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.
Good morning, man, I am glad. I'm so glad to be here.
I missed you all. I'll tell you, I have something
to tell you. So if you're here for the first
time in the past six weeks or so, you don't know who I am.
I'm Jason. I'm the pastor here.
Every summer I take a little bit of time to get away and just and
and kind of pray and let our teaching team teach.
I want to acknowledge our teaching team.
Holy cow. Right?
Like. So it was Aaron, and then it was
Rebecca, and then it was RJ, and then it was Jennifer, and then
it was Johnny. And I'm forgetting somebody.
And it's terrible. It would have been great.
Jason Casey. Thank you.
Yeah. Jason Casey.
Sorry, Casey. But you know, I'm grateful for
them because listen, they all have full time jobs.
This is not their thing that that they do.
And so they took time to listen and to pray and to ask God, hey,
like, what do you want to say and how do you want to say it?
And I, they talked about tough stuff.
And that leads me to you. Like, I want to thank you for
coming. And I want you to know, right?
Like a series on idolatry heavy lifting.
Tough stuff, right? Most, a lot of churches during
the summer they're like we'll talk about self esteem and you
know and what kind of tell story like not you.
No way. You're like we want to talk
about and I'm so I'm so grateful for you.
And so last week during this service we had an opportunity to
sneak in now and I we we snuck in and we kind of sat back there
and and the deal was I just wanted to go to church at my
church right. And not be the pastor and not
have to fix things or figure things out.
And so, as I was sitting there, I was almost.
Immediately, just kind of overcome.
Right. And they were just emotion.
And I want to say, so very careful case.
So I'm not one who hears audible voices from the Lord.
Right. Like, I just like, you know,
some people do whatever, but but they're every once in a while,
you just get an impression, right?
Like a sense of feeling, whatever, that's so strong that
you know that it's something it's unusual for you.
And that was sitting back there, right back in this kind of
little area last week. And I'm watching, you know,
little Gabby sing and, you know, this is a House of miracles,
what I want to tell you. And I hope you'll hear this.
And you'll receive this for you because, like you were here, the
Lord is so pleased. And this isn't a sense of that
He doesn't know, right? Like, this isn't a sense.
Like you've hidden that ugly thing really good, so He doesn't
know what's come and gone. No, the Lord sees, and He knows
what your life is about, and He knows all the struggles that
you're facing, and He knows the ugly stuff.
And you're here, listening. And so I just want to say thank
you for being a kind of place that in the summer will continue
to show up, will continue to listen to, to difficult hard
teaching. And I believe that you go home
and you think about it and you and you kind of wonder.
And so a lot of you right now, today are just like finally, we
don't want to talk about idols anymore.
And that's not really the case at all.
See that first service didn't laugh at that either.
They're like, well, because it's not funny.
It's not funny at all. Here's the thing.
Here's how we have to talk about it.
It's serious business. It's a big, it's a big deal,
right, Because we've, as we've seen right, we saw kind of
throughout the whole six week series of the deal, right.
These idols, they get in us and they are sneaky and they are
subtle and they get their tentacles in us and they get
their hooks in us and then they begin to drive and control our
lives and they begin to make life difficult and unmanageable
and hard and and we just get down that road, right.
And So what I would say is, as a believer, as a Christian, this
business of. Idols we don't ever graduate
from. We don't ever get to get away
from looking at our hearts and going, Lord, is there anything
in my heart that is taking your place?
Is there anything that's calling the shots in my life?
But you right? And that can be dangerous.
That can feel hard. We don't.
We don't want to do that. I don't.
I don't want to talk about that. It's easier to just assume and
it's easier just to pretend. What I would just say is it's
really not. Because idols are cruel
taskmasters, right? They are absolutely unpleasable.
We have a God who is pleased, and we have these idols and
these taskmasters who are radically unpleased.
Not only that, this whole process of of dethroning idols
in our life, that's what following Jesus is.
Jesus came as king. Jesus came as Lord, right?
The Lord, the the. The word literally means like
boss, like master. And so Jesus comes as king and
he comes as boss. And so he's going to, he's going
to take aim at all the idols. And so as we follow Jesus,
listen, you should expect regularly to find areas in your
life where you just go. I'm trusting that instead of
Jesus. It doesn't mean that you're
doing it wrong. It means that you're doing it
right. It means that you now have an
opportunity to make those decisions and to and to follow
him. Right.
And it's not just Jesus. It's not just in the New
Testament. If you go to the Old Testament
right, all the way back to the very beginning as God, you know,
Adam and Eve, right? What it said, they, he told him,
don't eat that. And what reason would they have
to eat that? Except they said they saw that
the fruit was pleasing to the eye and it was good for food and
and it was good for making one wise.
