Week 12 of our sermon series on on the Book of Titus.
And this week we find ourselves at just doing one verse.
And there's a really specific reason why we're just doing one
verse this morning. It's because this verse, in my
opinion, deserves all of our attention and it we can't really
make sense of exactly what Paul is trying to say unless we try
to dig into the very bottom of a verse 3 together.
So this is also Part 2 of a sermon on how to engage the
culture as Christians. So last week we looked at Titus
3 verses one through 2 and we concluded that the Christian
posture towards a hostile culture is gentleness.
So that was the conclusion that we, we drew last week when we
talked about how do Christians engage with culture?
What do we do when we experience pushback?
What do we do when we experience hostility?
What do we do when my neighbor says something mean to me?
What do I do if somebody puts up a yard sign that I, I don't
love? And the biblical answer for that
is we respond with gentleness. But it had me thinking, how much
hostility do Christians really experience today in, in, in the
here and now? And so I gave myself a little
homework assignment. This was just for me, I was
like, OK, what I'm going to do this next week is I'm going to
do a personal audit of cultural hostility.
So I was like for, for one week, every kind of little bit of
pushback and hostility that I experienced this week, I'm going
to write it down. And so I did 7 days of that and
there were five things that happened to me that were like,
OK, yeah, that's some hostility towards Christianity.
Here's #1 I listened to a song by a musician that I liked, and
the song derided Christianity as foolishness.
I was like, ah, shoot, I like that artist.
Point #2 was a stranger on Instagram, commented on one one
video of me preaching, and he told me that I was a religiously
white supremacist because I was a Christian.
He told me that I was a grifter in the attention economy.
I was like, oh wow, coffee's on me if you're ever coming through
to the moment. So I was #2 stranger #3 was a
fiction book I was reading, criticized Christianity as
oppressive through a character in the book who was a malicious
religious leader. It was still a pretty good book,
though #4 Is the Seattle Mariners lost now?
That doesn't that doesn't count as hostility towards culture.
It broke my heart, actually. I was this week my my daughter.
I didn't tell you this, Della, she wanted me to grab her snack.
So I was like, OK, who's the best, though?
And Della goes, God, it's like, OK, that's pretty good.
And I was like, yeah, OK. But what I meant was who's the
best human? And she goes, well, Jesus became
human. So God, I was like, oh, gosh
Dang it, you're right again. And so I was like, OK, who's
who's, who is the the best human, who's not God?
And she said, Ken Griffey junior.
I was like, close enough. We'll count that.
I was actually pretty proud of her.
But actually there was a street preacher outside of the Mariners
Arena this last week who was assaulted because it was
preaching. So maybe we'll talk that up as
#4 and #5 is that a loved one who was near to me?
Didn't say it to me, but she said something really mean about
Christians online. So that was my week and those
five points, I look at those five points and I think, you
know, not, not a lot of hostility.
It's not a lot. I didn't lose my job, right?
My wife didn't leave me because I was a Christian.
Nothing like that happened. I didn't take a pay cut because
of it. I wasn't arrested, but also it
wasn't nothing. And So what is the proper
response to those five things from a Christian worldview?
Which, what should I do in response to that pushback?
Well, the options are #1 I can go on a serious rage Bender and
type a bunch of angry sentences defending my view.
Or #2 well, is there another option?
If it's not retaliating with religious hostility, what is my
other option for responding to the hostility of culture?
Let's have the Word of God answer that for us.
If you're able, let's go ahead and stand up for the reading of
God's Word. I preached on verses one through
2 last week. So if you want the sermon on
these first 2 verses, you're going to have to go back in and
watch that. I still want you to hear the
flow of God's Word because it works together here.
So Paul says in chapter 3, he says remind them that's you,
that's the church. Remind them to be submissive to
rulers and authorities. And so these are the political
rulers and authority authorities who in that culture were not
Christian. And they are creating the
political and also the popular culture on the island of Crete
that this is going to. That's why I say that this is
Paul's instructions for responding to a hostile culture.
He says remind them to be submissive to rulers and
authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to
speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle and to
show perfect courtesy toward all people.
That was our sermon last week. The question is OK.
My posture shorts towards culture should be 1 of
gentleness. How do I do that?
