We've Got You

As followers of Jesus, we're called to something radically different than the world's "gotcha" culture. In this message from our What Our World Needs Now series, we explore the fruit of the Spirit known as gentleness and discover that gentleness isn't weakness—it's strength used for restoration. Through Galatians 6 and the example of Jesus, we'll learn how to become people who don't just catch others in their failures, but help catch them when they fall. What if the church became the safest place to land when life falls apart?

Transcript

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Hey everyone, and welcome to the brand new Burnec Church podcast. My name is Tim, and I'm your host and the pastor of Brennan 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. We hope you enjoy the episode. This morning we're going to continue our conversation about the fruits of the Spirit. Galatians chapter 5, verse 22 says, the fruit of the spirit, the fruit of the spirit of Jesus working itself out in people should look like this love. Love is the overarching theme of all of these things. Joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, self-control. I didn't get those all in the right order, that's okay. I'm pretty sure I got every one of them. This is week eight, week nine is next week. We're gonna talk about self-control, and that'll be the end of the conversation. I wanna tell you a quick story as we get going, and we're thinking about gentleness today, okay? Here's a moment when I got caught. When I was 15 years old on my summer break, I went to McDonald's with one of my friends. Now, for the OGs in the room, the old school people, okay, you might remember that lots of uh fast food restaurants in the 80s and 90s had atriums on the front of it. Do you remember this? You have big glass rooms that overheated because there was no air conditioning, of course. And would cook you alive when you went in there. You know, but it was uh it was a it was it was a thing, it was a deal. And one summer, my friend and I, you know, while we were on our vacation, took our bikes, and because you know, our parents didn't drive kids anywhere in the 80s and 90s, uh, we just had to get there ourselves. So we jumped on our bike in the searing heat, and we went, I don't know why we were in the atrium, but we went in the atrium because it was really hot in there, and we had our lunch together. And as 15-year-old boys, we were um experimenting with the English language. Do you know what I mean? Using words that my parents hadn't taught me, but my education had, speaking of two different sets of values. So we were there and it was innocuous. We were having a conversation between ourselves. I don't know if you remember, most of the atriums were sort of like blocked off from the rest of the restaurant by a big set of planters, right? So you couldn't see what was going on, and nobody could see what was going on in the atrium. Do you remember this? Okay. So we're sitting down in the atrium, having this experimental conversation. And I finished my lunch and left the restaurant and went home. Didn't think twice about it. Until I got home and my mom was sitting in our living room. And she was sitting in such a way that told me something was wrong. Ever had that experience? She didn't even have to say a word. She's just sitting in a posture that makes me realize, uh-oh. Uh-oh, something happened. She invites me into the living room, which was bad. She used my full name, Timothy. Would you join me in here? That's even worse. This is not gonna go well. And I was, frankly, flabbergasted. What could she want to talk to me about? I had no idea. And she said, I got a phone call from Donna Mariah. Donna Mariayan was a sweet older lady who attended church with us. Donna Mariayan was having lunch at McDonald's, Tim. On the other side of the atrium wall, from the experimental conversation I was having with my friend. And she heard me experimenting with the English language in ways she knew my mother wouldn't approve of. And so she, unlike me, left the restaurant, went directly home, picked up the phone, and called my mother and said, You should have heard the words that were coming out of his mouth. And she proceeded to, in one way or another, let my mom know exactly what words I was using that I wasn't supposed to use. It was the one and only time I've ever had soap in my mouth. That doesn't mean it fixed my swearing problem. It just means that I never got caught again. Isn't there something about those gotcha moments that we kind of love? Just a little bit, like everybody's laughing at my expense. Right? We are in a culture that loves gotcha moments, right? When somebody messes up. One of my favorite comedians has a bit where he's like, I don't really do impressions, but let me do one for you. And I'm not gonna try and do it because I'm not nearly as funny as he is. But the basic premise of the impression is he does an impression of the audience and says, This is what it sounds like to me. You guys are ready for me to mess up. And anytime I mess up, doesn't matter when, doesn't matter how, doesn't matter if I did it 20 years ago, if I find out about it, we're gonna get you and we're gonna ruin your life. He said, that's what it feels