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Hey everyone, and welcome to the brand new Burnett Church podcast. My name is Tim, and I'm your host and the pastor of Burnett Church. Today's podcast is the audio from part one of our series called Reactions to Speak Louder, in which we start to unpack how our reactions affect the world around us and also say something about our relationship to ourselves and to Jesus as well. Hope you enjoy the episode. Hopefully, one of the things you experienced last week, if it was uh one of your first Sundays with us, was we're a church that wants to make this place as easy to come to as possible. We say come as you are. It doesn't matter how you dress, and it doesn't matter what your experience with church is, and it doesn't matter so many things that might feel like barriers to being a part of a church community. We try to make it as easy as possible for you to get connected. Uh, somebody who knows how to turn my mic down when they do that, please. Um sorry, I was I was had I had two jobs this morning. By the way, if you'd like to volunteer at Burnett Church at any given time, just let us know. We have lots of jobs that need to be done on any given week. Um just to make sure that people have safe places to come and explore and build a faith. One of the things that we love to do as equally is that is to be a generous community. We feel like it's our call as people who follow Jesus to express the generosity that Jesus uh expressed to us. And so we have a goal every year to try and uh be what we call a tithing church. If you're not familiar with that phrase, that's okay. A tithe is a biblical sort of idea that people set aside a certain amount of their money to give to others. And so we express that uh in in two ways as a community every single year. We have local projects that we do at Christmas time, we have something called generosity, and we kind of run a several month campaign to say, hey, how much can we raise from within our congregation to partner with local schools and give gift cards to families who need a little bit of help at Christmas time? It's a great initiative. In the springtime, we're doing our sort of uh outside of Canada uh initiatives, and I want to introduce that to you today as part of what we're gonna do over the next number of months together. Some of you may remember this guy. His name is Mutu. Uh he came to visit us last year in the summer and told us all about the work that he does in Mumbai, India. Um there are uh various ways you can get filled in if you weren't here at that point. But what you want to know is that Mutu's one of the busiest human beings I've ever met. Um he is uh much, he actually puts, like Melissa and I, we talked about how shameful we feel about how lack of busy we are compared to the work in the ministry that he does. He is just everywhere all the time. And last year we partnered with Mutu in um in helping to build up what was called a home for the destitute. I believe that it's open and functioning now. I think in our community we raised something like $23,000 last year to help provide beds and furnishings and walls and the things that were required to actually open up this home. It was a great thing that we did. So we went to Mutu this year and we said, hey, what projects do you have on the move? Uh the one that he had for us this year, I think is really, really inspiring as well. They're looking to open a 12-month-a-year daycare for kids of women who are working in the red light district in Mumbai to be able to provide some uh some help, some repriefs, some love, some relationship, you know, with those people to help them uh experience the gospel firsthand. Uh they have a budget to run that every year of about $32,000, uh, and they've raised 12 of it already, which is awesome. Uh but there's still a gap, obviously, between 12 and 32. So over the next number of months, we're just gonna ask the church family to continue to be prayerful about how we can support Mutu. Every couple of weeks, we'll just let you know. If you follow the QR code that was on the screen before, it'll take you to places where you can, yes, donate to our general fund, which you know, things like food trucks don't pay for themselves. So we uh we do have a general fund. We do encourage people to participate in that, but we also encourage people to think about how I can do something sort of up and above. If this is your first time here and you're like, oh my gosh, I came to church and the first thing they're doing is asking me for money, this isn't for you. This is for the folks who call this their church home. We choose as a community to partner with people like Mutu to try and make a difference locally and globally. We hope that you'll consider doing that with us. If you were here last week, I started my message last week with a bit of a question. If there was something that you could change about yourself, what would it be? What is the thing that comes to mind that you would want to change? And I suggested to you, I'm not gonna ask you that question again. You might want to think about it. If you weren't here last week, what's one thing that you would change if you could? I suggested that trusting Jesus and taking steps of trust towards Jesus is one of the primary ways in which people in our society experience change. And I invited you, whether you're a follower of Jesus or not, to come back so that you could take a step of trust, so that you could begin to see, is this actually something that might flesh itself out in my life if I made steps of trust? And I said, and I'll stick with this, you don't have to believe in order to take steps of trust. It's a great way for you to see, see how good it works. We sang about that earlier. Come and see. That was the invitation of Jesus always from the very beginning. People would say, just come and see, just come and