Where do I get that from verse 3-4?
Or because for we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, LED
astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing
our days and malice and envy, hated by others and hating one
another. That's past tense.
I hope it's past tense for you. But that's in the Word of God,
the strategy for producing gentleness in your life.
Heavenly Father, I pray that you would.
Would you do that in US? Would you produce in USA?
A a Christ like gentleness, not a gentleness that lacks courage.
Not a gentleness that lacks bravery, not a gentleness that's
accomplished by undermining the truth.
That's not gentleness. That's cowardice.
This. But nevertheless, would you
produce a real gentleness in us that people could look at and
say, you know, I responded aggressively and with hostility
towards that person, and I just couldn't believe what she did in
response to that. I experienced gentleness.
What was that? Oh God, would you help us live
that way? Only through the power of Jesus.
So it's in his precious name that all God's people prayed.
Yeah, you can have a seat. Again, I'm not going to re
preach verses one through 2, but Apollo is essentially saying be
known for your gentleness. Maybe we could say it as don't
retaliate, Don't be hyper reactive.
Be known for your gentleness. That word gentleness, right
there is a Greek word that's used a handful of times
throughout the the the New Testament 11 translation of it
is meekness. That's a perfectly solid
translation of it. It's also paired in first Peter
with a quiet spirit. First Peter compels us and tells
us that we should be gentle and have a quiet spirit.
That also gives you a picture for the type of tenderness that
God is demanding when he uses the word gentleness.
Often times in the New Testament it's used with the antonym of
proud and haughty. So to have to have gentleness is
to be the opposite of having pride and and haughtiness.
And so when you kind of tie that all together, the gentleness
that Paul is coaching this church to have, that God's
coaching us to have one is 1 that you would call a truthful
tenderness. Or maybe you want to flip that.
Maybe it's a tender truthfulness, right?
It's the opposite of pride. It's the opposite of haughty.
It's non retaliatory. It would be compatible with when
Jesus says, hey, somebody hits you on the cheek, give them the
other one. That's the type of gentleness
that God is commanding from us. How do we get that though?
And that's where we turn the corner in verse 3.
It flows from be gentle to look at verse 3.
In verse 3, Paul gives us a strategy that can actually
produce in us the gentleness that he's demanding from us.
He essentially says, be gentle because you were the same way.
He says. He describes the hostility of
the world, and he says, hey, before you knew Jesus, you're
doing the same stuff. Or look at the actual language
here in verse three. Look at it, for we ourselves
were once foolish. You didn't have the wisdom of
God, disobedient, you didn't have the power to obey God.
Slaves to various passions and pleasures.
You just followed your flesh in whichever way it desired.
Passing our days and nalice and envy.
Hated by others and hating one another.
Post essentially saying that before you knew Jesus you were
doing the same stuff. But I want you to make one
massive textual observation about verse three.
If you have it in front of you, get your eyeballs on it.
I want you to notice this. This is really important.
Paul actually did not in fact say, hey, you were doing the
same stuff. It's close.
That's not what he says. close. Put no cigar.
What you would expect Paul to say is you would expect Paul to
say this. You know, we were once living in
a foolish way. That's not what he says.
Or we were once saying foolish stuff.
That's not what he says. Or we were once making foolish
decisions. That's that's not what he says,
though, is it? Look at the verb in verse 3 for
we ourselves were once foolish were that's the past tense verb
for to be. Why am I making such a deal out
of this? Why am I?
Why am I zooming in right here? Because Paul actually doesn't
say that we were doing the same stuff as them.
This is actually not operating on a behavioral level.
Paul saying you were the same way or to use technical language
before you knew Jesus, you had the exact same nature.
What I need you to see right here is that this is not just a
statement on behavior. This is a statement on human
nature. Paul is saying before you knew
Jesus, you had the exact same nature.
So we should ask ourselves the question, what nature was that?
And what the Bible argues and what Christians have
historically argued historically, emphatically and
biblically, is that the default operating system of human beings
apart from the grace of God is a sinful nature.
They've always argued that human beings are born with a sinful
nature. In other words, apart from the
saving grace of God, all human beings have the capacity to do
is sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin.
