GAURD RAILS: DON'T BLOW UP YOUR LIFE | Start Over | Ben Anderson

==============
Join us for worship this Sunday at 10:30am (CST)! Connect with our community and experience a message of hope.

Learn more about Redeemer Church: http://www.redeemermn.org/

Ready to take a next step? Fill out a connect card: http://www.redeemermn.org/nextsteps 

Need prayer? We're here for you: http://www.redeemermn.org/prayer

Support our mission: http://www.redeemermn.org/give

=============== 

Stay Connected: 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/redeemermn_church/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/redeemermn/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RedeemerMN

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to Redeemer. If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Ben Anderson, and I'm one of the pastors here, and it's so great to spend a little time with you this morning. Hey, just a couple of quick things before we jump into today's sermon. First of all, if you are a guest with us this morning, I want to give a special welcome to you. I don't know what brought you here, but I'm glad you're here, and I hope that you have just a perfect experience this morning. But if you are a guest and you are ready to be known, one of the best things that you can do is make your way to our welcome desk, which is available right in the commons in the back. There'll be somebody there to get to know your name and your story and connect all the dots for who we are as a church and how you can get deeper connected. Speaking of a deeper connection, about a month ago, we offered a class called Discover Redeemer, which is a class that we're gonna offer three times a year. And in that class, this is what we do. We talk about the history of our church. We talk about the heartbeat of who we are and where we're going, and we answer a handful of questions, whatever you want to ask, all over a hot meal. And so obviously, that's a great experience. If you haven't been there yet, get connected. But really, our goal in that conversation is to have people step into a deeper sense of ownership as people who attend Redeemer. In fact, we had 10 people take us up on that offer, and so they're stepping into membership, and so we're very excited about that. Now, if you're wondering, well, who are those people? One of the things that you're gonna have to do is you have to do a little bit of work. It's available on our Monday email. So if right now you're thinking, I didn't know we had a Monday email, this is the perfect time to sign up. If you're thinking, I never look at the Monday email, this is your perfect time to start looking at it. So there's a lot of good stuff in there, including those names. So hopefully you can get connected to them. But here is the reality. As people are stepping into a deeper sense of ownership, you are gonna see them on a regular basis because they're committing to gathering on Sundays in a regular routine of their life. They are committed to being a part of small groups and they are committed to serving so you will get to know these people very, very soon, especially when you are living in that deeper sense of ownership yourself. Well, today we are going to bring our latest sermon series, Guardrails, Don't Blow Up Your Life to a Close. Which means for one last time, we are going to ask ourselves this question: how do I protect my future? Because this is what's true. It's been true in your life and true in the people's lives around you. No one wakes up in the morning and thinks, how can I plan to destroy my life? How do I mess up my marriage? How do I alienate my children? How do I screw up my finances? How do I lose my job? Nobody wakes up in the morning with that plan in mind. But here's the trouble. So often, what we don't do is we don't wake up in the morning with a plan how not to do that. And that's where we get into all of this mess. So today, after we finish today's conversation, all of these things will be available. Because maybe as we've been wrestling through this, you've been thinking, man, I could have used this 10 years ago. I could have used this 20 years ago, I could have used this 30 years ago. Where was this back then? Or maybe you're thinking, I could have used this yesterday. And so we want to give that content to you. So it's all available on our website. You can go back, you can re-listen, you can catch up on moments that you missed, or you can even share it with a friend if you think that it might be beneficial to them. But let me give you a quick snapshot of where we have been, and then I'm gonna tell you where we're going. The first week we talked about renewing our minds. Because if we begin to think differently, we begin to act differently, behave differently, respond differently. So if we take God's eternal truth and put it into our mind, it will change who we are and it will change how we navigate life. The next week we talked about fleeing temptation, to be intentional about avoiding the places and things and those moments where we have found ourselves time and time again that we fall short and we screw up. We want to avoid them at all costs. In fact, we want to make a plan that when we walk into those moments, even when we don't know that they're gonna pop up, that we run for our lives. Get out of there, protect our future. The third week we talked about seeking accountability. That we're going to intentionally invite people in because we're gonna have to do this. Invite people in to say, give me honest feedback. Call me out when I'm struggling. In fact, even going one step further, and this is so important, finding somebody you trust and telling them all of the weaknesses that you have, all the mistakes that you find yourself making time and time and time again, so they have access to your story and the availability to help you. Now, last week we talked about this. We talked about planning ahead. How most of us we live in the moment, what makes me happy today without any regard for the future? But it really came down to this idea last week. If we want to safeguard our future, then we need to live with the future in mind. Ask ourselves this question: how will my choices today benefit or hurt my future? Now, as I was working through this last week, I told this story about in high school where my friends and I, we used to drive on these dark country roads where there's no light. We get our cars up to like 60 or 70 miles an hour, and then we'd shut off the lights and see how long that we could drive for before panicking and turning them back on. Now, I I was shocked by after service how many grown men came up to you and said, I did that too. Totally did that too. I mean, guys, not a couple. A lot. This is apparently a guy thing. Apparently, we've all done this. If