SPEAKER_00: We study through books of the Bible here at the village chapel.
SPEAKER_00: We've got extra copies.
SPEAKER_00: If you didn't bring one and you'd like one to follow along, just raise your hand up real high.
SPEAKER_00: Someone will drop one off at your row, your aisle, and that way you can follow along in the text.
SPEAKER_00: Always helpful to do that.
SPEAKER_00: The password, if you prefer to follow along on your device, is uh up on the screen as well.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I love to hear the sound of rustling pages or the swipe of glass as you open your Bible and turn to it and follow along with us.
SPEAKER_00: We're looking at the book of Philippians, uh ancient letter written by the Apostle Paul, probably the warmest, most pastoral uh letter that he wrote.
SPEAKER_00: He he's he founded this church in 52 A.D.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote this letter about 10 years later, 62, right in there.
SPEAKER_00: And he's writing to a church that's actually younger than this church.
SPEAKER_00: Our church here is about 18 years of age.
SPEAKER_00: And uh so we've we've got no more excuses.
SPEAKER_00: It's time to grow up, people.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's all of us, right?
SPEAKER_00: And um uh, but they were 10 years old.
SPEAKER_00: Uh they lived at the time during the Roman Empire when Nero was the emperor.
SPEAKER_00: He ruled from 54 A.D.
SPEAKER_00: to about 68 A.D.
SPEAKER_00: He became quite violent in the last, especially the last half of his reign.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul the Apostle is probably writing from a jail cell in Rome at this time, and it's, you know, who knows what's going to happen to him.
SPEAKER_00: He he's he, I'm sure, not aware of whether or not tomorrow is his last day or not, but he's riding.
SPEAKER_00: And he writes these, what we call four chapters.
SPEAKER_00: They get in the English Bible, it gets broken up into chapters and verses, and he writes uh about joy.
SPEAKER_00: He talks about joy and rejoicing 16 times.
SPEAKER_00: He talks about Jesus, we just sang Jesus only, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He talks about Jesus uh almost 40 times in this short letter to the church at Philippi that he started with an interesting core group, a successful businesswoman who ran a prayer meeting down by the river, and uh formerly demon-possessed teenage girl who isn't even named, and an unnamed Roman jailer.
SPEAKER_00: They're a part of the core group that launched this church with the Apostle Paul, with his friend Silas, Timothy, and Luke, who are with him on this missionary journey when they go through Philippi.
SPEAKER_00: So it's a fascinating letter.
SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting ancient city set right on the main thoroughfare east to west at the top of the Aegean Sea.
SPEAKER_00: We typically in our day and time we would think of the Aegean Sea as that body of water between Greece and Turkey.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is 10 miles inland from the top, the tip of the Aegean Sea.
SPEAKER_00: And uh that's who he's writing to, this ancient church.
SPEAKER_00: And we're looking like I say at chapter 2, um, verses 1 through 11, if you'll turn there with me.
SPEAKER_00: And he says this there.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, I'll tell you in advance, because some of you I know just need little helps to sort of, so we're doing the study, and you need little helps to keep you awake or keep you focused or dialed in.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a guy that needs that all the time.
SPEAKER_00: There are three groupings of four things that we will read in these eleven verses.
SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of like the Highlights magazine, find the number of squirrels that are in the picture.
SPEAKER_00: You you dial in, you pay attention, you find the three clusters of four things in these eleven verses, and I'll give you a gold star later.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so here we go.
SPEAKER_00: If therefore, and it starts with the first grouping, if therefore there is any encouragement in Christ, if there's any consolation of love, if there's any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy, there's one of his favorite words, complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.
SPEAKER_00: Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit or vainglory, some of your translations might say.
SPEAKER_00: But with humility of mind, let each of you regard one another as more important than himself.
SPEAKER_00: Do not merely look out for your own personal interest, but also for the interests of others.
SPEAKER_00: Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, think like Jesus thinks.
SPEAKER_00: See what Jesus sees.
SPEAKER_00: Take on the mind of Christ, the heart of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Weep over what he weeps over, rejoice over what he rejoices over, value what Christ values.
SPEAKER_00: All of that.
SPEAKER_00: Have this mind, this attitude in yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant or a slave.
SPEAKER_00: And being made in the likeness of men.
SPEAKER_00: Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, and that's interesting that he mentions the form or the method of death, because back then it wasn't just an item of jewelry, the cross.
