Take Care Then How You Hear

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Zac Lloyd; Luke 8:16-21 Take Care Then How You Hear

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You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. Don's out, and I had coffee with him this week.
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The men are up at a retreat at Barrichell, and as he described it, based on the amount of arms and ammunition, it might be militia training.
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I'm not sure yet, but that's where they're at, and hopefully they're having a good time. They'll be coming back today, so you're stuck with me today.
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We're going to be in Luke chapter 8, so if you don't mind, go ahead and turning there. Administratively, whenever I get the opportunity to share with you,
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I'm going to share the next section of Luke. Last time I was up here,
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I did the beginning of Luke 8, so now we're going to be in verses 16 through 21. By way of introduction, just to tell you a little bit about myself, no one's ever described me as passionate.
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I'm just sort of even keeled. I don't get super excited about stuff, but I have found that certain things
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I get excited about, and I share them automatically. It's just natural that I want to share something.
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An example would be a couple years ago, our neighborhood was having a garage sale. Everybody in our neighborhood sells stuff over this particular weekend, and my immediate neighbor was selling his power washer, just this tool that you power wash stuff.
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It's pretty fun. My siding needed to be washed, and so he was selling his for $25, and I said, bet, let's do it, and it worked great.
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Power washing my siding looked great. Another thing about me is that I like to run, and running in the spring and the fall in Michigan, your shoes get real dirty, and if you run in the summer, they get real stinky.
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You have to keep them outside because you're all sweaty. So I've never had a good way of washing my shoes.
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I've tried different detergents. I've tried bleach. I've tried washing machines. I've tried dishwasher. Either it didn't work well, or the shoe didn't survive.
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But I found power washing my shoes was fantastic, and this is a real photo.
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This really happened. This isn't something off the Internet. These are before and after, and when I discovered this, I shared it with everybody.
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My small group, I said, you've got to check this out. Look at my shoes. They're brand new. It's like, do you know about this?
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Have you seen this? You can do this, and so that's the key that it wasn't like, hey, look how cool I am. It was, you can do this too, and it's really cool, and it was exciting, and I found that, and maybe you have something.
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If it's a podcast, if it's a book, if it's a TV show, something you get, maybe a sermon, something you get excited about, and then you want to share it with others.
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Some couple other examples, my daughter was home in the spring from college, and she turned us on to a show called Jury Duty, and so we watched that.
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Immediately, I was just like, have you seen Jury Duty? Have you seen Jury Duty? It's just, it was what I talked to everybody about.
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Dating myself, there was a movie called Sixth Sense, and Sixth Sense has this weird, profound twist in the movie, and I remember going to the theater three different times, paid to go see the movie with different people, so that they could experience it like I experienced it.
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I wanted it for them. It was such a cool thing. I wanted them to be like, what? You didn't see that coming, did you?
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I've seen it with sporting events as well. I'll rewind it, pause it, like Bryce, my son, or Reese or Jason, my son, come see this play.
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Did you see this? Just to experience it again. And so, I don't think I'm on my own in this.
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John Piper describes, he's a pastor theologian, he describes this sort of phenomenon as completing your joy.
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Like if I was to power wash my shoes and just be like enamored with it, to see Sixth Sense or amazing sports play, and it's just cool.
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It's just here. Like I don't know, that's not how we're wired, and if you do that, I don't know how to describe that outside of like, that's just sort of sad.
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Like, this is it. And I feel like it almost, again, it's the opposite of joy.
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But I think as humans, we're wired for connection, we're wired to interact, and we're wired to share things together.
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And when we get excited about something and we share that, not only do you get to experience it through them, it almost seems better to see them experience it, and you almost, it almost amplifies your joy.
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And I think that's the natural way we're wired. And so where we're going with this is, we have access to the light of the world.
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We have access to eternal, everlasting joy. We have it now.
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Some theologians refer to like eschatology as like the study of the end times. And they'll use this phrase, like an over -realized or an under -realized eschatology.
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And some people live their lives, they're Christians, they accept Christ, they pray a prayer, they accept
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Christ as their Savior, and someday they're going to be in heaven. And between now and then, it's just grind. That's an under -realized eschatology.
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Jesus says that you can have life and you can have it now abundantly, and so that what we share with one another should be that, should be that life.
