DISTINCTLY LUTHERAN | Solas | Ben Anderson

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to Redeemer. If we haven't had a chance to meet before, my name is Ben Anderson, and I'm one of the pastors here. It's so great to spend a little time with you this morning. Hey, just a couple of quick things uh before we get rolling today. But first of all, if you are a first-time guest with us, I am so glad you're here. And I'm glad you took the risk. And I want you to know if this is your first time or the first time in a while, you have picked the absolute best Sunday to join us because we're starting a new sermon series today. It's always so helpful to be here at the front end of a series because you never have to wonder, what did I miss, or you're trying to catch up in the middle of the conversation. So I'm so glad you're here. And today we're going to start the news news series called Distinctly Lutheran. Now, if you've been around Redeemer for a while, you know that we're a unique church. We have three streams woven together. We have the Lutheran side, we have a charismatic, spirit-filled element. And of course, we are on a mission for Christ. We want to live out our faith and have it change not just our head, but we want it to change our hearts. So throughout these next coming weeks, we are going to focus on that Lutheran element. What are the beautiful things of Lutheranism that I want all of you guys to hold on to? And this is really for everyone. It doesn't matter where you land on the spectrum. If you have grown up in a Lutheran church, you were baptized as a kid, you took first communion there, you went through the confirmation classes, right? You did the whole thing. You've always been a Lutheran. This is for you. If you come in here right now, and even the term Lutheran kind of makes you a little bit nervous, because maybe you didn't have a good experience growing up, right? You sat in a room with a boring pastor teaching you confirmation classes, and it maybe just didn't work for you. You didn't really feel Jesus there. This is a series for you. This is a series for absolutely everyone. But here's my hope. My hope is at the end of the series that you have a clearer understanding of Scripture and a clearer understanding of what it truly means to be free in Christ. But here's another hope that I have for you today. And this is a hope that I have for you every single time that you show up here. And it's this I hope that you have a deeper sense of community by the time that you leave. In fact, one of the best things that you can do here is between services or after services, we offer free coffee and donuts. Of course, that's great. But the best part about that is making those connections with other people. So don't hesitate as you're waiting in line or you're sitting at a table to reach across the table, invite someone to come sit next to you, share your name, get to know their name, maybe reintroduce yourself for the 50th time, doesn't really matter, but just get to know their name, their story, and uh make those deeper connections today. Well, what do you think of when you hear terms like Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Catholic, Lutheran? Well, I think probably a lot of it depends on your experience. Or maybe it depends on the experience that somebody else in your life had that they told you about. For example, my my dad grew up Catholic. Now, this was a long time ago, so just take this with a grain of salt. But he grew up Catholic and he would tell me these really crazy stories to me about growing up Catholic. Like he took piano lessons from a nun, and so he would tell me that he would play the piano, or at least try to play the piano. He wasn't overly musical, just like me. Didn't probably practice as much as he should. But when he would hit a wrong note, you know what she would do? She had this big log wooden stick and she would smack his knuckles. As you can imagine, they probably weren't best friends because of this. Well, one day he said he walked in, he sat at the table, he was all ready, got his books, right? He was he was he was really concerned about getting you know smacked on his knuckles, so he was ready. And the nun looked at him and said, Aren't you forgetting something? He's racking his brain. I think I got everything, like we're good. And she said, You didn't say good morning, sister. Until you can say good morning, sister, you might as well go home. He said, I got up, I went home, never went back again. Needless to say, I did not grow up Catholic. But I didn't grow up Lutheran either. I grew up in a town that was primarily men night, and I know what most of you are thinking right now. All black clothes, wide-brim hats, horses, pulling carriages, stuff like that. That not that type of men night. But what I do remember is this we had a lot of rules and regulations that we were expected to follow. I mean, we knew right and we knew wrong, and it was very clear to me that if I broke any of those rules, there was gonna be severe consequences. In fact, even in our culture where I was growing up, there was like a form of shunning. Like if you did certain sins, like you people weren't gonna talk to you, weren't gonna associate with you. And because of that environment growing up, I learned to be well-behaved. In fact, I was paranoid about being well-behaved. But not everyone in my town was Mennonite. There was a Lutheran church, and a lot of my friends went to the Lutheran church, and what I learned was they were far less concerned about being well-behaved than I was. Now, they did all the classic things, right? They they went to First Communion, they went to confirmation. In fact, I