SPEAKER_00: It was actually a means of execution, and beyond that, it was the means of executing those who were criminals.
SPEAKER_00: It was a symbol of shame, a symbol of you having done something so heinously wrong that the emperor in all of Rome is gonna say, death to that kind of person, that kind of thinking.
SPEAKER_00: And all along the Appian Way outside of Rome, not only Nero, but other emperors would crucify, literally crucify Christians on crosses, all along the Appian Way, thousands, thousands of Christians.
SPEAKER_00: And a public display of the fact that they refused to worship the emperor, who it whichever one it was, uh beginning with Nero and those that followed.
SPEAKER_00: And they refused to worship the emperor, and they they kept claiming that this Jesus was their king.
SPEAKER_00: And so they lost their lives.
SPEAKER_00: So death on a cross was a symbol, a sign that the Roman Empire was more powerful than you and whatever you stood for.
SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus died on a cross, Paul writing to the Philippians who lived in a Roman colony where their citizenship as Roman citizens prevented them from ever being crucified on a cross, because they had rights.
SPEAKER_00: And when he says that Jesus humbled himself, the most debased thing that could happen to Jesus would be that he would be put to death with a criminal's execution.
SPEAKER_00: And that very public thing.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, also God highly exalted him.
SPEAKER_00: So after telling us he just he was put to death by this in this criminal's death, this criminal's execution, God, the great reversal artist, reversed all of that and highly exalted Jesus, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And bestowed on him the name which is above every name, including the emperors.
SPEAKER_00: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth.
SPEAKER_00: That pretty much includes everybody everywhere, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And then the purpose of all of it?
SPEAKER_00: To the glory of God the Father.
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: Don't miss that.
SPEAKER_00: That's not just a bit of filler, that's not just a bit of biblical filler or religious filler.
SPEAKER_00: It's the purpose of the whole deal.
SPEAKER_00: The glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: It reminds us of our purpose as well.
SPEAKER_00: You were created and designed by God for God's glory, and he wants to pour his glory through you and his glory through me, not so that we're glorified, but that God would be glorified.
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: Man, there's so much here.
SPEAKER_00: Um let's unpack just a little bit of it.
SPEAKER_00: First, we're calling our study in Philippians the hope of joy.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: That's because we're, as we read this thing, and as we've read, uh, those of us who've read it before and studied it before, we kind of see that there's this inextricable tie and connection between Jesus, our relationship with Christ, and deep abiding joy.
SPEAKER_00: Not just happiness, there's nothing wrong with happiness, I'm okay with happiness, but happiness tends to depend on happenings.
SPEAKER_00: Joy seems to be something that's deeper than that.
SPEAKER_00: The kind of sustaining confidence in the God who is there and is sovereign that carries one through the kind of suffering and the kind of persecution that for Paul includes being chained to a Roman cell and being able to write about joy.
SPEAKER_00: So it's much deeper than mere happiness.
SPEAKER_00: Happiness is okay, I'm all for it, but joy is way deeper than that.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the kind of thing I think that we're all really longing for, the kind of thing that lasts, the kind of thing that sustains through even our suffering, our times of difficulty, as we see with Paul.
SPEAKER_00: All right, so those of you who are wondering about this passage, what is it really all about?
SPEAKER_00: Steve Lawson's a seminary professor.
SPEAKER_00: He says, this is a high call to a lowly life.
SPEAKER_00: I think he's right.
SPEAKER_00: This passage is a high calling to a lowly life.
SPEAKER_00: It runs contrary to a lot of what we get programmed with all week long out there.
SPEAKER_00: And so we come in here for like one hour, and I'm the guy trying to stand up here and remind you, you know, there's a high call to a lowly life, and then we all go out there and we get this call to a to a high life.
SPEAKER_00: We get this call to, it's all about you! We get this influencing, this, this, this messaging that just pummels us everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: That the most three most important people on the planet are you, yourself, you know, and and you again.
SPEAKER_00: Me, myself, and I are the three most important people.
SPEAKER_00: And yet the Bible says it's not that way at all.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna give you the three clusters of four things.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna start with the second one, which is in verse two, not in verse one, because four distinctives of our unity in Christ, because this really is, he's writing to a church, he's I think this passage could act could possibly be called an apostolic attaboy.
SPEAKER_00: I think he's actually saying, Well done, church.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: You know why?
SPEAKER_00: Because the word if uh in verse one could be translated since or because.