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Because we have access to everlasting joy, and it starts now. We're still in sinful bodies, I'm not saying that everything gets all better, but that's what we should be sharing.
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So, join me in reading Luke 8, verses 16 -21. I'll read, you'll follow along.
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Then I'll pray, and then the band will come, and we'll worship God with our voices. So, verses 16 -21 say,
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No one, after lighting a lamp, covers it with a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light.
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For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.
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Take care, then, how you hear, for the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.
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Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. And when he was told,
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Your mother and your brothers are standing outside desiring to see you, but he answered them, My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.
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Let's pray. Father God in heaven, Lord, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for an opportunity to gather.
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God, I pray that as we gather, that we come in contact with you and your gospel, that we see you in new and life -giving and refreshing ways.
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God, that your Holy Spirit would change us. God, we are humble. We want to be humble.
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God, humble us, help us to worship in spirit and truth, and just to pray for those that are not here.
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We pray for our men that are up at that retreat, that you would give them life through this fellowship. God, that you give them safe travel back today so they can rejoin their families, be refreshed and renewed and with new commitments.
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God, we love you and commit this morning to you. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you, Jesse. Thank you,
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Ben. Really appreciate it. It really is a joy to be in the house of the Lord, to be able to sing together is a privilege.
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So the title of this message is, and that is a quote from Jesus in this passage. So we're just going to go through it, and I'm going to draw some applications.
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So keep your Bible open and check to see if what I'm saying is actually there. So in verse 16, it's up there on this slide, but only briefly because it's important to understand that we're not, this isn't just some little proverb that we can just take this little nugget, but rather it's in context.
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And the last time that I preached, or if you read through Luke's gospel, the beginning of chapter 8 is really tied into today's message.
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And what the first beginning of this, the first part of Luke chapter 8 is the parable of the sowers.
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And so that context is that Jesus was going around in his ministry, preaching and sharing and healing and doing lots of things.
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There was tons of people, including his disciples. And he shared a parable. And the parable is the parable of the sowers in which the sower sowed seeds, and it fell on four different kinds of soils.
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And he told this to everybody. And then he pulled his disciples aside up above in Luke chapter 8 and explained it.
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And this is what the parable means. He says, I'm going to tell you what it means. It says that the word of God, I mean, the seed is the word of God.
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And it fell on four different kinds of soil. The one that fell on the hard path, that was when the devil comes and takes it from somebody's heart.
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Before they, it takes it from their heart. And then the one fell on rocky soil was another scenario.
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They believe for a while, and in time of testing, they fall away. And another one fell among thorns.
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And it grew up, and it had fruit, but the fruit never matured. It looked like it was going to have something really big going on. And then the cares of this world choked it out.
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And then the last one was it fell on good soil, the good human heart that produced fruit, salvation, and not just a little bit, but a hundredfold.
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And so that's the context that we're coming to today. Today's is just a continuation of that message.
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And it's important to know the key thing in those different soils, it was all about hearing. And Jesus said up above, the key there is how do you hear well?
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Jesus said, those that have ears, let them hear. In the same way he said, let there be light.
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Let there be day, let there be night. There was day, there was light, there was night. Jesus does it.
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He's the one who opens up our hearts. And so the next verse or the next slide also points to, if you don't mind turning there, it says, take care then how you hear.
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So that's really what we want to focus on. What do we hear? And so that's the context of today's message is how we hear.
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So now we can go to verse 16 and start walking through that in light of what we just heard.
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And so verse 16 says, no one after lighting a lamp covers it with a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a stand so that those who enter may see the light.
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And this axiom, this sort of, you know, truth isn't really a tutorial on how to use light, obviously, but it's good to understand what light are we talking about?
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Because light in the scriptures is often metaphorically used for different things, whether it's life, like regeneration, like rebirth, fruit, or it's just welfare, things are going well.
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Or sometimes you see light referred to as sort of like guidance and wisdom. Like Psalm 105 says, your word is a light unto my path, so we can see where we're going.
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But this is referring to that first one. This light is Jesus, his salvation, what he offers as new life, new birth, fruit in the spiritual life.
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So that's what we're talking about when it says this light. And I think it's pretty obvious that it's not how do you use light, but it's curious, the utility of the light in this.
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Like you would expect it to say, don't hide it under a bed, don't hide it under a jar, rather put it on display so that when people enter the room, they can see what's going on.
