Build The House | Christ vs. Culture

We explore how to live faithfully in a culture that elevates emotion and speed, and how humility, Scripture, and the Holy Spirit form a wiser response. We share tools for discernment, spiritual practices that reorient desire, and resources to keep growing.

• Three reactions to pressure and a Spirit-led fourth way
• Ethos, pathos, logos explained with John 1 implications
• Truth versus lies as the core spiritual battle
• Technology, media and education shaping belief
• Humility as dependence, not silence
• Scripture as anchor and the Bible shred practice
• Sabbath, silence and fasting to reset desire
• Image and inscription: belonging to God

We want to see this house get hungry for the word, for prayer, and for a word from the Lord.

Chapters

• 0:00 Generosity And Serving Our City
• 1:45 Framing Christ Versus Culture
• 5:55 Three Common Reactions To Cultural Pressure
• 9:40 A Fourth Way: Spirit-Led Perspective
• 12:45 Why This Conversation And Who’s At The Table
• 17:30 Defining Ethos, Pathos, And Logos
• 22:30 Logos As Anchor And John 1 Implications
• 27:15 What Shapes Us: Ideas, Lies, And Education
• 33:20 Spiritual Warfare As Truth Versus Lies
• 38:00 Discernment, Lies Of The Self, And Culture
• 43:30 Limits, Ends, And Obligations Of Being Human
• 48:00 From Answers To Truth: Humility And Dependence
• 53:30 The Voice Of God: Scripture And Tone
• 58:00 The Bible Shred: Seeing The Big Story
• 1:04:00 Narratives That Form Us And Old Testament Mercy
• 1:09:00 Practices That Reorient Desire: Sabbath And Silence
• 1:14:30 Image, Inscription, And Cultural Formation
• 1:19:00 Resources, Next Steps, And House Alignment
• 1:23:30 Prayer For Hunger, Humility, And Anchoring In Truth

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:03

Welcome to the Rock Family Sermon of the Week. For more information about our church, please visit therockfamily.tv. Now join us for a message from Pastor Scott Silcox.

SPEAKER_05: 0:19

And I I'm I'm kind of I made kind of like of a pivot. I kind of told you I was gonna do this early on in the series, but but in this case, I feel like there's there's a big need to have a further conversation and to have more content around Christ versus culture. Just like what we were able to do last week, and let me just say this I think how many ornaments? Was it 450-something ornaments that disappeared last week? And I just want to say kudos to our church family for picking those up. We're amazing. Yeah, every once in a while you just gotta be proud of yourself, right? And when I when I left that day, and and Lee Marshall's like, hey, I there ain't no, there's no more ornaments left, and we have 50 people that need more. And it was so good to be in that position. What does it say? It says we understand. We have the heart of generosity. When you hear a vision, our people respond to it. I want to say thank you for doing that. And uh so it's so it's so comforting to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, isn't it? And in this season, we get the opportunity to serve, to serve, to serve. And can I tell you, I think they talked about it earlier, but don't forget the opportunity to serve even this weekend that's coming up. Like we're having an incredible opportunity. You know, we're gonna serve a thousand meals this weekend. We're preparing, putting it together, and delivering a thousand meals into our communities. So if you want to be a part of that, we welcome you to do it. We have Manna House this week, a great opportunity and next week to serve. Uh, we want to invite you to that. And of course, all of that is out on the app. We encourage you to go to this. It's good news is good news. Remember us using that? That's kind of our outreach arm. We encourage you to go find out the dates, times, and ways that you can get to be a part of serving. You will not regret it. How many know that there's an hour that you spend thinking about somebody else that God doesn't restore 10 times? He does it every time. Why does that happen? Because we get the heart of the Father. You know, one of the things we left off with last week is what is God's heart? How do we see the broken? How do we, how do we, how do we get to a place to sympathize with the broken? How many of you can't do that unless you have the father's heart, his perspective on it? Right? So my prayer is this week you be praying into that and asking the Lord, how can God use you in the next couple of days? We have some great opportunities to join up with teams, to go door to door to minister, to go door to door to deliver food, to turn around and serve people in a manna house. It's just gonna be an amazing, amazing couple of days. So uh pray about that, find out how you can get involved in it. But today we're we're gonna do something a little different. Obviously, there's four chairs. And then you're like, what are the four chairs for? Uh, I'm gonna sit in all four of them and preach a different point. And uh just kidding. Although that's not a bad idea, so that might be a good idea, but I'm gonna invite a few people to the stage with me this morning that I think are incredible people. I I want to frame this before I introduce them to give you this idea. Look, Christ versus culture is a big conversation. I think everybody in this room, uh, even if you've never been a part of this series and you're here for the very first time, you can relate to this. You know that there is a lot of pressure that the culture is pressing down on the Christian, on the believer, and on the church. And it and it's and it's what it's producing one or two responses. Really, it's three responses, in my opinion. There's either there's either a compromise, it gets too heavy, that you you start to slip into compromise to to kind of meet somebody in the middle, or there is the other side of that where it comes down to it where you're you're you get invigorated where you get to want to fight. You want to put on the gloves and go toe-to-toe with somebody. Let's go. Give me the best platform possible, Facebook, and let me go at somebody. Which is not the best platform, by the way. Unless it's my mom, and she will wear you out on there. I'm just kidding. Only with like family memories and pictures. My point being is there's this, there's a fight, there's a compromise, and then there's this middle ground, which is just stick your head in the ground. Just get low, get as low as you can, and get as quiet as you can. And how many know that there is there's really only like one response we should be taking. And and I'm just gonna tell you there's a there's a fourth thing in this one. It's a seat above. It's an invitation to come up and get perspective on how all three of those are responding to this cultural moment and asking the Father, how does he want us to respond? And how many know that that can look like a fight sometimes? Oh that can look like confronting what's wrong, but it can also look like on our knees in prayer. Right? But but if we do not have his perspective, we can't get a good feel for what that looks like. Does that make sense? We don't want to be reactionary, we want to be led by the Spirit. This is the call of the church, right? And so I want to open up a conversation, and I'm using this word conversation for a reason because I started thinking about this. I don't know how to bring you into kind of the why we're thinking this way. In fact, I heard this from many people during the series. Why are y'all even talking about this? What got you to be thinking this way? What is it that you think we need to hear in it? And I just kept, I kept saying, like, I wish I could get them to be a part of the conversations we're having. And I thought, well, I guess I'll just do that. So I created this entire thing this morning for you to kind of sit on the sidelines and not really on the sidelines, but join the conversation. You can find me and the other three that are gonna be up here today at any given point, somewhere in some office, gathered around a desk with a with a whiteboard and our phones, trying to figure out are we doing this right? So I would like to invite Pastor Christian, Pastor Reese, Pastor Sheree is gonna be joining us today. These three have been incredible, incredible gifts to us. And for a lot of reasons why I'm asking them to join us on this on this stage, but obviously they're incredibly smart uh and they have put a lot of effort and time in this, and we have actually wasted a lot of time in conversation on this. I mean, a whole lot. I mean, we probably exhausted every imaginable idea and thought and concept of church and why. And this is the question we finally boiled down to. We boiled down to this one thought, and this is what I wanted to kind of get and to communicate today. There's this one question I kind of want to kind of get our hearts and our minds around. What is our responsibility to this cultural moment? What is the church's responsibility? Like, like if we know there's those three ways that we can react, but what is my responsibility? I think that thing just kind of floats and settles over all of us, is when you hear what's going on in the world and we say the church needs to be the church, the next question is how? How is that? Because a lot of us just want to know how to do it. Give me the to-do list, right? But but how many know that that if we just get a punch list and we don't understand why we're doing it, then the then it's not real. It's just saying, I just want to chop the tree, I just want to get it knocked out. But but it what we're hoping is that we respond out of transformation. We want to be transformed by the word, our minds, our spirits, we want to be in right relationship, intimacy with the Father so that we can respond rightly. It's like when I told my kids, you know, like when you ever you if you have kids, you know you've had this conversation. Hey, I want you to do this. And it's like they they do it, but they don't want to do it. Because their heart isn't changed, but their their action is gonna do it because I'm saying, no, you're gonna do it. Right? If everything we do in the church is in the way of just saying, No, that's what you're gonna do, the heart posture isn't right. That means when there's nobody there to tell you what to do, you don't know how to depend on the Holy Spirit. If nobody is there to say, do exactly this, then you don't know why we're here to exist anyway. That's the conversation I want to have. And I'm inviting you to our desk today. We're just gonna talk about this, we're gonna open up the conversation, we're gonna go through a handful of different things, and and one thing I know I have to do before I do anything, um, and these guys are obviously more than welcome to jump in on this, but uh part of the conversation, I'm gonna I'm gonna do this, okay? This is sad. When you have when you have this, this is my prop today. Yeah. This is not how I envisioned this. Me snotting on everything. Sheree, I'm sorry. I was gonna be like, can you hold that?