see who this is and what he has done in my life. You might ask yourself, well, how do we believe that happens? And we explored this a little bit last week together as well. The how, that same power that raised Jesus from the dead, right? The Spirit of God working in Jesus, when Jesus left us to go back and be with the Father, he gave the gift of that spirit to the people who follow him as a way of helping them become the primary way of helping them become the people that he knew and longed for them to become. And his invitation, instructions, invitation, sounded a bit like this. Don't leave Jerusalem, right? Because everybody was kind of inclined to leave Jerusalem at this point, right? Like Jesus was an unpopular guy, and the majority of the people who followed him were going to become unpopular people. Don't leave, don't be scared, stay here and wait. I have a gift for you. And the gift that he was referring to was this his spirit actually working in and through people. And when that happens, we're told that it produces certain things. Certain things that at one point in the scriptures they call them the fruits of the spirit. Okay? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. A really interesting list of things that, according to Jesus and his early followers, one could expect to start to multiply in your life when you take steps of trust and allow that spirit to start to inform the way that you live? Right? And I asked at the end of the service last week, and I'll ask it again, who among us doesn't want more of those things in their life? Whose life wouldn't be better with more joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control in their life? Maybe that's why, if you're a student of our society, there's a trend right now. A trend towards people re-engaging with their spirituality. Sometimes that's through church, but often it's not. You will hear somebody say if you get into this conversation with them, I'm religious. I'm sorry, I'm not religious, I'm spiritual. In fact, that's something I've said to people before. Because, at least for me, I find myself needing to create some distance between some of the um what I consider misguided ways that people use the teaching of Jesus in the world. I don't know if you've ever experienced somebody like that before. Sometimes what it means, okay, so that's what I mean, but sometimes what it means is I'm going to, I'm on the process of piecing together a spirituality for myself, a faith framework that makes sense to me. And often people are doing that because they have reactions to negative experiences with big religion and toxic churches and unhealthy communities. But while that can be positive, right, this is these words like deconstruction and reconstruction that we're using in our society an awful lot. This this can actually be somewhat healthy and in fact necessary. I think the people who become religious are the people who build up a framework and then are unwilling to consider changing it. I have a friend who's a former pastor. In fact, he was a member of our church for many, many years. His name is Ken. Some of you probably remember Pastor Ken, some better than others, because you were at his church before he arrived here. Pastor Ken talked about his uh his theological house, okay? His theological house that he had built for himself. So, this is all the ideas about God that he had built up into some sort of structure and framework. And he said, My theological house is under constant renovation. I am constantly evaluating the ways in which I am putting my thoughts onto God, right? Um, and and allowing God to put his thoughts back into me. Sometimes the renovations are pretty basic. It's a coat of paint, some new wallpaper. Sometimes it's taking two rooms off the back of your house so you can make room to put three rooms. It's actually a really healthy thing to evaluate the things that you believe and allow them to come under reconsideration. And so I want you to know that in one very broad and real sense, I and this church are for you asking questions. I am for you doing hard work. I am for you sometimes saying, I don't know what I believe about that, or this is what I believe today. And being open to changing, right? This is a church where you are encouraged to do that, even invited. But I put a caveat on that. Like many things, going at it alone is unwise. Becoming more spiritual on your own terms, without any reference to the hard work that people have done to the foundations of our faith before, not seeking wisdom that stood up the test of time over thousands of years, is a little bit like building a house with no experience. Because doesn't it look really easy to make a square wall until you have to combine several square walls together? I don't know if you've ever tried to do this before. Once I tried to renovate a room in the basement of a house all by myself with almost no experience whatsoever. And uh the first day I was trying to put drywall up by myself, I left that day with trigger finger. Have anybody ever had this? Where like I had used the drill so many times my finger wouldn't move anymore. And I had to go, my job was playing music at the time, so I had to try and go play guitar with only three fingers that night at rehearsal. It was a very, very unwise, bad idea. And um, I've been told by my realtor in Ontario that uh the people who bought that house immediately tore down everything that I had built and rebuilt it, which was probably very, very smart of them. Maybe that's why Jesus never encouraged us to be spiritual. Jesus never uses those words. Those are our words. He never says, be more spiritual. He wanted something better for you, better for us. Jesus appointed his followers towards maturity. Maturity. Jesus really taught stands actually in pretty sharp contrast to a version of spirituality that's all about me. Christian or