Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our
lead pastor, Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message
would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you
to the life changing love of Jesus.
May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow Him today.
Before we dive in and we're going to unpack the text through
sections of it and we'll end with some what I hope will be
very clear application for you, we're going to start with saying
our confession together. This is our moment of truth
telling as a community where we acknowledge the reality of where
we are right now, both in terms of the struggles, but also in
terms of how God feels about us. And some mornings you might wake
up and think, I don't know. I don't know if God loves me.
I don't know if he even likes me.
I'm not sure I even like me this morning.
And so it's important that whether we're feeling that or
whether we're like, man, there's no wonder.
Jesus. Is a fan of me wherever you're
at on the spectrum today of those things.
It's important that we say these things together because they
acknowledge the truth about who we are and about who God is.
So if this is your first time visiting to River City, you're
so welcome here. We're so glad that you would
join with us to worship and to learn more about Jesus and
walking in his ways. I will say the first line and we
say the second line together. So if it's the first time here,
welcome into liturgical practice.
Confession is this. We are badly broken.
We are deeply loved. That's right.
Some people saying it was some force this morning.
I like it. How do we become who we are?
You may not have spent a lot of time reflecting on who am I?
And sometimes you might get asked that question.
You get into a new setting as. Oh, who are you?
And you might give your name, and you might give your family
setting. You might talk about your job,
but there's some things going on beneath the surface that are
much deeper than those realities.
No matter how covenant or how long term those other
relationships might be, do they really fully express who you are
and how did you become the person that you are right here,
right now? You have preferences and
longings. We all have.
Opinions, and lots of them. And some of us say them more
than others, right? We we've had these things that
come out from us, but how do we get here?
There's a few things that clearly factor in.
One of them is in the realm of your family of origin, the
environment that you grew up in as a little person.
And there's there's a couple, Pete and Jerry's Gazero, who've
done a lot of work around the health of a person in the
emotional realm and relational realm.
And one of the things that peace Gazzaro says is that, you know,
we've started to follow Jesus. Aren't we all completely
different now? And and yet Thanksgiving is
still a bust up every year. What is going on?
He says Jesus is in your heart, but grandpa is in your bones.
There's a knowledge and a way of being that we carry with us
unconsciously. We're not paying attention to
it, but it's like the wizard behind the curtain pulling all
of the switches and controlling things.
And that's why sometimes you say things and you go, huh, why did
I just say that that way? Or you feel really angry about
something, but on reflection you're like.
There's no big deal. What is going on there?
The problem is, for most of us, we're far too busy.
Hurry, hurry. Important.
Lives to live, to ever slow down and pay attention to those
things along with family of origin where you came from,
questions around group participation, who you associate
with. Most of us like to think that we
gravitate towards and associate with people who already think in
the brilliant ways that we think and behave in the very high
moral ways that we already behave.
We like to gather with our tribe or as Pastor Jason said, our
mop. And sometimes it is a mop.
Sometimes it's not a kind and gentle place to be.
It is fiery and fractured. It turns out, statistically,
that our beliefs are actually biased by association.
Meaning you might come into a group because of one point of
affinity, but lots of other things you didn't agree with
will suddenly start to change as you associate with a group.
Social constructs form us deeply in ways we might not even be
paying attention to. That might come out when you
suddenly find yourself in support of a particular policy
or position that a decade before you were violently opposed to.
But now it's obvious, right? Clearly this is the right way
and that was the wrong way. And how did you get there along
with your family of origin and your your groups that you
associate with? There's these things that we
could call cultural liturgies. We just said a liturgy when we
said our confession. It was a structure, a form that
we entered into the High Anglican Church, Orthodox
Church, Roman Catholic Church. They have a lot more written
liturgy, right? The said prayers that everybody
says together and everybody who's been in those circles long
enough knows them by heart. They're embedded in them.
But we also have these cultural liturgies.
If that is something you're like, wow, that sounds really
interesting, Johnny. And I would really like to read
more about that. There's an amazing author named
James KA Smith. He wrote a more readable book
called You Are What You Love and then some really big books like
Desiring the Kingdom that go like Nerdy Deep.