SPEAKER_04: 9:42

So funny because you you weren't sneezing like 20 minutes ago.

SPEAKER_05: 9:46

No, no, it's just you were fine. I was fine until I got up here. I'm allergic. I'm allergic to somebody on this front row, and I don't know who it is. I don't know. Christ versus culture. One of the things my wife told me last week that that probably needs better definition, because we're having a conversation because I love this. I've gotten a lot of feedback this week, you know, about like pathos and logos, you know, or logos. And it's like, it's funny because, you know, it's it's right, you know, um, especially now that I'm I put my all my all my all my stuff out there last week about how I can't control my my attitude and anger in the mornings. I've been gifted with lots of accountability this week, with people just texting me. I know you're on your way to school, remember logos. This is the good morning. This is your opportunity to deny pathos in your life. You know, that's like that's that's what was given to me this morning, so thank you for weaponizing my vulnerability. Um appreciate that. But my wife made a good point. You know, like, can you explain better like where we got the language, pathos and logos? And so I I think it's it's interesting to mention, and I thought maybe I had not done a good enough job, so I will explain it. Uh, it starts with this phrase right here. Um it's the modes of persuasion. Aristotle presented this as a way of communication. He basically was saying it's like there are three effective ways to communicate whatever it is that you're doing. And and in order to do that, it's it's three things ethos, pathos, and logos, right? And so we'll just talk about those for just a second, kind of what they are and what they mean. And um, yeah, there it goes. Ethos is this, it's a Greek word meaning character or guiding beliefs. In rhetoric, it refers to persuasion based on the speaker's credibility, authority, and character, meaning that if somebody's gonna speak towards something, uh they their past, their experience, the things that they've done with it, their character, who they are as an individual, it proves they're worth listening to. This is how he was saying, in order for to get an idea or a thought across, then that has to be in place. Now, the two that we talked about last week were these two. And this one's pathos. I'm sorry, I went too far. Here it is, pathos. It is this Greek word comes from the meaning experience or suffering or emotion. It refers to an appeal to the audience's emotion created and an emotional response to persuade them. So when we talked about last week, that culture is like pathos, meaning it is the thing that wants to amp up the emotions so that we live in an emotional state. So you have anybody ever noticed that is that when when someone wants to manipulate or move you into a direction that they would like, it's often done, often done, especially in this cultural moment, it's done by amping up your emotions around something. It it creates this tension in you, and then it it it it aggrandizes self and self-expression, it aggrandizes like experience. That's where you get language like um, we're like uh my truth. My truth. This is this is what my experience tells me is true. And how many know that there is only one truth that we as believers hold ourselves to, which is Christ and the Word, right? Right? So this I just want you to understand how we get to this language and why we're using it. So Logos is this is the Greek word with various meanings, including reason, logic, or the word, which is what we're used to hearing it from. It's John 1, 1, right? In the beginning was the and the word, right, was God, and you know in rhetoric, it refers to persuasion through reason, logic, facts, and coherent argument. And the idea is that the word gives us a foundational truth, an anchor. When when the world culture wants to drive me into emotion, the believer has to anchor themselves in the word. When you feel like chaos is starting to take hold in your life, and you know this, like circumstantial things that happen at work or in your family, there's things that start to take place, all of a sudden, there's a thing that you're saying, how do I find center? How do I get to a place where I can I can level out? You can't do that in self. What we attempt to do is to do it in self. So what we do is we self-medicate. That that can be done in whatever habit, that can be done in whatever hobby or anything else can be used to self-medicate. But the truth is, God's invitation is to the word, to anchor yourself, right? That thing to be hidden in your heart so that you can withstand all the fiery darts and trials of the enemy, right? Right? So this is the invitation of Logos. That's that's that's what those were. So that was my go back and fix what I didn't do last week. Okay? Chef. For my wife, done. All right. Can I jump in? Okay, sure. Jump in already. We don't even have a question.

SPEAKER_00: 15:16

Well, I just wanted to piggyback here because sometimes when we start hearing these type of words, we just tune out. It feels too academic. It feels, in some ways, it can feel maybe even disrespectful to the Lord. Like, do we need to know these kind of ideas? And I want to take us to Acts uh 17, starting at 16. When Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply troubled by all the idols he saw everywhere in the city. So, culture. He went into the synagogue to reason with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles. You can compare that to what we're doing right now. He spoke daily in where? The public square to all who happened to be there. And listen to what he's talking about. He also had a debate with some of the Epicureans and Stoic philosophers. When he told them about Jesus and the resurrection, they said, and then it goes into the debate. But I'm just sharing that to say that yes, we have to be empowered by the Holy Spirit to be able to bring about any sort of breakthrough when it comes to anything regarding culture, and let's bring our best to know and understand the dynamics that are at play.

SPEAKER_05: 16:35

Yeah, so good. So good.

SPEAKER_04: 16:37

Yeah, but since we're just gonna go ahead. Can I add one thing to that?

SPEAKER_00: 16:40

But isn't that how it happens in our office?

SPEAKER_04: 16:43

Yeah, but but this also, yeah. This is so true. Um so that's like the setting, you know, where where Paul's at, and talking about him going to Athens, um, you know, this is Athens, Greece, and these these three things we're talking about, these three modes of persuasion, bruh. You good, dude?

SPEAKER_02: 17:06

He was like, as opposed to Athens, Georgia, yeah, or Alabama, right up the road right up the road.

SPEAKER_04: 17:13

Yeah. Yeah, they weren't going to Wits barbecue after these debates. Um yeah, so the these three like modes of persuasion, Greece, this is like ground zero uh for like the golden age of philosophy. So you mentioned Aristotle, you can think of Plato, you can think of Socrates, and like philosophy, the when you break the word down, it means like the love of wisdom. So this is this is where the whole sort of tradition of philosophy historically comes from. But these three modes, all these philosophers were frequently arguing over which one of these things is the greatest. So, like, which is the greatest sort of way to persuade people? Because the truth is, we look at these, we're all persuaded by those things. You know, like you have people in your life that just because of their character or their experience, you regard their word as something. You're persuaded by sort of that mode of ethos. You don't know what that is, but that's what's happening. Um, or then someone that you may not know at all, but they speak something that's true, and you're just like, I don't know you from a hole in the ground, but I recognize that as true and I respect it. And then at the same time, every day in all sorts of ways, we're persuaded by our emotions, and that's probably one of the strongest ones. It's also the most like sneaky. But I say that's like they're all they're frequently arguing over which one's the greatest, and that's what's so cool about what the writer of John does when he opens his gospel. This wasn't the point that he's getting at, but it would have been an implication in the mind of the you know, a first century hearer or reader. When he says, in the beginning was the logos, they're leaning in, like, oh, hold up, like, wait, what's he doing? What's he saying? And one of the things that is like an implication of what John's saying, John's point in writing, is to say that this logos that you've heard about, this idea that there's a divine order and logic to reality itself, and that there's sort of a morality that comes from that. And so the Greeks think that you have to like sort of, in order to have right standing in the world or with the universe, you need to live like in accordance with this logic and divine sense of logic and reason that sort of orders the world. John's saying, yes, yes, and like improv, right? Yes, and yes, and yes, and it's not just an abstract set of things, that's a person. And that person is Jesus. So John settles the score on the argument in a sense, saying Logos now reigns supreme in terms of the mode of persuasion, because it's not just in right standing with nature or order or what's logical. It is those things, but all those things exist in the person of Jesus. And it's being in right standing with Christ. So this is the sort of philosoph philosophizing and sp sort of spiritual warfare, in a sense, and Paul's idea of just like going to war with arguments that's happening in this in this scene in Acts. Perfect.

