Episode 10 - When We Fail & A Big Word

In this episode we dig into how to think when we fail, what "low anthropology" means, and more about preaching. Then, we dive into the big word - propitiation and gain a better understanding of what Jesus has accomplished for us. Finally, we consider how God's love changes us to look like him. 

Transcript

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Hey, welcome to the Disappointingly Normal podcast. I'm your host, Paul Stiver. This podcast is a project of Hope Community Church Northlakes that meets in Shoreview, Minnesota. Friends, we are disappointingly normal. One of the freedoms of following Jesus and experiencing his grace is that we do not live to uh cement or establish our own impressiveness. We actually can be freed up to be normal. He's the hero of our story. We don't need to be. So in that sense, we can be disappointingly normal. Um, but also we're not weird. That actually, as a follower of Jesus, we become more human. We become more like who God made us to be as we get to know him. And so the point of this podcast then is to help us be disappointingly normal. How do we do that? We seek to take discipleship beyond Sundays to the rest of the week in all of life, that the Christian life is not just lived on Sundays in a church service, but it's actually lived on Sunday through Sunday, Monday through Saturday, all those days within the week that we get to follow Jesus in the ups and downs of our lives. I wanted to share a story from this week for me that was another embarrassing one. And I don't know if you've noticed this, but I tend to try to share stories that are embarrassing. And where that comes from or why do that is because we're disappointingly normal. That actually these ideas, disappointingly normal, and leading with the stories where you are the failure or the flawed or just an idiot like me sometimes, uh, leading with those kind of stories is actually pretty refreshing. The phrase around it is low anthropology, that we have a lower view of ourselves, not in any sort of abasing, uh dehumanizing way, but more in line with what grace teaches, that there's an inability in us. The gospel kind of declares this, there's an inability in us to save ourselves. And so when we acknowledge that, when we admit that, when we lead with the ways that we actually have shortcomings, flaws, and sins, there's a freedom in that. It's refreshing. Instead of always trying to put ourselves on a pedestal and establish our righteousness before others so that others look at us and are trying to and think, wow, they're really impressive. Actually lead the other way, go the opposite way, uh, is very freeing. And it actually fits more with what the gospel teaches. So that's a low anthropology or a low view of how impressive we are as humans. Um, and that's actually a beautiful thing. And so I want to lead with that with a story from this week that uh I um I lost my kayak paddle for my kayak fishing that I like to do as a way to kind of rest in the Lord. And um so I was uh pulling into the dock uh over at Turtle Lake and I parked my kayak, pulled everything up. This was a day, by the way, that I had already forgotten my anchor, so the wind was just blowing me across the lake. I put everything in my car and I left the kayak paddle right there on the dock, and I didn't think of it four days, and then I realized you can't pad, you can't just like uh do anything in a kayak. You can't, you just kind of float if you don't have a paddle. And so I went and looked for it and it was gone. And uh that makes sense. And um, that's just a lot of my life these days, is forgetting stuff where I'm like, how old am I? Uh, but uh that is life. And there are those moments where we just forget where we have these shortcomings, and when we're confronted with those moments, we have the opportunity to kind of crater and shame uh or get frustrated with ourselves. And um, one of the things that low anthropology and this kind of being free in Christ, or sometimes we say around hope, I'm okay in Jesus. One of the ways that changes our lives is then we're actually um not as devastated by our own shortcomings that we actually acknowledge, I yeah, I make mistakes, I make a lot of them. Um, but God loves me despite that. And in fact, his grace overcomes all of those. And it's really something very freeing. One of the things that plays out in our lives then, as or how it looks, is that um when uh like Allison, for example, will call me on something that I said or something that I did, instead of getting defensive, I can say that makes sense. That fits with a track record of making mistakes or saying something dumb, which actually has followed me my whole life. And it is really then something special to be reminded that in the midst of all those mistakes and flaws and failures, not to mention sins, Jesus looks at us and loves us. Man, what's good news. Um this week, as we get into a Sunday recap, I actually just want to continue talking about the idea of preaching. I started talking about this last week, but preaching obviously very central to a Sunday service, very central to the life of the church in one way, because it's kind of in one, it's teaching here's what we believe, here's why we believe it, but also it's an opportunity to create culture and establish who a church is and why we exist. And so I really love the task of preaching. Um, my uh actually, I think in my time in ministry, now working in ministry and being an elder and serving previously at Hope St. Paul and now uh here and maybe at a couple other churches I preached at, I've definitely have now approached the hundred sermon mark in my life. I've preached at least 100 sermons, which is really