And so they chose those things. Over the reality that God is
king. And since then all of human
history has been plagued by idolatry.
And so the message of God to his people in Israel as they were
taking their promised land, as they were wandering in the
wilderness, the message always was go get rid of the idols.
And when we get to the Book of Kings and Chronicles, it tells
kind of the the story and the history of of God's people.
We talk about these kings and they would say he was a good
king, but. He didn't go after the high
places. He didn't go get the idols down.
He did a lot of good things and it was great, but he let the
idols remain. And so it's an invitation and
it's a challenge to us to not let those idols to remain, to
not let those things. So let me paint really a picture
for the rest of the year. Okay, you don't have to remember
this. Like, we're just going to do it.
But I want to give you. So, you know, kind of we know
where we're going, right, for the next six or seven weeks.
We're starting a new series today called A Long Walk to
Freedom, right. And.
What we're going to talk about this week is we're going to talk
about, let me back up too many times, I think in church, even
as pastors, because it's easier for me to just stand here and
Thunder forth on things that you should do.
Stop being idolaters, Stop worshiping at stop.
You're just right. And some people, like, if we
grew up in church, we'd love that.
Like, kill them sinners. Gee, right.
Tell them right. Yeah, right.
And we think. And so it's easy to Thunder
forth. Here's the problem.
When that becomes the reality of what this is about, we walk out
of here and we may have a vague or a general sense of the fact
that we've messed it up somehow, but we don't know how to do it
different. And so if we've just spent six
weeks talking about the fact that we have idols and big idols
of money and idols of of distraction and idols, you know,
and all these things. If we have all these idols in
us, if we don't believe, if we just don't start to get a sense
that God can actually lead us out of those and away from
those, what happens in is what settles in is hopelessness or
anger or bitterness. And so you may experience that.
That may be your kind of. Experience right now, but what
we're going to do for the next several weeks is we're going to
look at the process for removing idols for our lives.
And the reality is like and you get like this is a little bit
self-serving maybe or may seem that way, right.
But you need kind of the whole process, right.
Which means that you have to come back next week, right.
We're not going to get the whole thing this week, right.
So for the next six weeks we're going to talk about the process
of idolatry movement removal. After that, we're going to spend
about four weeks and we're going to look at some very crystal
clear practices that Jesus use. The practices that Jesus.
To make sure that he stayed free from idols.
That will help us stay free from idols.
And then after that, here's the danger if we just stop there,
right? We talk about the process and we
talk about the practice process that the problem there is we
just leave from here and go, great, I'll do it.
I've got the strength and the willpower and I'll just, it's
all up to me. And there is nothing about that.
That's good news, is there? There's nothing about that that
that should give us hope. So we're going to talk about the
process and we're going to talk about the practices.
And finally we're going to talk about the power to do that.
We're talking about the Holy Spirit and the role of the Holy
Spirit in our life. And so this is an ongoing
conversation that impacts and affects all of us, right?
But my hope is that as we continue to walk together, we
begin to really have an idea of how to answer that question.
How can we get rid of these things that control us?
And that destroy us, that ruin our lives.
The first question that we have to ask is, and that you may be
asking and and listen, I hope at some point over the last six
weeks as you as you heard, as you listen, you just started to
say, man, yeah, I struggle with that.
I think that's that's an idol in my life.
The question then becomes that we have to ask is, is freedom
from that thing? Is it really even possible?
Does God really want me to be free in an understandable sense,
where people would be able to look at it and just be able to
go? That person does not have
evidence of of that brand, that unique brand of idolatry in
their life. Is it possible?
And so that's kind of the question that we're going to
camp on. And let me just kind of maybe if
I need to tip my hand, the answer is an emphatic yes, You
can live free. From the things that if God
reveals it, if the reason that he reveals it is because he
wants to take it away from you. So we're going to spend most of
our time in John chapter 8 today.
If you want to turn there. I want to set some context.
The 1st 11 verses of John chapter 8 is this crazy account
and not crazy like in a bad way like eye opening and humbling
and beautiful account of Jesus with a woman caught in adultery.
And we're not going to kind of talk about that today.
But before that, John Chapter 7, John sets the context for that
and what we find is Jesus and his disciples and John.
Chapter 7 and continuing to John, Chapter 8 are celebrating.
It's the time in Jerusalem called the Feast of the
Tabernacles. OK.
And so the Feast of the Tabernacles was a big weeklong
feast ordained and instituted by God.
And the point and the purpose of the Feast of the Tabernacles was
to celebrate God's deliverance of the Jewish people out of
slavery in Egypt. So it was all about freedom.
