabulary. Which is why some of your translations may say adversity or trouble. But because the ESV, the English Standard Version, what we use here at Peace Church, because that's a descendant of the King James Bible, we still translate this word as evil. But let's be clear. Let's be clear here. The Bible is clear that God is not the author of evil. But clearly, God in his sovereignty allows this for a time. But while God allows us, make no mistake, this comes from Satan's hands. So the notion behind this that I think we need to understand is that we have to, on this side of eternity, understand that we're going to have to take the good with the bad because that's called living in the real world The people who think that they only deserve good all the time are called entitled But Job is not entitled, Job is a man with perspective and his perspective Allows him to endure suffering unlike his wife or anyone else on this planet entitlement or anyone else on this planet. Entitlement destroys us during suffering, because entitlement doesn't prepare us for hardship, loss, or suffering. I think maybe a common way to look at this is to say that what Job is showing us right now is the difference between being humble and being prideful. So let's connect this with something that we said earlier. Okay, earlier we said people in our world reject God so they can determine their own identity. Again, I think that's only ever going to produce a shadow of who you are meant to be. But here's what we have done. We have told the last few generations you can be anything you want to be. And we thought we were being kind, we thought we were being uplifted, and we thought we were producing healthy children, but what we were doing was we were feeding them a mantra made of Twinkies. We should not have been saying to thine own self be true. We should have been telling our kids be true to God. But we don't have God in our lives, which means we become the God of our lives, lowercase g, gods. Add to that, we've been raised with an entitlement attitude and what do we have? We have the culture around us. We should have saw this coming. What we have in the world around us is the product of our own teachings. This was the inevitable outcome of this. And I would say one of the most glaring examples of this would be the transgender movement. The transgender community, in a sense, to no fault of their own, they are demonstrating the unintended consequences of the be whatever you want, find yourself teaching of their upbringing. Add to that an unhealthy dose of massive entitlement and now the world must bend to their will. The transgender community gets to identify as they want, not as God designed. And if you misgender, dead name, or fall short of anything other than affirming their godless identity, then you are committing the cardinal sin of our age. If you don't let them use the bathroom they want, if you don't let them play the sport they want, if you don't use the pronouns they want, then you are the terrible person. Why? Because you are threatening their mental health. That makes you the problem. This further just shows that an entitled upbringing does not prepare you for opposition or adversity or suffering or pain. And as we learn from the book of Job, perspective and humility prepare us for suffering, but pride and entitlement destroy us in suffering or opposition or adversity or pain. And so Christians in the house, we cannot make the same mistake. We can't make the same mistake of the previous generations and we can't make the mistake that Job's wife is making. We must have perspective. We must have humility that all we are and all we have is from God. This perspective gives us humility. Humility to face opposition, to face suffering, to face loss. A humility for when we do engage the transgender community that we do this with love and respect and grace, but also truth. Remember Job did not call his wife names, but he still called her out. We don't call people names, but we do call out godlessness. And Job shows us this fourth important difference. He says at the end of verse 10, he says, in all of this, the scriptures tell us, in all of this, Job did not sin with his lips. What comes out of your mouth is from your heart. The Bible is saying that Job did not sin at all here. Because what we see here is that when faced with suffering, Job did not make excuses to sin. He kept his innocence. And suffering, when you suffer, if you do it in faith, you will not have an excuse to sin. But we'll see our innocence kept. Because suffering grows our faith by showing us the difference between excuses and innocence. Job did not sin when he had all of the worldly excuses to reject God. Even in the midst of this he kept his innocence because he did not make excuses So many people in their suffering make an excuse to sin Whether through acting out in revenge or causing more pain So often people in their pain they lash out in their anguish and in their anger and they end up sinning They do what Job's wife Wanted Job to do. They cursed God. And for the Christian, for the Christian, for the faithful Christian, we can't begin to think about suffering without considering the suffering that Jesus went through. This is why the Christian approaches life and suffering so differently, because we have a Savior who not only suffered, but He suffered for us. Need I remind you that when Jesus was literally being nailed to the cross, He was covered not just in a skin disease, His flesh was torn open because He had just been tortured? His flesh was gaping open as he was being nailed to the cross. It was in this state that Jesus died for us with open bloody wounds covering his body, the hammer coming down on the nails that pounded through his flesh, through his hands and his feet as he hung there on the cross for us in our place through it all Jesus kept his integrity he kept his identity he kept his perspective he kept his humility he kept his faith he kept his innocence even in his greatest moment of suffering and it was in this that Jesus said something and it was the thing that changed my heart in the midst of this is when Jesus cried out to God and he said father forgive them for they do not know what they