like to try to entertain this culture. If you think back, you can probably think of an athlete, a celebrity, a politician, a pastor who's had a gotcha moment. Right? And suddenly everybody's a commentator, right? We post, we share, we speculate, we laugh at them, we expose them. We don't just notice failure anymore, we consume it. Reality TV has built an industry on it. Social media has accelerated it, and cancel culture has weaponized it. And so our feeds are full of exposures and opportunities to spill the tea. Our society seems to love catching people, and sometimes it feels like the church loves catching people too. I don't know if you've ever seen this or had this experience. I certainly have. Where somebody gets caught doing something they're not supposed to do, it's probably worse than being caught swearing at McDonald's. And sometimes, sometimes what happens is people aren't wounded because they got caught. They get wounded by us by the way we catch people. How we go about catching people. Today, out of Galatians chapter 5, we want to talk about gentleness. And I want to talk about how gentleness needs to inform the way we go about doing our catching when catching comes along. But before we get into it too deeply, I want to say one thing that's really important. If you're here and you hear gentleness and all of a sudden, you know, it's it's it's it's weakness. Can I try to get you to flip that around this morning? Because here's what I think gentleness is. I think gentleness is how strength behaves when it matures. Gentleness is how strength behaves when it's under control. With that in mind, I want to look at a couple of stories in scripture. One of them I'm not gonna unpack entirely this morning because Ryan Guerra did this for you a few weeks ago. It's the woman caught in adultery. And the first thing that always strikes me about this story when I read it in the Bible is like, where the heck is the dude? Because how I understand adultery, that would take two to tango if you caught them in it. So where's the other person? That's a nice speculation for us to think about. Might give some perspective on where the culture was at the time. What I want to focus on, though, is Jesus' response when he catches it. So if you're not familiar with the story, I'll tell it to you really briefly. The religious elite of Jesus' day bring this woman in front of the community because they've caught her cheating on her husband. And in their culture, the punishment for this is death by stoning. Okay? So they bring her, and at this time, now we're we're we're several, you know, sort of months slash years into Jesus' ministry. So Jesus is on the scene. What they're trying to do is catch Jesus being unfaithful to their laws. Right? They're trying to set Jesus up as the bad guy, ironically. And so they bring her out in front and they show her to Jesus and they go, look, we found this woman caught in adultery. May we stone her teacher? What a question. Jesus, I mean, it's so brilliant. This is the story where Jesus bends down and he starts writing on the ground, but we're not told what he's writing. And everybody loves to speculate. What did Jesus write on the ground? Did he write their secret sins on the ground? What happened? What we know is that Jesus' answer to them was this is what the law says. If any of you are without sin, go ahead and throw the first stone. I'll wait. And one by one, they get the message and they walk away. And when nobody is left, Jesus is there, right, embodying everything you and I need to know about God. Right? If you want to know how God would respond to somebody caught, go and read this story in John chapter 8 for yourself again. Okay? Because what happens is Jesus standing there says, I could throw this stone, but I'm not going to. I choose not to. Now go and leave your life of sin. In this moment, Jesus affirms so many of the things that he's been teaching his followers. Right? Don't judge. Be full of grace and truth at the same time. Because notice, Jesus doesn't relabel what's going on. He's very clear about what happened. You're sinning, right? Talk about that a little bit in a second. Go and leave that life. And yet, while he is being perfectly truthful, he chooses to be full of grace at the same time. Show mercy. Jesus has the high ground here. Not just because he's God, but because he knows the law. And in that moment, Jesus chooses to be the stronger person through his gentleness. He is mature, controlled, and he leverages his strength for somebody else. That's what gentleness looks like. And this isn't the only time that we see Jesus do it in scripture, right? We could think about Jesus' encounter with the woman at the well, right? Where he is full of grace and truth and he is gentle towards her. When he meets Zacchaeus and is very clear about the things that Zacchaeus has done wrong, and yet chooses to go to Zacchaeus's home to eat with him instead of going to eat with those who feel like they deserve his presence. And it was obvious, obvious to those who came after Jesus, that gentleness was a fruit of the Spirit of God working itself out through humanity. And that's why we find Paul, as he continues Galatians, calling us, the church, to behave the same way. Here's what he says: Galatians chapter 6, verse 1. Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in sin, and every time I read that, I go, Paul's being very kind here. If someone's caught in sin, when someone is caught in sin, because it's going to happen. Now, I just want to take a quick second here because I feel like this is necessary. Sin is one of those words that like we hear it and we wint every time because like it's been weaponized against people. All we mean when we say this, all we mean, you know, it's like the word just. Never use the word just. Nothing is ever just. Do you notice that? Once something is, you know, it's just this, it's not just that, it's something else. Sin, the problem that God has with sin, the reason sin matters, is because God loves so deeply that he can't stand to see someone else hurt him. And you will not find anything referenced in the scriptures as sin that doesn't boil down to somebody getting hurt. Either we're hurting ourselves, we're hurting our relationship with God, we're hurting each other, or we're hurting the world around us. Something is getting hurt. That's why sin matters. Sin grieves God so deeply because God loves so deeply. So if someone is caught doing something that hurts another person and because it hurts another person, offends God, but not if, when, when that happens. Everyone, everyone knows the feeling of being caught doing something you're not supposed to be doing. Sometimes we know the feeling that we should have been caught, but we haven't been caught yet. Right? Maybe it was a relationship compromise. Maybe it's debt that you've accumulated and your partner doesn't know anything about it. Maybe, maybe it's a secret that you haven't told anyone yet. Maybe it's an online life that you're not ready to talk about or haven't. Maybe it's an addiction. Maybe it's a double standard, maybe it's anger, maybe it's an affair, maybe it's just plain old dishonesty. You know, the interesting thing is that none of those things happen in a moment. Right? We don't wake up one morning and decide I'm gonna destroy my life today. People don't do that, right? What it starts with is something small. A heart affection given to somebody it doesn't belong to. A lie that you can get away with. Moving money from here to there. And then it's repeated, and then it's normalized, and suddenly it snowballs out of control. And that's the moment when we're either caught or afraid to be caught. I want to tell you a story that I hope, I hope will come across the right way. It's a little bit vulnerable on my part, so bear with me. When I was a teenager, um, I I had I had a struggle with pornography. It started small. It started with my 11-year-old friend getting a magazine from his dad. And they lived in a home where it wasn't a big deal. He was becoming a young man, so you might as well see this at some point. And he shared it with me, and things snowballed from there. You know? So when I was in my early 20s, I was still struggling with it. The problem with that was that in my early 20s, I met this girl who I really liked. And I and I think she really liked me. In fact, I know that they must have liked me somewhat because her family built me a room in their basement when I lost my job so that I could stay with them. This is Melissa's family, by the way. Right? If that didn't become super clear, right? So one evening, uh, but at the time, Melissa was the only one who had a computer in the house. So one night, as Melissa was in bed, I had been playing a game online, and then she fell asleep, and then one thing led to another, and my addiction kicked in, and I moved into that world. But then Melissa woke up and she caught me. And in that moment, she had every right to drop me like a dirty shirt. Right? She displayed so much gentleness towards me in that moment. Now I want to be really clear, she wasn't weak or whimsical. She was mad at me, and she had every right to be mad at me. But what she did was say, instead of I'm I'm out, I'm done, I'm moving on, how can I help? What do you need? How can I lend my strength to you so that you can overcome this thing that you've been caught in? I'm sure many of you have stories that are like that, maybe not with the same issue, but something that you've been doing in your private life that you haven't been proud of and you got caught. It's not if, it's when. Guys, if we do life together, right? That's what we say our church wants to be, that our lives together would tell a story of God's love that the world wants to hear. So if we're gonna do life together, some point, someone's gonna get caught. It's the unfortunate reality of the human condition. We all kind of have this tendency to move in a direction we shouldn't move in. So, if someone gets caught in sin, what do you do? You who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. That's the instruction that we're given. That's the world we're trying to create. That's why the fruit of the Spirit working itself out in us matters. There's a choice between condemnation and restoration, right? There's a choice every time. We think that Paul should say, you know, if you catch someone in sin, expose that person publicly. Or rebuke that person quickly, or condemn that person harshly. That feels more in line with what