you're a guy haven't done it yet, it's probably just a matter of time before you you get the itch and you're driving down the road and you do this. But this is what's true about all those guys, I have to imagine, is they weren't stupid enough to tell their mom. But because all of my stories end up online, my mom has access to every one of them. And so many of you asked, well, how did she respond when she heard about it? Well, if you're on our Facebook page, you saw right away there was an instant response. She wrote these exact words on there. You did what? Pat Anderson, which is my mom. She followed it up with a text message to me, right to my phone, that said, What were you thinking? And you don't even want to know what she said to me when I called her for Mother's Day that afternoon. I'm just joking. She didn't say anything to me. She didn't answer the phone. My guess is she was probably with my older two brothers who've never made any mistakes. Or at least they would have never told her about their mistakes in a public setting like I do almost every week. But today, as we close out this series, and you've been wrestling with this with me, maybe you have been thinking, oh man, I wish I could go back. I wish I could hit the reset button. I wish I had these guardrails in my mind when I was 20, when I was 30, when I was in high school. Maybe I wish I would have had them put in place. Because I have made a mess of my life. And you wish you could go back. You wish you could hit the reset button. You wish you could start over. And today that's the conversation we're having. How do we start over? Can we start over? We're going to be in the book of 2 Corinthians today, specifically chapter 5. So if you have your Bibles, you can pull them out, or your phones, or of course, the information will be on the screen as well. So this is where we begin. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come, the old has gone, the new is here. Now, if you are a regular tender here at Redeemer, you have probably heard this over the course of the last year and a half. Me say this hundreds of times, that following Christ doesn't just change your eternity, it changes your everyday life. It's eternity changing and it's life-changing. I mean, it's eternity changing. We are promised in Scripture that if we have a relationship with Christ, if we trust in his sacrifice in the cross, if we believe in him, if we have faith in him, that we can have eternal life. Our sins will be forgiven because of Christ's work on the cross. And when this life comes to a close, we will be with Christ in paradise. The Bible describes it as a place where there is no pain and there is no sickness and there is no sorrow. A place of perfection. Then if it is a place of perfection, which it is, guess what will happen to you? You will be perfected. You'll have no more temper, you'll have no more laziness within your bones, you'll have no more selfishness, right? No more addiction. Everything that you struggle with in life, everything that the people around you say, I wish they didn't, that will all be gone. All the shortcomings will be gone. But what if I told you that we didn't have to wait? What if I told you that we had access to much of this right now? Because what does this Bible verse say? It says the new creation has come. It doesn't say someday in the future, then we'll get around this. No, it says it has come. It says the new is here. Which means that every day of your journey, you will never get to perfect, but you have the opportunity to get better and better and better every day. More like Christ would want you to be. In fact, in our modern day, we don't have many excuses, do we? I mean, right now in the first century, they didn't have the Bible, but right now we do. In fact, in your house, if you looked around, you probably have one, two, three, four Bibles sitting there. If you pull out your phone, you can download an app if you haven't already. You'll have the Bible on your phone. You can go into that same phone, you can pull up a podcast and listen to sermons from pastors all over the planet and grow in your faith from day to day. In fact, if you are here, you get to step into a church on a weekly basis, and what are we going to do? We are going to invite you to walk in the way of the Redeemer. And if you walk in the way of the Redeemer, you leave the old stuff behind and you become more like Christ each and every day. You get to think like Christ more and more. You get to act like Christ more and more. You get to respond to situations like Christ would more and more. And when you do this, guess what happens? You protect your future. Because the best way to protect your future is to stay out of the ditch. Isn't it? I know that's maybe the most obvious thing that I have ever said up here in my entire existence. But isn't it true in your life that every time that you followed the way of Christ, even when it didn't make sense to you, it offered a benefit? But every time that you tried to do it your way, even though you knew better, it created a big mess. I mean, think about this. The Bible says things like this don't get drunk on wine. Has there ever been a time in your life when you got drunk, you woke up the next morning and your life was better? I mean, you went out, you went to party, you got black, got drunk, and you woke up the morning, walked into your office, and all of your budget, which before this was a mess, is now perfectly done. All the bills are paid. You invested perfectly in the stock market, and guess what? Now you're a millionaire. All because you simply got drunk. Of course that's not true. You wake up feeling crummy, and you wake up with a bunch of regrets. The Bible says this be slow to anger. Has temper ever improved the situation for you? Have you ever found yourself at a second-grade girls' basketball game? And all of a sudden the referee, which is just a high school, are trying to do their best, they hardly know the rules. Like they're getting irritating to you. I mean, you're just you're missing calls. This game really matters. I mean, this will this will be the trajectory of my daughter's life based off of the second grade basketball game. You're getting heated, the coach isn't coaching properly, so now you're mad at them. The other coach is talking smack, so you're upset with them. There's some lady right behind you who doesn't know that's your daughter and now talking bad about your daughter and you start losing it. And all of a sudden there's an outburst. This is not based on real life. I know what you guys are thinking. This has not actually happened to me. Like, wait a second. But if for that to happen, if that were to happen, does your life get better? I mean, do people respect you more? Does your daughter like so impressed with you?