do. This is why Jesus is better than Job. This is why we ultimately don't look to Job, we look to Jesus. We don't rely on a story like Job, we rely on the gospel of Jesus. That is the center of our faith. That is the core of our identity. Job suffered, although he was righteous, but Jesus suffered for the unrighteous, for me and for you. And as we've said before, the best way that you can prepare for pain and suffering in this life is not by being inspired by a story like Job, it's by having faith in Jesus Christ. For it's in our faith, in the risen Jesus, that we can be prepared. Because what the Holy Spirit does is he build in us to be a sanctuary. He builds us as a church to be a sanctuary, and it's a strong tower. It's a tower that can weather the ups and downs of life, the pain and suffering. It's a tower, it's a sanctuary, where we have it because that's who we are in Christ, and we have it when we come together, that we can celebrate the highest of highs, and we can mourn with those who are in the lowest of lows. Why? Because through it all, Jesus is building his church. He's building us to be his church. He's building in us to be a sanctuary to show the world something different, something that shines light in a dark world, something that can weather the storms of suffering and pain and something that can celebrate like none other, because that's who God is making us to be. And so, as I said last week, you may not feel like you need it right now, but in this broken world, you may come to a point of pain and suffering. And so, like Job, don't rely on a story like his, look to your faith, faith in Jesus. Amen. What I want you to do is I want you to bow your heads for a moment. And if you could just not tune out, but just listen to me for a second. The story of Job is not a story you are just supposed to sit there and listen to a preacher preach about. This is a story that you, as a follower of Jesus, you must wrestle with in your own soul. And I want you to do that right now. I want you to consider Job and what he went through, the faith that he had. I want you just to consider and wrestle with this for a moment. Father, we come before you. Lord, you are strong. Father, you are over all. So, Father, we do, even if it comes with a level of mystery, we'd rather have you, God, who allows this to happen, rather than a God who is helpless when it happens. So, Father, we do look to you in all things. And I pray, Lord, and I thank you, Father, that by Jesus, through the power of the Spirit, through your Word, you are building us. You're building in us a sanctuary, and you're building us to be a sanctuary. I pray, God, pray that the light of this church and every gospel preaching church shines brightly in this world to show the world something different, something better, something that can stand the weather of opposition, the weather of suffering, and something that can celebrate the love that you've given to us in Jesus. So, Father, we do pray that you'd build in us to be a sanctuary. For your glory, we do pray these things in the precious, perfect, and powerful name of Jesus. Jesus. And everyone said, Amen.

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The News To His Enemy Sermon Series: Go Tell It On The Mountain Ryan DB Kimmel Lead Pastor Peace Church Main Passage: Matthew 2:1-16 Transcript It gives me a lot, a lot of great joy to say these two words to you. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. So I wonder what was the word? What word did you think of? What word do you think of when you hear Christmas? Do you think joy? Do you think nostalgia? Do you think tradition? Do you think Jesus? What do you think? What is your one word response? You know, when it comes to Christmas there are a lot of different ways that people respond. And as I just said, here at Peace Church, what we've been doing during this Christmas series is we've been looking at the Bible and we've been looking at how different people responded to the news that Jesus Christ was born or was going to be born, and we've looked at how their response helps us to understand how we might respond. What is the best way to respond? Now we've looked at the news given to his mom, given to his dad, Joseph, given to his people, the shepherds, given to his relatives, but every instance that we've looked at so far in Scripture has been a positive example for us. We've seen the Holy Spirit work through different people in a positive way, and it's helped to encourage us to think about how do we rightly respond to Christmas. But today, tonight, we're going to look at the opposite of a positive response. We're going to look at a really hard, negative response as we look at the news given to his enemy, to the enemy of Jesus Christ, as we look at how King Herod responded to the news that a king has been born. So here's what I'd love for you to do. Would you open up your Bibles to Matthew chapter 2. We're gonna read a longer than normal section tonight, but hey, this is the crazy crowd and we're gonna get into our Bibles here today. Here's the setting for you. We are looking at how King Herod reacts to the news. Now Herod was not a good guy. Murdered one of his wives, murdered a couple of his sons, just so that he could maintain and hold on to power. He was desperate to hold on to power. And we're going to see how he responded to the news that a king, a new king has been born. So here's the setting. Jesus has been born. And the star that marked his birth has guided the wise men from their country to Judea, to Jerusalem. And when they get to Jerusalem, they're like, so where is he? Where's the newborn king? And nobody has any idea what they're talking about. And so everyone starts getting on edge, everyone's wondering what's going on. And King Herod especially is troubled by this, because Herod is a man who's obsessed with his own power, and he does not want another king in the country. And so with that, let's look at Herod's response. Let's read the gospel according to Matthew, chapter 2. We'll read verses 1 to 16. So would you hear God's word? Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who has been born the king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose, and we have come to worship him. When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. And they told him in Bethlehem of Judea, for it is written by the prophet and you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah are by no means least among the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem saying, go search diligently for the child. And when you have found him, bring me word that I may too go and worship him. And after listening to the king, they went on their way. And behold, the star that they had seen when it rose went before them until it came to rest over the place where the child was. And when they, when the wise men saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother and they fell down and worshiped him then opening their treasures they offered him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh and being warned in a dream not to return to Herod they departed to their own country by another way now when they had departed behold an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said rise take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him. And when he rose, he took the child and his mother and departed by night to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophets out of Egypt. I called my son. Then Herod, when he saw that he was tricked by the wise men, he became furious and he sent and he killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all the region who were two years old or under according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. This is God's very sobering but very powerful word. Let's pray and then we'll continue but let's start with prayer. Father we gather here tonight to glorify you for the birth of your Son and our Savior. On this eve of the celebration of his birth, would you please send us the Holy Spirit to be with us, that we may know your word and by it know your Son all the more this Christmas. For it is in the name of the newborn King that we pray these things and everyone said Amen and Amen. My friends, Christmas is about good news. And so let me give you some good news here tonight. It may be challenging, but it's good news nonetheless. And it's this, the result of Herod's reaction to the news of Christ's birth shows us that Jesus can't be stopped. And so what we're going to do is we're going to take a few moments. Let's do a good old fashioned Bible study. Let's look at Herod's response, Herod's reaction to this news, and then we're going to look at our response. So we're first going to look at Herod's reaction, then we'll see how that might inform our response. So first thing, Herod's reaction to the news of Christ's birth. First thing, he feels threatened. So the wise men roll into town talking about a newborn king, and verse 3, when Herod the king heard this, he was troubled. He was troubled because he's a man obsessed with rule and obsessed with power. And he sees this prophecy. He sees this news of a new king as a threat to his power. And you know what? I'm pretty sure a lot of us sit here and we think, yup, exactly. That's how it's like. That's what it's like with those who are in power. All they care about is keeping their power and eliminating those who oppose it. And you know what? Yeah, that actually is what's happening here. But don't be too quick to judge, because here's the reality. Jesus does come to upend ungodly rule and power. Herod does not want to give up the authority over Judea, but so many of us do not want to give up authority over our own lives. And Jesus comes to upend ungodly rule and ungodly power. So you better believe Jesus is a threat to the power structures that do not glorify God. He has come to take his throne upon this world, upon his creation, and yes, upon our own lives. Herod understood this in many ways that we don't even. So let's hold that thought, we're going to come back to it. So Herod reacts to the news of Christ's birth by feeling threatened, and the second thing we see is that Herod reacts to the news of Christ's birth by spreading, speaking lies. So Herod hears about this king, and he doesn't know his own Bible very well, so he calls the biblical scholars around him, calls them together, and he asks them, where's this Messiah going to be born? And they say, well the prophets say that he's going to be born in Bethlehem. And so this is what Herod does, verse 8. And so he, Herod, sent them, the Magi, the wise men, Herod sent them to Bethlehem saying, go, search diligently for the child. And when you have found them, bring me word that I may too come and worship him. But we all know that this is a big fat lie. He has no intention of doing that. But listen to me for a moment. The wise men sincerely, genuinely want to worship Christ. And Herod only acts like he does, but he has no intention of doing this. And I want to ask you, how many of us are really that different? For so many people, maybe even you gathered here tonight in front of people, in front of church people, you act and talk a big game. I too want to worship Jesus. But when it comes time to do it, you don't show up. Don't judge Herod so quickly. Herod responds to the news of Christ's birth by spreading death. So God, God in his goodness warns the wise men, don't go back to Herod. Go back to your own country. And they do. Now, we're pretty certain that the wise men came from Persia, which is modern day Iran. So God tells them don't go back. He's not a good guy. It's not going to end well. Go back to your own country. So they do. But when Herod finds out about this, he's absolutely livid. Verse 16, then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious and he sent and killed all the male children of Bethlehem. This is nothing short of absolute horror. And it shows the utter depth of what one man will do to maintain power. Now listen, there were actually many Herods in the Herod dynasty. It can be really confusing to try and follow this lineage here, but what you need to know is this is not the same Herod that Jesus meets with during his trial right before his crucifixion. That's one of his sons. This Herod, this is the original. This is Herod the Great. This is the OG Herod. This is the Herod that was installed to his kingship by the Roman