SPEAKER_00: That it's an in the intention of the author is that it's an indicative, not just a question that's up for grabs, and you could just you could say no or you could say yes.
SPEAKER_00: I think he's saying, since there's great encouragement in Christ, since there's all of this other stuff that comes with it.
SPEAKER_00: And what he says is basically here the distinctives of unity, being of the same mind.
SPEAKER_00: You see that up there in verse 2?
SPEAKER_00: Be make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but being of the same mind can be hard with people.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever noticed this?
SPEAKER_00: How many of you know that it's it's kind of hard to order pizza if there's more than one of us?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, even with people you love, you say you love, they say that they love you, and yet they don't like your choice for pizza.
SPEAKER_00: And it's in about 14 different categories that we divide and that we separate and we go our, we get mad and we get huffy and we try to we try to vie for control and power over what kind of crust and what kind of sauce and what kind of toppings.
SPEAKER_00: And I used to like round pepperoni, but now I like that angle-cut pepperoni.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't like mushrooms, it's fungus, people.
SPEAKER_00: Why do you want fungus in your body?
SPEAKER_00: There's enough.
SPEAKER_00: I heard a I heard a guy at Burgers and Bibles, I don't know how many of you are here for the genetics and self-ding.
SPEAKER_00: He says half of our physical body is actually not human material.
SPEAKER_00: That's scary to me.
SPEAKER_00: Be careful what you eat on your pizza.
SPEAKER_00: But being of one mind with something like pizza is a very trivial illustration of the fact that we actually have difficulty being of the same mind.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the problem is so often for me, is that everybody doesn't want what I want.
SPEAKER_00: How dare they?
SPEAKER_00: We've all thought, oh, how perfect the world would be if everybody could think just like me.
SPEAKER_00: From your first cry when you were delivered, you said this.
SPEAKER_00: I want what I want, and I want it.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And your mom and dad thought you were the sweetest, cutest little thing that ever lived.
SPEAKER_00: And at two o'clock in the morning, you and you were saying, I want what I want, and I want it now, and you gotta get out of bed and give it to me.
SPEAKER_00: And you grew up, and that just turns into a mom or a dad, and you're still crying, I want what I want, and I want it now.
SPEAKER_00: And then you get a little older, maybe you get married, maybe you got coworkers or whatever, and you're now you're going, honey, or or you're yelling at your boss, or your boss is yelling at you, you want what you want, you want it now.
SPEAKER_00: And it happens, it's over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's one of the like like for those of you, and we know we have a bunch of people that have been in the music business in our in some category of the music business in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that to me that's proof of the existence of God is that our church council actually has former bandmates of ours on it.
SPEAKER_00: That to me is proof of the existence of God.
SPEAKER_00: That former bandmates not only are they in a church together, but they're serving on a board together.
SPEAKER_00: And that is like a miracle.
SPEAKER_00: That is a major miracle if you know anything about church boards and them not getting along and how people can in churches be of one mind.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, you guys have grown up in church too.
SPEAKER_00: We if we don't argue over the color of the carpet, you know, here at the village chapel, we might argue over why the floor looks like a shuffleboard game.
SPEAKER_00: It's got those diamonds in the middle there, and some of you are like, push.
SPEAKER_00: I made it, look at that, ten points.
SPEAKER_00: And people who go to church have a hard time being of the same mind.
SPEAKER_00: There's so many options.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know, just thousands of options.
SPEAKER_00: Maintaining the same love.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I don't know about you, but I think I've learned from reading the New Testament that I don't have it in me to actually love everybody.
SPEAKER_00: I really don't.
SPEAKER_00: And and you may or may not admit that about yourself, but I think it's true.
SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the reasons the book of Romans teaches us that the love of God has been poured out within us.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because I run out of the love of Jim.
SPEAKER_00: I don't run out of loving Jim.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have any problem loving Jim.
SPEAKER_00: What I run out of is the capacity to love others as Jim.
SPEAKER_00: And so what I need is the love of God poured out in my heart by the Holy Spirit so that I can then turn and love others.
SPEAKER_00: Maintaining the same love united in spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And that, again, I love other, I love the way the Apostle Paul sometimes will run like a list, these, especially these three lists of four things, because he's really showing us what a beautiful jewel, a diamond, if you will, a multifaceted jewel this is.