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But that's not what it says. It says, why do you put it on a stand? So that the people can see the light.
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You don't have to be an expert in how to use a lamp, but if you ever walk into a dark room with a flashlight and you look at the flashlight, you want to look everywhere but the light.
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That's not useful at all to look at the light. You're just like, I can't see anything now. I remember helping my dad working on projects.
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He said, can you hold the flashlight? And if it shined in his eyes, I was like, nope, that's not helpful. But you might think this is sort of some kind of quirk
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I'm misinterpreting, but all the major English translations translate it this way. Why? It's not an accident.
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I think there's some reality in that where should our focus be? Our focus should be on Christ.
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And what happens when we focus on Christ, His gospel, and His goodness, His salvation? The darkness just seems to grow strangely dim, just starts to fade.
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You're in that room and you're just looking at the flashlight. Well, that's all I can see. You're sitting in a room with just a fireplace looking at the fireplace. That's all you can see.
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Everything else, still there, still a problem. It's just not your focus. It doesn't affect you.
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And I think there's some reality to that. That is what we want to do with the gospel. I'll say it this way. Don't hear me say this morning that we need to present a more attractive gospel.
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We just need to present the gospel, the real gospel. So we want to put that on display because then the cares of this world drift away.
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So go to the next verse in verse 17. We're going to run through this pretty quickly and then do some applications. Nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest.
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This is Jesus talking again. Nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light. And sometimes you can read this and just think that, well,
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God knows everything. He knows everything in my heart and it's all going to be revealed. There's no secrets. That's true about God, but this is not what that's about when you look at the context.
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Because just above what he just said in that parable in verse 10, he said, To you, talking to his disciples, it has been given to know hidden things.
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Secrets of the kingdom of God. This is just continuing on in that theme. Secrets of the kingdom of God.
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What is the secret of the kingdom of God that was being revealed? God's word was going out.
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It was falling on human hearts. The things that happened in the human hearts, we don't know. To be honest, we don't want to know everything that's going on in our hearts.
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Especially other people's hearts, but even our own hearts were deceived. But this is going to be revealed. And how is it revealed?
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It talks about it bears fruit. We see works. We see rebirth.
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It's revealed in what comes out of that person. That's the revealing going on. So the things that are hidden, the things that are secret, are being revealed.
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And that is the reality is that true faith does work. So the next verse is,
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I think, verse 18. Take care then how you hear. And that's the real caution Jesus is talking about. That seed that fell on good soil and how they heard.
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Take care then how you hear. Almost a judgment. For to the one who has, more will be given.
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From the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away. Seems not helpful.
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That seems cruel. You think maybe it's taking from the poor person and giving it to the wealthy.
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That's just sort of, the first will be last, last will be first. What are we talking about here? Again, in context, those four soils.
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Three of them thought they had something. The seed fell on soil, fell on hearts.
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But it was hard soil. It was rocky soil. It was choked up by thorns. They thought they had a bunch of fruit, but turns out they had nothing.
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But that one soil, the good soil, what did it have? It had fruit. And not just one, two, five.
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A hundred, not a hundred, a hundred times. So it was more will be given to that person.
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That's what God is talking about, Jesus is talking about. In that which is, take care then how you hear.
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Because more will be given to the person that hears, has that good and right heart. With patience, it said up above.
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And so then the last section says in verses 19 through 21. Then his mother and his brothers came to him.
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But they could not reach him because of the crowd. And he was told, your mother and your brothers are standing outside desiring to see you.
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But he answered them, my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.
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And it's, this is a shift because he was just describing what
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Jesus was saying. And now he's describing what's actually happened. These are physical events, these are real events that did happen.
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And so what happens is his mother and brothers show up. And I'm going to read this kind of cynically because I'm cynical.
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I see everything cynically. His mother and his brothers, they come and there's throngs of people there.
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And what are they doing? We're going to stand. Tell Jesus we need to see him.
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This rubs me the wrong way. And that's again a little bit cynical. It reminds me like Taylor Swift.
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Just throngs of people at her concert and her family shows up. Tell Taylor we're here. Now there, it's based on biology.
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That makes sense that she would come out. He goes on to say, it's not about biology. It's not about, you're the tribe of Benjamin.