emperor himself. This was the Herod, the great Herod, who rebuilt the second temple, expanded it, and made it the crowning jewel of Jerusalem, how could a man who did such an amazing thing for God turn around and kill children? Here's how. Because Herod didn't do it for God. Herod built the temple for himself. He did it to garner favor among the people to maintain power, and in this we are seeing the true extent of Herod's obsession with his own power. He's willing to kill innocent children rather than see God's good prophecy fulfilled, even if that means having to give up his own authority. And right there's another challenge for us. How many of us are willing to do things for God, even great things for God, as long as we don't have to give up our own authority? How many people will say things like this? They'll say things like, God, I will do great things for you as long as you bless me and don't tell me what to do with my life. That that's the spirit of Herod. That's the spirit of Herod. This is God. I want to serve you. I'll do good things for you. Just don't tell me how to live my life. That is the spirit of Herod. And I'm telling you, it is alive and well in America. And unfortunately, even in the American church. We love to serve God, we just don't like to follow God. We love to serve God, but we don't like to submit to Him. And so, I'm asking you, would you look into your own soul tonight? I fully recognize on a day like today, I'm speaking to people who I will never see again, and you will never hear me speak again. I am thankful to the Lord on high for the moments I have to be able to share something with you. I hope and I pray is of eternal value. So let me just ask you, would you look in your own soul? Do you have this spirit in you? Because if you do call it out, reject it and embrace Christ, because when you do, you realize that what God has for you is better than what you have for you. And so let's see what that is. Let's contrast Herod's reaction with our response. First thing is this. Where Herod feels threatened, we are liberated. Where Herod feels threatened, we are liberated. Let me ask you a question. Do you know what the Stockholm Syndrome is? Let me explain. The Stockholm Syndrome is this condition where a person falls in love with their captor, meaning a person who has been kidnapped or is held in bondage, they will actually develop feelings of love and protection for the very people or person who keeps them enslaved. It's an unhealthy mental condition. And for so many people in the world, we've developed Stockholm syndrome for our own sin. We've fallen in love with our sin. We love our sin, but sin keeps us enslaved. Sin keeps us away from God and away from the freedom that's only found in the Lord. Christmas, let me remind you, if anything, Christmas is a heavenly invasion where the Son of God left His throne in heaven, stepped into creation, born in that little manger, and He came on a rescue mission to save you, and to save me, to save us from sin, to save us from the grip and the bondage of sin and the reign of Satan. I know we all have lots of different opinions on what sin is, but let me tell you what the Bible says. Sin is slavery, and yet we've come to love it, and we celebrate it, and we protect it. And so when a power comes into our life that wants to free us from that, we, like Herod, we feel threatened. We feel threatened when this power comes in, even if it's a power to liberate us from our sin. Herod feels threatened, my friends, but when we accept Christ, that's liberation. That's freedom from our sin. That's salvation. And with it, we come to know the truth. And that's the second thing we're going to see, is that where Herod speaks lies, we receive truth. If you know your Bibles at all, you'll know that there's actually not a lot of ink spilled talking about the birth of Christ. Of the four Gospels that we have, only two of the Gospels actually even mention the story of Jesus' birth. Talking about Jesus' birth isn't something the Bible does a lot about, but there is this one very rare occasion where Jesus himself speaks about his own birth. You may know what I'm talking about. It's when he's on trial, when he's looking at possibly being crucified and he's standing before Pontius Pilate, the governor, and Pilate calls Jesus aside and Pilate's trying to figure out, should I crucify this man or not? So Pilate pulls him aside and is having this conversation with Jesus. And we see this amazing, amazing interaction. It's in John 18. Here's what it says. Then Pilate said to him, to Jesus, so you are a king. And Jesus answered, you say that I'm a king, but then listen to this twofold response. It's powerful. You say I am a king. And then Jesus says for this purpose, I was born and for this purpose, I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. So on the one hand, Jesus says he is born. On the other hand, Jesus says that he's come into this world. This reminds us that Jesus is both the son of Mary and Jesus is the son of God. But then Jesus follows up with this line, with this next line. And let me tell you, this next line is a line in the sand. I know we like to think about Jesus as that guy that draws big circles around everybody and brings us together. You have to understand that Jesus said things that at times that was nothing short of a line in the sand. And this is one of those. And let me remind you, my friends, Jesus says this to a man who is trying to decide whether or not to kill him by crucifixion. This is how amazing Jesus Christ is. Jesus says this to Pilate, everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. Of the truth, because Christ is Emmanuel. He is God with us. Jesus is the truth and by Jesus we know what the truth is. That's what we get at Christmas. We get to know the capital T truth that transcends all of our opinions, all of our cultures, all of our societies, all of our language. We get to know the truth that will be true even when we're not here. For Jesus is the truth. Herod responds by speaking lies. We respond by receiving truth. For Jesus powerfully said this line, and if you went to Sunday school, you probably know this line. Jesus said, I am the way and the truth. Anybody