cool. Uh, there is an old joke by Tim Keller that he says your first hundred sermons are terrible no matter what you do. And so now I'm like, do I have to start figuring it out? Uh but I really appreciate that joke. And uh just a background for me in preaching. Uh obviously I came to faith later in life, um, and then I did the LDI internship. And as a part of the LDI internship, I took a class with Pastor Steve Trikler called Communicating God's Word. And in that we learned how to present ideas, how to communicate God's Word. We read incredible books on the topic uh about preaching and learned things like a fallen condition focus. Like, how does each text show the echoes of what we had with God and how that's been broken by sin? And now how does the gospel restore that? That's that fallen condition focus. I learned how to make arguments where you state a point, you prove a point from the text, you illustrate that point, and then you preach about that point. You say, why does this matter? I learned things like that. I learned so much from watching great communicators through the years, and there's so much that you can do in preaching a sermon. We talked about things like the use of humor at hope. We've always used humor and maybe to some extent uh an excessive amount of memes to portray the gospel. And the reason, one of the reasons for that is actually, I mean, we all experience it. Humor opens us up to hear ideas. It softens us. You know, oftentimes you think about when you come in listening to a sermon, whether we want to do it or not, there's this element where we can almost cross our arms and say, okay, prove to me, lead me, teach me something I don't understand. You almost come in with a demand. And I and then what is uh what that does or that what that can do is cause us to miss out on what God's trying to say to us. And so humor is one way to lead with humor, to soften our hearts to really hear what God's trying to say to us, among other things. And so always have loved using humor at hope. Uh the there's a different type of preacher. Each preacher is different. Um, so one of the things we talk about in preaching is there's like head, heart, hands. So um you try to access a head is like more of a prophetic type person. They love telling the truth of God's word. There's the heart-oriented person, so they're loving to share stories that hit the heart, the very priestly type of person, if you will, uh, that tells stories that hit the heart and land with our hearts. Um then there's the uh kind of strategic person, the king, and they love more of that hands-on, that application. Here's how to live like this. And each sermon has elements of all of those things, teaching truth, speaking to the heart, maybe through stories or other examples, and then how do we apply it at hope traditionally? And some of you who are more in that strategic camp or just want things to do, like if you think, uh, what is that, uh, the um different personality types that where you want to hear things to do, often sermons at hope might end up being frustrating for you because we tend to lean more toward the first two. We tend at hope to preach more toward here's the truth, here's what to know about this. And then we want to get it after your heart because really one of the things the Bible does is in the New Testament emphasize how we think about God, how we come to understand the gospel, and it de-emphasizes at times how to live it out. We get more of these pictures of what it means to know God, and less of like, here's five steps to live your life better. Um, and so we see that a lot, and we see that definitely at hope. We're doing a lot more uh preaching to the heart, preaching to the head than we are just giving life application. Actually, one of the things I've enjoyed about doing this podcast is it's created a chance to share more about how to live out what we learned from the text, uh, whether that's as a church or personally. Some other things about preaching, particularly at Hope North Lakes or in Hope's Culture that you might notice, we like to preach according to our values. So we want to preach in a way that's welcoming, authentic, clear, and engaging. And so, welcoming, one of the ways that plays out, and maybe you've noticed this, but when we talk about things, even culture or even ourselves, we're never pointing fingers. Uh, it's hard to go into a service and then be told, you're wrong, you're evil, you're terrible. Now, it is important to look at sin, but it's not great for us as a church to point fingers at people and say, look how terrible they are. We're not going to do that. That's not welcoming. Authentic, we want to tell these personal stories where we're oftentimes, like I said, the butt of the joke. We're not telling hero stories because Jesus is the hero. We want to be clear, this really matters at Hope North Lake. So we want to make sure that on a Sunday, someone can understand what is being taught and why it matters. And that why it matters is our engaging piece. And every week try to find ways that the gospel really engages with our lives because God is desirous to transform all of our lives, that He doesn't just want us to believe these on a conceptual level as ideas, but he wants to get into the nitty-gritty of our lives and shape us. And so we think about that even more. Um we love to preach that as though grace is true because it is, and so therefore, we're not creating different groups. And when we preach the ground is level at the foot of the cross, we all have the same need for Jesus. Our goal at Hope North Lakes is to provide encouragement to follow Jesus, to see your relationship started or strengthened with him. Um and so we want to equip you