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Tribal, they don't care. It's not about that. It's about hearing the word and doing it. And so his mother and brothers are standing there.
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Tell them we're here. They're not going to take any actions. I'm not going to be bothered with all this rabble.
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Tell him to come out and see us. We've got to talk to him. And maybe that's heavy handed because we know
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Mary in Luke 1, when the Holy Spirit comes to her, tells her the Savior of the world is going to be in her womb.
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She's all in. She's like, yep. She praises God, praises him, and she seems to understand it. But unlike some other religions, we know that Mary was still a sinner.
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She wasn't perfect. So she still has the potential. And his brothers especially. We see no evidence in any of the gospels that any of his brothers knew what was going on, that he was the
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Savior of the world. It's only until we get to the book of Acts, after Jesus has died, resurrected, and ascended, do they seem to get it.
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And to be fair, James does get it because he writes a book that's in the canon, and it's in the New Testament. And the theme of that book is, faith without works is dead.
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And that's kind of what this point of this sermon is. So James does get it. But it reminds me of another passage in Luke chapter 19.
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And I am familiar with the passage because when we went overseas, we learned that a lot of the world still doesn't know how to read and write.
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When you're trying to reach people with the gospel, it's an oral story method. And just tell stories from Scripture. You can engage people and study them without having to teach them how to read and write.
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And one of the stories that was really useful was the story of Zacchaeus. Many of you know the story of Zacchaeus, but just to remind you,
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Zacchaeus was a tax collector. He was a friend of the enemy, the Romans, occupiers.
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He was taking the money from his people and giving it to them and keeping some for himself. He was a jerk.
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Nobody liked him. He wasn't a fan. He wasn't a fan. But the text says, in Luke chapter 19, it says,
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Zacchaeus, wanting to see Jesus, desiring to see Jesus, stood outside when there was a crowd.
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He could not see Jesus because of the crowd and because of his small stature. He couldn't see. And the text doesn't say, tell
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Jesus I'm here. I need to talk to him. It doesn't say that. Rather, you know what
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Zacchaeus does. He runs up to the place where he knows Jesus is going and climbs a tree so that he can see. And Jesus comes to that tree.
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And I think that action is, that's revealing what's going on in Zacchaeus' heart. That he ran up, made a way, figured out a way to see
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Jesus. He wasn't standing out cashing in on his clout. I'm his mom. He needs to come see me.
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He wasn't trying to see Jesus on his own terms. I had a co -worker years ago,
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I don't know, five, ten years ago. And she came to Recast for a season. She was agnostic. And she would often say, when you'd sit down with her and like, where are you at with God?
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She would say, I have something that I need him to do for me. If he does that,
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I'll know he's real. But she couldn't tell anybody because then they would know.
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That's coming to God on your terms. He's revealed himself to us. No one's without excuse.
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Romans says, we're here, we're Christians are here, we're revealing the gospel to you. I feel like his mom and his brothers are like, we need to talk to you on our terms.
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And there's a lesson for us there. And I would say that every time that I've read this passage or come in contact with this passage,
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I see. But he answered them, my mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.
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That is a command. Like I've heard, that's the great commission. We need to put his gospel on display for the light of the world, for everybody to see that we are to fill the great commission.
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Go into all the parts of the world, sharing the good news, baptizing and teaching them to keep my commandments. That's the command here.
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He says, if you want to be my mother and my brothers, you want to be my spiritual mother and brothers, that is joint heirs with Christ.
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And you hear that phrase in Christianity, but you know joint heirs, like we're partners.
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Everything Jesus gets, we get. That's what joint heirs, you want to be that?
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I heard, hear the word of God and do it. Reality is that's a description.
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That's a description of what we're to do. Of a Christian that heard the word, that's what they do.
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And that's a subtlety, but that's a diagnostic. It should be a way for, it's like a check engine light kind of thing.
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Is that where we're at? Are we doing the word of God? And it's risky. I think it's a gamble.
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Hard to talk about scripture as gambling, but it's because if you measure anything, it's just what you start focusing on.
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Like if you want to get better at running. All you got to do is record how far you went and how long it took.
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Don't change your shoes. Don't start strength training. Don't change your diet. Just record it.
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Somehow you're just going to get better at running. Just maybe not 100 % of the time, but most times.
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You have a problem with spending money. You need a budget. I would just start, just track your finance.