know the last one? And the life. And that's the last thing that we see. Where Herod spreads death, we have life. King Herod was the enemy of the Son of God. I'm going to say something hard, but we, until we receive Christ as our Savior, we are also enemies of God. And I know you're thinking, that is a horrible thing to say, especially on Christmas Eve. Hold on a second. It actually, yes, it's hard to hear, but it actually reveals something pretty amazing. That even as we are enemies of God, God still loves us enough to send his Son to save us. Yes, understanding that until we accept Christ we're an enemy of God, that's a hard thing to hear. But with it, you also have to understand, it also kind of shows us the magnitude of God's great love, that even for those who hate God, who revile Him, who spit on Him, who mock Him, God still sent a Savior to save us. That's how amazing God's love is. Romans chapter five, verse 10 says, for while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Much more now that we are reconciled, how we shall be saved by his life. His life. My friends, it's an odd thing to consider all the things that you've worked for in your life. It's an odd thing to consider all the things that you think you've earned in your life. It's an odd thing to consider all that you have accumulated and yet your very life was given to you. You did not earn it, you didn't work for it. It was given to you, as is the breath in your lungs. But you have to understand that Jesus, Jesus comes to give us so much more life. True and everlasting and eternal life marked by salvation in his name. And the Bible says here, says that we are reconciled. Don't get put off by that word. I know it sounds like a religious word. It simply just means to be reconciled, means to be put back into a right and proper relationship So by the death of Jesus we are brought back into the relationship with God that we should have not as enemies but as friends as Friends of God and even more than that We are adopted By Jesus God adopts us into his kingdom and looks at us and calls us his sons and his daughters And he welcomes us into his kingdom. He welcomes us to His table. That's what we get to have at Christmas through Jesus. Christ came to give His life to save you. True and everlasting life. And we can have this life because Jesus gave His. For the child that was born at Christmas, as we're going to see here and reenact here in a moment, Jesus Christ is the light of the world who came into this dark world to give up his life on a cross and His death on the cross was the payment for our sin Because sin is death but yet in Christ we have life for the death of Christ means life for us So this Christmas remember this especially if I will never see you again, especially if you'll never hear me speak again. If I could leave you with one thing, let me leave you with this. This Christmas, remember that Jesus can't be stopped, not even by Kings, not even by lies and not even by death. Herod tried and failed. Herod lied, and yet the truth still went forth. Herod killed and murdered children, yet Jesus still lived. This Christmas, remember that Jesus Christ cannot be stopped. And this was not the only time that death tried to stop Jesus, but couldn't. Death couldn't stop Christ as a child. And death couldn't stop Him even after He was killed on the cross. For three days after his death, Jesus Christ got up and walked out of his grave. The child that was born at Christmas is the Savior who rose again. That's who we are here to celebrate, because Jesus can't be stopped. Amen? Amen. Amen. Let's pray.

The Lie of "Follow Your Heart" Sermon Series: Calling Out Cultural Lies Ryan DB Kimmel Lead Pastor Peace Church Main Passage: Jeremiah 17:9 Transcript Today is the day that the Lord has made. So let us rejoice and be glad in it. And everyone said, Amen. So as we continue this sermon series, calling out cultural lies, I want to address two quick things as we get going. First one is this. I got a communication in light of this sermon series, and it basically went like this. Oh, here we go. Another self-righteous pastor wanting to call out culture when he should be calling out his congregation Now I got that I immediately thought You clearly haven't heard me preach brother I Have no problem calling out this congregation to live more faithfully and fully To God do you agree with that? Amen. And I start with myself. Which leads to the other thing that I want to say. And I've said it before in this sermon series, but I definitely want to say it again. And that's the reason that we're doing this sermon series, calling out cultural lies. We're not doing this to pick on anyone. See, God, through Jesus Christ, calls Christians to love everyone. We're not called to agree with everyone, but we're called to love everyone. So we love people. And see what these lies are doing is that they're keeping people in darkness. And I don't know about you, but I don't like it when people I love are lied to. So this sermon series is not about picking on people, it's about pulling them out of darkness and into God's glorious light. That's why we're doing this, amen? Amen. Which leads to the lie that I want to discuss today. And I'll just tell you, this lie, this cultural lie, is not exclusive to any one group or any one American demographic or either political affiliation. I've heard people left, right, up, down, black, white, we all have said this probably at some point, and it's this lie. The lie of follow your heart. Now, this will be a hard pill to swallow, but my hope is that coming out of this sermon, you will never again tell someone, follow your heart. And so we're going to look at just one verse today, just one, but I think it's very powerful and I think it sums it all up. So please, if you have your Bibles, would you turn to Jeremiah chapter 17 verse 9. Now if you do want to use the Bibles we provided we are very happy for you to do that. Quick reference that's on page 819. But as you're turning there let me just remind us and show us why this nearly 2,500 year old passage is still relevant today. It's helpful if we know the context. So here let me just lay the context as you're finding that passage. This