with encouragement, not necessarily inspiration to try harder. Uh and then last thing I'll share about preaching at North Lakes, one of the things that we're thinking about every time is is Jesus the hero and is the gospel the answer? Is Jesus the hero, is the gospel the answer? Then everything else we do, engaging culture, thinking about our own lives, application, all those things flow downstream from are we helping people see Jesus in his beauty? Because beholding him as he is, seeing him for who he is, is the way that God transforms our hearts. So that's a little bit more about preaching at Hope North Lakes. I love talking about preaching, as you can tell. And uh, if you ever have questions about it, please talk to me. There's a lot more that could be said. Um, but I sure do love having that opportunity to preach. And um, last thing I'll say about preaching, oftentimes on a Sunday in a service, we think, oh, the music is worship. The music is worship. But actually, every part of a Sunday service is worship. And when I'm preaching a sermon, one of my goals for the hearer is that their heart would be led to God, that they would get a picture of God, that they would see God in a new, fresh way, where he would be very real, very present to them. But I also worship God when I'm preaching. I love it, and I'm thankful to get to do it. Um, all right, switching in, switching gears a little bit into uh, and this is actually fit with the Sunday recap. Uh, yesterday, in the service, the big word from 1 John was that Jesus was a propitiation for our sins. The way we saw it was in this is love, God said that Jesus came, uh was sent to be a propitiation for our sins. God loved us and sent his son to be a propitiation for our sins. That word can mean many things, but one of the things it means is the turning away of God's righteous wrath through a sacrifice that satisfies divine justice. The turning away of God's righteous wrath through a sacrifice that satisfies divine justice. We've talked about this in different ways at North Lakes, but God is just and God is holy. Because God is good, we need someone to deal with the sin that we've committed against him, right? If he's righteous and he's holy, then he should hate things that are evil and wrong. That's actually one of the things we look around our world today. We all experience that. When you read a news story or see something evil, we hate it, we detest it. Well, God in himself is perfectly holy, so when he sees sin, he hates it and detests it. But a part of that then means that he has wrath on sin and wrath on our sin. So we need someone to take away that wrath. We need a propitiating sacrifice, and that, of course, is the Son of God, the person of Jesus Christ. When Jesus offers himself as a sacrifice for sin, the wrath of God is appeased. It is dealt with. And then therefore, when our faith is in Jesus, we avoid God's wrath because Jesus has already been punished. That's part of this idea of propitiation. God has taken away our sin, that's expiation, but God has taken away the penalty for our sin, the wrath for our sin, that is propitiation. But God goes beyond that. He satisfies his justice, but he also justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. That we know in this idea of justification. There's a couple ways to think about justification. It's a big word. It could mean just as if I'd never sinned. I'm justified, just as if I'd never sinned. And that's true in the gospel. That is true. When you put your faith in Jesus, you're justified in him. It is just as if you'd never sinned, but it goes further than that. Because Jesus lived a perfect life, or sometimes what's called his active obedience, because Jesus lived a perfect life. It is not just as if I'd never sinned, but when we trust in Jesus, it is also just as if I'd always done everything right. The way it came up in the sermon yesterday was that we saw the two commandments, to love your the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and second, to love your neighbor as yourself. When we trust in Jesus, it is not as if though we never sinned in that area, but also as though we always did everything right in that area. And on that basis, then we stand before God. So this idea of propitiation then allows for the removal of wrath, but also the establishment of righteousness. We don't have a morally neutral standing before God where we have to wonder if he accepts us. We don't have to have morally neutral standing before God where now we have to go earn his acceptance. We are justified in Christ because God is both just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. That is incredible news. Thank you, Jesus, for being the propitiating sacrifice for our sins. If God then loved us that way, friends, we ought to love one another, as John tells us. Now, this is why this is important. We've got to understand this because we live in a world that is very religious. You know, it's interesting. Yesterday we talked about religion and irreligion. And I use this idea that uh irreligious people create their own moral code. Do you know what that is? When we talk about that, this is really compelling. We talk about this, I found this so interesting that it's little l laws. So sometimes we think a lot often in the Bible, we look at the Bible, and especially the Old Testament, we say, God gives the big L law, the capital L law, the uh Ten Commandments and everything He commands, and in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, that's the big L law. But we don't realize that even if we reject God, don't accept His law in the Old Testament and say He doesn't exist, that every human being creates a moral code. And what we could call that is