So if Nerdy Deep is your thing, get the big ones.
But he explains some cultural liturgies.
Did you know that the mall is a formative place?
Did you know that the mall is a form of worship?
We enter into these high ceiling glass spaces that pump out
certain aromas, Think incense right that gather us into this
space. Where we go, this is a place of
wonder. I will find many wonderful
things here that will bring me satisfaction and joy.
Maybe things to eat, maybe things to wear.
But the Mall is a cultural liturgy that is forming you into
the idea that you are what you own.
What about the rally? What about the political rally
where we go and exercise our free speech, right?
And we get to tell it like we see it, and that's fine.
But the cultural liturgy of the rally is forming you into a
person that believes and lives as though you are what you
control, which is why we end up demonizing other people that
don't believe and see like us because we want to control.
That's the end that we're reaching for.
What about the game? I see some jerseys out here,
right? Am I aware?
I don't want to look, please don't tell me, but am I aware
that my football team was one up on Manchester City as I was
stepping up to preach? Yeah, I knew that because my
phone told me that truth may have gone.
I didn't have high expectations. But when we are steeped in the
culture of the game and our team and our tribe, we start to
believe this story that you are your record, your record, and it
doesn't stay in the mall or the rally or the game.
It comes home with you and everywhere you go, and you
happen to turn up everywhere that you are.
Along with these three larger formative things, our habits,
our communities, our desires, and our rhythms all factor into
who we are today and who we're becoming.
To change is the normal of the human experience, and we're all
changing and growing in One Direction or another.
But how often do we examine? To what end?
Where am I heading? If you were to look at a line of
my life and change and transformation, what am I
becoming? You want to ask a dangerous,
risky question? Ask someone close to you.
Am I more kind and gentle and humble than I used to be?
Just find out. But how do we even know what
target we're aiming for? Who should we become and what is
the good life, and how do we get there?
So we live in a world of competing ideals.
So you might be simultaneously carrying the idea of radical
generosity, but you grew up in a household, as I might be telling
on myself here, why financial security was the baseline of
knowing that you were doing well.
But also, there's all of these guitar pedals that I want in my
life, and there's pleasures to pursue.
And I have these ideals that Duke it out inside of me to
generously give away everything, but also to hold on to
everything so that we're secure, but also to buy a few things
because, you know, some days are hard and sweet.
Guitar tone makes me feel better, right?
You fill in your blank because we live with hearts that have
competing wants. I want a healthy body and I want
cheeseburgers. And too much of either one of
those denies the other. Which one's going to win?
Stay tuned. And then we live in communities
of competing behaviors. Listen for those of us that live
and work. Hi, my name's Johnny.
I'm a volunteer member of the teaching team.
Let's get that out of the way. Now, my wife and I are directors
of member care at a missions organization here in New
Braunfels. That means the majority of our
days now are spent within the community of faith, whether it's
doing volunteer stuff here or if it's in our day job taking care
of missionaries around the world.
But I did used to work in the marketplace in an IT job.
And I know that the office party isn't a lot like my small group
on a Sunday night. There are competing behaviours
into which we find ourselves with pressures to conform to the
group. Who should we be?
What does it mean to have a good, a blessed life, as Jesus
would say? And how are we going to get
there? In essence, how do we grow as
followers of Jesus, specifically into the maturity the pastor
Jason talked about, right? This is the goal of the those
who serve in servant leadership inside the church.
The apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd and teacher
is given to equip the Saints for the work of ministry and to the
end that we grow up into the fullness of Christ.
We're not meant to stay babies in Jesus.
Childlike in our faith, yes, but mature.
So how do we change? How do we get there?
Today we're going to look at some aspects of Christian
spiritual formation. I want to be specific with that
Christian spiritual formation because every single person on
the planet is being spiritually formed.
We are spiritual beings, body, mind, soul, strength.
We are spiritual beings and all people are such, but not all
people are being formed into the image of Jesus.