of course was set in the Old Testament. Now this was during a time when God's people were divided into two nations, the northern kingdom called Israel and the southern kingdom called Judah. Now when the prophet Jeremiah comes on the scene, the northern kingdom of Israel has already been destroyed by Assyria and only the southern kingdom, Judah remains, and this is where Jerusalem was. And God sends Jeremiah to tell this nation, he tells them, if you don't change course, you're headed for the same fate as the northern kingdom, except it won't be Assyria that comes to destroy you. It will be Babylon. See, God had made a promise with his people, we call it a covenant, that they would follow him as their God, and he would love them as his people as he called them to be a light in the world. But here's what was happening. They were taking their status as being God's people and they got lazy and they stopped following in his ways. God had told them, take care of the poor, stay pure and distinct from the world around you. But these people were beginning to look only to themselves and they were beginning to assimilate to the cultures around them. And God is like, if you're not going to follow me, why would I protect you? God is saying, if you're going to openly sin against me, why wouldn't I judge you? And so God sends Jeremiah to deliver this message. And Jeremiah is like, listen up, my kinsfolk, we are way off path and it's because our hearts have led us there. Rather than following God, we have followed our sinful hearts. Nothing at all like what is happening today, right? There are so many similarities. But I'm not talking about the culture at large. I'm talking about Christians. Let's look at some of these stats. Only 44% of Protestants attend church weekly. That means on any given Sunday around 55% of the people aren't there Only 5% of churchgoers give 10% of their income and Did you know that if Christians would tie 10% of their income God's Church would have an extra Brace yourself. I hope you had your medication this morning God's Church would have an extra $139 billion annually. Imagine the impact the church could have, because listen to me, that $139 billion is going somewhere, more than likely to Disney, Verizon, and the big three auto companies. Only 40% of Christians pray, 40% of Christians only pray when they are at church. Only 45% of those who attend church actually serve at church, which means the vast majority of Christians are more than happy letting someone else do all the work. Now listen, I'm citing national trends here. I'm citing national trends. Peace Church, I fully believe that we are bucking those trends at every turn. But there are still people who call themselves Christians who only show up sporadically, they only give when it's convenient, they don't serve, and then we all sit and wonder why the church doesn't have more of a positive influence in our society. Because here's the moral of the story, the state of the church is not pointed in a good direction and it's a heart issue. We look back on these people for the Old Testament. We can't believe that they would behave the way that they did But let me ask you are we really any different? In love I ask you are you any different? For those who went to Sunday school, you know how the story ends the people did not listen to Jeremiah or to God and And Babylon does come in and destroys the kingdom and men women or children and children are carted off to Babylon Where they have to live in exile among the foreign people with a foreign culture But at this point in our passage The verse we're gonna read today Babylon hadn't come yet and Jeremiah is warning them He's pleading with them, but they aren't listening. And this is what he says. So would you hear the Word of the Lord? Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick. Who can understand it? This is God's Word. Let's pray and we'll continue. Let's pray. Father, we thank you, Lord, that we get to be able to gather here today so freely. Lord, we want to give you glory this morning as we lift up the name of Jesus and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. Lord God, we need you to continue to mold and shape hearts more and more into the image of Jesus. For it's in his precious, perfect, and powerful name that we pray these things. And everyone said, Amen. So church, the world and the culture and many of us are saying even to our kids, follow your heart. But I'm here to give you this one main idea today. The rebuttal to follow your heart is very simply this. Follow God, not your heart. Follow God, not your heart. And we're gonna look at just one verse. We'll look at some other verses. But we're gonna primarily look at some at one verse today. And we're gonna try and siphon out three things from it. Here is ahead of time. Follow God, not your heart, because our hearts are liars, our hearts are lacking, and our hearts are lost. Alright, first thing, let's see what God's truth says about all of this. Our hearts are liars. Listen to this first part of this verse and tell me that this doesn't fly in the face of everything our culture is saying. Jeremiah 17 verse 9 starts off by saying, the heart is deceitful above all things. I'll tell you this, when I have a bad day, my heart says, go get a box of donuts. My heart says, when someone treats me bad, treat them bad back. My heart says, if someone's going to be snarky to you, be snarky back. I don't know what it is for you, but I guarantee if you followed your heart 100% of the time, your life would not turn out well. Why? Because our hearts are actually broken. I don't mean broken as in your boyfriend dumps you. I mean broken as in they do not function properly. They are broken. They're missing pieces and they're broken by sin. This is why we need God not just to make all things new, but we need God to give us a new heart. Because our heart is broken by sin and because it's broken because it's broken. It's deceitful It lies to us. So no do not follow your heart follow God Why because he wants better things for you than what your heart does But this is so hard this is so Impossibly hard in our world, especially here in 21st century America. There is not much that's not