SPEAKER_00: And some of these things overlap, but but some of us need to hear it one way, some of us need to hear it another way, and it resonates with you, perhaps, in one way or another.
SPEAKER_00: And basically what he's saying is that there's a unity in Christ that can only happen because of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't happen because you and I just decide that we're gonna be good little southerners and get along with each other, and we're gonna pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and, you know, and just be awesome.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we're not awesome.
SPEAKER_00: We need transformation.
SPEAKER_00: We need unity, we need to be united by the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: He does a work in our lives and in our hearts and draws us to this one purpose, which we read about in verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: To the glory, all of us, to the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: You know, so that's so important.
SPEAKER_00: Um, verse one was that first cluster of four, and I know some of you probably marked that down in your Bibles or in the Pew Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Encouragement in Christ, so important.
SPEAKER_00: Consolation, love, fellowship, spirit, affection, and compassion.
SPEAKER_00: We need all four of these.
SPEAKER_00: I need these desperately.
SPEAKER_00: Um, encouragement means to pour courage into.
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what it is.
SPEAKER_00: When you encourage somebody, you pour courage into them.
SPEAKER_00: When somebody encourages you, that's what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: They're pouring courage into you to do something that you otherwise might be a little bit afraid to do.
SPEAKER_00: How many are afraid of heights?
SPEAKER_00: Anybody afraid of heights?
SPEAKER_00: I'm afraid of heights.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not afraid of this height right here.
SPEAKER_00: This is about six-inch stage.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have any problem with that.
SPEAKER_00: That's not a problem.
SPEAKER_00: I'm good with that.
SPEAKER_00: That's all right.
SPEAKER_00: But some evil person in Kim's family at one point when Dad turned 80, 70, oh, it was when he turned 70.
SPEAKER_00: Some evil person in Kim's family still made the plan.
SPEAKER_00: Was it you?
SPEAKER_00: It was not you.
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Made the plan to go on a hot air balloon ride with dad and the whole family had to go, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Including Jim, who's afraid of heights.
SPEAKER_00: I spent the entire hot air balloon on my knees in the basket with everybody else standing up.
SPEAKER_00: And remember, when you're standing up in that basket, most of you is not in the basket.
SPEAKER_00: Most of you is outside of the basket.
SPEAKER_00: I was not, however, I was on my knees, you know, doing this kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00: And it's just because I have this visceral fear of heights.
SPEAKER_00: And especially when, like the twin parrots, we're in Florida, and there's these exotic birds are flying by, and they're below us, flying.
SPEAKER_00: And they're beautiful and everything like that, but they're down there, and that's even further to the ground.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't like it, I needed courage if I needed, yeah, I needed some courage.
SPEAKER_00: I took one for the team.
SPEAKER_00: I went in the thing, went on the ride, but it wasn't pretty.
SPEAKER_00: It was not pretty at all.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples needed courage when they were out in the stormy sea on the boat.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was back on the mountain praying.
SPEAKER_00: He looked out and could see them from a distance.
SPEAKER_00: And I love this about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He he saw they were strained, he saw they were fearful, he thought their lives were passing before that.
SPEAKER_00: They thought their lives were passing before their eyes.
SPEAKER_00: And he walked out on the water to them, we're told.
SPEAKER_00: And they thought that he was a ghost, so they were really afraid.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, people generally don't walk on water, right?
SPEAKER_00: So here he is in the middle of a night, they've been surrendering at their oars, they think they're about to die, now they're hallucinating.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Fear not, take courage.
SPEAKER_00: It is I.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, great.
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00: That reminds us.
SPEAKER_00: Courage isn't something we drum up as believers, courage is something we receive.
SPEAKER_00: It's a gift given, like so many other things.
SPEAKER_00: A gift of his grace to us when we don't have whatever it takes to be courageous.
SPEAKER_00: For some of you, you don't have what it takes to be courageous enough to actually talk to a person that you need to talk to.
SPEAKER_00: You avoid every conversation about some subject because you just don't have the courage to do it.
SPEAKER_00: And yet here's God saying, Don't be afraid.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be afraid.
SPEAKER_00: And there is encouragement when you're in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are afraid of other things, some of you are mad about other things.
SPEAKER_00: And he's coming along and saying, There is this consolation of love, this solace, this comfort.
SPEAKER_00: That even though we're living in in what I for me, and I've been here probably longer than most of you on the planet, but I don't remember a time that was so so filled with acrimony and rancor and animosity and people at odds with one another.