then little L laws. This is a concept that is all over in uh modern culture, but we see it in uh especially from friends at Mockingbird and the ministry of Mockingbird, where they talk about these little l laws. Now, what is a law, no matter what, whether it's God's capital L law or little L laws that human beings make up, it is an idea that says, and we learn this from Galatians 3, do this and live. So in Galatians 3, the law teaches, the Old Testament law teaches, if you keep these laws, God will love you. Do this and live. If you can do this, then you live. And now thank God in Galatians 3 we learn that we couldn't keep the law, but Jesus keeps the law, fulfills the law, and when we put our trust in him, it is as though we have also fulfilled the law. So we don't have to wonder, do I need to do this and live? It's more like believe this and live. Um, but then in the little L law world, we have all these little L laws. Just like the big L laws at Sinai that accuse us and say you can't live up to the standard, there's all these little L laws that accuse us. Be a better parent, lose the weight, keep up, advance in your career, uh, be more beautiful. You name it. All of these things are accusatory little L laws that demand that we reach perfection on our own. So even people that reject God, irreligious people, if you will, set up systems of laws for what looks like real life. So no matter what, we are under these kind of oppressive structures. If we are religious and we think we have to keep God's law to be saved, if we're irreligious and we create our own standards to be saved, and then we demand on others, do this and live. Agree with me and live. No matter what, we've got law following us all around. Now, the beauty of grace is that we're saved not by our own works. So the reality of an irreligious person then is if you create your own moral code, you have to live up to it. And how often do we fail? So we failed now, where do we look? Uh, for following the religious laws. If if the New Testament didn't exist and we only had to obey God's law, we would immediately fail and we'd be lost forever. But the good news is here comes Jesus, who fulfills the law, sets us free from any kind of self-created moral code by further establishing what God has teach is taught throughout the whole Bible. But he fulfills that law and then invites us into a relationship of grace where our acceptance is established already, not on the basis of what we've done, but on the basis of what he's done. And so grace then totally comes in and totally uproots all this lawmaking that we could do and all this law keeping that would be demanded of us, we're saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Now, that then changes the way that we love. That was what we looked at. That changes the way that we loved, and I want to know uh why that matters and how that matters. And so uh when we're looking at how does that change the way we love, uh, I want to look at um beyond Sundays as a church and really just think about this as a church. So, well, first individually, personally, and we talked about it in the sermon, but if God has shown us uh the wrath-absorbing, cost-absorbing, sin absolving love that he's shown us in Christ that doesn't just uh take away wrath and doesn't just uh forgive us of our sins, but also establishes us righteous before him, what would it look like if we showed that kind of love to others? What would it look like? I guess this is personal and church. What would this look like if we uh what what would change if the world around us if we stopped giving up on people? Like think about how much God has pursued us and sticks by us. What if we stopped giving up on people? What if we fought our jadedness and difficult relationships with hope in God and prayer? What if we kept humbling ourselves and reminding ourselves of our need for grace? What if we kept coming back to this message that God sent his son so that we might have life, that God gave his son to take away the wrath for our sin, the penalty of our sin, the power of our sin? What if we remembered that God has loved us in that way and now we went out and loved others that like that? That's not us creating our own definition of love. That's seeking to have a cruciform picture of love, a love that looks like Jesus, a love that washes feet, a love that bears with people, a love that covers a multitude of sins, a perfect love that casts out fear so that people never have to wonder how we feel about them. They just know we love them because we're serving them and caring for them and reminding them of that. There's a beauty of the distinctiveness of Christian love that we don't make up the rules about how we love, we don't kind of come up with our own morality about it. We also don't get to decide who we love because, as Jesus teaches, everyone is our neighbor, but we also don't love others in our own strength. We love them in the power of the Holy Spirit, we love them with the reminder of how God has loved us. Friends, what would change in our world today if we loved people like Christ has loved us? And how do we know he's loved us? Because on the cross he was cast out. On the cross, he was treated as a sinner. On the cross he absorbed all the wrath that God intended for punishing sin, so that we might now have life in him, freedom in him, acceptance by God because we belong to him. Friends, if that's how God has loved us, let us love others that way so that they might encounter Jesus, maybe start that relationship with him, but certainly strengthen that relationship with him. It's been great to talk with you this week about God's love for us. Friends, as always, the news is good, the grace is free. Have a great week.