unknown 13:44

Right?

SPEAKER_00 13:45

When we do things our way, it creates a mess, but when we do things God's way, it cleans up that mess. The Bible says things like this. Husbands, love your wife like you love yourself. There's so much mess in marriage that if we got this right, we wouldn't just have unmessied relationships, we would have healthy marriages. If we can make our marriage, or really any relationship for that matter, about the other person, I want to love you, I want to care for you, and in a healthy relationship, guess what? They do the same thing. You will have a happy and healthy marriage. The Bible says things like this work with all your heart as working for the Lord and not for human masters. If you work with the mindset that God is your boss, it doesn't matter what kind of toxic work environment that you live in. It doesn't matter how crummy your boss is or how incompetent that he is. If you work unto the Lord, guess what will happen? You'll get promoted and you'll get a raise. And if it doesn't happen there, guess what will happen? Someone else will take notice of you because this is the type of people that people want in their company. And they'll call you over and you'll get that raise, or you will get that promotion. Here's where Paul goes next. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them. Now, everything in the series so far, up to this point in time, has been about building guardrails to stay out of the ditch. But what happens when we end up in the ditch? And I don't mean like slightly in the ditch, like we lied on accident, then we had to go back and create clarity around our unintentional deception. I'm not talking about that time when you were driving down the road and you said something you shouldn't in a car because of the way they were driving. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about you have messed up. Your car is in the ditch, it is totaled, it's flipped upside down, all the airbags have deployed. There are no windows left. I mean, it is destroyed. And the people that you love the most, those are the people who ride in your car, and they are bruised and they are battered and they are bleeding, and you have no idea what to do. Moments like you didn't expect it. You didn't see coming. But all of a sudden, well, your marriage, it wasn't so good, and you ended up with somebody who wasn't your spouse. You had an affair, and now your marriage is destroyed. Or maybe you had one drink that led to two drinks, that led to three drinks, and then you got in your car, you thought you were fine, and all of a sudden you hit somebody, and you think, I can never forgive myself. Or maybe you're a new mom, and that kid just was not asleep. And you've seen the billboard says never shake a baby, but you're like, who would do that? But then you understand this child hasn't slept in weeks, and it's screaming in my face for two straight hours, and before you know it, you're just uh clenching this precious child that you were supposed to protect, and you're screaming in its face. And you think, is there anything that I can do to fix this? Is there coming back from this? What can I start over? If you feel that tension in the room, I want you to hold on to this truth. There is no ditch. There is no ditch that God can't pull you out of. Because what does this section of the Bible say? It says that God does not count people's sins against them. Anything can be forgiven.

unknown 18:01

Right?