Now, of course, that doesn't mean that our non Christian
friends can't make good decisions.
John Calvin, a pretty solid theologian, he once famously
noted that having a sinful nature doesn't mean that every
decision we make apart from God is necessarily a bad decision,
or it doesn't mean that every motive that we have is a bad
motive. What it means is that even our
best decisions and even our best motives are still tainted by at
least the presence of some sin. And so our non Christian friends
and our non Christian brothers and sisters, they can do good
things in the world and they can make good choices in the world,
right? There's more than a handful of
examples in the Bible where non Christians live well or rule
well or make really good decisions.
So you don't need to be a Christian to make a good choice.
But without the grace of God, even our good choices are still
tainted by sin. This is why Christians cannot
earn their salvation. This is why there are no good
works that could earn salvation. Because every good work you
could do if you have a sinful nature is still tainted by sin
and unacceptable before a holy God.
That's why the Bible says that apart from God, our good works
are filthy rags. The problem isn't just a a
problem of behavior. The problem is a a problem of
nature. Cornelius Vantel, also a solid
20th century Reformed theologian, he likened when he
talked about the sinful nature of human beings, he likened it
to a glass of water. He said if you take this glass
of water and you just do one drop of poison in it, is the
water as poisoned as it could be?
No, you could put more poison in it.
But is the whole thing poisoned? Yeah, it works itself throughout
the entire thing. That's precisely what we see
with Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. When sin enters the world, a
drop of poison enters the human condition, and the human
condition becomes a default operating system of a sinful
nature. There's poison everywhere in the
cup. You can see this argument in the
text of the Bible. There's more than just these two
verses. I'll give you 2 really clear
ones though. In Psalm 51 verse 5, David says,
behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin did my
mother conceive me? What's David saying?
He's saying from conception I had a sinful nature.
And if that's not clear enough, look at Romans chapter 3 verse
10. Romans chapter 3 verse 10 says
there is no one righteous, not even one.
There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away. All have together become
worthless. There is no one who does good,
not even one. Pretty clear, pretty clear.
So I'm not going to bore you with the details about this.
I'm not going to bore you to death here.
But the view that human beings are born with an essentially
good nature or a neutral nature is not taught in scripture.
And it was officially condemned as a heresy in AD 14 at the
Council of Carthage. If you just want to have like a
fun afternoon, go Google the Pelagian controversy, OK, You
can study more about it. It's super fascinating.
But it's condemned as a heresy that human beings were just born
with an essentially good nature. But Are you ready for this?
You guys with me? OK, you ready for this?
This is crazy. There's a Christian ministry
called Ligonier, pretty solid stuff.
And they do something every year called the state of theology
where they do a massive survey among thousands of US Christians
just to have some fun and see what Christians actually believe
in America and check this out. The results are jaw-dropping.
They what they do is they they put a statement and they say, is
that true or false? So here's here's statement #15
statement #15 is everyone is born innocent in the eyes of
God. Do you know how many US
Christians agree with that 64%? So that means that by the
historical standard of biblical orthodoxy, 64% of US Christians
embrace what the historical church would call a heretical
view of human nature. Statement #12 Everyone sins a
little, but people are good by nature. 53% of American
Christians believe that 53%. That's This is why.
OK, take that statement. American Christians people are
good by nature. The Bible there is no one
righteous, not even 1 US Christians people are pretty
good the Bible at sinning. That's what they're good at.
And yet they're fearfully and wonderfully made and loved by
God. But our nature is one that is a
default operating system of sin. So let's chat here.
The we got, I want to say this. This is really important.
OK, you read verse 3. Paul says, hey, we ourselves, we
were once foolish, disobedient, LED astray, slaves to various
passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy,
hated by others and hating one another.
Paul's not saying that because he feels like being He doesn't.
He's not saying that because he feels like being mean.
This is really important, OK, The Christian doctrine of the
sinful nature, It's like medicine.
It tastes bitter, but it actually produces health in you.
It's actually really humanizing and produces humility and
gentleness and you. It has a ton of explanatory
power in answering the question, why the heck am I the way that I
am? Like, have you ever asked that
question? Have you ever just like, have
you ever just made a boneheaded decision and then looked at
yourself in the mirror and been like, why am I the way that I
am? What is broken?