It was all about deliverance. It was all about God taking his
people who he loves and leading them.
Now, when he led them out of Egypt, and we've heard right, a
part of the Red Sea and the Egyptians came, it was this
great miraculous thing. He didn't immediately say great.
You go from Egypt and now you live in Israel.
For 40 years. They wandered around in the
desert. And it doesn't say that they,
you know, pitched the tent and they stayed there for 40 years.
It says that they wandered around.
And the way that they moved was interesting.
We're told that there was by day there was a pillar of cloud and
at evening there was a pillar of fire and so.
There was this unusually great bright light in the sky, and it
would camp out. For sometimes when the the
pillar of fire would camp out, the people would stop and they
would pitch their tents and they would have their lives and they
would do their thing. But when the light, when the
pillar of fire moved, began to move, the people of Israel would
pack up their stuff and they would follow this fire.
And so one of the ways that the Jewish people would celebrate
the Feast of Tabernacles in the Temple right now is thousands of
years before. In Jesus's time, in the 1st
century, the way that they would celebrate the feast of tyranny
was in the temple. They would have these great
giant chandeliers right with lots of with big candles and oil
and the and the idea was in the temple, which was where the
presence of God was dwelt right. The chandeliers in that temple
and the kind of one of the outer courts of the temple, the
chandeliers that were lit up would give light to the whole
city. From anywhere in Jerusalem you
could see the light and again there's deep and rich and fixed
symbolism all over this. The idea is the light would draw
our attention, that light would draw us and invite us and lead
us up into God's presence in the Tabernacle.
So this idea of God leading with light and God's light being a
guide it absolutely. Saturates Jewish history, Jewish
theology, the whole entire ethos would have understood God's
light as being their guide. We see it in the Psalm Psalm
chapter 43, verse three. Send out your light and your
truth. Let them lead me.
Let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.
This could have been read at the Feast of the Tabernacles.
Let your light shine, and let it draw me and guide me.
Then I will go to the altar of God, To God my exceeding joy,
and I will praise you with the Lear.
Oh God, my God, If you go to Psalm 119105.
Which is this? Extended.
And I say extended, I mean, it's long.
Like hundreds of verses. This extended meditation on the
role of God's word in worship. And Psalm 119105 says your word
is a lamp onto my feet and a light onto my path.
And so the entire kind of Jewish idea of who they were was
saturated with this idea that God leads his people.
That God has a plan for them, that he will lead them from
slavery and exile into life and in the goodness and in freedom.
And in a sense, the word was just follow the light.
And so this deeply entrenched idea in the lives of the Jewish
people as they, as they said, right, we look for the light.
The light is in the temple. The light is in God's word,
which is the Torah. The light is, is there and it's
ready to go, and we just follow the light.
So now you can imagine at the Feast of Tabernacles when Jesus,
this Jewish rabbi stands. And in verse 12, Jesus spoke to
them saying, I am the light of the world.
Bro, you are cracked. We know what light is about.
Light is about illumination. Light reveals, light shines,
light shows up. But he doesn't just stop there.
He says Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but we'll
have the light. Of life.
And So what we what we've gone from is Jesus's word, which is
which? To the 1st century Jewish mind
was the Torah, the first five books, Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
They'd enshrine the message of the prophets and all that to
leave them. But the problem was, in the 1st
century, the Jewish people in Israel weren't very free.
They were under Roman oppression.
They didn't have the kind of life that that they thought they
would be. And so they were looking for
freedom and for exile. And so the way that they dealt
with that was by rigid and meticulous adherence and
obedience to the Torah. It's about the rules.
This is where the Pharisees came from.
They just said if you mess up a little bit, God won't come back.
And then we'll just be stuck and we'll be slaves forever.
And into that Jesus stands up and says, guys, I'm the light of
the world. I'm the 1.
So it's not just the books of the law, it's just not the
Torah. It's Jesus's life, it's his
teachings, it's the ministry. It's in Matthew chapter 5 when
Jesus said blessed are the poor and spirit for they'll receive
the Kingdom of God. He said blessed are those who
mourn, for they'll be comforted. Jesus is giving a picture and an
illustration of what his teachers when he says forgive
and you'll be forgiven, but if you don't forgive, you won't be
forgiven. And he says turn the other
cheek, go the extra mile. Forgive 70 * 7.
When Jesus stood in his teaching in his life and he says a lot of
people are going to come to me and Matthew chapter seven, he
says a lot of people are going to come to me on that last day
and they're going to say, Lord, we we built a big church and we
preached for you and we did all these amazing things, Jesus, and
we're ready to to kind of come be with you.