SPEAKER_00 18:01

Notice what it says. Nothing is the word. It doesn't say that he doesn't count some sins against them, as long as they're not really bad. Those ones we're gonna count against them. He doesn't say some sins are forgiven unless society as a whole says these are the unforgivable sins. It doesn't say that. It doesn't say some sins are forgiven unless you grew up knowing better and your parents told you every day of your life, don't do this. Every single sin can be forgiven. In fact, think about the stories of the Bible. I mean, could God forgive a person who systematically sought out to take people because of what they believed and killed them off or put them in prison? I mean, could God forgive a person who took moms away from their babies, husbands away from their wives, killed them off, imprisoned them, simply because they saw the world as slightly different than he saw the world? Could God forgive somebody like that? Well, that's the Apostle Paul. He would go on to write most of the New Testament, including the section that we're reading today. Could God forgive a person who abused their position of leadership to bring a woman who was married close to them, to sleep with them, to impregnate them, and then to cover it up, to kill off the husband? Could God forgive that? I mean, that's extreme. That's King David. He would end up being a line in the lineage of Jesus Christ. How about this? Could God forgive a person that even after they believed could never do anything good in their life? Well, that's the criminal on the cross. He said, today you'll be with me in paradise. In other words, your sins are forgiven. And that person never did a positive thing in their life after their proclamation of faith. You see, Jesus wants to pull you out of the ditch. And all you have to do is let him do that. Let's keep going. And he was committed. He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We're therefore Christ's ambassadors as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. Paul was uh a writer of this book, like I said before, and God pulled him out of the ditch. He changed his eternity, and he changed his life. And when that happened, how did Paul respond? Well, he didn't just write most of the New Testament, he became the greatest missionary the world has ever seen as a response to what God had offered him. Because when you experience something that is life-changing and eternity-changing, you want to share it with everyone you can. In October this past year, I went to visit my family. They live in Missouri, and my parents said, there's a seven brew opening up in the area, and they're giving away free drinks. We should check it out. Now, that is my favorite type of drink, the free drink. So we were very excited to go. So I took my wife, I took my dad, we got this super long line to get our free drink, and we enjoyed our free drink, and then we came home. The next day, guess what I did? I went back for more free drinks. I mean, those are my favorite. So I brought my wife, I brought my kids, we went and got free drinks. Third day. I packed everyone I could in my minivan and I drove out there for free drinks. Now, why does Seven Brew do this? Well, a couple reasons. One, they're trying to train their staff as fast as humanly possible, put them in stressful positions so they can get used to kicking out these orders really, really quickly. But the second reason is what a great way to spread the quality of your product. Get as many people to enjoy it as possible. Because what happens when people enjoy something? What happens when people's lives are changed? You can't help but share it. Because by the time it got to the fourth and fifth day, guess what's happening? I was going up to complete strangers and saying, Have you heard Seven Brew is giving away free drinks? You've got to go. And you know how they responded? No one said, Why are you telling me this? I don't want this. They said, Thanks for letting me know. We had no idea. We'll have to go check it out. You see, here's a way to hold on to it. No one calls a tow truck that they don't know that they need. There's a pastor in Atlanta by the name of Andy Stanley, and he challenges his attenders on a regular basis. He says, if you hear one of these three phrases, pay attention. If things aren't going well, pay attention. If someone comes up to you and says, things just aren't going well right now. We've got the new kid that's challenging. My job, they're downsizing. I'm a little bit nervous about that. My kid is back at home, he was in college, but didn't work out. Things aren't going well. And when you hear that phrase, invite people to church. What they don't know is they are living in the ditch of life and they need a solution. They need Christ to pull them out of that ditch. Or when you hear, I'm not prepared for, I wasn't prepared for how I was gonna feel when my kid went off to college. I wasn't prepared for what retirement would actually be like. I wasn't prepared for this transition at work, and I took on more responsibility and it's just weighing on me, and now I never see my family. I wasn't prepared for. When you hear that phrase, come and invite somebody in. Come sit with me. What they don't realize, they are in the ditch, and there is a solution available to them. Or when you hear the phrase, I'm not from here. I've just recently moved to the Twin Cities. I'm not from here originally. I don't know where the gas stations are, I don't know where the grocery stores are, I don't know where the banks are, I don't know what schools my kids will even be in. And guess what they don't have yet at church? What a great opportunity to invite somebody in so they can experience what only Christ can offer. To let them know that there is an opportunity for them to get out of the ditch of life, to stay in the center of the road and experience everything that Christ has for them. Well, let's continue into verse 21. God made him who had no sin be sinned for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Have