So to talk about Christian spiritual formation has to be
formation in the way of Jesus and towards his likeness.
We're going to see Paul address the malformation of the old way
of life and he's going to give us a clear picture of formation
in the way of Jesus. And then there's a few case
studies. Who loves a good case study in
the room? I got like.
My peeps, 2 of you great, we're going to be reading James Smith
and the rest of you do whatever you want to do it's fine so
we're going to come back to our text and begin working through
I'm teaching from the NASB. That's what we settled on as our
teaching text specifically because.
It's a little more clunky. The message read so well today
love that translation for this passage but to teach and to get
into some of the dynamics of their original language, we like
a a text that's a little bit more technical little.
Harder for us makes us realize, hmm, this wasn't written in my
language today and so we're in Ephesians 417 through 32.
Pray for me that we get there. We can do we can do this.
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,
including preaching 1/2 a page of Bible right here we go verses
17 through 19. Paul says so I say this.
And affirm in the Lord that you are to no longer walk, just as
the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their minds.
It's just boys there for a moment.
So Paul gets actually pretty strong in the Greek here.
I'm affirming something in the Lord.
This is a truth for all people, that you are to no longer walk
just as the Gentiles. Who's he writing to?
All your gentiles? They're still gentiles in a
ethnic sense. But he says you're not to walk,
just as the Gentiles walk in the futility of their minds.
If you have. Read through the Old Testament.
Maybe there's something's going to pop up in reflecting on the
book of Ecclesiastes where the Wisdom teacher talks about
things being meaningless and vanity and are chasing after the
wind. The futility of the way of
thinking in the old life. Meant though what people
believed would bring about their ultimate satisfaction and
welfare of others never works out.
They were chasing something that was a waste of time, he goes on.
If you think that wasn't harsh, being darkened in their
understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the
ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their
heart, is a winning speech, isn't it?
Right here? You're like, everybody's with
you, we're good now, he says, Look, your way of thinking led
to emptiness and brokenness. And not only that, your
understanding was in the dark. As enlightened as you thought
you were before knowing Jesus, you lived in darkness.
You couldn't even see that your way ended in ruin and you were
excluded from the life of God. Now just think back if you've
been with. Us over the weeks to some of the
things that. Paul has prayed for the church
at Ephesus and the surrounding churches where this letter went.
He. Prayed that the eyes of their
hearts would be enlightened because it's dark in here
without God and we need God to move on our behalf to turn the
lights on. And he prayed that they would be
rooted and grounded in love. And when something is rooted and
grounded well, there is life in it, there is SAP in it, it is
flexible, it grows well. But here we have.
Hearts that have become hardened because they've been cut off
from the God life. Stemming from ignorance,
stemming from a hard heart, they just kept trudging down the path
of death and more death and brokenness, and it's kept them
cut off to the extent verse 19 that they having become callous.
Have given themselves up to indecent behaviour for the
practice of every kind of impurity.
With greediness, there is a callous compulsion that begins
to set in. The more that people give
themselves to a certain practice and way of being, the more they
want to do that thing. And so Paul uses this term of of
greediness, right? They've given themselves up to
something and they just want more and more and more of it.
This is the cycle of addiction. It is observable in your life
and in the lives of many people who have found themselves caught
up in chasing substance or chasing shopping or sex or
whatever. The thing is that you think I
just got to have that to feel OK right now.
If I could just have that, I could deal with this other
problem. But all of these things that
aren't God come with an increased.
Cost for a diminished return. The first hit is oh so good, but
after that you are owned, you are enslaved and your behaviours
will change in the pursuit of the thing that your heart
desires. Ben Witherington the third
quotes a guy named Hona in one of his commentaries, where he
says every surrender to temptation encrusts the heart
and narrows the range of its future choice.
It encrusts the heart, so it's harder for truth and life and
light to penetrate through. You might be thinking of the
story of Pharaoh as he resisted God's call to repentance and to
let his people go. And throughout that story,
Pharaoh's heart gets harder and harder and harder.