Not unlike the tertiary part of who I am, But like at the very
center of me, like even if you consider it through a dietary
lens, it's there. Like, why do I hunger for fast
food when I know it's bad for me?
And why can I not train myself to hunger for kale?
Because I know it's good for me. Why?
Why is my nature like this? There's something profoundly off
in the very center of our nature.
We we long for things that will destroy us.
And then we have to train our natures to enjoy the things that
are beneficial for us. What is that like?
I have never heard anybody say like, you know, I just really
had to discipline myself to eat that third bag of nerd clusters.
Speaking from experience, no, you don't have to discipline
yourself to do that. What do you have to do?
Just follow your nature? Have you guys had nerve
clusters? Dude, they're the best candy
ever. Ask.
Ask your buddy who's who's experienced A substance
addiction. Guarantee you your sister who's
experienced an addiction to a substance.
I guarantee you she won't say, you know, I just had to
discipline myself to go back and back to that substance.
No, all it required was a following, a going of the flow
along with the very grain of human nature.
And this is not just true in from a dietary lens.
This is true spiritually. Paul says be gentle, not angry.
OK. Why does anger feel so good that
isn't there like a dark pleasure to it?
You don't have to. You don't have to discipline
your nature to be more angry. What do you have to discipline
your nature to be? You have to discipline your
nature to be more gentle. Anger feels good in the moment.
Our nature loves it, but it slowly erodes our character over
time. And yes, there is such a thing
as righteous anger, but it probably constitutes 1% of your
anger. Righteous anger.
There is such a thing as righteous anger, it's just a lot
of Christians use that to justify 99% of their anger,
whereas it probably only constitutes like 1% of their
anger. So that's a thing.
But for the most part, anger feels good in the moment, but it
slowly erodes our character over time.
Gentleness feels like death in the moment, but it slowly builds
up our character over time. Why, why, why are we this way?
And at the bottom of these paradoxes, why don't this, not
that? Why do I not do the things that
I want to do and then I do the things I don't want to do?
At the bottom of all these paradoxes is not a giant
question mark. Who can know such things?
No, no, no. At the bottom of these paradoxes
is a biblical fact that we have a sinful nature.
And this sinful nature, you could explain it in a lot of
ways, but it's constituted, it's composed of primarily two
ingredients. Here's the first one.
The first ingredient of a sinful nature is we overestimate how
much happiness or how much joy sin will bring, right?
Eating a doughnut is not sinful. I love it.
But just as an example, when we see a doughnut sitting there,
all we have the capacity to do is imagine how intensely good
that flavor will be. What we don't have the capacity
to imagine is how the sugar crash is going to feel.
What we don't seem to have the capacity to do is recognize the
fact that after we eat that all it's going to produce in US is a
desire for another doughnut. And again, this is true
spiritually. When it comes to anger, all we
can think about is how good that angry e-mail will feel, right?
All, all we have the capacity to imagine is, dude, it's going to
feel so good to dish out this sick burn on Insta, right?
But what you can't imagine is what you can't imagine is the
embarrassment of somebody from your church reading that comment
and being like, oh, hey, cool. Not that that's happened.
I actually made it. I decided I'm not going to argue
about spiritual stuff on social media.
You do you do you whatever you want.
But I will argue about wrestling.
So that's where I get into trouble.
But that's part of the component of a simple nature is that we
vastly overestimate how much happiness sin will bring.
And the other component, and this is really just a second way
of saying the same thing, the second ingredient of a simple
nature is we underestimate how much happiness.
We underestimate how much joy God will bring.
We underestimate how happy it will make us to obey God's word,
even if it results in pain. And because we and because we
don't have the ability to imagine how happy obedience will
make us, we end up building idols for ourselves and we seek
our happiness and sin, or we even seek our happiness, our
ultimate happiness and things that are good but just don't
have the capacity to bring about everlasting happiness that it
promises. Like we have a tendency to say,
well, I'll, I'll be happy whenever I'm done with this
diet. You won't.
I'll be happy whenever I get the promotion.
You won't. I'll be happy whenever I find
the next church that really understands me.