otherwise. What Jesus taught, his ultimate expression of maturity, was that we would say no to me for the sake of we. And I think people know that. And I think it's one of the reasons why sometimes people reject the teachings of Jesus or the form of it that looks like us, the church, Christianity. So many of us, somebody already said it out loud, know a person that sounds like this. They had a verse for everything. They went to church all the time and they let everybody know about it. And yet, they were unkind, harsh, hypocritical, judgmental, and self-righteous. In other words, they built a version of Christianity that made them feel good, but not the people around them. Those people are religious, but not mature. They're equally at fault for creating a spirituality that serves them and not everyone else. And Jesus called those people whitewashed tombs. It was a really harsh statement when you think about it. It's like, hey, uh, you made yourself look good on the outside, but on the inside there's rotting flesh. Jesus' call sounds like this, okay? And and before we put the verse up on the screen, I need to give a caveat because you're gonna read it, okay? If this showed up on your screen as like your daily verse, you would immediately dismiss it if nobody told you any context about it. It's one of those things that we read in the Bible and we go, how in the world is that possible? So just don't throw it away right away, okay? We're gonna put it up on screen here. And I just want you to read it and then I'll explain it to you. Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect. And people who come here on a regular basis might go, yeah, but Pastor Tim, you always say there's no perfect people allowed here. So how in the world are we supposed to be perfect? Like your heavenly father is perfect, right? I am sure. I am sure I'm not the only person who's read this verse and went, oh, that's really confusing. Like it doesn't sound like what I'm taught most of the time. And here's the reason why. This is such an important thing to understand about Scripture, okay? About the words that are written in the Bible. The words that were written in the Bible were written for our benefit, but they weren't written to us. We aren't Hebrews, we aren't Greeks, right? It was written in a language at a time for a people who aren't us. And so it exists for our benefit. Now, because that's true, and because we're trying to give people the advantage of reading the Bible for themselves, we have translated the Bible from original languages into our own language. The problem is it's not a one-for-one trade. It's not like every word in ancient Greek has a word in English that perfectly encapsulates the text and the tense and all of that kind of stuff. Right? So please don't have a view of scripture that looks like, well, this is what it says in English, and so that's what it means. You actually need to go deeper than that with many things. And good news for you, there's a deeper explanation for this, because hands up if you're perfect. Right? Hands up if you're perfect. And there's nobody even. Gordy made a joke. He put his hand up a little bit. But he did that for my benefit, right, Gordy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Gordy was my neighbor. He knows I'm not perfect, and I know he's not perfect. It's okay. Right? So, hey, um, here's what we actually need to know about this verse. The Greek word for perfect is a word called telios. Okay? And telios is used more than once in the New Testament, so it gives us an idea about other ways that we could interpret this word. Okay, so the person who wrote the NIV version of the Bible used it and meant perfect. But another equally accurate way of saying that phrase would be, be mature, therefore, as your father in heaven is mature. Okay? And what does that mean? Don't just be good to the people who are good to you. Right? Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5, verse 45, just before this verse, that God causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good. And he sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Right? So, like, think about small kids. Like, it's easy to be good and nice to people while they're being good and nice to you. Right? You know, but that's a that's a goodness that's kind of immature. As long as you do what I want and we're not biting each other, then everything's good. Right? God, however, is very different. And he calls us to be different. God doesn't predicate his goodness towards us on our goodness towards him. He doesn't predicate his love towards us on our love towards him. He is willing to take the first step, right? And so while we struggle with patience and kindness and self-control and reactivity and a whole bunch of problems with us, God is patient. And he calls us to be patient with each other. He calls us to be ready to do for others what they are not ready to do for us. And when we do that, Jesus says, perfect. Perfect. You got it. Well done. Okay? Paul uses this word teleos later in his book called Ephesians, right? Paul, the guy who wrote most of the New Testament, most of the back half of the Bible, right, as letters to churches that he was helping to start and to people that he loved in the ancient world. Listen to what Paul says when he uses this word. Christ gave us, meaning the church, the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. What does that mean? God gave us these gifts, okay, uh, in the form of people who have abilities, okay, that that were given to them by the Spirit of God to do what? To equip his people for works of service, right? So, so people, mature people, people um who are who are doing leadership in churches, are really there to help all of you do the ministries that you've been given. Whether that's the kindness that you're showing to your barista on a Monday morning when you don't feel like it, or serving around the church, right? We're here to help equip you. The church is a team game, right? It's not just the staff doing the work, it's the staff, hopefully, equipping all of you to do work as well.