You might be thinking about your own heart and seasons where you
just didn't want anything to do with God and no matter who
prayed for you, no matter who talked to you were just like,
Nah, I'm good. I found my scene.
I found my crowd. Makes me feel good, helps me
forget the hurts. I'm just going that way.
Our heart gets encrusted. And then I just thought it was
fascinating. It narrows the range of our
future choice. See, we lie to ourselves that
we're truly free, when in fact, apart from Christ, we're
increasingly subject to sin. We're actually less of our
unique self, and we are more closed off to others.
When the world promises you that if you just all throw off the
shackles of old religion, be liberated and free in your
thinking, come on, be a thoroughly post secular
postmodern, wherever we've gotten to person, define your
own destiny. Actually, most of those people
living that way look awfully similar, don't they?
Most of them are caught up in the same patterns and the same
struggles and the same brokenness and there's no joy
and there's no life and it's just getting harder.
The greediness of sin deforms us.
And so then Paul brings us to a new paradigm.
He says, but you verse 20. But you did not learn Christ in
this way, if indeed you've heard of him and have been taught in
him, just as truth is in Jesus. You did not learn Christ this
way, not learn about Christ, not learn the teachings of Christ,
not learn the acceptable social statements of Christ people in a
religious setting. You did not learn Christ the
person himself this way. This is not what it looked like.
Dark and futile and closed off. If indeed he says you have heard
him. Have you heard Jesus?
Have you heard him speak your
name? Have you heard him call you to
Him? I suspect there are some in this
room who are hungry this morning who are desperately wondering,
would he call me? Yes, indeed.
He's calling you right now to him, and your choice is either
the life you've been living or the life in allegiance to him
who laid down his life for you. That's what's set before you.
And so I pray that what you would hear in the rest of this
message is a compelling vision towards the truly good and
beautiful life that would summon you from darkness and into light
as you yield to him. It is the person of Christ who
is the new paradigm. This is the apocalypse that Paul
has been teaching and writing and preaching.
Jesus is the life. Jesus is the light of the world
who shines into our darkness. Have you heard him?
If indeed you've heard him and have been taught in him, just as
truth is in Jesus. See, Jesus is the new center and
the paradigm. The person of Christ calls us to
allegiance. The teachings of Christ are the
instruction that we need to learn how to live when our
children are born. They don't know that those cute
little smiling faces in the wall with face plates around them are
dangerous to stick their fingers and metal objects into.
They don't know. They have to be instructed in
this. So if you as a parent got mad at
them the first time they did that, it's not fair on the
child, right? Because they don't know they
need instruction. You as followers in the way of
Jesus need instruction to know how you live now, not in order
to be adopted, but because you have been adopted and there's
new house rules. And so we learned the House
rules through the teachings of Christ.
And he says the truth is in Jesus.
So as well as allegiance and instruction, I think this points
to the way of Jesus and our alignment.
You might acknowledge that Jesus is the Lord of all creation, and
you might know all of the instruction that he brings.
But will you align yourself, your own life, your own
practices and ways to be in accordance with Him?
The truth is in Him. So he's the measure.
There is no other measure. Jesus is the measure and we
align ourselves to Him or not. And you have the free choice as
to which you will do. But you cannot take that which
is not the way of Jesus and try and slap a Jesus sticker on it
just because you've, you know, said a prayer sometime you can't
do that. You can't baptize your behavior
into Jesus, but you can be baptized into him and align your
life with him. And so Paul tells us like here's
a new paradigm. The old way was dark and futile,
but the new way is life in him. And so we get this idea of
counter formation in the way of Jesus verse 22.
That in reference to your former way of life, you are to rid
yourselves of the old self which is being corrupted in accordance
with the lusts of deceit. And that you are to be renewed
in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, which in
the likeness of God, has been created in righteousness and
holiness of the truth. The reason that I would dearly
love if we someday did a like 77 weeks series through Ephesians
is because there's like multiple messages just in those verses
right there, but. For your sake, my sake, and
everyone's sake, we're just going to be brief and a high
level overview of this quick grammar note for you when it
says to rid yourself and to put off and to be renewed.