SPEAKER_05: 20:16

Okay, so like let's take this out of out of that and into now like how do we like I know in our conversations we've been trying to identify what the tension point is. What's the 30,000-foot view? Right? What is what is when you're looking zoomed out, what are we looking at? And so this is gonna kind of set us off on a series of of like questions from this point. Okay? So this idea like life as a continuation of God's story and the church's role within it, right? There's there's we're not just sitting here waiting for Christ to come. There's there we're playing a part in what's happening today. Now you may say, I'm just going to work. Right? I'm just being mom and I'm just being dad and I'm being grandparent, but that's actually not true. Everything that we're doing is that that is true, but there's actually a greater truth at work. And so I'm gonna ask a series of questions and we'll just chat them out. All right, we'll just figure this out, all right? Some of them are gonna be a little bit harder to to ch to to go through, but but but I'm timing you, Christian. When you look at the cultural climate around us, social media, politics, entertainment, what do you see uh shaping people's worldview the most today? It could be any of you. It doesn't matter, it's just me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 21:35

Uh I'm gonna have to explain this a little bit, but I want to. I knew you were gonna say that. Everyone looked at me. Everyone looked over here. I've been waiting for my moment. Um the thing that's shaping our our minds and and hearts and opinions about things are is robots.

SPEAKER_04: 21:55

You're not wrong, actually. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 21:58

And uh I'm I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that every single one of us needs to get off of our phones entirely.

SPEAKER_04: 22:07

There you go. What's what's that in your pocket, Christian?

SPEAKER_02: 22:11

This is my notepad. It's my notepad.

SPEAKER_00: 22:14

Yeah, like everyone's clapping. I'm like, are you guys gonna do it? We as a congregation gonna get rid of our Facebook. Someone's Facebook right now.

SPEAKER_05: 22:22

Like, Christian should get off his phone. Yay!

SPEAKER_02: 22:26

Isn't it interesting that like like when you look at like a Facebook post that's mildly controversial, not even controversial at all, like you can guess like what the comments are gonna be, and they're always the same comments, and that's not an accent. The reason is because robots are writing those comments. It's either a robot that's written it or somebody who's copy and pasted the opinion of a robot and re-posted it underneath somebody else's page. So now we've only like like the internet is almost entirely like it's just interacting with robots, and that's forming our minds and our opinions. This is why like people are starting into like this giant hive mind of like the same person, right? Am I all for this? No, no, you're right.

SPEAKER_04: 23:06

So I I would say like you know, that in like in terms of phones, like technology, technology is the medium through which the thing we're like we're really talking about is like is happening. In terms of the things that are that are influencing us the most, you know, there's there's been people in history who have sort of noted what are the things that even produce like culture in a society, and this sort of argued about like how many, but you can kind of boil it down to five. You've got like the family, you've got religion, like as such, um media, law, and then education. Um and you have you have some thinkers who sort of noted that education, education isn't really its own pillar, it's kind of like a mediating force between the rest of them. So like if you can get into education, you can influence the rest, and that, and then you can spread ideas that way. And I think if we're looking at the state of education today, we can kind of see that that's true and has happened and is happening. Um I love uh John Mark Comer in his book, Live No Lies, sort of laid out this framework that I love in terms of how this happens. Um like if you're a Christian, if we believe the Christian story and we believe Jesus, there's a there's a spiritual component that we also have to acknowledge, which is for one, the spiritual realm, but like the devil and the enemy, not as an abstract force or energy, but as like a personified evil, like a real being and real beings. And one of the things that he lays out in his book that I love is that the way that scripture kind of talks about the sort of the war, like the spiritual war, the war for mankind, isn't as much good and evil as it is truth and lies. And we see this when Jesus is led out into the wilderness, that there's this dynamic going on, not between like necessarily right or wrong or good and evil, although those are true, but it's between truth and lies. Um, and you hear Jesus saying things like you are of your father, the you know, the devil, the father of lies. Anyway, this this kind of thing. And what he la what what uh John Mark lays out in his book that I that I love is this pattern that it seems that what the enemy does is that the the in essentials, we've done some of this work in In Essentials a couple semesters ago, that the primary theater of spiritual warfare is the battleground of ideas. Um there's there's a guy, he's he's not a Christian, he's a he's a psychologist or whatever, but he name he proposed the idea that people don't have ideas, ideas have people. It's like an idea like gets into you and it's like it has you. And and I think this is I think this sort of lays over well what Paul talks about in Ephesians and in his letters to the Corinthians when he's talking about spiritual warfare. Because when ideas sort of get get into us, it's almost like they, almost like a spirit, and this is starting to sound new agey, and it's it's not at all. This is sort of an analogy. I'm not mixing the two up, but it's almost like they possess us. It's like they have us. There is not an infinite number of demons, you know, or evil spiritual beings. They can't possess us all, or maybe they would. But when an idea has us, it moves us out into the world, it animates our lives in certain directions. And so it seems as if the devil like inspires deceptive ideas, the first step, that appeal to our disordered desires. It's our natural fallen state, our flesh, and our desires that are all out of whack. Inspires deceptive ideas that uniquely appeal to those. And then when you get sort of a mass of those things all working in tandem, then those normalize in simple society. Because the truth is, think about these modes of persuasion, you don't believe everything you believe or do everything you do because someone persuaded you or told you. Most of it's just, it's like mimetic, or we like mime each other. That's predominantly how people learn. It's monkey see, monkey do. And that's kind of that's what people are like. And so that's the power of culture. When you have ideas that shape a culture and shape what we do and how we behave, we don't even know it. It's just an operating system kind of running in the background. We were talking about that this week, James K. Smith's book, um, about the how the things you are what you love, and how the things we do are really the things that form us, regardless of the ideas that may or may not be um be attached to those. So that's just kind of laying out, I think, in terms of spiritual warfare and the things that are shaping us, a lot of those, that's sort of like how they how they come to us. And a lot of it's it's just it's in the form of lies. A lot of them are lies about the self. Lies we believe about our sense of identity, uh, and what it is to what it is to be human, lies about God, and then lies about uh lies about others. Anyway, I could go on and on.

SPEAKER_02: 28:07

I want to bring it back to the education thing that you were talking about uh and why the robot thing is so dangerous. Because I I watched Terminator last week and it really got me thinking. Really, really got me thinking, guys, there's a lot of truth there. Uh no, the danger with the robot thing is like the lie of like objective transmission of information, uh, or that like there's objective education. That's a lie. All education is indoctrination across the board, in either a good way or a bad way, because there's no way to transmit information without also transmitting values.

unknown: 28:43

That's right.

SPEAKER_02: 28:43

So that's why when you're like, oh, I can just look this up on Chat GPT, you know. My dad's a big, he's probably watching this right now. He's a big ChatGPT guy. He calls me a couple weeks ago. He's like, hey son, I wrote a book. It's like it was great, it took me five minutes. It's like, wait, hold on a second, you know, he keeps telling me, he's like, Oh, you gotta get into this chat GPT stuff. Have you heard about Chat GPT? I was like, I don't know, you know, and I, you know, I had a problem with it, but I wasn't really sure why, and I'm not like an anti-like, oh, don't use it or whatever. My point was that, like, alright, you know, like it's fine to use it, but like if I were to write my wife a Valentine's Day car, and it just like moved her heart and gripped her emotions, she was like, I can't believe that's what you thought about me, and I can't believe that that that this is you know how you view our marriage and all this kind of stuff. And I was like, Yeah, chat wrote it. Like, why would she have a problem with that? Because of sincerity and transmission of values, because it's not, you know, so like this is how you know that that the robots are they won't win. Uh uh is like try asking chat a moral question.

SPEAKER_03: 29:41

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 29:41

Right? So Reese has said it like this before, like, and I know you probably stole it from the back flap of like a good book, but um uh um that science, science uh can only tell you what is, it can't tell you what ought to be. And I think that's the where the robots lose.

SPEAKER_03: 29:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 30:00

You know, and this is why Christian education is so important, this is why Kingdom Heights is the most important thing that we could possibly do right now if we care about kids. Right, is Christian education. Well, this is why theology was always known as like the queen of the sciences, because and you wonder why like like you know, STEM, you know, medicine and like science like fields are so like out of whack right now. You know what I mean? And why, you know, like a doctor, you know, who's like done all this study on the human body and biology can also perform an abortion and call it health care. Right.