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So that the body of Christ can be built up until we all reach unity and faith, until we all reach a point of trust in Christ that looks like each other and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become telios, mature. Paul says, God didn't give you gifts for you to show off how spiritual you are. He gave them to you so that you can grow up yourself and the church into maturity. The measure of that maturity, he tells us in verse 13, is that we attain the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Okay, we take on together in unity, right? No one of us gets to do this, right? But together, if we follow Jesus well and we submit ourselves to a process of growth and change and trust, we will do the work of. Of Jesus together in the world today. Christ-likeness is the goal for the church, and every one of us has an opportunity to play a part in that. And Paul says, then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. What does he mean honestly? He's telling you to be careful of people like me. In modern terms, Paul is saying and talking about people like me in my line of work who can, under the wrong circumstances, use their title and position to manipulate people into behavior modifications that suit them. Right? So sometimes you'll hear somebody claiming to be, or somebody, sometimes they're clever enough to get somebody to say it for them. They have a special anointing from the Lord. When I read the Bible, I think all Christians are called equally. That's how I read it. All Christians are called equally. Now not all people are gifted the same, but all people are called by the same Lord to the same life. And so, friends, if you if you have somebody, if you see somebody, if you pick up a podcast, if you if you read a book, if you whatever, and this person seems to be sort of elevating themselves up to the special place where, man, you could not do this without me. Run away. Please run away. Paul encourages us all to grow up so we won't fall for it. Instead of falling for such nonsense, speaking the truth in love, we, the body, will grow to become in every respect the mature talios body of him who is the head, that is Jesus Christ. Our calling, friends, the opportunity that's in front of us, what should be happening as we trust in Jesus, is that God wants us to become what the world needs now. And what the world needs now is not more privatized designer suit my needs spirituality. It needs people willing to follow a better way. The way of Jesus. The way of less of me and more of we. What a beautiful experience that is. What an amazing gift to be a small part of God doing that in the world. In other words, being a part of a community that's actually empowered and led by the Holy Spirit is a huge part of what Jesus meant when he said, I came to give you life and life to the full. It isn't an individualistic life, it's a together life. It's us becoming a church that resembles Jesus. Right? Remember, that's what we were invited to trust Jesus for. The ability to live a life that resembles Him. So for the next eight weeks, we're gonna unpack these various fruits of the Spirit. Just one at a time. And I want to say something. If you're a person who loves lists, okay? If you're a checkoff kind of person, this is not a list. Okay? This is not like I'm gonna come for the next eight weeks and listen to these things and oh yeah, I agree with that, and all of a sudden I'm gonna be all of these things. That's not how it works. What this is, is what we can expect happening in our lives and in the lives of the people around us as we take steps of trust in Jesus to become more mature. Right? And just in case you missed it the first time I said it or last week or whatever, you can take trust steps before you believe. It's a process, it takes time. Listen to how Paul talks about this in his letter to his friends in a city called Galatia, Galatians 5, verse 25. Since we live by the Spirit, and it's okay if you don't believe that right now. Just like just run with me for a quick second. Since we live by the Spirit, since our life has been enabled by the Spirit of God, right? That's how the scriptures talk about the beginning of us, right? God formed us out of the dust, and then he breathed into us the breath of life. And so sometimes we talk about thanking God for life and breath and everything else. Those are Paul's words, too. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Okay? So what does that mean? If God has given you life, then why don't we trust Him to animate us to help us experience that in fullness, right? Paul actually equates this to the same sensation as being drunk. And before you run away, just wait. So I can tell you what this means. Because Paul wasn't giving you permission to go get drunk. But have you ever had your picture? Now hang on, let me ask that a different way. Have you ever seen a picture of somebody who is inebriated and you knew that they were inebriated even though you weren't there with them? Because the alcohol is animating them in a way that shows you that they're inebriated. Have you ever had that experience before? No, of course, you guys don't know anybody who's ever done that before. Okay, just take my word for it. If you don't, if you've never seen this before, just take my word for it. This happens from time to time. You will look at a photograph of somebody and go, oh, I can see it in their eyes. You know? Their eyes are not quite the same. They're a little bit glassy, maybe half open, right? Or they're standing in such a way, or they're, you know, you know, whatever pose they took, you realize that