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Every time you spend something, write it down. Start tracking it. You're going to get better at spending your money because you're keeping track.
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Students. I remember in college. I went to college and there was like, college is trying to teach you as much as they can.
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We're going to do 40 books in three weeks. You're just grazing through this stuff. I remember the first couple tests.
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This chapter or this test, exam one is over the first 10 chapters. What? There's so much.
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That's like 180 pages. How am I going to remember all that? And then the guy next to me in class, he's in a fraternity, and his fraternity brothers have the exams that this professor gave in previous years.
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Now I know what to study. Just this. This is all I got to study. It's way easier. But what it does do,
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I'm not, I'm not, it doesn't prove that I know the material. It proves that I know how to study this exam and this little brief.
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I know how to appease this man. And so it is with us when
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God in the, in the scripture do the work is that we want to start doing stuff.
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Well, faith works. I don't want my faith to be found lacking. Let's get working because that's what
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I'm supposed to be doing. Nothing is more contrary to the gospel. What is the gospel?
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Ephesians 2, 8 through 10 is where I'll go. For by grace, you have been saved through faith.
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Not for by grace, you have been saved through hard works and your works. For by grace, you have been saved through faith.
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It is a gift. It is a gift. You didn't do anything to earn it. You have been saved by grace through faith.
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It is a gift. And not a result of works. So nobody can boast. We're all equal.
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Nobody can boast. That's the gospel. So what about the works? Verse 10 says, we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for what?
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For good works. We're created for good works. When is it, when do these good works get prepared?
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The text says beforehand that we would walk in them. So the good works that we're supposed to be doing flow out of our salvation.
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Not, I need to do that so that I can prove that I'm a joiner, that I'm a spiritual brother of Christ.
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That's the opposite. Nothing is more contrary to the gospel. And so I think when we think about how we share the gospel, the gospel that we share might not be this gospel.
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And so what do I mean? I remember, I think the next slide refers to wood splitting.
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So I shared some fun things that I, you know, power washing, watching shows, sermons, podcasts.
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Some things are pretty fun to share. Wood splitting, it's an acquired taste. I wouldn't say most people enjoy it.
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I've grown to like it. And just to give an illustration. So wood, you cut the log into these 18 inch, 20 inch logs, and then you split them.
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And I did it manually. So it's a, that device, like a mall or something like that, it's a splitter.
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It's not just an axe, which is super thin. It's 8, 10, maybe even 12 pounds of steel. And it's got an edge on it.
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In wood, you know how over time it grows and gets all these rings. And if you want to split wood, you want to hit that right in the very center, right in the eye.
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That's where it's weakest. And so you take that device, that mall or that splitter, and you can just wheel it and get all that centrifugal force putting it way out here, all that weight, and just land it right in the center of that piece of wood.
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And if you're good at it, it just splits wide open. And it's fun. I mean,
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I've done it. When you get good at it and you can do that and throw all of your energy right into that log and you just want to drop it and like feel like a gladiator.
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Like what? Anybody else want some? Like you just feel like you're dominant, like I can't be stopped.
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Just sort of probably isn't appealing to the women as much, but maybe you can get it. Like there's just something that I feel like I'm in control of and I can do.
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But it's still, it's a lot of hard work. And when I share that with somebody, I tell you what I wouldn't do. That's black locust.
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Black locust is this sort of gnarly wood that's got like, it's just, it doesn't break.
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It just kind of tears. Or hickory, which is just like concrete. And you swing all of you.
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And it hits, it's like worse than concrete. Just shakes the handle in your hand. You're like, it's like, what?
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Did you want something? Like you're just like, what? You hit it perfectly with all your might. And so you just start slamming on it and slamming on it.
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And Bryce, come check this out. You want to do this? 10 minutes later, I'm just pouring and sweat mosquitoes and my hands are sore.
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This is fun, huh? You want to do this? Of course not. Is that the gospel that we share?
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What's the analogy? What am I talking about? I think the gospel that we share is that we have not quite experienced unconditional love.
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The reality is while we are yet sinners, Christ died for us. What happens in our heads is we know how much we've sinned and we get forgiveness for that.
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We pray that prayer. And then we sin again in God. We walk around in shame and guilt.
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Not that excited about our heavenly father who's kind of just annoyed with us. He's frustrated with us.