SPEAKER_04: 30:32

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 30:33

Because it's science.

SPEAKER_04: 30:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 30:35

Because of the lie of objective information. Uh it's all transmission of value, and that's why this logos idea is so, so important.

SPEAKER_00: 30:42

But it it takes work to recognize lies.

SPEAKER_04: 30:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 30:48

It in every single one of us are susceptible to lies all the time, and it's not it's not to live underneath this oppression of like, oh, what lie am I believing? But it's to walk with discernment. We're called to love God with our whole mind, which means that we need to slow down long enough to be able to identify lies. And lies, I love what Reese is sharing from John Comer's book book about this animating force. The lies parade as truth, the lies parade as light, the lies parade as counterfeit. And so it's even harder, like it feels like, oh, I've been walking with the Lord for a long time, I can recognize a lie. It's hard. It's hard to slow down and go, oh my goodness, that actually has a grain of truth in it. Oh, that looks a lot like truth. I mean, I'm I I have little girls in my life, and and their lies are a little bit more obvious, but to them it's not obvious. Lena watched Paddington too, uh, and Paddington gets left at jail and his family forgets to visit him at jail, and Paddington's like, I'm being forgotten because this lie, this neighboring inmate, is telling him one day your family's gonna forget you. And Lena's crying herself to sleep last night, going, Are you guys gonna forget me? You know, and so we're having to act, I know it's a precious baby, it's heavy, I know she's a feeler. Um, but we're having to actively not just laugh at her or not just be like you're being silly, but for her, that's a lie that wants to take hold and form into her identity. And so now at six years old, we have to slow down. I'm just trying to be practical, we have to slow down and listen for the lie, and then that's hard work to inspect yourself. Go through freedom and you'll get some tools.

SPEAKER_05: 32:44

Very well said, so good.

SPEAKER_04: 32:46

I just want to name a couple things real quick, just to be specific.

SPEAKER_05: 32:50

Why am I here?

SPEAKER_04: 32:51

Uh huh.

SPEAKER_05: 32:51

I'm just like, I oh hey dad, I didn't say you're in there. One question, bro. Like, okay, fine.

SPEAKER_04: 32:57

Just round two last thing, dude. I promise. So let's go. This is what our office is like, okay. So, yeah, and then he literally this this week, he just walked away at one point because we were keep going for 20 minutes after he walked away without realizing. Like, right, guys? Guys, where'd you go? It's so true. It's so true. Um okay, just uh I'll say just a couple things about the lies specifically, just to kind of get a few things in our head. One of the difficulties, like Sheree's saying, it's tough to recognize because there's lies that um I think are specific to you, like personally, right? There's ways that the enemy gets into uh through past experiences of childhood or this or that, looks for any sort of any sort of crack. Uh in freedom, this past week we talked about uh like footholds, you know, right, Tim? Like these little things that then, you know, like a mountain goat is just looking just to get like a toe in, you know, uh to sort of get a hold, then to apply pressure and to drive you know a lie deeper. And some of those things may be like specific and unique, you know, unique to you, and that's where you know, again, you need the word of God, you need the you need the Holy Spirit. And then there's there's some of the ones that just broadly in culture, it's like, what are the lies? It's like asking a fish why it's wet. The fish is like, I don't like what's wet. You know, and so there, I think there's certain ideas that have shaped our culture that's hard to recognize because it's just it's the air we breathe and it's the water we're in. Um Carl Truman um names three of these. Um Dr. Carl Truman, he's a professor at Grove City College, Presbyterian guy, he's absolutely brilliant. Um he's got two books, uh big, thick, chunky ones called The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, which is very, very good. But uh basically he says these three things, the a couple, he doesn't frame it as lies, but they are the lies. But it's the belief that um there are no natural human limits. So what it is to be human, there's not a dis there's not a designed sort of shape or limit on what it is to be human. And so we see this all the way from transhumanism to transgenderism, this idea that you can go beyond what it is to be human. Um in any sense. Um so that there are um there are no natural human limits. Um there are no natural human ends. So what does that mean? That there is a purpose of mankind. To be human, to be made in God's image is to exist for a purpose. We went to a um like a reformed uh Christian school and we learned the Westminster Schwarter Catechism in the first question um in there, and it's like doctrine, so it teaches you doctrine in like question and answer form. We started learning this in like first grade, you know. Uh so Christian, what is the chief purpose of man?

SPEAKER_02: 36:02

I cheated on that test.

SPEAKER_04: 36:04

Yeah, that sounds that sounds right. Yeah. Dude, I like failed and I still remember. Anyway, I know you know it, you're being coy. Uh but it's to uh, of course, it's to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

SPEAKER_00: 36:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 36:18

Um and then the last one that there are no natural human obligations. There's not only is there no purpose, but there's no obligation that we have to each other or to the Lord. You know, we see the breakout of no fault divorce, and the family just plummets because why? Well, there's no natural obligation that husbands have to wives, or that men have to women, or that parents have to their children, or that children have to their parents. Uh, and science can't tell you those things, right? Like you're saying, like only Scripture can tell us those things, and God has given scripture to his church to equip the body to live within our limits on purpose and to the end of worshiping God.

SPEAKER_05: 36:57

Okay, so all right, great. Very well said. Okay, we answer the question. Lots of information to take in right there. Um, so here's the thing. So if we could just we do set down to you know, avoid the robots, um, big ideas, and ideas that that obviously are are are what capture us over time. Um and then the other one is um not just ideas but lies, right? To be paying attention to. And I love what you said, Sheree, that practical side of doing the work of better understanding what they are and when they disguise themselves. This is like good work for everybody in this room, and I think everybody can probably relate to that. I know that I can personally. Uh I've come across quite a few lately. And and what's harder is like you said, I can point some things out at my kids because I'm around them a lot and they're kind of easy to point out. The ones that really get me the most are the ones that start to show up on me or in me in ways that I thought were normal, and I had normalized a lot of stuff that I'm like, wait, hold up. I'm living in and working from and have made years of decisions from lies that I've been holding up as truth, and that work doesn't happen outside of the Holy Spirit in the Word, right? Those two are critical factors in understanding yourself better and how to respond better, right? Then there's like the third part. You have to respond. It's not enough to know it or it to be exposed. Then you have to actually do work to get that thing out of your life, right? And it's and it's hard. And then I can have this conversation with others in this room, some older than me, that that have gone 30, 40, 50 years believing one thing about themselves in relationship to God, themselves in relationship to others, some past experience that is that is guided decision making. And I'm just telling you, this is not wasted work. This is actually the kind of work that brings generational blessing onto your families. That work, if you'll do it now, your kids won't have to do it later. And that's that's why we put the effort there. It's so that my kids and grandkids are not carrying those same things, right? So this is why this is so very important. So my question is so we got this great 30,000-foot view, right? This really big monster in the sky that we're all trying to deal with. Why is it, and this is a big concern for me personally, because of the nature of what we do and who we are in this room, the church, right? The big sea church, but also the localized version of that right here. Why is it so difficult for the believer, for the church to find herself understanding the the role that that we're to play in continuing the message, right? What God's what God is doing on the earth. So I wrote it like this. It says, Why do you think many believers struggle to see their life as part of a larger biblical story rather than just their own personal one? Right? It's like there's this really Really great thing God's doing on the earth. And from Genesis to today, I'm a part of something. But we can't get out of our s can't get out of the way of ourselves to recognize that. What is what is that?

SPEAKER_02: 40:13

Okay. Alright, so okay. Alright, I don't know. I'm I just Googled all the answers that I was looking for. Get that. This is a robot. This is chat. Yeah, chat gave me the answer to this. I think people's, you know, especially within the church, like like inability to like engage with with this and with the logos like we're talking about. And this I have no way to substantiate this. This is just my observation. What I think is that that a lot of the time within the church, most people don't want truth, they want answers. And right? Rhys and I talk about this all the time. Like, please pray for our wives. Like that have to hear this mumbo jumbo all day and all night. Um, and this, and this is kind of like, you know, the the humility goes a long way here. You know, it's like my wife, we're having a conversation very similar to this mumbo and jumbo the other night. She was, you know, she said this. I'm trying to remember what the context was, but she was like, You just think everyone else is wrong and you're right. Said, no, I think everybody else is wrong, including me. Like, that's a pretty powerful like truth to grasp hold of. But um uh uh uh you know, so Reese and I will, you know, like be in these pursuits of truth. You know, like if I believe that the truth is a person and truth is Jesus, then my pursuit of truth largely is me picking up my f my my cross and following or pursuing truth. Um, and that's what it means to follow Christ. Um what am I even saying? I don't even know. I I woke up at like three in the morning, I'm jet lagged for in Israel.