you ever been driving down the road and someone passes you, like driving like crazy, super fast, weaving in out of traffic, and you're in your car and you're thinking, I hope they get pulled over. Right? If you're like me, that's what I think. Because I'm like painting a story in my head of what they're doing. Like they're driving recklessly, they're racing their friends, they're acting like imbeciles, like they're gonna get somebody hurt. And if I were to pull around that turn and they were pulled over, I would be like, Yes. You get them, State Patrol. Let's go. But the truth is, I have no idea their motivation. I have no idea why they're driving like that. I mean, it is possible that their kid has just gotten severely hurt and they are in the hospital and they are trying to get to the doctor as soon as possible because maybe, just maybe, they're trying to get that opportunity to say goodbye for one last time. Or maybe they're rushing off to work because they have two strikes against them already, and if they're late one more time, they're gonna get terminated, and they are the only person in their family who brings in money, and they'd be completely sunk if they don't get there in time. Or maybe it's a Sunday morning, and they are desperate to get to Redeemer on time, to hear the tail end of the series, guardrails, and they're weaving in our traffic to make it here. We have no idea their motivation. But if their motivation was pure, we would have a lot more compassion on them, wouldn't we? But how about if we knew that their motivation was evil? You see, oftentimes when that happens, our compassion goes to zero. And I think we struggle with this as Christians from time to time. Because we apply it to our spiritual lives as well. Maybe you've applied it to your own spiritual life. I mean, we believe we are saved by grace through faith, and there's nothing we can do. It is a gift from God. But what happens when now we know better? What happens when we have that relationship with God? What happens when we go to church on a regular basis? What happens when we read our Bible? What happens when we're in a small group? What happens when we pray on a regular basis? I mean, we know better. What happens when we fail from that space? You see, I think unintentionally, sometimes when we live out this journey with faith, the more we know the lower compassion we have on others and the lower compassion we have on ourselves. It's almost like we put a cap on the grace. But is this how God treats us? Does God look at us and say, well, they know better and so forth? If they know better, then I'm so upset with them. I mean, is this how we should treat other people? I mean, we're angry at people because they should know better. I mean, they've been in church their whole life, they went to Sunday school, they went to confirmation. I mean, does Christ look at us like we oftentimes look at others? That if they know better, they're in trouble. They're not going to be forgiven. Here's the good news. If you've ever wrestled with that and you put that on yourself, or you feel like maybe that is something that's taught in the Bible, which it isn't, the tow truck is designed for people in the ditch. And that's every single one of us. And it'll happen time after time after time after time. If you've wrestled with this idea that you can't be forgiven because Christ has already forgiven you and now you know better, and now He doesn't want anything to do with you, you're just like me. I wrestled with that. Sometimes I still wrestle with that. I grew up in a town, a wonderful town, with a wonderful family. We lived right across the street from the church. The parsonage was right next to our house. I mean, I saw the pastor on a regular basis. I got sent to a Christian school, I was in Sunday school, I went to youth ministry, I was on the youth ministry leadership team. I knew better. In fact, because I knew better, I started judging the people who failed in regards in life. I was like, they know better and they're falling short, and therefore I'm gonna judge them. And that worked out okay for me until I went to college and I made some mistakes of my own. And all of a sudden I was stuck in this moment, like, I know better, I was taught better, I know the truth of the Bible, but yet I fell short. And I believed a lie that because I knew better, that God couldn't forgive me, that I did this to myself, and I get what I deserve. And you know where that left me? I felt hopeless. I felt depressed, and there was no path forward. I needed to learn the truth that God will constantly pull us out of the ditch. I mean, when he went to the cross, he went to the cross for the sins that you have committed, for the sins that you're currently committing, and the sins you will commit in the future. He just wants to put you back onto the center of the road. So as we close out this series, the final thing I want you to hold on to is this. How do we protect our future? By starting over. By starting over. Getting back into the center of the road, putting those guardrails in place and staying out of the ditch. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for these precious moments to gather, to learn your truth, be challenged by your truth. And Lord, I pray for anyone in this room, anyone watching online, that if they've wrestled with this idea that I can't start over, that I have screwed up too much, I've messed up too much, my life is over, my life is ruined, that they will hear these words, that every time those things happen, there is still a Savior who wants to restore us. There's still a Savior who calls us back. There is a Savior who went to the cross knowing what we were gonna do already, and he died for those sins, past, present, and future. And he doesn't want us held back. So, Lord, may we find our reset button, restart, reset ourselves, put those guardrails in place and accomplish everything that you want for us in this life. We pray this in your mighty name. Amen.