These are infinitives, not imperatives.
The difference would be the imperative puts all the onus on
you. You got to you got to do this.
You've got to figure. This out, get it done right now.
It's a command when it's an imperative, but an infinitive
speaks more to what has and is happening.
Friends, we are not alone in the work of formation, in the way of
Jesus, OK, And what? Paul shows us is this.
Picture of taking off the old humanity like a ragged nasty
coat and putting on the new humanity, putting off the old
Adam who said I want to be God myself and ends up living in
complete separation to putting on the new Adam Jesus so that we
are clothed in righteousness and in him and the pat the pattern
of this counter formation is put off and be renewed and put on
and so we can get that idea like the put off All right, so I
stopped doing certain things. I walk out of certain
situations. I don't align with old ways and
I start to try to align in other ways.
But what's this middle bit to be renewed in the spirit of your
minds? Paul is talking about the
reintegration of spirit and cognition.
See, the old way, when we were just all your Gentiles, before
we were baptized into Christ, was darkened in our
understanding and futile in our thinking.
And so we actually desperately need renewal in our ways of
thinking about things. You can't just assume that your
old way of thinking neatly locks into ways here.
An example of that in the world would be I grew up in the
British political system. It is not a one for one to the
US political system. So where I thought I knew
boundaries and how they operate and how to think about things
did not import into my experience of political life
within the US. Your ways of thinking in the old
life need to be examined and for.
That you need to be aware of them and you need the.
Holy Spirit to be at work renewing that this.
Is the just to read that paraphrase from Eugene Peterson
in the Message again, he says take on an entirely new way of
life, a God fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and
working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his
character in you. God is reproducing.
Who He is loving, compassionate, forgiving, just, holy,
righteous, merciful in you. This is what it is to be
baptized into the Christ life. And so there is a radical
change. There should be a radical
change. That begins to take place in our
lives as we put off the old ways and we go through this renewal
where we allow God by His Spirit to work with us to refresh our
ways of thinking and we begin to put on those new ways of living
that seems so foreign and weird to us before.
Like, have you ever tried out, OK, in our cultural moment,
fasting has become like the ultimate diet plan or something,
right? But people have been fasting as
a way to know God and to commune with God and to press in in
prayer forever. We think we're so cool with our
like, well, this is your body type and blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah. Fasting is not a diet trend.
Fasting is a spiritual practice that can break bonds.
Fasting is a spiritual practice that can make us more available
to hear God speak to us today. But if you talk to somebody who
is outside of Jesus about this. They're going to be like, you
are crazy. Would you like a cheeseburger or
a doughnut or any of your weaknesses?
I happen to have brought them to work today just for you.
I may have some things I need to process here.
So what then does Paul do? Having laid out this counter
formation in the way of Jesus that the the purpose of it is
that we would be made new in the likeness of God.
Does that not bring you back to the garden, Adam and Eve and God
breathing life. And these are my image bearers
in the world. And that image has been
devastated by sin. And in Christ that devastation
is being undone so that even today, before the end of the
age, before the New Jerusalem comes down and we are standing
in this new city going. Wow.
I couldn't even conceive of this today.
You can live as people of the Kingdom, bringing about radical
change in your neighborhood and your workplace.
It's a reality. It's not something we're waiting
for out there. It's something we're pursuing
today that we would be image bearers.
And he begins to give us some case studies.
Case studies in spiritual formation.
He says, Therefore, reading yourselves A falsehood, speak
truth, each one of you with his neighbor.
Is that in caps up there? Yes.
Thank you. When the NASB puts things in
caps it means it's a quote from the Old Testament.
Paul is making a. Quote right here.
Speak truth, each one of you with his neighbor, because we
are parts of one another. So Paul quotes from the book of
Zechariah. It's in the Old Testament, it's
in the minor Prophets section if you wanted to find it.
But verse 8, I'm actually at chapter 8.
I'm actually going to read from 16 through 17 says these are the
things which you shall do. Lord is speaking to his people.