SPEAKER_05: 41:38

Yeah, he was in Israel last week.

SPEAKER_02: 41:39

So, I'm pouring sweat right now, I have no clue what's happening right now. Um but yeah, you know, so we'll have like these conversations, pursuing truth and really trying to figure out like, Lord, what is the answer? How does this apply to my life? What am I doing? And oftentimes, like the response is like, okay, all right, just tell me where to sign. Like, what do I believe? Yeah, you know, what's the answer? You know, and unfortunately, like I can't give you truth, you have to pursue it. Truth is something that you can only pursue, like I can't just give it to you in a package. That's why like sermons and things like that. It's like all of our language, all of our dialogue, all of that really is just like like polemic or argument. It's not me giving you truth, it's me trying to chip away at lies that you're believing so that you can pursue truth better.

SPEAKER_05: 42:24

Yes, right, right. That's perfect.

SPEAKER_00: 42:26

I I like what you're I mean, you start talking about humility, which last week's dip into humility, I think, is so helpful. Um it's really difficult to define what humility is because the world's definition of humility is so far from biblical humility. So if I were to speak in broad terms, when I think of humility, especially because like I'm a loudmouth Latina, I think of humility as like suck it up, be quiet, bite your tongue, slow your roll, you know, don't cause a ruckus so that Damani and Shana don't have more chaos at home with with all these conversations. I'm just I'm just messing around. Um but that would be more of like the world's definition of humility. Uh a more sound-minded definition of humility that I would argue is humility is utter and sheer dependence upon God. Total for like the little things, for the big things, for the mouth things, for all the things. And it's really difficult to get there. So I'm gonna give two quick examples. Moses is known as the most humble, it's written in scripture, most humble man that's ever lived. I think Moses wrote that. So we're already in like question mark territory. So, what is it that Moses is trying to communicate? And I don't actually think Moses is trying to give him like a massive humble brag, the best humble brag of all time. I think what Moses is trying to say is I am the most utterly dependent upon God. I have been the most at the absolute end of myself, and the only way tomorrow comes is through taking hold of God's wisdom for my life and for the people I'm responsible for. And then we have we have John. John says this too. John says, I must decrease so that he must increase. Here's the question: Does John stop speaking?

SPEAKER_05: 44:23

No.

SPEAKER_00: 44:24

John does not go silent after he says, I must decrease, so that he can increase, he actually gets louder. That's right. He becomes more sure. He says words that lead to his beheading. He says words about God being the light that has come into the world that so offensive leads to his beheading. So to kind of come back to that question of why can we not see ourselves as part of the bigger narrative that God is speaking, I think it's because we lack humility. But by lacking humility, I I if we were to look at the opposite of humility, our instinct is to say pride. So if we're looking not from worldly definitions of pride, we're trying to pull it into biblical definitions, pride being self-reliance, self-dependence. I am authoring my own story, I am showing up to work today, I am showing up in my family. And do you hear the deceptive lie? That's right. It's actually there's a lot of truth in that. You are bringing your wood, why? So that God can set fire to it. You're telling half of the sentence, half of the story. So I think it's navel gazing. I think it's like we're looking down, we're we're staring at our belly button. And um, okay, I'm gonna say this in kind of like a ridiculous way. So as a full-figured Latina, I have this, I have this running, running joke, like that I sometimes I'll have, you know, I was a youth pastor for a long time, and you'll have like slightly full-figured young ladies who are like in crisis because all they think about are the extra 10 pounds. And they come to me and they're like, Shrey, how did you get over it? And I'll I'll say something that sounds so like out of touch, like I never was concerned with it. And they're like, Well, that's impossible. Why? And I'm like, well, part of it's my culture, right? So in my culture, it's the skinny ones that are ridiculed. I'm not saying that's right. I'm just sharing vulnerably from my family background. But the other part of it is this idea that I have that none of you care that I'm full figured. You're too busy thinking about yourself to care. Okay, so why am I gonna waste time and energy and really taking up all of my mental map thinking about myself? Thinking about, you know, how many of us I mean, just to be vulnerable in worship. What do I look like right now? Does this look right, Lord? And just the constant, like the constant perfecting of self is the belly button. You can't be a part of human history and the beautiful story that God is writing because you're too you're too busy looking at your belly button. Get your eyes up, myself included. I'm part of that story too in other ways. It's and it's and so like to say it kinder, John could have become obsessed and fixated on the idea that it was gonna cost him his life. That could have been the belly button, like, oh, this is gonna hurt. So women are especially good at this because they can get to the point where they see past the pain of childbirth into the beauty and glory to come.

SPEAKER_05: 47:49

Yeah, right, right, right. What they're gonna do.

SPEAKER_00: 47:50

But that's basic that's one of the only recipes for like working through childbirth. It's like, okay, this beautiful thing is coming. Okay, so get your eyes up.

SPEAKER_05: 48:00

Yeah, okay, so like I I gave a quote last week. If you guys remember it, I'm gonna put it back up on the screen because I think it was really critical. We we had it right at the end, but I do think it's important because it talks about this, right? St. Moses the Ethiopian. What does he say? He says, You fast, but Satan does not eat. You labor fervently, but Satan never sleeps. The only dimension with which you can uh outperform Satan is by acquiring humility, for Satan has no humility. This this idea that you're talking about is like it's not just a good idea in the sense of like, oh, that's a better way of thinking, Sheree. That's awesome. No, it's it's empowerment into the direction of something the enemy doesn't even have capacity for. And because he doesn't have capacity for that, there is an infinite secret, there's a secret superpower to humility that we have to get back.

SPEAKER_00: 48:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 48:55

You know, like if you knew you had a superpower and you were just sitting on it, right? I mean, come on. I mean, like, that's that's unreal to me that the church, if we could ever get our hearts and our minds wrapped around what the power of humbling ourselves to one another, to the word, right? To to where we're at and to to serve I always go back to humility in the sense of like what Christ did when he is inviting the disciples into the upper room right before he's about to give his life. Now he's gonna make the ultimate sacrifice, he's gonna have to humble himself, a God who comes down to be with us, as us, for us. That that is a that's a massive act. We don't need anything else, right? I mean, like the act alone is enough, but then he like doubled, he doubles down and says, here I'm gonna wash your feet.

SPEAKER_00: 49:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 49:47

And that to me is like the quintessential, like when I think about this idea of thinking less of ourselves and more for the people that are around us. What's the actionable work behind this? Not just you thinking less of you, but about others. There's another side, like you said, it's two parts of the story, not just one side.

SPEAKER_00: 50:07

And and and to push on that, like thinking less of ourselves in the sense of feeling think of yourself less. Like not thinking lower of yourself. Not thinking you are like this ugly thing. No, you're fearfully and wonderfully made in God's beautiful image. Like you're an image bearer, and get your mind busy there with other things besides self. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so then like, okay.

unknown: 50:32

Oh man, what time is that?

SPEAKER_05: 50:35

Oh my gosh. Okay. There's we're not even close to the end. We got time. What are we what are we doing? Well, I've got to change the format. Changing the format. All right, here we go. We're going to, I'm jumping ahead. Uh I would ask more, but I'm not. I'll send you more of these. I I think we put the questions and stuff out there so you can kind of get an idea. I want to talk about this the role of scripture, spirit, and and the church. And that is this. I wrote this like this because I feel like it, these, this is how they relate to me. The map, the guide, and the vehicle. Uh meaning the map obviously being scripture, right? The guide being the Holy Spirit. He's the guide, he's the one walking us through this thing, the vehicle, and you can like it or not, but you're sitting in it. Yeah. You're sitting in it, and you are it as a believer. So I'm gonna be more specific because people will think it's in just this location. Uh, I know we're many churches, many, you know, many locations, one church or whatever, but the at the end of the day, like we're talking about this is the role and responsibility. All right, so I'm gonna ask a couple of questions here, uh, just to kind of get your thoughts on this uh before we move on. Um how about this one? What what role does the Holy Spirit play in giving discernment and confusing moral and cultural issues? Like, what is the role he should be playing? Is it just things that have to do with the church? Or does it move beyond that? Anyone want to jump in on any of that? Not all at once, if you don't want to.