You won't. I'll be happy whenever I get
married, right? All of these, these things, some
of these things are good, but they just do not deliver the
everlasting happiness that they seem to promise.
Why? Because we have a sinful nature
that overestimates how much happiness the world will bring
and underestimates how much happiness God will bring.
We. This is the way.
We were right. We were foolish, disobedient
slaves to our various passions. You know how people say stop and
smell the roses? I think that's good advice.
I think it's good advice stop and smell the roses.
We also need the opposite statement once in a while too,
especially in our Western 21st culture.
Like we need to start saying stop and smell the feces doesn't
look good on a sweatshirt or a mug or a Pinterest post.
But there are massive benefits from meditating on our crappy
nature and recognizing that apart from the grace of God, we
were that exact same way. It's one of the healthiest
things we can do as Christians. That's why Paul is reminding
them of this. It's where the gentleness comes
from. A humility that recognize I'm
the same way, right? Like, and you got to hear me on
this. Remembering our sinful nature or
contemplating our sinful nature. It's not about self loathing.
It's about self knowledge. There's a massive difference
there. Self loathing says I'm
worthless, I suck, nobody loves me.
That's not where contemplation of the sinful nature leads you.
It leads you to self-awareness of your nature.
And it doesn't say I'm worthless and I saw it says, you know, I'm
limited, I'm conflicted, I'm sinful, I'm self-centered and so
is everyone else. Doesn't that feel freeing?
That's actually where the humility that produces
gentleness comes from. This is what Paul's doing.
Paul's saying. Paul's saying stop and smell the
feces. You're not better than the
hostile culture around you. You can't read this text and
draw a different conclusion. Paul's like, hey, avoid
quarreling, be gentle, show perfect courtesy towards all
people because you were yourself once foolish, disobedient, LED
astray, slave to various passions and pleasures.
You were the same way. Paul's saying.
They're not different than you. They're made of the same stuff.
They're made of the same clay. They're made of the same matter.
They are acting like you acted before you knew Jesus.
They were acting like every human being ever has acted who
has not yet tasted the grace of God.
They're sinning because they have sinful natures.
Paul is saying, remember, you had this.
We were our we were the same way.
We were once foolish. We were once disobedient.
We once hated others and were hating one another.
All of us were this way. We've we've all descended from
the same Adam and Eve. If you think of yourself as like
a glass of wine, we're all poured from the same picture as
Adam and Eve. That's where our nature came
from, poured out of the same picture.
We recognize that because some Christians just think that their
crap don't stank, right? The moral superiority of some
Christians in the way that they engage the unbelieving culture
suggests that they think that they fart butterflies you don't
like. Sometimes you listen to
Christians and you would think that honestly, you you would
think that they thought that God made their unbelieving neighbors
out of clay, but when God made them, he used 24 karat gold.
Believer, bring back the phrase from the 90s.
You're not all that in a bag of potato chips.
Wasn't just true in the 90s, it's still true.
You, you can't listen to me. You can't point at any of the
billions of human lives that have ever existed on planet
Earth and say thank God I'm not like that person.
You can't do that because you are.
You had the same nature. You can't even point at Adolf
Hitler and say, oh, thank God, I'm not like that.
You are. Hitler wasn't made of different
stuff. He was made of the same stuff as
you. The difference between you and
Hitler is circumstances and the grace of God.
That's it. If you could see the world, if
you could see reality clearly, the difference between you and
Hitler is nothing compared to the difference between you and
God. You're much more like him than
you are like God, made of the same stuff, right?
On the bright side, that's like, here's a here's a great way of
phrasing it. On the bright side, we're all
poured out of the same picture of human nature as Mother Teresa
and Gandhi and King David. But on the dark side, we're all
poured out of the same picture as Stall and Hitler and King
David. You are you.
You are like every other human being who has ever existed on
planet Earth. That's what you're like when you
remember this. It produces in you a humility
that recognize. But by the grace of God, that's
exactly what I'd be doing. And the recognition of this
helps you engage with culture, with gentleness when they act in
Pagan ways, when the culture bumps your cup and you
recognize, hey man, I got the same.
I would have done that if not by the grace of God.