remember seeing their picture in the paper, and at that moment in my life, I was like, why are they wearing bathrobes with you know like winter scarves on? I didn't really get it. Of course, the irony is now in our traditional service, if you ever go to that, what am I wearing? It's not a bathrobe, by the way, it's an alb. I wear the stool, the whole thing, right? I get it, like it's come full circle. But I would see them in the paper and think, it's it's so interesting that they're publicly like sharing their faith in the paper, but when I am with them privately, when I'm playing sports with them, I mean, these were the kids who they used the worst language, they would drink underage, you know, that they were watching movies that I would never be allowed to watch in in my household. And because of that, I had a unique view of Lutherans and Lutheranism in general. I thought I need to save these people, they're not doing well, right? They don't really know what's going on. But here's what's fascinating: if I had the opportunity to sit down with every single one of you, I mean, which take forever, but it'd be so much fun. If we sat down over a cup of coffee or a cup of tea, or a beer, which we would never be allowed to do in my hometown, and you told me about your experiences in church, I would begin to understand where you've landed. Why you think what you think. Why maybe you no longer go to that Baptist church, or why you ran away from that Methodist church, or why you took your personal tambourine and you danced out of that assembly of God church. If you don't get that joke, just you'll see it. Look it up online, scrape. Right? You walked away from a church, maybe you walked away from a Lutheran church because something happened in that church that didn't sit right with you, or maybe it never got from your head to your heart, and you were looking for something different. You see, I think it's safe to say that even though we have uh millions of people on the planet who claim Christ is Lord, who celebrate Easter and Christmas, and all of these things, even though we have these core things in common, we're still pretty divided, aren't we? Divided because of beliefs, divided because of experiences, divided over all sorts of things. And I was thinking this week, is this really what it's supposed to be? Is this really what Christ wants? We're gonna explore that question today in in the book of John, specifically chapter 17. So if you have your Bibles, you can open them up, or the words will be on the screen. But this is what we read. My prayer is not for them, so this is Christ speaking. I pray also for those who believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as I, just as you are in me and I am in you. So as we look at this passage, this actually is one of the biggest, longest prayers that we have recorded in the Bible from Jesus. In fact, it's one of the last prayers that he prayed before his betrayal and his crucifixion. Right? This is an important prayer. And in this key moment in his life, what does he pray for? He prays for unity. And not just unity for the disciples, don't miss this. This is really, really important. What do the words say? It says, I pray for those who will believe in me through their message. See, he's praying for us. He's praying for everyone who receives the message through the generation, from the disciples to the first century Christians, the second century, third century, all the way to us. And his prayer for us is that we will experience unity. How's that going? Not that great. But it wasn't going that great for the disciples either. In fact, as we read about the disciples' story, we see that they they wrestled with this too, right? They argued over who was the greatest. They argued over who could do what types of ministries, who could cast out demons, who couldn't cast out demons. I mean, Jesus brought together quite a group of men. We have Matthew, he's a tax collector, he worked for Rome. We have a guy by the name of Simon. He was labeled as the zealot, which means he was against Rome and was willing to even do violence to Rome to overthrow them. I mean, that's a tough group to put together. You can see where there'd be a little bit of disunity. But even beyond that, once Christ ascends into heaven and they're handing it on to the larger church or the first century church, there's still division. The Greek-speaking Christians have a hard time with the Aramaic-speaking Christians. The circumcised people have a hard time with those who haven't been circumcised. Paul has an issue with Barnabas. There's all sorts of things. They're fighting over who are their favorite communicators. I like Paul, I like Apollos, I like Peter, right? They're dividing over all sorts of things. In fact, as a church, I mean, we can do that too, can't we? Who's your favorite Anderson? If you don't get that, we have a lot of Andersons on staff. I mean, do you prefer Terry? Do you prefer Ben? A couple weeks ago we had a guest speaker, his name was Jim Anderson. Right? Who's your favorite? You see how this can happen so quickly. But what does Christ call us to? He calls us to unity. And if Christ wants unity, what do you think the enemy wants? Disunity. Because disunity leads to failure. In fact, you've all heard these phrases before. Divide and conquer. United we stand, divided we fall. A house divided against itself cannot. Alright, we know this. Division, disunity creates failure. When I was in high school, I played on this really good, talented basketball team. We played together since we were little kids, and there was a ton of buzz by the time we got to our senior year. How good could this team truly