SPEAKER_00: And so this passage on unity to me is fascinating.
SPEAKER_00: And I I long for it.
SPEAKER_00: I want it for us as a community of faith.
SPEAKER_00: And I what I'm really pleased to be able to say, I think with the Apostle Paul about Philippi, I think I can say about the village chapel as well.
SPEAKER_00: I see the unity in Christ in our church.
SPEAKER_00: We have five different worship services, but I actually, over the past month, especially when the pressure's been turned up on our congregation because of a lot of loss and some things going sideways, God has been pouring his glory through his people as he has enabled them to love one another well and respond to the needs of our congregation.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a beautiful thing to watch.
SPEAKER_00: And so, like Paul saying to Philippi, yeah, there's definitely some encouragement in Christ, some consolation to love.
SPEAKER_00: There's some fellowship of the Spirit going on here, and it's wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: And there's affection and compassion that's flowing between persons because it's flowing from the throne of heaven to us.
SPEAKER_00: Because he first loved me, I can now turn and love somebody who I find it difficult to love.
SPEAKER_00: And I again I'm I'm trying to be honest with you, there are some people that annoy me.
SPEAKER_00: And you're probably you can probably think of somebody that annoys you as well, and they're difficult to love, and and you run out of the your own resource so beautifully, God wants to pour his love through us because it's an unlimited supply.
SPEAKER_00: Because he came.
SPEAKER_00: To a rebel planet where nobody really sought after God.
SPEAKER_00: Some of us were religious at that time, but nobody actually wanted to surrender before God and let God be God in every category.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody was going their own way.
SPEAKER_00: And he came into a world of lost sinners and gave his life for us.
SPEAKER_00: Who wouldn't want that kind of a God?
SPEAKER_00: The third and final of the four clusters that I saw in this, and maybe you'll see others.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but I'll throw these out, as ways that we can preserve our unity in Christ as a church.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he gives them that apostolic attaboy, that's true, but he also says, but keep doing this.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a disposition of heart when you're a part of a community of faith to do the kinds of things that the Apostle Paul told us to do.
SPEAKER_00: Avoid being self-centered.
SPEAKER_00: In this selfie generation, we love our selfies.
SPEAKER_00: Because Philippians 2 is saying, do nothing.
SPEAKER_00: How much is that?
SPEAKER_00: Nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Do nothing from selfishness.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing from this sort of vainglory or this attempt to elevate the self.
SPEAKER_00: And our culture around us is all about the self.
SPEAKER_00: And it's in a misguided way, putting a too, far too heavy a burden on the individual's ego.
SPEAKER_00: On us trying to find our own identity, on us trying to find our own sense of meaning and purpose in life.
SPEAKER_00: When God says you're a created being, you're created in the image of God, which is awesome, and God wants to pour his glory through your life.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's gonna look like one little thread of suffering or sorrow in a beautiful tapestry.
SPEAKER_00: Beautiful tapestry, a multicolored tapestry of grace.
SPEAKER_00: Suffering in motion, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: But nonetheless, when you stand back and you look at all of it, you go, oh my goodness, look how they love each other.
SPEAKER_00: In and through that loss.
SPEAKER_00: Look how they serve each other.
SPEAKER_00: And it all ends up glorifying God, not us.
SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the things about vain glory, you know, that verse in particular, where it's it's really what's happening to us is we're redirecting the proper object where glory is supposed to go.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening to us.
SPEAKER_00: We're redirecting it, for instance, to our to our money or to our sexuality or to our to our social power.
SPEAKER_00: And what happens is we put so much weight on those things, and they're not, they never were designed to bear that burden.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not that we're saying those things are evil in and of themselves, it's just we're saying they aren't designed to carry that weight.
SPEAKER_00: So we have a whole, we have a whole wave of children that are confused about what does it mean to be a human person right now?
SPEAKER_00: Because some of us adults have forgotten what it means to be a human person.
SPEAKER_00: And we've allowed it to just slip away into this absurd level of build your own thing, you know?
SPEAKER_00: And God says, no, no, you're, I'm a creator, there's a big line, and then everything else is creation, including human persons.
SPEAKER_00: So you as a human person, we are, we are given the gift of life.
SPEAKER_00: And so it we're not supposed to be in charge, we're supposed to be giving glory to him, and vain glory would be me giving glory to me, or me giving glory to the culture, or me giving glory to some aspect, one little aspect of life or category of life.