You spill wine, not water. You spill gentleness and not
hostility when people post things or say mean things to you
or put up yard signs you don't like or put up billboards that
you don't like. When you recognize that you're
made of the same stuff, you won't respond with hyper
reactivity. You'll respond with gentleness,
but it's like, OK, cool, got it. That's in the text.
Avoid quarreling. Be gentle.
We were exactly that same way. The big unanswered question that
I'm not bringing clarity to right now, I know what it is.
The big unanswered question is what exact form should the
gentleness take in response to the culture?
I got the gentle posture down, but what should I do when crap
actually hits the fan? When the rubber actually meets
the road? And the answer to that is, it
depends, right? So maybe, maybe if you've
experienced hostility from the culture in the last month, just
bring that to mind for a second. Again, something means somebody
said, maybe just something you disagreed with.
Whatever it was, the culture bumped you and you're like, I
don't like that. What's what's the what form
should the gentleness take? It might be a gentle answer.
This is Proverbs 15 verse one quote.
A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up
anger. So it might be gently responding
with the correct answer. There's biblical precedent for
that, but it might also be simply absorbing the hostility
of the culture without retaliating.
We see that demonstrated in Jesus before Pilate.
Pilate before crucifying Jesus is mocking him and saying what
is truth? And Jesus just looks at him and
absorbs it. So there's biblical merit to
just absorbing the hostility and not retaliating also.
So it might be that might be, it might be absorbing the hostility
of a friend or family member while choosing to hold on to the
relationship knowing that the future will afford you an
opportunity to speak the truth. I don't know, let's say, OK,
well, what's the Bible say? Here's what it says.
Proverbs 26, verses four and five.
Are you ready for this? Proverbs 26 verse 4 answer not a
fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself.
OK, so don't respond to foolishness with an answer,
because then I'll just look foolish, right?
Maybe Proverbs 26 verse 5 answer a fool according to his folly,
less TP wise in his own eyes. They're purposefully
back-to-back right there. What is it?
Do I not answer them or do I answer them?
And the question or the answer to that is maybe have fun with
that. But here, here's the point
underneath that. The point underneath that is
that there's not A1 size fits all response to a hostile
culture. You are actually going to have
to wrestle with God, and He wants it that way.
You are actually going to have to wrestle with God to know what
the exact right response is. It's just the way it is.
It's a relationship with God. But this sermon does come with a
massive surgeon general's warning.
OK, this does not invalidate everything I just said, but it
comes with a surgeon general's warning.
And here's the surgeon general's warning.
You need to know that building a life around avoiding cultural
pushback is a waste of time. Notice this Paul is not giving
instructions on how to avoid the hostility of the world.
He's assuming you're experiencing it.
So somebody might misinterpret my sermon or last week's sermon
by saying it sounds Cole like, like the point is to just not be
offensive. No, no, you are offensive by
merit of what you believe and what you are.
You're a piece of new creation working yourself through the old
creation. By the very of nature of what
you are, you will be offensive. It assumes hostility.
So the instructions aren't, hey, here's how you don't ever
provoke any hostility from the culture.
The instructions are make sure that when the hostility comes,
you're gentle in response. Does that make sense?
This is this is super, super important because you will be
tempted to organize and curate your life around what makes the
world least likely to lash out at you.
Can I just say that's a bad idea?
It's it's a bad idea to organize and curate your life around.
What can I say and do that's going to make the culture not
get mad at me? It's a bad idea.
Like I would even say it this way over the last year or two I
have actually, this is super interesting.
I have learned almost the exact dynamics of the hardwood floor
that's on our upstairs level in our 100 year old house.
I I know almost exactly which boards creak and which ones
don't. Do you know why?
Because every morning when Chloe and I wake up, if we want to go
downstairs, we have to walk by one of our children's rooms.
And it's the room of a child who we don't want to wake up before
he needs to wake up. I can let you draw your own
conclusions on which of our three children that is.
I'll give you a hint. He's the only Diking kid to get
kicked out of Frontier Roots and the the gym childcare in the
same week, and deservedly so. Now I'm messing, but in response
to that, I've learned, OK, if I, if I step there, that one's
going to creak. And if I step there, it's not
going to creak. And so like when I walk past his
room, I'm like, it's almost like I'm like, I can see it like it's
a football play on the hardwood floor.