And Jesus's response will be I never knew you.
He's not going to say he didn't spend enough time in the book.
He's not going to say he didn't memorize.
He's going to say you didn't I didn't know you.
Now some of your fields starting to feel a little scandalized
right now you're just like a bad pastors getting like dangerous.
We're going to get there That's that's that's good, right.
I'm saying Jesus said I didn't know you.
And at the end of Matthew, chapter seven, he says, If
you'll build your life on my teaching.
On me, then you'll be like this house that's built on a rock and
its foundation is strong and it's good.
And if you build your foundation on that, then your life will be
stable and it will be steady and it will be good.
But if you don't, if you build it on something else, you'll be
stuck. And so Jesus makes this
scandalous statement. I am the light, and he says
follow me. So what do we do with the book
then? What do we do with the Torah?
Now, right? We're supposed to, we're
supposed to do that. What about Leviticus, man,
there's got a bunch of rules in there and we just discard those.
We just throw those away. We'll go down to verse 30 in
that, right? Verse 30 says as he was talking
about Jesus, Jesus was saying these things.
Many believed in him. So now the context for this is
they were everybody that would have hurt Jesus in this, in
this, what he's saying would have been a Jewish person.
They would have had their their hopes in that and so.
What happened says when it says they believe him, These are what
we in the kind of the 21st century, W would call new
believers. OK, And listen.
You may be a new believer and listen real quick.
This is so good. If you're here and you're a new
believer and you're a little bit concerned and you're a little
worried about me, I don't know enough.
I'm not doing this. Like, listen, Jesus knows.
And Jesus welcomed them. And I want you to hear this.
We welcome you too. You don't have an expectation
that you live up to anything because because I want you to
know, we also understand that being a new believer and having
new new ideas and learn follows means there's a lot of stuff
that we're going to get wrong, right.
Like I new believers get, specially these Jewish believers
that could have been like I believe Jesus, kind of like what
you're saying. You're the light that I'm
supposed to follow you, but I'm not ready for all that Leviticus
stuff. I'm not I I just, there's so
much that I don't know. Like can I just have Jesus and
not kind of have the rules and can I have Jesus and can you
just love me? Can I can I not do that?
Right. And so new believers can be
messy. And I just want you to say it is
a beautiful and a blessed messiness that we don't just
welcome, we seek it here. We want to be honest with where
we are and who we are and and what we're doing.
And So what we're told is Jesus was surrounded by these new
believers who were trying to figure out.
What? What's it about?
What are we doing? You may be here, too.
Now listen, you may actually have been a follower of Jesus
for a long time and not know what it's about.
I want you to know that's Okay too.
Okay. What's not Okay is to stay.
Where we are. And to build a fence around it
and to lay down a foundation and idolize it.
It's not okay to stay. Well, here I am, and I cannot
and will not go anywhere else. So Jesus is.
We're told in verse 30 that many of them had believed him.
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, If you abide
in my word, you are truly my disciples, right?
So this is a conditional statement.
If you do, then you are. And the converse of that is, if
you don't, then you're not. And so now we have to ask what
we're doing. And in the 21st century year, I
think a lot of us when we read this, we the first thing that
comes to remind is Bible study, right.
The word of Biden is to like, remain to camp out.
It's a picture like of the Tabernacles, right?
Like I'm going to sit, I'm going to build a house here and I'm
going to remain. And so some of us maybe read
this and we look at maybe we were taught in, in our, in our
churches or our Sunday school growing up that you need to
spend 37 hours a day in Bible study.
And if if you don't, you're not, it's not OK, right.
And Jesus is probably mad at you, but.
But you're sure not going. But we've already kind of seen,
right, how Jesus expands, right? And Jesus takes.
And he's talking about his life, the message of his life, the
things that he said for sure, but the things that he did, the
way that he walked, the life that he led, how he treated
people, how he treated religion, how he treated the church, how
he treated the temple. And he says, so if you abide in
my word and he says you're truly my disciples, that still holds
true today. We don't notify that.
We don't take that away. We don't, we don't know that you
have to abide in His word. And so one of the things that I
kind of sense and recognize and realize while I was away for six
weeks, right, and and things popping in your head or
whatever, one of the things that came back to us is for River
City to to continue to see God's pleasure and places.
We have to be a place that is radically saturated in God's
word. It's not enough for you to come
and get a little dose from me every week.
It's not enough for for you. But it's also not enough for us
to have 75 Beth Moore Bible studies lined up, right?
I mean, just go. I've done them all right.
It's not that's not okay, right. What we have to do is moment by
moment, day by day, instant by instant.
We have to acknowledge and stay and be in this message of
Jesus's life, right? So he goes on and you will know
the truth and the truth will set you free.