SPEAKER_04: 52:05

I'll I mean I'll I'll I'll say one thing. Um what role does the Holy Spirit play? I mean, that's a that's a huge it's a huge question. Um there's a lot of different directions. I I think first off I'll say this. What also probably comes to mind is like, how does the voice of God in my life help me navigate, you know, X, Y, Z, you know, whatever thing. And the first uh the first thing I would say is that going back to this idea of like pathos versus logos and living in a um sort of a pathological, a a pathos-driven culture that uh primarily appeals to our emotions, appeals to our sensibilities, appeals to just our inner dialogue, even that's kind of like driven by by feeling. Um the way that you discern, the best way to to discern and sharpen your discernment of the voice of the Lord is to know what he's already said. And it's to it's to learn scripture. Like um God is a person, and He's that's the way He's revealed Himself to us, and the way that you get to know a person is through their words. Yeah you can hear about them from someone else, you can stand in a room and just look at them, but the way that you really learn about them is when they tell you about themselves. And then you take them at their word, and that's what God has done for us through Scripture. So we have His words about Himself to us. And so to even learn what the voice of the Lord sounds like and what he says is to have what He's already said in our minds and hearts. And the other thing that that does, we were talking about this the other day, at least for me, is there this is gonna sound this is gonna sound weird, and I'm just going for my personal experience here, but even like a certain sort of tone of voice starts to div starts to develop like in your heart when the Lord speaks to you. And a lot of you you probably know, like know what I mean. Like there's there's been times I was talking to Brian about this that came up in our like freedom group recently, like there's things in my own, like, in my own heart and in my own mind, you know, lately that you know, just rehearsing things, just circumstances in life or you know, stuff I'm going through or whatever, and they're things that are they are things that are true. Like they're factual, like what I believe or think about a certain situation. But it my it's drawing my my attention and my soul like down, you know, just those it's negative, like negative ruminating thoughts. They're true, they're factual, but they're negative, and like you were saying, they're only half of the truth. And just the Lord the other day in the kitchen stopped me and was just like, does that sound like me? And I was like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, got it. Oh, I got it. Right? So even you know, again, this idea that lies can be half truths, and then when you when you learn scripture and you learn scripture, you pray scripture, you develop a you develop a prayer life, the the voice of the Lord starts to have not just content that you recognize to be truth from his word, but even just a a way, uh sort of tone that it settles in your in your heart, so you begin to recognize the voice of the Lord. So before it's like, how does the Holy Spirit help you do X X, Y, Z, it's learning to recognize what that voice is, even your life. And so I would just say that those are some steps.

SPEAKER_05: 55:42

Yeah, like okay, so like the rehearsal of what you just said, the rehearsal of thoughts. It's the same effort. It's it's actually the same, it's the same work, just misplaced, right? The the rehearsal of thoughts, negative thoughts, when the scripture is alive and planted, that that same level of rehearsal can come into play, which then brings about life, which is why we talk about having the word hidden on your heart, right? So that when you're in a situation, you're not looking for a Bible to figure out where to anchor. Right? It's hidden in your heart, right? That that steady flow. So my question would be is that you spend that I would argue that that there's times where we spend more time rehearsing who we're not than who we are through the word, right? That's right. So like when I think of things like you've been doing, Christian, like through the shred, which is like super intense, right? You got a whole army of folks out here that try to do this thing with you and they go through the Bible and you're like, how has that been a tool for you to help reshape the way you think about life?

SPEAKER_02: 56:44

For those of you who don't know, the shred is is raise your hand if you've done it with me. Let's go. Look at all these people. This is unbelievable. We read the Bible in 30 days. The entire Bible in 30 days. Hold them up real high. I want to see it. We read the entire Bible in 30 days, uh, and it just automatically uh like makes you like transcendent, like your skin starts glowing. It just happens, it's a cheat code. They don't want you to know about this. The robots don't want you to know that all you have to do is read the Bible in 30 days. That's because the robot read the Bible to you in 30 days.

SPEAKER_05: 57:15

But don't make me expose.

SPEAKER_02: 57:16

On speakerphone. Uh no, this is the this is the reason why it's so important. Um, for one, um, this is gonna sound weird too. But the Bible's not Jesus. Um, no, no, that's it. I'm just leaving it. Quicker, quicker now.

SPEAKER_05: 57:32

Quicker, the stones are I think it's in math.

SPEAKER_02: 57:35

I think it's in Matthew 18. So, like we remember, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God. That's the logos that we're talking about. That's the truth, that's transcend, you know, uh transcendent, it's above. It's this thing that we're grasping at, constantly trying to pursue. I think it's in Matthew 18. Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, and uh he says, You search the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life, but you don't see that they point to me. The Greek word used for scriptures there is graphi. It's a uh a technical term used by New Testament writers to describe like like uh uh inspired documents or inspired texts. So this is Jesus literally saying, He's like, No, no, no, no. The scriptures reveal me, but the scriptures aren't me. So this is why, you know, uh uh Peter literally talks about Paul. He says, This is one of my favorite things ever, because Peter's like the like the dumb like church planner guy who just like he's so anointed and he just makes everybody mad because he's kind of like dumb a little bit, and Paul's like this real smart guy, and Peter references Paul a few times, and Paul never references Peter. And Peter literally writes, and he's like, We've all read, you know, the Paul's writings, and I get it, they're a little confusing. He literally says this. And he's yeah, and he says that people twist his words to their own demise. Another uh quote, this is Hilaire Bella, fame famed Catholic apologist. Uh, and you know, take this how you will, but he's you know, he was certainly right when he says that the Reformation has made every man his own pope. It's like when you think about authority and interpretation of scripture, it's just me, my Bible, and Jesus, like these type people, and then you wonder why they just do whatever they want.

unknown: 59:04

You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02: 59:05

Like they live their own life. Uh and the point, and this is why this-I'll bring it back to the shred, why the shred was so important for me, is again this pursuit of truth rather than answers. I mean, how often have I read my Bible looking for an answer to my immediate circumstance or situation? And it's like trying to catch up to something, and now I'm making the Bible mean something that doesn't mean because I'm greedy for conclusions. I'm greedy for an answer, so I'm now making the Bible mean something that it doesn't mean. And this is this is a real easy way to recognize this is am I using a verse to prove my opinion or my conclusion or whatever it is? This is the problem, is that the Bible isn't verses. Right? It's like it's it's bodies of work, it's letters, it's books that people have written to make an argument, a case for something, whether it's the divinity of Christ, the humanity of Christ, the mission of the church, or whatever it is. It's like the easy way to recognize it is that like if my wife sent me a text message today. Uh, she's in the baby room right now. It sent me a text message today. It was like, wow, you know, like I did not think you were gonna do a good job on stage today. You did so amazing. You, you know, you said the right words or you were articulate or whatever it is. And she wrote this big long sweet text to me. If I read the text and was like, you didn't think I was gonna do a good job, yeah. And that's what I took away from the message.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:20

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:20

That's what we do to the Bible every single day when we take a verse and try to make it mean something on its own. The Bible is written, it's a whole, whole book that I need to read and allow the Holy Spirit to animate the content in it so it can reveal truth, this logos that I'm reaching at and constantly trying to get at, and doing it all in 30 days kind of like eliminates your ability to just like cheat and cut corners. Because it's like you're reading the whole thing, and it really like gives you like you guys agree with the the guys that did it? Okay, alright, good.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:46