I'm like, you know, I take a couple steps here, a couple
steps there. If I make it past his room and I
and I get to the stairs, then I start to gently tip toe right
down into the basement, right. And the reason why I'm bringing
this up is because you should not live your life that way.
You will be tempted to live that way.
If I step right there, the culture is going to squeak.
If I step on that thing that the culture is going to creak.
So I better avoid that. And I'm going to run over here
and then I'm going to tiptoe throughout life.
Just don't, don't be mean to me. Do you know what that is?
That is slavery. You're organizing your life not
around the lordship of Jesus, but around whatever I can do to
not poke the sleeping bear. Those 10 seconds of me walking
by Jack's room, they're, they are 10 anxious seconds.
If you live your life that way, your life will be dominated by
the anxiety of what's the world going to say?
What's the world going to do? If you build your life around
not offending the world, then who is really the functional
Lord of your life? The world.
Now be gentle, be gentle, but the world's going to bark at you
no matter what. Just reckon with that.
It's OK. Once you get that, you can just
read your Bible, believe your Bible and pattern your life
around Jesus and say the hell with what comes.
Whatever the consequences are, I'm going to take them because
I'm like Jesus. And that is a life of freedom.
It is. It's a life of freedom.
Ask your your Christian friends around you about a time that
they endured persecution. You would be amazed at the
stories of some people in this room, the things that they have
endured and held onto their faith with.
They will make you think. There's no amount of persecution
I can experience that's going to peel my grip off of Jesus.
And that will embolden you and it will embolden you to not
retaliate when the world is mean to you because gentleness, it is
how you win the world. I've never seen a person one to
Jesus because you were the loudest, more religious arguer.
Is that how Jesus won you? No, Jesus won you with his
gentleness. Does Jesus have a sword?
Yes, he does. Is that how he convinced you?
No, He won you with His cross. He won you by being gentle and
lowly, by being crucified publicly for you, by willingly
being betrayed for you, by enduring slaps to the face for
you, by paying the penalty for your sin, by forgiving you, by
covering you in His very own righteousness, by faith and
grace alone. That's how Jesus won you.
And if you don't know Jesus, I don't want you to see the tip of
that sword. Repent and turn to Jesus this
morning. Don't wait.
Do it right now. But for those who know Jesus,
for those of you who have embraced the gospel, 1
theologian said it this way. I love this one theologian said.
Jesus's gentleness towards you isn't just one of many things he
does towards you, it's who he is.
He cannot UN gentle himself towards you any more than you
can change your eye color. It's the very nature of Jesus
towards you, and it should be the nature of our posture
towards the world. I was hanging out with my little
nephew a little over a year ago. He's my little homie.
I love this dude. We hang out in the same room.
I can't remember. We were playing dodgeball or
basketball or whatever, and then I got a text message.
So I had to walk across the room.
And that's important to the way that you understand the story.
I walked across the room. I was on the other side of the
room and I sat down and I got my phone out and I was responding
to the text message. So, so my little nephew, he's on
the other side of the room. I'm on the exact opposite side
of the room. Just respond to some text
messages between you and me. Maybe I fell into a little doom
scrolling too, right? I'm doing a little scrolling on
the other side of the room, and while I'm scrolling on my phone,
all of a sudden I hear there's a little pop.
I look up and my nephew is crying and rubbing his head
because you know what he did? He ran into a shelf, his head on
a shelf. I don't even know how the kid
did it. I wasn't.
I wasn't playing with him. I was scrolling on the phone.
I shouldn't have been, but I was going on my phone, kid.
Kid popped his head right into the shelf.
Maybe he ran into it, maybe he he tripped after it.
I know the kid. So maybe he just head butted it.
I don't know. All those are valid options.
No blood, no bruise, no nothing like that.
But nevertheless he's crying and it's enough that I look at him
and I say, hey big dog, how you doing?
He looks at me with fire in his eyes.
Me, I didn't do anything. Looks at me with fire in his
eyes and he points a finger at me and he says you he screams at
me and I'm like, so I didn't do anything.
I didn't even I wasn't even playing with you, man.
Like, wow, what are you mad at me for?