Speak the truth to one another. Judge with truth and judgment
for peace at your gates, and let none of you devise evil in your
heart against another. And do not love perjury.
So don't love telling lies about people.
For all these. Things are what I hate, declares
the Lord. Paul just kind of slips this
little. Quote in and breezes on by.
There weren't footnotes in the original text, right?
They just weren't there. Paul just knew the scriptures
like we know a national anthem. It's just in there.
Someone starts it. You're like, I got to finish it.
It's got to happen, right? The scriptures are embedded.
And Paul, he's been formed by them and then reformed in the
way of Jesus. She talks on this one.
We're going to look at them a little more in a moment.
But verse 26, be angry and yet do not sin.
Do not let the sun go down on your anger and do not give the
devil an opportunity. And there is a an illusion at
minimum to Psalm 4, verse four that says tremble, trembling
from anger. You ever been so mad that you're
shook? Yeah, right.
Adrenaline surging. You're like, I got to do
something about this now, right? To tremble and do not sin.
Meditate in your heart upon your bed and be still.
I got to tell you, like, contemplative prayer is really
hard when you're trembling with rage.
It's just a difficult game, all right.
But actually, the instruction of the Scriptures isn't to deny
your anger. But it's to do something
different with it from what the world does.
Be angry and yet don't sin, don't let the sun go down on
your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.
The one who steals Third case study The one who steals must
low no longer steal. OK, cool, I used to do it, don't
do it now great, but rather But wait, there's more.
He must labor, producing with his own hands what is good, so
that he will have something to share with the one who has need.
OK, and then let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but
if there is any good word for edification according to the
need at the moment, say that so that it will give grace to those
who hear. So Paul actually begins to
unpack this idea of put off and be renewed and put on.
He doesn't just run around saying, stop doing that, stop
doing that, don't do that. Instead, he invites the people
into a new way of living. And I think we've got a slide
where we're going to go through some of these things again.
But the old way of lying, whether it's for your gain or
whether it's to slander somebody else, is replaced by speaking
the truth. Why?
Well, what Paul? Says is speak the truth, each
one of you with his neighbor, because we are parts of one
another. And in the reference in
Zechariah, it talks about establishing peace at the gates,
right? And I think what Paul is saying,
because remember the, the, the main metaphor we're working with
is all y'all is the body together.
And what lying does is decimates relationship and undoes trust.
It fractures us relationally one from another.
I don't know about you, but when I go on to any of the anything
online now, my first question tends to be, is this true?
I got to Fact Check the fact checkers because I just don't
know anymore. And then I'm like, I forget the
Internet. I'm just carry on.
I got enough to do here alone. What's going on elsewhere,
right? We're so used.
To lying being a kind of baseline operation relationally,
impulses don't do that instead. Speak the truth.
Why? For connection, because the Holy
Spirit has done this profound work of knitting us together.
We are members one of another. And so if my hand lies about my
foot, that's no good for me, right?
My hand is like, hey, foot's fine, but foot's actually like
swollen and hurt. I need treatment.
I don't need you to lie if hand hits somebody and says.
Foot did it. It's no good.
So we get rid of the old way because we name it and we see
it. But then we put on the new way
because connection is a Kingdom thing.
The old way of unrighteous anger or dysfunctional anger.
Look, anger is like gasoline and it can power a Mustang and it
can burn a house down. Gasoline should be handled
correctly. Or for my British people in the
House of which all my Australian people petrol, right?
Just translate for you. I need subtitles.
Sometimes people, unrighteous anger is the old way and what
Paul instructs is instead resolve your conflict.
Resolve it every day with the Psalm in mind.
Go and tremble in your anger before God first, and then when
that heat has been dealt. With.
Resolve your conflict on the daily so that the devil can't
get a foothold. The reason is protection to
guard the community. Stealing, right?
He says don't steal anymore. Instead do good work.
That's the new way Is good work work?
Work is not a curse. The curse is that work got real
hard, but work is actually part of our image bearing.
So do good work. Why?