SPEAKER_00: And none of those were meant to bear the weight of glory.
SPEAKER_00: Glory is too powerful.
SPEAKER_00: The only one that can that deserves glory is God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: And if we start aiming our glory at something else, it's just not going to be able to bear the weight of it, you see.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why it's vanity to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Because all of our idols end up turning in on us, and they end up failing us, and we find ourselves chronically dissatisfied because we're focusing on something that is not God and was never meant to be God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's that's what happens to all of us.
SPEAKER_00: So our affections and our compassion need to be all directed toward God.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be available to God.
SPEAKER_00: We need to live for the glory of God and to that.
SPEAKER_00: It's that that thread of music that he, that orchestra that he wants to play through our lives that draws people, not to us, but to him.
SPEAKER_00: That sound that will draw people to him, not to us.
SPEAKER_00: I'll close with a couple of these quotes.
SPEAKER_00: Chesterton, who's always one of my favorites the way he thinks, how much larger your life would be if you yourself could be smaller in it.
SPEAKER_00: That's just amazing, right there.
SPEAKER_00: If you could really look at each other, um, at other persons with common curiosity and pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, when I think about when we gather and stuff like that, you know, you people come in here, you know, and you say, we do we all do this other.
SPEAKER_00: How you doing?
SPEAKER_00: Uh huh.
SPEAKER_00: You got the big 97-pound Bible and the Cheshire cat smile.
SPEAKER_00: Everything's good, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Um what would happen if every one of us actually asked more than just that kind of question?
SPEAKER_00: How's your hey how's how's your soul doing?
SPEAKER_00: How you doing?
SPEAKER_00: How you doing in here?
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: Um, and what if we started actually answering, you know.
SPEAKER_00: You say, how you doing?
SPEAKER_00: You really want to know?
SPEAKER_00: Because if you ask, if you're just checking a box, that's one thing.
SPEAKER_00: But if you really want to know, this week, man, I had one heck of a week, I'm not even sure I believe in God anymore, and my children are running away from me, and everything, my car broke down, my computer froze up, and everything went sideways.
SPEAKER_00: And you go, whoa, holy moly! You know, you kind of back off from that kind of response.
SPEAKER_00: But what would happen if a community of people actually started really listening to one another, caring about one another, at least to the point of we where we go, tell me more about you.
SPEAKER_00: We all know people who when when we when we see them in a crowd or a room like this, they're doing the radar thing, looking around to see who else came in the room.
SPEAKER_00: They're not really talking to us.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody ever have that experience?
SPEAKER_00: They're not really paying attention to us in the moment.
SPEAKER_00: We're the ones standing close to them, but they're not talking to us.
SPEAKER_00: They're not present with us.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be that person.
SPEAKER_00: I've been that, I've been that person.
SPEAKER_00: I've been the, I'll catch myself every now and then, oh, ooh, yeah, oh, you know, whatever.
SPEAKER_00: We gotta stop doing that.
SPEAKER_00: Um, three wonderful words.
SPEAKER_00: Tell me more.
SPEAKER_00: Means you're actually listening.
SPEAKER_00: Tell me more.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I failed in this this week.
SPEAKER_00: We we got back from vacation.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I failed in this very thing.
SPEAKER_00: We got back from vacation.
SPEAKER_00: Other people go on vacations too, you know, and uh and I'm all excited, you know, came back from vacation.
SPEAKER_00: And somebody said, So how was your vacation?
SPEAKER_00: Told them a little bit about it, said, How was yours?
SPEAKER_00: And they started to tell me about theirs, and I said, Oh yeah, and this other thing happened too.
SPEAKER_00: And I brought it right back around to me again, you know?
SPEAKER_00: How much larger our lives would be if our self wasn't so stinking big in it.
SPEAKER_00: I think Chesterton is right on with that.
SPEAKER_00: If we actually started thinking about others and thinking about Lewis in Mere Christianity says this the terrible thing, the almost impossible thing is to hand over your whole self, all your wishes and precautions to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But it's far easier than what we are all trying to do instead.
SPEAKER_00: For what we're trying to do is to remain what we call ourselves, to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be good.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, we're at war inside of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: Because conceptually, I'd like to care about you.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe even when I ask you, hey, how are you?
SPEAKER_00: I haven't seen you in a while.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe conceptually up here, I actually would like to know, but then my impulse is to turn it back around to me.