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He's disappointed. So we're not running around to tell everybody. Because the reality is our current culture, our atheist, that God, I make a better God than that in their minds.
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I know how to love myself better than that. I know how to care for myself better than that. Why would I want your
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God that's just going to judge me, make me feel bad? Because that's how we walk around, feeling the weight and shame of our sin.
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Are we sinners? Yep. Are we forgiven? We are.
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There's freedom. That is the good news. That's the gospel we want to be sharing.
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And so I wonder what motivates us to do these works.
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These works that we should walk in. So we are that hundred -fold fruit. So ask yourself, why do you help out with the kids program?
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Why do you help out in the cafe? Why do you help out on the stage? Why do you participate in small group?
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There could be a sense that you want to be approved by others because you know that's what good Christians do. Or you could be doing it because you want to show your
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God, your father, heavenly father, look, I'm good. That's the opposite.
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That's not going to have any juice. If you do those things, there's a difference between serving the body, loving one another out of your own actions, and out of your own desire to please one another or please
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God, than the one that really has the juice of the Holy Spirit and is connected to the vine and has true love for one another.
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True love because you've experienced unconditional love from Jesus Christ. And you know that he loves you no matter what at your worst.
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When he died on that cross, he knew every sin you would ever commit beginning to end. Nothing new is to him.
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And so experience that reality. That's the juice. That's the fuel. That's the grace that you can then take to the world and love them.
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And so just to be completely honest, loving the world, loving people is hard.
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We're the worst. I said we are. Not just you guys. You are, but so am I. We're the worst.
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We're hard to love, truly. We can manufacture it. Sometimes we can split that easy log really easy.
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We can do it in our own strength. But to really crack hearts and really change hearts, you need
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God to do that. You need somebody else to do that. You need the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. And so I found, since I've had kids, we laid it out in our family.
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We're going to glorify God. That's our purpose in life. Our family goals are to love
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God and love others. And recently in the car, I asked some of my kids, I said, what do you think my priorities are? What do
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I value most? Do I value glorifying God, loving God, loving others, or efficiency? Efficiency.
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They all responded. I didn't have to prod them. Well, what about when I do that? No. They just responded that way. I'm not celebrating.
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That's a bad thing. I just love when what happens is if I'm in a situation, if I'm in a bank, and they need this form, and then they need another form, and two forms of ID, I just start to,
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I go to a seven or a ten, I get angry, like, because this is inefficient. This is stupid. Why are we doing this? Because I value,
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I don't care for these people. I care about getting stuff done. Do you hear me? That's wrong. That's not appropriate.
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But that's the way I'm wired. So I'm talking about loving one another. So we see ourselves rightly.
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We receive the gospel. We want to share it with the world. And we do that by loving one another. And the only way we get good at loving anyone is by reflecting on what
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God has done for us. We cannot manufacture that. And so one of the things
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I just, careful here, I don't like it when preachers give us tips on how to live out the
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Christian life. I mentioned John Piper. I'm a big John Piper fanboy. He's done it lots of times.
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Like, here's how I pray. And it's helpful. It's useful. But sometimes I can hear it like, you're not good at praying?
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You should pray like me. I'm good. Be like me. And then God will like you. I just get a little bit like, come on.
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You're just like us. But it is helpful. So while I hate it, I'm going to share it.
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And it's a story that is wrinkled in a couple different ways. Because what
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I want us to hear, the point of this message is take care how you hear. Take care how you hear. Because sometimes we hear the gospel and we apply that I need to do some work.
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That's not hearing the gospel. If you hear the gospel well, you will do it. That's just what happens as a result of being loved by God and receiving it and receiving that salvation.
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That's what happens. That's how we hear. I'm going to talk about how we listen to one another.
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So there's a little bit of an overlap, but the point of the passage isn't to let's get good at listening to one another.
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And so why do I mention that? I think that in our day and age, and particularly our culture, therapy and counseling is at an all -time demand.
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And I'm not going to venture share with you why I think that is. Outside it is. People want to be heard.
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People feel loved when they're heard. So how do we get good at listening?
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I think that's a way that we can love well. When we got back from Indonesia, there's a place in Richland, Michigan, called
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Alongside. Alongside is an organization set up for people that live across different cultures, and they come back.
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It helps them re -assimilate into their home culture because they've changed, culture's changed, and there's just always some friction.