they're not making the same decisions that they would normally make, because they're being animated by a foreign substance. This is what Paul is saying. Letting Jesus live through us should kind of be like that, in the sense that people should be able to see a difference in us because the spirit is working in us and through us. And so Paul encourages you not to surrender to the influence of alcohol, but surrender to the influence of the spirit in your life. And you'll know it's working, and other people will know it's working, because they'll see it in you and through you. Why will they notice? Because the fruit of the spirit is, well, I've already listed it several times, but I don't even think I need to do that. Because I think you already know what's on the list. Why? Because it's what you want from the people in your life. It's what you wish your boss would be like. Right? It's what you wish your family would be like. It's what you hope the person your daughter is about to marry will be like. Right? This is what we want in our lives. And it's what everybody around you wants from your life. It's what they hope we will be. It's what we want our people to be, it's what we want our world leaders to be. This is what we sense as the best way. And it's almost unanimous. Every once in a while somebody goes rogue, but generally speaking, again, let me ask you the question: joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. Who doesn't want more of that in their life? Everybody does. And you don't have to be from Maple Ridge to want that. I'm gonna guess, and say with some level of certainty, that there are people on every continent, in every country, in every community, the majority of the people would be happier if that was their experience of other people. Good, patient, kind, self-controlled people. This stuff, this stuff is what changes the world. And when we are faithful and consistent in those things, man. And I want to take a quick rabbit trail for a second. Just to talk to the guys in the room for a second. Okay, like because sometimes when we we use this language like love and joy and peace and patience, kindness and goodness, you're like, I've I'm not that soft. You know, why do I have to be a softy to be a Christian? What's with that? Why do I have to follow this uh sweet, passive Jesus? You know? And if if if you are picking up that vibe and if you're sort of like, you know, I have more masculine ambitions than that, can I just ask you to do me a favor? I want you to go and read about the life of Jesus as he moved from Galilee to Jerusalem in the last weeks of his life. If you are a visual learner, you could pick up a copy of The Passion of the Christ and watch that. Watch that or read those chapters and tell me that Jesus was weak. Tell me that he wasn't an image of a man who was willing to give everything for his friends that is worth aspiring to. If you need a second one, read Acts chapter 8 and 9 about Paul, who tells you all of the things that have happened to him in his effort to live out love, peace, patience, and all the rest of it in his life. He's been in prison, he's been whipped, he's been beaten, he's been shipwrecked. I mean, the guy went through a ton. These men were men that were willing to look death in the face for what they believed. And they call us to do the same. Jesus was anything but weak and passive. And he wrote all of this as an invitation to let his life, sorry, Matthew wrote all of this as an invitation to let his life and character and courage and confidence be expressed through you. Ultimately, all of the things in the list of fruits of the Spirit are defined by love. They're defined by Jesus' insistence that he give himself for his friends. They are defined by Paul's dogged attempt to tell the story of a man who gave everything for us. Joy, peace, patience, kindness, and the rest of it, those are the definition of the kind of love that we want to see produced in our life. Those are what grown-up, mature Jesus followers begin to produce as we let love take over our lives. So, as we wrap up, same invitation as last week. Come back, engage. We're gonna unpack all of these things one at a time. And and and I guarantee, at least once, probably multiple times, if you're like me, you're gonna come on to one of these ideas and go, uh-oh, I struggle with that. I struggle with patience. I struggle with consistency. I struggle with self-control. Yes, exactly. Those are the places that God wants to change you and I. When we have that feeling, when we have that sensation, it should be a trigger to pay attention, to lean in and not run away. Because the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead wants to work on those things in you. Bless me. More we. Try to find Jesus on the other side. Try to let the one in whose image they want to be conformed be your inspiration for change. And if you'll do that, we'll pick up the conversation next week. We pray together. God, thank you for today. Thank you for this time and this space and this place. Thank you for this community. A few hundred people who are coming back week after week looking for life. God, help us to become mature. Help us to grow in unity. Help us to grow in faith. God, help us to make an impact on the world around us. If we left tomorrow, God, help us to be the kind of community that our community would actually miss. Help us to help Mutu make an impact in his community. God, your plan for the world is being fleshed out through your church. And your church is beautifully made up of all sorts of different people with all sorts of different gifts, all sorts of different experiences, and all sorts of different journeys. Thank you that you are you are big enough to work with us and through us, in spite of us. Come and fill our spiritual houses. As we attempt to make room for you in our lives, we ask you. In Jesus' name.