So that you may provide. If you used to steal for your
own gain. Not only do you get called to
stop stealing, you get called to labor with excellence so that
you can share with other people. It's a complete transformation.
It goes from greed to generosity.
And then lastly, he says, don't let any unwholesome word come
out of your mouth. The death talk that we used to
participate in needs to stop. And instead we are to be people
who speak life a good word for edification according to the
need at the moment so that it will give grace to those who
hear. The reason is that we are
summoned as a community to be a people who bless and not curse,
who speak life in the way of Jesus to each other and out into
the world. So I want to just say that I,
I'm, I'm with this initiative for shine, shine the light.
When people knock on your door, they come to get hot dog from
you. That's not the opportunity to
tell them how awful Halloween is and how terrible the dark things
in their yards are. Y'all listen?
So, so I don't know. It's like my kid gets scared by
some of the stuff that's there when I walk into school.
I'm just going to tell you that like, I'm not cool with it, but
I'm also not pounding on the door yelling at people about it.
I'm praying, praying Lord let a dog steal that creepy doll.
That's my prayer life people. So if your creepy dog I was
missing, thank the dog. Praise the Lord finally says,
don't grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed for the day
of redemption. All bitterness, wrath, anger,
clamour and slander must be removed from you, along with all
malice. Be kind to one another,
compassionate, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ
also has forgiven you. We are called to be a people
because those 4 examples, the case studies that He gives don't
cover the full gamut of the ways that we break each other right
as we we got so many ways. What he says is essentially
attuned to the Spirit. Don't grieve the Spirit of God,
which tells us something really important.
I don't know where your theology sits here, but if I can grieve
you, then there is personhood involved.
The Holy Spirit is not some kind of ethereal force.
The Holy Spirit is a person, the third person of the Trinity, and
you can grieve him. That sounds bad, right?
Grieving the Holy Spirit sounds bad.
Why do these things grieve him? Because they disturb and destroy
the unity of the body. The Holy Spirit is at work
bringing unity, not uniformity. I really like the way that was
put. Pastor Jason, thank you.
Unity. Together we are a body of
Christ. And we can.
Grieve the Spirit who has sealed us for the day of.
Redemption again, some questions might sit theologically.
You might be like, well I'm sealed and it's 1 and done.
But seals can be broken. Paul is never lackadaisical with
his language. He chooses his words
specifically. You are sealed with the Holy
Spirit. You're marked as an authentic
one. Don't grieve the Spirit and
break the seal. People walk in the way of Jesus
and that's the summons where you walk in the Antichrist or the
Christ life. Will you walk?
Where your mouth is a a mode of destruction or a mode of
blessing, will you walk in a way that your hands take and steal
and gain for you, or give and bless and pour out in generosity
and faith, spiritual formation. And this is a quote from John
Mark Homus Practicing the way book is the process of being
formed into people of love in Christ.
The process takes time of being formed.
You're not there yet into people of love.
Love is the chief metric of maturity in Christ.
He is the center and the focus and the goal.
So I want to apply this and I'll be as brief as I can because I
see that clock. I see you clock.
If you are not yet an apprentice of Jesus, let me just ask you
how you feel your life is currently going, the practices
and beliefs and foundations upon which you have built.
Are they giving you what they said they would?
And is what they said what you actually want?
If not, Jesus is calling. He said that anybody who would
come to him can receive life, eternal life, and he said that
he is the only way to the Father.
So if you've heard people say that Christianity is an
exclusive religion and try to tear it down because of that, I
just say, well, listen, Christianity is exclusive.
Jesus is it we we hold up no other standard or banner.
It's Jesus and Jesus alone, but Jesus leads to a transformed
life of love in a way that nothing else on this planet and
in our history ever has. So how about you accept the
exclusivity of Jesus today and yield yourself to him to become
an apprentice of His way. The call is really Will you put
off the old way and bow yourself to Him and trust him in his
loving goodness that He laid down his life to pay for your
sin and to bring you new life. Now for those of you who follow
Jesus to call this the ongoing work of spiritual formation,
which is just as much of a call to yield yourselves to quickly.