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It's three weeks. You live on site. There's a bunch of different, there's probably 25, 30 people there, married, single, different demographics, old, young, people coming off the mission field.
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I think there was a physician that lived in Africa. I don't know if he was a Christian or not, but for the most part, Christians, and we're there.
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It's intensive. It's a lot of counseling, seminar, one -on -ones. It was intensive but very helpful and life -giving and important.
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One of the days, it's second or third week, we're there, and it's a morning seminar, and it was on listening.
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And that particular day, me and my wife would go, our kids would go to a different program. My wife and I were sitting there, and she, two or three times a year, gets a migraine headache.
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She can always get pinpricks, gets nauseous. She just needs to go lay down in the dark. I was like, yeah, go ahead. I'll take notes.
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Don't worry about it. And so that particular day, they went on that morning to talk about listening, listening to one another and giving us some tips.
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And one of them was like, don't talk. Just listen. That's the simplest one. But if you do talk, here are some things that you shouldn't say, and here are some helpful things to say.
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And so they had us go through that, and then they started talking about nonverbal, nonverbal, how we can listen nonverbally.
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And so I was sitting there, and they said, we're going to have you guys do an exercise, which was common. They had us do this quite often.
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They said, we want you to pair up. No, I don't have my wife. I'm a free agent. I'm a single guy all of a sudden.
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So I get paired up with this 20 -something -year -old guy from Italy. I don't know him. And the exercise is we want you to communicate love, loving, compassion, kindness, and tenderness to one another with your eyes, nonverbally.
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So just stare into one another's eyes for three minutes. Three minutes. You need to know that my best friend my whole life, from kindergarten, we roomed through college.
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It wasn't until after college that I ever remember touching him. Like just physical intimacy was not something
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I ever pursued with males. Like I remember we hugged, and it was kind of a monumental moment. So for me to sit across from this guy and just stare into his eyes for three minutes was out of my comfort zone, but I share it because it worked.
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Just to stare and communicate love and kindness and compassion to someone with my eyes, and then when he did it to me,
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I got emotional. Is the point to stare into people's eyes and love them?
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It's not. That's not what I'm getting at, but it's a way to work out our gospel.
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Our gospel is not the right way to say that. To work out the gospel as we love one another. We need to be compassionate to one another, to be kind to one another, and that's an effective way to do it because, again, we're hard to love, but if you try and do it in your own strength, that's impossible.
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And so I want to wrap up today's message just by closing with this idea to make sure we take care how we hear.
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Hear what? It's not that we need to work harder and do better. Hear that gospel that it wasn't because of any works that you did.
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It was a free gift to you. He loves you as a sinner, and it's not that he loves a future version of you.
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He loves you now with everlasting kindness and love, and it's probably a love that we haven't experienced maybe a few different times in our life when somebody really loved us.
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But we can experience that, and that should be the juice. That should be the energy. That should be the grace that we take when we go out of here, even to the one another's, the bear with one another, the love one another's, the be kind and compassionate to one another's that we do is motivated for that.
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We cannot manufacture that. We cannot try and do harder. We can try and do harder, but it's not going to be attractive, and nobody's going to want it.
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It's not about being an attractive gospel. It's the actual gospel. So I ran through this sermon really fast, but if you're new here, what we're going to do is celebrate that, celebrate that gospel in communion.
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Scripture commands us to do that as often as we gather to celebrate and remember what Jesus did for us.
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So the logistics of it are, if you're new, is we have stations set up in four different spots in the room.
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So the music's going to play. You're going to have an opportunity to go get that, and then take it on your own. We're not going to have some ceremony at the end where we all do it together.
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We're going to sing, and then we're going to do that on our own, and then we'll close the service that way.
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But this is a remembrance. You're not working. You're not earning anything from God. You're not receiving more grace as a result of taking this, but it is an act of remembrance and thanksgiving.
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So I'll close our time in prayer, and then Dave will come and play, and we'll celebrate with communion.
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So Father God in heaven, Lord, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for your gospel. We thank you for dying on the cross.
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God, as we celebrate this, I pray that you would help us to understand, receive, comprehend your gospel in a new way, in a way that's new and refreshing to us so that when we share this with others,
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God, that you would change the world through us, that we would be your hands and feet because we heard your gospel accurately and truly.