we're inclined to do, but Paul says restore them gently. I think about it like this. In the neighborhood around the corner, just around the corner from my house, there is there is a house that looks like it has been there for a very long time and looks like it has been uncared for for a very long time. It's the kind of house you drive by and assume that if somebody pulls up outside of it, they're probably there to take delivery of some sort of narcotic that they're not supposed to have. Okay? It sat like that for two years as we've lived in the house that we live in currently. Recently, though, I've noticed that there's some work going on at that house. It's a very interesting thing because to me, my inclination, and you've seen this time and time again in Maple Ridge, right? The old houses in town get bulldozed so we can put up something big and modern, right? Happens all the time. You walk by, it's like, wow, that house is really out of place in this neighborhood. Doesn't look like anything else is built here. But somebody came along and bought the property because the property is actually more valuable than the building on it. Bulldozed it over and said, I'm gonna build my dream home on this plot of land because I love Maple Ridge so much. Right? And to be honest, that's probably that's probably my inclination as well. Bulldoze the thing over, start from scratch, build something new, then I won't have to think about it for you know at least five seconds after it's built, depending on who builds it and how well they do. What's actually happening to this house is that somebody has a vision for restoration for that house. Which is really interesting because it's a it's it's a unique house. It's got this you know cool uh big peak roof and and big peak uh on the front. It almost looks like something that like belongs in a Hansel and Gretel uh storybook, you know, something something from a fairy tale. It's a unique house. Somebody has got a vision. What they're doing instead of bulldozing it over, they're doing lots of things in the yard, they're trying to regrow the grass, they're doing all kinds of things, but they're also reshingling the roof, repainting the house, redoing the concrete. They are restoring instead of condemning. Condemnation is quick and easy. Restoration requires us to have a vision that even though this is going to be probably more difficult and much, much more messy, I can see the potential of what's on the other side, and I value the uniqueness that's there. Restoration, it is absolutely wonderful. 100% crucial and critical that we remember that restoration is God's ultimate goal. God's ultimate goal with all things, right? Like if you read the scriptures all the way through and you see where this is all headed, it's a new heaven and a new earth. It isn't the removal of us. And those two things are supposed to be together. So I don't believe it's the removal of us from this world permanently. I believe that it's it's us inhabiting it with Jesus as our king in the perfection that he imagined when he made it in the first place. It's all moving back in that direction. It's all moving towards restoration. And if restoration is God's goal, then restoration is Jesus' goal, and if it's his goal, it should be our goal. Amen? Right. Sometimes we forget this. Sometimes we wish people came to us already restored, fully, perfectly restored. Right? We get frustrated when people have their things that they're working through. Why isn't that fixed in your life yet? It is the definition of taking the plank out of our own eye while examining the speck in somebody else's eye, but we do it all the time, don't we? We forget about the things that God is being merciful and gentle towards us in and we forget to apply it to the world around us. Right? There are no perfect people here. In fact, it's it's often what we say the only kind of people that aren't welcomed at Burnett Church are perfect people. Right? No perfect people allowed here. Because the minute any one of us, myself included, got involved in this thing, it became imperfect. So if you think you're perfect, the rest of us aren't. And this probably isn't the community for you. Right? Because, and we say that and we're coy about it and we joke about it a little bit, but that perspective is necessary from the church. It's necessary that we carry a sense that God is being kind and gentle towards us because we are being called to be kind and gentle towards the world in Jesus' name. So it's important that we understand that there's two ways, two ways you can catch something. Two ways something can be caught, right? You can catch something in a net, and what happens when you do that is it's a mechanism that tires out and wears out what you've caught, right? You think about a fish, the last thing you do is you put it in the net and you let it wriggle around in there and still stop wriggling around, and then you can pick it up. Then you have caught it. Right? It's a device for entrapment, entanglement, and exhaustion. Or sometimes we can be caught by a net. One of my favorite guys on social media right now is this guy who does a uh a moment uh that he calls he's he's Jamaican, so excuse my accent. He he he calls it me na do this. Okay? Translated, I won't do