available to you that you don't have the means to get It is so hard to say no to our hearts in the world that we live in Our hearts lie to us and they tell us that what we desire is a good thing when it's not but we must Remember our hearts are broken. They lie to us a Broken clock lies to you about what time it is Even though it may not mean to and our broken hearts lie to us even about what is truly good for us. And let me just remind you of something. I think many times our own hearts can speak sweeter lies to us than even the devil himself. Sometimes we blame the devil when we need to blame our hearts. The heart is deceitful above all things. Listen to me. It's not just that it's deceitful. It's deceitful to you. Your own heart will lie to you. This is why we need to hide ourselves in the Word of God. So follow God, not your heart, because our hearts are liars, but also because our hearts are lacking. Our verse says the heart is deceitful above all things and then it says and desperately sick. This doesn't just mean sick as in your heart has COVID, but sick as in it's twisted. This is why the old King James would translate it like this. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Our hearts are wicked and it's wicked in full. But understand the picture here. It's not just that our hearts are unwell. It's not just that our hearts are unholy. Our hearts are un-whole. It's broken with missing pieces. Our hearts are lacking. They lack health. They lack wisdom and discernment. They lack the righteousness to make decisions that are truly best for us. And one of the biggest things they lack, which is also the biggest reason why we shouldn't trust them, hear me, hear me, especially you teenagers. Our twisted hearts want to serve our own passions rather than God's glory. If our hearts were true and well and trustworthy, they would lead us to do the greatest good. Listen to me, not just the greatest good for ourselves, but the greatest good that there is, which is bringing glory to God. But our broken hearts seek to bring glory to ourselves, but we're not meant for that. We can't handle the weight of glory. It crushes us because we are neither worthy nor able to handle the glory that our hearts desire. Our hearts seek to glorify ourselves. And so what do our hearts do? Our hearts give ourselves to our passions. But when we do that, with an unsanctified heart, giving ourselves to our passions, we don't get glory, we get pain. And when this happens we see the final truth. We need to follow God, not our hearts, because our hearts are lost. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick, leading to this both love and hate. It says this, who can understand it? If you've lived any length of time, you can look back and say, I can't believe I did that. If you've lived any length of time, or maybe you're in that moment right now, you're like, I can't believe I did that. I can't believe I'm doing that. Why am I doing this? I know it's wrong. The reason you say that is because your heart's lost. It's lost, it's wandering, it's looking for what it wants, but it doesn't know what it wants because it's broken. And don't forget the context here. Please don't forget the context. This was spoken 2,500 years ago to a different people at a different time, but it shows us that people are the same no matter when, no matter where. This was originally spoken to a people who were called to look at their life and make change or suffer the drastic consequences. God was using Jeremiah to call his people back to himself, back to his plan, which was for their good. He wanted something better for them than what they were chasing after. God was saying, stop following your heart. It's leading to your own destruction. Turn and follow me. Return to me and have life. Church, one of the clearest times in Scripture that we see God say, do not follow your heart, if not the clearest time, comes from Numbers chapter 15, a book of the Bible we rarely get to. Now, I will read it for you, but here's what's going on. At this point in Numbers chapter 15, God is speaking through Moses to the people. Numbers chapter 15, verse 37 on down says this, the Lord said to Moses, speak to the people of Israel and tell them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations and to put a cord of blue on the tassel of each corner. And it shall be a tassel for you to look at and remember all the commandments of the Lord to do them not to follow after your own hearts and your own eyes which you are inclined to whore after who would love to say that in church well God said it verse 40 so shall you remember and do all my commandments and be holy to your God I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God. I am the Lord your God. Did you hear that language? I want to be your God. It's all over this. A couple of things from this passage. We see God use some pretty strong language here and it's to wake us up so we can understand the reality of what it means to follow our heart. When we follow our hearts, it's like being a prostitute. You know what a prostitute does? A prostitute gives herself to that which does not love her back. And that's what we do when we follow our hearts. We give ourselves to things that will not love us back. This is why our main idea is follow God, not your heart. Why? Because God will love you back. Because God loves us. And I love how God called his people to put a blue cord on their clothes, a symbol, a constant symbol to remind them not to follow after their heart, but to follow after him. Now listen, I don't know if anyone in here actually has a tassel on their clothes with a blue cord running through it. Maybe we should, but I'll tell you what many of us do instead. We have Christian tattoos. We have WWJD bracelets. We have cross necklaces. We have fancy faith shirts. Christians, listen to me. Yes, adorn yourself with reminders of what God has done. It's actually kind of biblical, but don't do that. And then laugh in God's face by following after your own hearts, following after things that won't love you back, no one will love you like the Lord himself. So follow God, not your heart. We can see the folly of following our heart even before the Bible gives us