SPEAKER_00: See, we all know people like that as well.
SPEAKER_00: They ask you something about what's going on in your life or whatever, and then they actually don't ever seem to be interested in when you start to tell them.
SPEAKER_00: We all have experienced that.
SPEAKER_00: So the community of faith, though, needs to be a group of people that have learned how to, as Christ said, the only thing he said about what you should do with yourself is deny yourself.
SPEAKER_00: So contrary to what's out in our world right now.
SPEAKER_00: Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me, he said.
SPEAKER_00: And that is supposed to mark the community of faith as well.
SPEAKER_00: Tim Keller in a book, uh, tiny little booklet called The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness.
SPEAKER_00: If you haven't read this, go buy a copy.
SPEAKER_00: It's so cheap, it's so inexpensive.
SPEAKER_00: It's a lunch read, and you'll be done with it.
SPEAKER_00: But it is so rich and wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: The thing we would remember from meeting a truly gospel humble person is how much they seem to be totally interested in us.
SPEAKER_00: Because the essence of gospel humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.
SPEAKER_00: It's a concept he he borrowed from Lewis.
SPEAKER_00: But he says, gospel humility is not needing to think about myself, not needing to connect things with myself.
SPEAKER_00: The freedom of self-forgetfulness.
SPEAKER_00: This is what the Apostle Paul had.
SPEAKER_00: He's riding from a prison cell in Rome to a church in Philippi, and he is not saying, you would not believe how big the rats are here.
SPEAKER_00: I'm such a victim.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody hear me.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody come help me.
SPEAKER_00: He's not doing that.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I just want you guys to be joyful.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to have one mind, one spirit.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to remember there's encouragement in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to know that the Spirit is at work uniting you in ways that you could never unite yourselves.
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: He's not thinking about himself.
SPEAKER_00: He's got the freedom of self-forgetfulness, and it really is a beautiful thing.
SPEAKER_00: I'll close with this quote from Stott.
SPEAKER_00: It would be hard to improve on Luther's description of fallen man.
SPEAKER_00: Luther used the term homo in sei in curvatus, which means man curved in on himself.
SPEAKER_00: Human fallenness is human selfishness.
SPEAKER_00: Most ambition can be that way as well.
SPEAKER_00: Not all ambition, but a lot of ambition can be about self, asserting self, trying to self-aggrandize, make myself look better somehow or another in the eyes of others.
SPEAKER_00: And this is one of the sicknesses of the human person, one of the conditions that the Bible calls sin.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, there are acts of sin, individual acts of sin, but there is also a condition that we have of sin.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we need to be redeemed from and rescued from.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the great encouragement of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: While we are out on the stormy sea, paddling as hard as we can in this world, and the storm is raging around us.
SPEAKER_00: We can't help ourselves at all.
SPEAKER_00: But he will come out to us, walking on the water, which by the way, for him is nothing.
SPEAKER_00: To walk on some of his stuff that he created, that's nothing to him.
SPEAKER_00: And so he comes and he says, Don't be afraid.
SPEAKER_00: Take courage.
SPEAKER_00: It is I.
SPEAKER_00: His presence in your boat, even though the boat seems to be sinking, his presence when you're afraid, his presence when you're tired and exhausted.
SPEAKER_00: His presence is what you need.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I need.
SPEAKER_00: Over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, thank you for your presence.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that you've come.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't have to.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't owe it to us.
SPEAKER_00: We are part of a rebellious world.
SPEAKER_00: We are rebels ourselves at our core of our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: And we now, many of us, Lord, just want to turn to you.
SPEAKER_00: Turn away from our selfishness.
SPEAKER_00: Turn to you.
SPEAKER_00: We want to hear this word of encouragement that is in Christ today.
SPEAKER_00: We want to have this mind that you had, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So I pray that you would fill us to overflowing.
SPEAKER_00: Give us your perspective on everything.
SPEAKER_00: Help us see what you see, weep over what you weep over, delight in what you delight in.
SPEAKER_00: Our affections need to be redirected, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Our attitudes need to be changed and transformed in ways that we can't.
SPEAKER_00: So please come and do for us what we can't do for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We love you, we praise you, we thank you for noticing us.
SPEAKER_00: What is man that you would even take notice of us?
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for your kindness, your tenderness with us, your long suffering with us when we rebel over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you that I cannot outrun your grace.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: In his name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen and amen.