that. Okay? And he shows these absolutely ridiculous activities that people take on and try to do. Like uh, you know, when Red Bull paid the guy to free climb the um the building in Dubai. Did anybody see this? And he has no safety net. What are you doing? What are you doing? At the very least, sometimes when we do these extreme activities, we just need somebody to have a net in case we fall. Caught by the net. In that case, your net, the thing that you're using to catch, provides protection, a soft landing, and safety. The world has enough people attempting to catch others in a net. What our world needs now is a church that catches people with their net. We use our nets to provide protection, soft landings, and safety. People who have restoration in mind. And that's what I dream for us to be as a community of people. When we say come as you are, that's what we mean. There are enough people in the world who have been caught in a net and brought shame by their relationship with the church. What if people knew in our community that when they're in their worst moments, there is a soft landing place at Burnett Church? What if people could be certain that we were for their restoration, not for their condemnation? Imagine people in our community saying, I don't know what I believe, but if my life fell apart, I think those people would help. I've seen it. You know, there are moments when we have that reputation. Layla had a friend last year who lost their mom tragically. Right? A friend that she built playing soccer. Their family's the same age as ours. Mom was in her mid-40s and passed away suddenly, tragically. And I was so proud that when that little girl said, we need help, she texted Layla. Because her experience with people in our church were that we were safe. We could be trusted. We would help them. I remember talking to somebody who who, you know, as sometimes happens, we have moments in in our lives when we're, you know, heavily involved in church and moments in our lives when maybe we're not as heavily involved, and in one of those less heavily involved moments, that person's mother passed away, and they immediately called us, started attending regularly, came back here because they knew in their worst moment you would help them. You would catch them. With your net, not in your net. We can and must lead a movement that is changing hearts in our community as it relates to the kingdom of Jesus, as it relates to the reputation of the church. We must do this. This is go back to, you know, Pastor Tim's on a bit of a mission right now to think through all the ways that we can help build up our next generation. We need to do this. We need to get this right. We need to catch with, not in. And if you find yourself in a place where you have a practical opportunity to do that, right, go back to what Paul says. When you catch someone in a sin, what do you do? There are two questions I think you need to ask yourself if you find yourself in that moment. The first thing, before you say a word, ask yourself, what if it was me? What if it was me? Because in that moment, you will have self-awareness to realize, there but by the grace of God, go I. We are all, we talked about this a week or two ago. We are all one or two, or maybe three, if you're super lucky, bad decisions away from being the person who got caught. So what if it was me? I'm capable of it. What if it was me? Right? And and and what Paul says in verse two of chapter six, I know we've spent a lot of time just talking about this one thing, like when you catch somebody, Paul says, be careful that you that you're not tempted when you catch somebody. Okay? So there are two things that he could mean by that. He could either mean don't get sucked in, but I think if we I think if we look at it on a more deep level, if we look at it under the surface, maybe what Paul is saying is, if you're not careful, it might be you next. What if it was me? And then the second question, what is my goal? If I'm going to approach somebody who's been caught, what's my goal? Am I condemning or am I restoring? Be incredibly clear about it, because your approach will be entirely different. It will make all the difference to the person that you need to talk to. What if, what if we were the people that our society knew isn't interested in gotcha? What if we were the people that everybody knew? I've got you. I've got you. Let me let me help you through this moment. Let's pray together. Jesus, we're all gonna wield the net at some point. And probably at some point we're all gonna be in the net. Fill us with a vision for how you would deploy that net. Help us to see that our goal is not to catch each other in it, but to catch each other with it. Help us to be more concerned about restoration. Have the heart that you have for personal global restoration that Jesus so often displayed. It's clear. Even Jesus said, I didn't come to condemn the world, I came to save it. And if we are followers of His, God, what we want is for you to fill us with His Spirit. So that when we're in a moment of strength, we'll have the strength to be gentle. And when we're in a moment of weakness, somebody else will lend their strength to us through gentleness. We ask you to do all this in Jesus' name. For his sake. Amen.