the wisdom not to do it. And so as we've been looking at in this series, we've been looking at how lies, true lies crumble under the weight of truth, but true lies actually crumble under the weight of their own deception if we are wise enough to stop and actually analyze the lie that we're buying into. So let's talk about how the lie of follow your heart falls short of everything it promises. See, the world and even some well-intentioned people and parents will tell us, follow your hearts. And you and I have said this because the heart behind it is at least well-intentioned, but it's very similar to live your truth. It seems good, but it's misleading. Here's what it means. Let's look at this from two different angles here. So, first thing, follow your heart, meaning, what we try to mean is only you know what you want, so go after it. People, people, is it not entirely possible that others might know you better than you know yourself. Is it not often said that part of growing up is realizing that your parents were right? And your pastor. I'm waiting for my kids to get to that point, too, by the way. We need to learn that others can see things in us that maybe we don't see. But listen, it also goes another way. It also goes for the things that we want. Maybe others can see things in what we want more than what we can see. For instance, a girl likes a guy. If others know this gentleman better, isn't that something that she should listen to? Or what about a career? Do you follow your heart or do you listen to the advice of those who may be actually in that profession? Even before we bring the better answer of listening to God, we can already see that following your heart has a number of holes in it. Another angle is this. Follow your heart, people mean, don't follow the crowd, do what makes you happy. Listen, these statements seem nice and encouraging, and it's just what our selfish, pride-centered world wants to hear. But listen to me, just because the crowd isn't worth listening to, that doesn't mean that your heart is. There's a third option. God. I was recently listening to this presentation that this gentleman was giving, and it was on following your heart. And the presenter said some things that I could not disagree with more. He said this. He said, following your heart is the very definition of what it means to be human. Now listen, you have to understand the context from which this man was saying these things. Part of his story was that he was a cancer survivor. He had gotten very sick and was on the brink of death, but he overcame and he got strong and he overcame cancer, which is amazing and commendable and I'm very thankful for it. But that experience tainted his perspective and led him to craft this presentation that he goes around and gives. It led him to give this advice. He said this, he said, the secret to following your heart is one thing. Plan your funeral. The realization of our place in this world, that all of this is temporary, can become a lens through which matters of the heart are most easily viewed. Listen, I think that really deeply resonates with so many people. But if I could summarize how I heard this and why I think it's so popular, I think it'd be like this. I think this is kind of what he was saying. This life is all you got, and soon you will be gone. So follow that passion because what matters is your happiness in this fleeting moment that we call life. We love sentiments like that. I'm even feeling the warm fuzzies here. But let me throw a monkey wrench into this. What if the end of your life isn't the end? What if, yes, life is short, but what if it's not temporary, but eternal? So this puts us at an existential crossroads here. Church, listen to me. If, if the greatest good and the highest purpose is our own personal happiness, I would still tell you don't follow your hearts. But that's not the highest good, that's not our greatest purpose. We were made for more than this momentary life. We were made for more. And not just made for more, I'm telling you, we were made for the most. The greatest good and purpose is the glory of God. And from that, listen to me, from that we get the greatest joy because that's what we were meant to do. We were designed to love God and to worship Him. But when we put our, when we put ourselves first, we will never be happy because you'll never have enough. But if you put God first, that's when the greatest joy comes, because He's more than enough. But we don't get, and I get it, we don't get the greatest joy out of bringing God glory or through worship while we have broken hearts, which is why God says this, says, And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. This is powerful and somewhat graphic imagery of God ripping our stony heart out of our chest and giving us a new heart and a new spirit. But here's what's going on. Ezekiel is pointing to the new covenant which we are now in and it's in this fulfilled promise that we get this new heart and this happens when we place our faith in Jesus and we trust in his life, death and resurrection which we call the gospel and then also we get a new spirit which by the way is the Holy Spirit who fills us, indwells within us so that we could live the life that God has called us to do. But this happens when we place our faith in the gospel of Jesus, Jesus Christ, who gave up his body to death on the cross so that we could have life, so that we could have a new heart. And by his resurrection from the dead and by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, living this new life with this new heart, we can truly not just love God, but truly understand, experience, and receive the love of God, from which we can truly worship into a season and a moment, an experience of joy that our dead hearts could never bring us. A joy that can only be found in God through the gospel of Jesus Christ as we rejoice in Him and we love Him and we worship Him with a new heart given to us by the gospel, as we experience the greatest good which is bringing God glory glory that he deserves Which our hearts were made for And this doesn't happen through following your heart. This happens through giving our hearts to God. And so let's Let's do that now. Amen.