It it does it does so many things. Like I always describe it as like like a thousand mile an hour road trip across like the landscape of God's love for mankind. Because, you know, versus the kind of road trip where you're stopping every you know, every 20 minutes to get out and take a picture, and oh look at this rock I found, I'll put it in my you know, little keepsake, whatever. It's like, no, dude, back in the car, we gotta go. You know, we're making it from California to down to New York in a day or whatever. All you can see out the window is are the big movements, the big, the, the big parts of the story. You get what I would say like the meta-narrative, like the big story of scripture in your head. And the way to I think one of the ways to combat culture, we're talking about lies, like culture hands us like a story, like to live in and a role that you sort of play in it. And a way to combat narrative is with narrative. And getting God's story in your head, the shred is one of those things that helps you do that. And when you you start to see things that are connected that you've never seen before, because you're like, oh, I was in, you know, I was in Genesis just yesterday. So a ton of time can pass in scripture, and then you read something that like a prophet is saying, and something clicks that you've never seen before. Like if you were reading the Bible in a year, because you're like, oh, he's referencing something that I just read yesterday, even though it's maybe books apart. You know, it's it's wild, it's amazing. Things like here's like a lie, like in the church, or like against the church. The idea that like uh this is like a first century heresy called Marcionism, that like the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament, it's like good cop, bad cop. Like the God of the Old Testament is a bad guy, and he's mean and he's genocidal, and he he has his people go and like ethnically cleanse parts of the world. Like he's evil, he's a bad guy. You do the shred and you read the Old Testament and Josh, the book of Joshua, where a lot of these people really crank down on that argument, ooh, look how look how mean your your God is. But you've got so much of the Old Testament in your head just a couple days, and you're seeing over and over and over and over how patient God is with his people, and how much they fail and fail and fail, and yet God provides and restores and rescues and redeems over and over and over. You're like, oh man, the the opposite is true. God is so patient, so loving, and you really see that slow to anger part. That when you know, when somebody online just picks a couple verses out of Joshua and is like, dude, dude, look how bad the God of the Old Testament is. You're like, no, dude, I just I just shredded, and let me give you the bigger story. Those are the types of things that the shred helps you to do. So you you get a bunch of these big ideas about scripture and these big themes and big ideas that are that are more like not like high-level truths, but story version, narrative level versions of truth in your head that can help combat the lies, uh help combat the lies of our culture.

SPEAKER_05: 1:03:49

Okay, okay. Did you want to add to that? Okay, so let me just say this. So you got the scripture. So there are other ways in which I think you're gonna have to lean into too that I think should be regular fare for uh for the believer. And so, like, my next set of questions, and I'm gonna ask two questions around this: spiritual formation, disorienting age, how to build in the shadow of a culture decay. Now, in order to do that, we take this love for scripture, but this question is how can spiritual disciplines like Sabbath, fasting, or silence reorient our desires away from the world's pool? Like, how do those things work? Because it's scripture, but then some of these people are saying, like, the shred? What are you talking about? 30 days of reading that? Like, there's other parts of the disciplines of the faith that build the kind of a bedrock or foundation of strength for you to continue to work in, you know, like hearing the voice of the Lord. And what does it mean? Like, I like one of these, and here is just silence, just being quiet. Some of you guys don't need to read, talk, or do anything for a minute because that's you just constantly are talking, just like silence before the Lord and letting him press in upon you. How does that play into the church and and the empowerment of the believer?

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:07

I think anytime you get the opportunity to try out a new Christian practice, and by practice, what I'm trying to communicate is for thousands of years, there's a collection of ways that people who love Jesus have found this kind of collection of ways as common ways to interact and expand their faith, to interact with God, their understanding of who God is. Um practices that help you practice humility are um going to exponentially aid your capacity to navigate culture. So let me let me use Christ as our perfect example. So we see Christ constantly, and I it it really is pretty irritating how often he removes himself from the group, and how often he can't be found, and how often he's prank, and how often he's alone, and he's doing this over and over and over and over, and we're you know, we're like getting ready for today, and um we're making the joke about like wouldn't it be crazy if we didn't pull our phones out? Like, wouldn't that be insane if we and even like as I'm getting up, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna leave my I'm looking at my phone, I'm gonna leave my phone on the chair and just use the brain in my head, the scripture on my lap, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and and and really, and it truthfully it has created space for me to slow down and pray. So one of the practices that I want to specifically highlight is the practice of Sabbath. Um so I was in a ministry setting that just demanded absolutely everything out of me at all times. I mean, from the moment I woke up, it was I my husband and I were church planting in a post-Christian city center that really, really did not want a church on that doorstep. And we were in that environment. Funny s funny story for later. We were in that environment day in and day out. And at times I was concerned for my safety, I was concerned for the safety of my family and my staff, and I was on edge all the time. And the ministry work was really rich and really beautiful. People were also in crisis all the time. And so there were times where it was like, if I leave my phone, will the world keep spinning? And I began to confuse who was God and who wasn't God. And so the practice of Sabbath allowed me to recognize for one day a week that God's beautiful world will absolutely keep spinning, and that I'm just getting to be a participant in the beautiful narrative that God is writing. And so even now, like there's so many opportunities to break Sabbath. There's so many, like, oh, we just just ten more notes to write, or I gotta fix this little thing on the website, or you know, we've got uh the giving season coming up, we've got advent coming up, there are so many opportunities to um get on technology. So, what do I do when we practice Sabbath? We try to take a break from our phone for the day. It's really hard. It's actually hard to try for one day, and it can like it can drive my parents crazy because sometimes they can't get a hold of me.

SPEAKER_05: 1:08:36

I I'd be interested to know how many of you are trying some kind of Sabbath work in your home right now. Anyone? You're brave enough to just raise, yeah, like we're trying. It's okay, raise it up. Don't be ashamed, it's okay, right? I do think that's interesting to see just a handful of people that are doing Sabbaths. So continue what you're saying about it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:52

So the simple things we do, we take a break from technology, we um pursue something good and beautiful, which typically means we have to get outside. So we'll go and explore places around Huntsville, and then we do something called a yes day in our family. So it's between me, my husband, and our two little girls, and we give them a yes day, and it's not yes to chaos, it's not yes, I get to do whatever I want. It's yes, I get to lead our family in rest and play and enjoying God's beautiful creation. So I have a little four-year-old who's like, we're gonna hit that playground so hard today. That's typically not what I would choose for our yes day. What I will choose is to go inside of a bookstore and everyone gets some books and we're gonna spend an hour, an hour sitting and enjoying something beautiful that we're reading. So it's it's just this practice where we slow down, we truly do rest. I mean, just try like actually try to do nothing. Give it a go and see if you can accomplish it. Every single Saturday, I have a hard time doing nothing. And then we we bite down on God's beautiful creation, and it just creates that space to cultivate humility. What is humility? Dependence upon God. You are the one writing the story. I am not the one writing the story. I am trusting you for my bread, for my food. You know how hard it is to practice Sabbath when you've got three children under six? I don't get to clean on Saturdays. That's crazy. But that practice is just reminding me I am not God. God is God. That's good. Christian, are you gonna say something?

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:28

Yeah, we were saying we were like like uh having like a Western shootout with a microphone.

SPEAKER_05: 1:10:33

Okay, so like I I knew you were gonna say something. And so I came down here to get sis to put a timer on you right here. So sis is gonna time you for give me like the best 20, 25 seconds. 20 minutes? 26. Oh, 20 seconds, okay.

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:46

All right. This is the last thing. I mean, this last bit, and it's the Bible, it's the but it's a story from the Bible, but I think it really, really does good, like explaining like like uh what these spiritual practices are for, and then also specifically in the Christ Against Culture deal. Is there a timer going on there? Can I buy more time? Is that how is there like a um uh and this is uh it's it's recorded, you know, so really the point of these spiritual practices is to be like Christ. Time's up. These are I got the thing in there. I got the thing in there.

SPEAKER_05: 1:11:16

It's very well done to be like Christ.

SPEAKER_02: 1:11:18

Yeah, to be like these are all things that Jesus did, and this is what it means to be created in his image. So the story is from Matthew 22, and it's also recorded in Luke, and this is when the Pharisees come to Jesus and they say, Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?

unknown: 1:11:31

Right?