Some things here. Firstly, name your practices,
your patterns and your passions. Practices, patterns and
passions. You need to become observant of
your ways of living. self-assessment is only as good
as yourself awareness. So if you're like well I don't
have any practices, patterns and passions that aren't aligned
with Jesus, you need some people around you who can help you see
where you are deviating. Get the help of trusted people.
If you don't know what your issues are, practices are your
habits and actions in the day-to-day.
For some people it's a little drink to settle the nerves or a
little office gossip to feel pseudo connected.
Tish Harrison Warren in her book Liturgy of the Ordinary, says
that God is forming us into a new people and the place of that
formation is the small moments of today.
That's as true as of our formation in the way of Jesus as
it is as our malformation. What are your practices and are
they leading you into a life of love and what are your patterns?
Your patterns are the repeated tracks that you make in life.
Maybe you have a history of relational conflict, or maybe
there's a history of different ways of numbing out.
Trading in one addiction for a more acceptable addiction is
still addiction. Still try and meet a need or
cover a wound in a way that Jesus hasn't called you to
practices and patterns build together, but underneath them
are passions, the want under the want.
It's the Y that drives our dysfunctions and often times if
we'll spend long enough allowing the Holy Spirit to illuminate
the places in us. The Psalms say look, show me any
crooked way in me right to ask Holy Spirit, would you show me
these ways that don't lead me into the life of Christ.
He'll begin to show them and you'll see the.
Practices. 1st and then you'll see some patterns, but
underneath it is a passion, a want that is trying to be
satisfied outside of Christ. You've got to name them.
And then you need to refresh your vision for the good life.
You will pursue what you desire. So if your passions are
misaligned, get or renew a right desire.
Prioritizing time in the Word, prioritizing time in more
contemplative prayer where we just want to be in the presence
of God. These are ways that we begin to
get a vision of the good life that aligns with the Kingdom.
Get in spaces that you can hear others tell of the goodness of
Jesus and church consumed discerningly.
This is a conviction area. What's the stuff that when you
watch it, lead you more into the loving Kingdom ways of God?
And what's the stuff that makes you want to go burn stuff down?
I want to say most of the time burning stuff down comes out of
an inflamed passion, not out of love and justice.
And then lastly, apprentice to Jesus by a partnership of grace
in community. It's a partnership of grace.
Dallas Willard have quoted this a lot and I'll just keep quoting
it. Grace is not opposed to effort.
It is opposed to earning. You don't earn your way into the
Kingdom but nor do you lie around eating bonbons and
waiting for the Holy Spirit to come and fan you with a gentle
breeze. Apprenticeship to Jesus is
apprenticeship to a servant hearted life and one where we
take on the gentle easy yoke of Jesus and we walk with him.
The Spirit starts and sustains the work of formation, so we
join him in the work of formation into likeness of
Jesus. So church, show up to the work,
make a commitment and make it your priority that we would be
formed by a process into a people of love in Christ.
And you cannot do it alone. No matter how hard you can
introvert, you cannot do this alone.
You need community because community is a space that will
reveal your misalignment. But community is also a space
that provides a place for healing and growth.
And as we read, community is actually a primary benefactor of
your formation in the way of Jesus.
Community is necessary for your apprenticeship in the way.
And so church, we have to commit to it because there's a lot of
other things that want our time and our attention.
But you actually have a choice. And in Christ you have the
freedom to make those priorities now and to live free from the
old ways, not no longer just as the Gentiles, but as Gentiles
transformed by the radical love and power of God.
Thank you for joining us today. River City Church is all about
experiencing and expressing God's love in our lives and
community, and we hope that you've been able to experience
that today. As grateful as I am that you've
spent this time listening in this morning, this podcast is no
substitute for full participation in a local church.
I love it when River City people listen to other pastors, but it
is those who show up week after week faithfully giving their
support and time and resources that make all of this possible.
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Thanks so much for listening. May the Lord bless and keep you
in all grace and peace.