And it got so bad that my sister came down in the basement.
She's like, what's going on? I'm like Brooke sister, I swear
I didn't do anything. I didn't hit your I didn't hit
your son. I didn't push him.
I didn't trip him or anything like that.
He just hit his head over there on on that shelf or whatever.
And now he's mad at me. I swear I didn't do anything.
And my sister goes and no, no, bro, it's, it's OK, dude.
It's OK. He's he does this thing.
He does this thing where whenever he hurts himself, he
just gets mad at the person who's closest to him in the
room. Whenever he hurts himself, he
just gets mad and lashes out at the person who's closest to him
in the room. I just need you to know that's
why you're experiencing hostility from culture as a
Christian. That's what's at the root of it.
This will, this will change you. If you reckon with human nature,
biblical human nature, it will change you.
All the anger in the world, all the noise in the world, all the
vitriol, all the destructive hot takes, all the relentless finger
pointing, that thing that your siblings said that had claws in
it that you can't get out of your mind, that bad take that
got that reporter fired. All of the passive
aggressiveness on social media that just makes you scratch your
head. It's all coming from the same
source. Nobody has ever woken up one
morning with a pretty good human nature, looked at themselves in
the mirror and said, today I'm going to start being mean.
It's not a consciousness I used to justify.
I went through a season where I I was, I was just in a cage
stage season for a couple of years where I was mad at
everybody if they didn't agree with exactly what I believe.
And a lot of times what I would do is I would justify it with
personality types. I'd be like, well, you know, at
the end of the day, I'm just an ENTJ.
It's like, no, dude, you are a PRICK and you need to REPENT.
It's not because you're an ENTJ, right?
Nobody has ever looked at the toes in the mirror and said,
today, I'm going to start acting like an angry, hostile person.
No, all of the anger, it all comes from the same source.
Wounds. People are hurt and they're
hurting. They have a sinful human nature
and they've been sinned against and they're sinning and they
need to take responsibility for their own nature.
But because they're separated from God, they feel
insignificant. They feel insecure.
And so the next time culture lashes out at you, like whatever
it might be, maybe it's just a mean text from a friend, or
maybe it's a song that mocks Christianity on the radio.
Whatever the most natural thing to do, what your flesh will want
to do, is respond with equal opposing hostility.
You were the same way, though. I'll just respond with more
anger, more vitriol. I'll fight fire with fire.
No, no, no. What I'm suggesting the next
time it happens, and this is what Titus chapter 3 is
suggesting, is the next time culture lashes out at you, you
should see past the hostility. Or maybe the better way to
phrase it is through or underneath the hostility.
As Christians, we must see through the avatars that people
create for themselves. People are not who they present
themselves as to you, the angry comment.
They're just projecting, and it's not what people are.
People are not what they project themselves to be.
What you see is a mask. What you see is a wound that's
bleeding onto you. People are constantly performing
their method, acting. There's an image they're
crafting. There's a brand that they're
crafting, and our job, when that comes our way, when we're on the
receiving end of that, our job as Christians engaging with the
culture is to see the human being underneath the charade.
It's just a charade out there. And what we must do as
Christians is see the human being underneath the charade.
And that means that underneath the hostility, and you see in
them, you see in the person just a child who bumped their head
and is just lashing out at the person closest to them.
And that just happens to be you at the moment.
And when you recognize that that's just what people do when
they're operating out of woundedness, that's what people
do when they have a sinful nature as they sin.
And you were the same way and I was the same way.
And when you recognize that, then you can effectively be the
gentleness that ends the cycle of hostility.
When you recognize that you can be the one who stands in the gap
and say, this ends right here. I'm going to absorb it and walk
away. Or maybe I'm going to absorb it
and give a gentle response or whatever it looks like.
But you can be the person who absorbs that hostility rather
than passes it on. You can do that.
You can have that humility. You can do that because you know
what? Because you know what?
You were without Jesus. And you can do that because you
have the Holy Spirit, right? You have the Spirit of the
living God in you. You're a new creation, you
working your way through the old creation and remembering that.
Remembering that you were the same way.
But the grace of God has made you what you are today.
That is the secret sauce to gentleness in the face of a
hostile culture.