SPEAKER_02: 1:11:31

And he says, Bring me a denarius, and then he asks the question, whose image and inscription is on it? And they say Caesar's, and then he says, Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and render unto God what belongs to God. Notice how he doesn't tell you what makes something belong to God. But if the coin belongs to Caesar because it bears his image, what belongs to God? The thing that bears his image. And the inscription piece is pretty interesting as well. Like on the denarius, what the actual inscription was was uh uh I forget how to say it in Latin, and it's a dead language, it's boring, anyways. Uh um essentially translated to English is Caesar, son of the divine Augustus. So the inscription on the denarius, so it has his image, and the inscription on the denarius is Caesar, son of God. So now not only is Jesus, so like we think this is like a story about Jesus like telling us to pay taxes, it's like way, way more than that. Jesus is not only telling you like to render yourself if you're made in the image of God to God, he's also saying that culture is trying to make you in its image. It's like culture is actually actively vying for the same thing that Jesus is asking for. That's right. So this is like back to the lie thing, why it looks like so much truth, is because these lies are all using the same language that Jesus uses, it's just on other stuff. Right? So, like when you think of like sacraments, like sacraments are looking back to Jesus, the feasts, we're all looking forward to Jesus. And when you look at the language of the sacraments and how lies take that language and put it on other things, that's why it's not surprising when you hear language like this is my body. That Jesus used to describe the Eucharist, the way that we ultimately become like Christ, that same phrase that's now used to perpetuate abortion. So, my the last thing that I would say, do I still have enough time? The last thing that I would say But keep going is how do I know if it belongs to Jesus? If it bears his image, it belongs to him. Even the idea of like this is my body or my body, my choice, all this like language around this that's exists in culture that is like so pervasive, it's like so opposite of everything that scripture says. It's like every time scripture talks about your body, it describes it as belonging to either God or your husband or your spouse. It's like the Bible almost explicitly says that your body is not your own, it was purchased with a price. And the same thing that I would say about your children, your children's children, I think about this all the time. It's my birth mother was 16 years old when she had me. I was adopted, you know, from birth. This is funny too, because it was in February of 1933, uh, 1933. Jeez. Gee wins.

SPEAKER_05: 1:14:14

My gosh. 1993, yeah. 1993?

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, 1993, 30 minutes from Waco, 30 minutes from Waco, Texas, in February of 1993. I don't know if anybody's familiar with Waco, Texas history.

SPEAKER_05: 1:14:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:31

And they never found all those kids, so I don't know.

SPEAKER_05: 1:14:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:35

I could be one of those kids. Anyways.

SPEAKER_05: 1:14:39

Anyway, okay, listen. Here's the thing I wanted to make sure that you get today. We went ahead and compiled a giant resource list. I know some people will say, like, man, where do we even start in reading some of this stuff? How do I follow up with the conversation? There's things that we're gonna be presenting over the next year. If you know anything about how we started this year, why are we doing a service like this today? You may say to yourself, like, man, where's the sermon at? Well, the sermon has been all that you've heard many sermons today. The the idea is to spark hunger in the body of Christ. Like, we want to see this house get hungry for the word. We want to see this house get hungry for prayer. We want this house to get desperate for a word from the Lord. Come on, somebody. Like, we have dedicated our entire year to us getting better at following Christ well, right? That is gonna take work. That's not just something we just pray and then just start walking out just haphazardly. It's gonna require something, right? And so we're trying to put resources and things. If you'll take your phone, you can do the tab technology hit in front of you. There's an there is a giant list. It's got podcasts on it, it's got books that we recommend, it's got things that we think that if you would like to continue this conversation, you may say, Listen, Pastor Scott, I was born in 1933 and I'm not interested. I've learned all that I need to know. I need nothing else. You know what I mean? Great, that's fine. That's between you and the Lord. But there is a big number of people in this room who are saying, like, I need next steps. What's the next step? Where can I get a trusted resource that's been vetted through our team? And what we put out before you is a lot of different things that have gone through our vetting here, so that we can have good information, so we're all working from the right language. How many know it's really important that if we're not careful, you can be in a room this size, and each of us drawing from things that don't align where the house is going. This series about build the house. That is both metaphorically in you, that is us, the house of God, right? But it is also a collective work of this house. We're re-establishing what it looks like. What are the foundations? What are the building materials? What is the plan? Who has the plan? Are we, where are we in the process? Well, these are all important things to know, and this is why this series exists. We've got two more weeks where we're gonna go through this series and we're gonna finish up, right? There's there's and I and I encourage you, do not miss out on those. Those will be traditional sermons, by the way, for all those who are saying, like, I gave up on it today. Don't give up on it. We've got two more weeks that you do not want to miss. We want to try to close and put the, if you will, just another book end on what we're trying to accomplish with this series. It's gonna be very important for you to have the last two that it's gonna make sense of all the other things that we are doing. So I encourage you, lean in. The resources are for you. Just figure out if it's something you want to dive into. Reese put at least two books in there. I will never read. So let me just be on. I'm not gonna touch them because they're about that thick, right? And I'm just like, there's just no way unless a robot does it for me, if I'm gonna do that. And, you know, I can't uh backflap. If I had that, then I'd okay, got it. Would you stand with me? Come on. Would you thank these guys for helping me out? This conversation this morning. I'm I'm I know I know we're in a hurry. Lunch, kids, all the things, but can we just can we just submit this time, just this this last 30 seconds, a minute? And can we just can we just ask the Lord? Can we just can we just close our eyes and ask ask Holy Spirit to reveal to us areas in our life that He He is desiring to sharpen? Maybe it's a rough edge that needs to come off, maybe it's a sensitivity that He's trying to form in us, maybe it's a new hunger. Maybe somebody in this room has gotten to the place where they've lived off mom and dad's revelation for so long and now it just doesn't have the power that it once had. And that there's a new revelation supposed to come to you, something you're supposed to live out, something you're supposed to engage with the Father about. I I really mean this. I it's in moments like this that I actually believe creative and amazing ideas, seeds that will come from the Lord in this moment where you've heard something that made you think differently. There are gonna be people that walk out of this room and apply what they've heard today in unique ways that's gonna cause you to think about life totally different. There's solutions that are right in front of you, solutions for broken relationships. There is peace available to you. There's a revelation of who you are as son and daughter that can be found in what you heard today. You would say, I don't even know who I am, I don't know where I said. No, you don't have to worry about. Where you fit. Christ sees you, He knows you, and invites you into more, more clarity, more understanding. And I believe this. I just genuinely, when I was praying about this session, is God, I'm asking you to stir the hunger of your people again. We cannot live off every headline of the newspaper. We cannot be moved by the emotion of the moment. There is a temptation to be to drag us around by our emotions, but God's invitation is to be anchored in him. It's to be anchored in him. In his word. Heavenly Father, we love you today. We thank you for this congregation. We thank you for your people. God, we pray that as we depart from this place, God, I pray that you would stir in us a hunger for your word, for your presence. God, you would help us to recalibrate where we've gotten derailed some of us in the trouble that that sets before us, the struggle that seems so real, even greater than the reality of who you are, the reality of who we aren't, that cycle of thinking, that lies that we've begin to believe. God, I'm asking you, Holy Spirit, would you show us where those deceptive thoughts have crept in? That have rerouted us, maybe held us back, maybe prevented us from stepping into the fullness of who you are and who we are to be in you. That our desire today is that you would reshape us, reform us into your image and likeness. God, we thank you today that as we lean in, God, you you do this work and we invite you to the work with us. We invite you. We give you access to our hearts. And we just come against every single stronghold, every single stronghold, every lie of the enemy, every every lie that says, I know, I know everything I need to know. Every lie that says, I don't, I don't know enough, and I don't think I ever will. You give an invitation to truth. Come up higher. I can give you a perspective, I'll empower you, and I'll reveal myself to you. We thank you for humility. God, we invite humility into our hearts and our lives today. We reject that sense of self that wants to bring its ugly head above everything. That I am the most important thing in my life. No, Father, you are the most important thing. You are what we need. You're what we anchor to today. Now go with us today, go before us. God, as we dig into your word and we dig into the presence of the Lord, God, I thank you that it will refine us, transform us. God, not so that we can be smart, not so that we can have the answers, but that your kingdom can be advanced. So that through our obedience and through our lives, God, that revelation, that uh enlightenment, that that light into the dark place, God, you've called us to be, God, we thank you today that it's happening happens at the place of hunger. And God, it will be sustained through our humility. The logos in our life. God, we we we reject the idea that pathos rules the day. And we accept that we want truth anchored that causes us to live well, represent well. We thank you for all these things and so much more. In Jesus' name, everyone said, Amen, amen, amen.

SPEAKER_01: 1:23:52

We hope and pray this message was encouraging and impactful. Join us live on our website or Facebook on Sundays at 9 and 11 a.m. You can stay connected with us on Facebook and Instagram at the Rock Family. Have a Jesus filled week.