be? Could be they be the team, for the first time in like hundreds of years in my hometown, could they finally be the team that wins it all? By the end of the year, we had broken most of the school records, but we did not come home with the ultimate prize. And the reason was we were disunified. We couldn't get along. I mean, there's always someone fighting with somebody, someone wasn't passing somebody the ball. I mean, it was all sorts of issues going on in the team, and because of that, we never reached the level we should have reached. Well, this past summer I went back to my hometown to celebrate my 25th uh high school reunion. So the gang was all back in town, we had this town celebration going on. I thought, you know what would be fun? Let's get the team back together. And let's play some basketball. Well, it just so happens there was a 3N3 basketball tournament going on. So I got the guys together, said, Who wants to play in this? Got a few of the guys like, let's go and play. I mean, we're older now, we're mature, we're over that stuff. We all got kids. And truly, we were we were over that stuff. We were good, we were connected, we were unified. So, how do you guys think we did? We lost all three games. This isn't a movie. We're old. We're all in our mid-40s trying to play against college players in their 20s. Now, I will say one game we should have won. I missed a last second shot. That's on me. Sorry guys. It was too late for us as a team, but it's not too late for us as a body of believers, as a church, or as a church as a whole. This is what Christ prays next. May they also be in us that the world may believe that you have sent me. Now, why does Christ want unity for his followers? And why does a byproduct of Satan want disunity amongst Christ's followers? Well, the answer is right here. The positive outcome of unity is this: the world will believe. You see, unity shows Christ to the world. We live in a world of division, don't we? People divide over politics, people divide over economic status, they divide over race, they divide over biological sex. I mean, sometimes I feel this way, and maybe you do too. Like we live in the United States of America, but sometimes it feels more like the divided states of America. You ever felt that tension before? But as horrible as that feels on a day-to-day basis, sometimes when all that division creeps into our everyday life, I think it's a huge opportunity. It's a huge opportunity to show the world something different. To show them what unity truly can look like. In fact, this is what the first century church did. They experienced the same things that we experienced, right? They had political divide, they had economic divide, they had divided between the sexes, right? They had division between races. Nothing has changed. But the way they lived it out was different. In fact, if you look into the book of Acts, you're gonna see how their love for Christ extended into the love for each other, and it brought unity amongst them, and it changed that first century world. It's amazing. They went from 120 people to 3,000 people to over 10,000 people in the blink of an eye. Now, why did that happen? Well, one, of course, because the Holy Spirit was at work behind the scenes, but the other part was they chose to be unified despite their differences. And the world took notice. Because a divided world takes notice when we are unified through Christ, and that's magnetic. Here's where the prayer goes next: it says, I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. I and them, and you and me, so that they may be brought to complete unity. Now, what do we unify around as Christians? Well, in this verse we see it. There's something that Christ passed on to the disciples, the disciples passed on to us. It's the core truth of Jesus. That's the core teachings of Jesus. You see, as a as a pastor or as a Christian in general, one of the most devastating things that I see is when people break fellowship or there's disunity within a church, not over the core things, but over the small things. People divide over our musical styles. I mean, do we have to sing the songs to an organ? Or do we sing the music to a worship band? I hate to break it to you, but there's no organs in the Bible. And there's no electrical guitars in the Bible either. See, people divide over silly things. How about clothing styles? What should the pastor wear? I mean, if we're in the Old Testament, I should be wearing some very intricate designs. In fact, if you if you read through the Old Testament, you're gonna see a lot of writing on what the priest should wear and what it looks like and what color it is and all these types of things, all right? Should I wear that or should I dress like Jesus? First century apparel. Something that would look very common to the everyday man. How about this? Can I wear a hat in church? If you read through Paul's writings, Paul says men shouldn't wear hats. Women should wear hats. If I go to the Old Testament, all the priests wore hats. I mean, it's very confusing to what we should be doing. How about building styles? Do we need to have pews? Do we need to have stained glass windows? I mean, none of those things existed in the Bible. Do I need to stand at a formal pulpit? Well, Jesus sat when he taught. You see, we divide over silly things. In fact, as I was going to that list, maybe there's something in there that kind of hits you. You're like, oh, that actually matters to me quite a bit. That bothers me when I see it. That bothers me when I don't see it. But here's the point we often divide over the small things instead of uniting around the big things and making them the core things. You see, unity is possible. It is possible. That's what Christ prays for, right? We we can do this. However, unity around everything is impossible and should be impossible. You see, truth calls us to stand apart. In fact, this is what Martin Luther was wrestling with during the Reformation. When he went to the door of Wittenberg and he nailed the 95 Theses on there, he he was fighting a battle around this idea of people buying indulgences. What do we unite around? What do we divide around? And he started a conversation with those ideas. Where do we find unity? And where do we need to break fellowship? And in the end, what came out of the Reformation, at least one of the key things that came out of the Reformation was the five solos, which is solas is a Latin word which means alone or only. It's these five core teachings. Maybe you've heard these before. I'm gonna work through them with us today, and I'll just say buckle up. I'm gonna cover five things that probably should be taught in a whole set semester of seminary. I'm gonna do it in about eight minutes. Okay? So I'm gonna talk fast. If it's too fast, go back online, watch again, slow it down if you need to. We're gonna move quick, but I want you to catch these things. Because these are the teachings that can we can find unity in. Here's the first one grace alone. Ephesians says it this way. As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh, following his desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions, is by grace you have been saved. How much grace do you deserve? How much grace do you require? The answer is you don't deserve any grace. And the answer to the second one is that how much do you require or what can you produce? The answer is nothing. What does the Bible say here? It calls us dead. We are dead in our transgressions. Dead things cannot bring themselves back to life. That's why you probably heard me say this before that I believe that salvation is a miracle. I would say yes. I have seen dead things come back to life, not dead bodies come back to life. I have seen people who have cold, dead hearts have their lives transformed by Jesus Christ. I mean, that is an absolute miracle when. Something dead comes back to life. Every single one of you in this room has hopefully seen that miracle in your life or miracle in the world around you. In fact, one of the best ways that I can describe this, this grace that's given to us, is through this label that is put upon us in the Bible, which is children of God. I think about your kids. They didn't pick you. You got them. You picked them. You chose to have them. They showed up. They're your children. They have done nothing to be a part of your family but just showed up. And if you're a good parent, guess what you're not going to do? And God is a good parent. My kids could do horrible, horrible things, and believe me, they do. There will always be Andersons. They will always be a part of the family. There will always be a place for them at the table. Now they might not choose to be at the table, but there will always be a place for them at the table. And the same is true of God. You didn't choose him. He chose you. And he put a place at the table for you if you want to sit at the table with him. Here's the next solo faith alone. Ephesians says this for as by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It is a gift from God, not by works that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Sometimes I'll have people come up to me and wrestle with this question. Maybe you've wrestled with this question. Maybe today you are wrestling with this question. Am I saved? But if I died today, would I go to heaven? Whenever people ask me that question, I ask them a question. Well, do you trust in Christ's work on the cross? Do you believe in Him? Do you have faith in Him? Do you want a relationship with the God of the universe who wants to have a relationship with you? Will you follow Him as your King? And if the answer is yes, then I just tell them. Stop worrying about it. Right? The miracle has happened. Hold on to the miracle that God has done in your life. In fact, this isn't complicated, is it? There's really two categories of people. There's the people who want to have a relationship with Christ, with him as the king of their life, and those who don't. In fact, think about Satan. Satan believes and knows, like he knows who Christ is, he knows what Christ has done, but he rejects that Christ is his king. He doesn't submit to him. These are the two categories that people live in. And God isn't going to force people into heaven, he's going to give them exactly what they want. Do you want a relationship with him, or do you not want a relationship with him? Here's a third one: Christ alone. It's recorded for us in Romans. It says, God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance he left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Once again, who does the work? It's Christ. Christ did the work on the cross for you and for me and for every single person. And if we receive that, we get all the benefits for his work. 2 Timothy says it this way. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of because you know those from whom you have learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. All scriptures God breeds and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. When Jesus showed up on the scene, John describes it in his gospel that Jesus was the logos, the word and flesh. He took the truth of the Old Testament, he gave clarity to it, he taught his disciples. As their lives went on, he ascended into heaven. They decided to pen it down. They had memorized it, they had internalized it, and they shared it. And in your Bible, you have the word of Christ, the truth that makes you alive for salvation, that teaches you the truth, that tells you how to navigate life. That's what God is giving you. This is what we hold on to as Christians. Here's the fifth one: God's glory alone. Ephesians says this praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him we have the redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. He made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment, to bring unity to all things in heaven and earth under Christ. Who gets credit for all this? Who is the glory go to? Christ. Every single time. Everything you do, everything that good comes in this world, is for God's glory, including your relationship with Christ, including your salvation. Now I know that was a lot really fast. I read really fast. Like I said, if you missed it, go online, catch it up, slow it down. It's okay. There's a lot there. But here's a way to hold on to it. In fact, maybe this is worth memorizing to think of the core teachings of the Bible that you are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, as revealed through Scripture alone, for God's glory alone. These are the core teachings of the faith. And it's in these things that we can find unity with those around us. And throughout church history, churches have been able to unify different churches that have different beliefs about different things, but they hold together in these five solas and still do today. But here's the challenging thing about our modern world. You can actually be a part of a church that down the road there's another church with your same label. Maybe it's Baptist, maybe it's Methodist, maybe it's Lutheran, whatever it is. But if you walk into that church, you would quickly realize that they don't actually hold to all five of these. And the typical one that's being violated in our modern day is Scripture alone. Because Scripture is hard. Let's be honest. When you read through your Bible, hopefully you have a time every day that you read through your Bible. It'll ding you. It'll challenge you. Sometimes you see things and you think that doesn't make sense. Sometimes you see things and you think, I don't want that to make sense. Because that means I have to change my life. I have to bow my knee once again to the king. And if I do, I'm going to look different. I'm going to look weird. I'm going to have to have a hard conversation. You see, what's happened in our culture is we have sometimes two different types of churches. The ones that bow their knee and we say, okay, we're going to read scripture and we might not get it all, but we're going to just receive it from God. It's a big God, much bigger than us, and we're going to wrestle with it. I'm going to adapt my life around it. Or we have other spaces that have said, I'm going to make it make sense. And when they do that, they shrink it down to fit their mind. They make a God who's much smaller than our God. Or they look at it and say, well, the world doesn't act this way, teach this way, think this way. We're modern men, we know better. And they adapt it or they remove stuff and they pull stuff out. And this is a problem. You see, we are called to unity, but we aren't called to unity on all things. And this is why these five cellars are so important. This is where we find unity, but also this is where we know that there are some areas where we do need to break fellowship. There are certain areas where disunity has to happen because in the end, the thing that we're most worried about being unified, being unified to is God and his truth. In 2008, I would end up attending Concordia University, a Lutheran seminary or Lutheran school in Nebraska. I went there to coach baseball to get a master's degree and to save the Lutherans. Because after all, what was my experience? All my Lutheran buddies, I love them dearly, but man, they swore a lot. They drank a lot. They watched movies I wasn't allowed to watch. So I walked into what I thought was going to be my mission field. You know what I found? I found people who loved Jesus in a deeper way than I love Jesus. I found people who had found a freedom in Christ that I couldn't even begin to understand. You see, I walked into that campus expecting to save the Lutherans, and the Lutherans saved me. More on that story next week. So if you want to hear it, you gotta show back up. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this time to come before your truth, to wrestle with it, to realize how small we are, how big you are, and how far we have to go. Father Lord, we thank you for your grace. We are so thankful that you do all of the work to set us free, to bring us into your family, to call us children of God. We are so thankful that we don't have to fear that you are going to kick us out, but to always be a seat at the table with you. And so, Lord, today maybe that truth is just exactly what someone needed to hear. Because they need to come back and they need to sit at the table again and receive everything that you have for them, Lord. If that's the case, I hope they do. Maybe, Lord, we have people in the room who need to find unity with other believers. Connection. To be a witness to the world. Or Lord, maybe they just need clarity. My God, there's people that I'm connecting with that don't actually hold on to the core truth, and it's going to create damage. It's going to create confusion. Lord, whatever your spirit needs to speak into people's hearts and minds today, whether it's in person or online, Lord, I hope that that happened. Be at work. Bringing dead things to life. This in Christ's mighty name. Amen.