That's good news isn't it? Now truth.
Truth is a heady and a dangerous thing.
See, This is why Jesus is so clear throughout his teachings.
The word of God is expressed in in the written word points to
Jesus. Jesus is the word of God and
that's why he says if you abide in me.
He didn't say if you go to Bible study every week.
He said the the idea that God has created you to be free, but
the way that God works his freedom into your life is
through truth. And truth doesn't change in
every generation. Truth isn't new today and false
yesterday and it's not true today and it won't be true
tomorrow, right. And so it forced us to to kind
of contend and to step back and go, OK, what's real and what's
big and what lasts and and and what indoors, right.
And so he's talking to these recent hang ups who would have
been thoroughly saturated and entrenched and drenched in in
all of the Torah and all that. And he said, follow me and that
idea. Follow me is the same idea as
abide in my word. Jesus didn't say for us to walk
around 24 hours a day with our head in the book.
Because if we walk around like this, do you know what we miss?
You. You miss creation.
Romans 120 says that what's been known about God can be seen, but
even his invisible qualities by what's been made.
So if we walk around here and what Jesus is saying us is if we
as a people, if you as a person will intentionally and
deliberately and consistently grow in the way and in the
lifestyle of Jesus, then you will have the life that he
created for then you will be free.
He did not say if you are always at Bible study.
Underlying here thing here is that academics, an academic
pursuit of Jesus or religion or faith does not lead to the kind
of freedom that God wants for you.
And as scandalous again as that may sound to some of you are so
twitchy right now, you're just like you say the Bible doesn't
matter, right? Listen, what I'm saying is you
probably know somebody who knows more Bible than you that you
would never want to be around. You maybe know somebody who
knows so much scripture and your thought.
Maybe if Jesus is like them, I'll take my chances at the
other place in eternity. If Jesus is stuffy and cranky, I
don't want to be any part of that.
You don't get the life that Jesus has for us exclusively by
having a data set, by knowing that.
And here's how we know. We live in a time where there
are more Bible study resources and tools available to us, to
the common person and the common man than ever before in history.
And I would venture a guess, and I don't think it's some great
kind of challenge and stretch of belief to say we are no more
free than we ever have been. We have more opportunities to
open the word and to understand what it means.
We have ordinary common people, unschooled, unlettered people
have the ability to get into the original languages and and
dabble and get in and understand the Hebrew and the Greek.
And yet we don't experience the freedom that the very book seems
to imply and promise to us. And So what that tells me how
this brings us all back around is maybe we've made an idol out
of the Bible or Bible study. Maybe we have begun to worship
the scripture is kind of like the 4th member of the Trinity,
right? Which makes it not the Trinity
anymore because try is 3 and all kinds of mental gymnastics to
get around that right. And so let me real quick though,
put some things to rest, rightfully so.
You may be concerned that I'm diminishing the the the
scriptures, but I'm saying man, you don't need the scripts.
You don't need that. So just to make sure that I'm
very clear, going to put it up, you can take a picture and
remind yourself I'm going to read it so that I don't make any
mistakes and I don't fumble my way past.
Are you ready? The Bible.
This. Whatever you know the English
standard version of the new International version of the New
Living translation. The Bible is a trustworthy,
indispensable. That's a word that you have to
know. You have to hear my heart on
this. The Bible is an indispensable
tool because because here is why it is indispensable, because it
accurately and faithfully. That means when you read it, you
can trust it. You can believe it and it will,
and you can trust it to be repetitive, to understand, to
get over it, it accurately and faithfully portrays the full
expression of God's heart. You want to know what God's
heart is? You can see it.
It's in the Word, the full expressions of God's heart and
his will for humanity, which is the life and teaching of Jesus
and the Gospels, and by his Holy Spirit through the Church.
K So the Bible is an indispensable tool because it
points us to Jesus so. And I talk about the Gospels and
the Holy Spirit and the book of Acts and the church and all
that. So does that mean that the Old
Testament is no. Listen, what I'm telling you is
every page in the Scripture, every passage, every idea points
us to Jesus. For instance, the feast of the
Tabernacle. They thought it celebrated
ultimately their escape from slavery in Egypt.
And it did. But what we see in John Chapter
8 is it pointed to Jesus see the pillar of fire in the sky.
That's not the light of the world.
Jesus is the light of the world. But what God had been preparing
his people to do since forever, He had prepared them to look for
his guidance. He had prepared them to look for
his leadership. He had prepared them to expect
an illumination of their life, to have light in the sky and
light in the darkness. So when Jesus stands and says I
am the light of the world and John chapter 14, he says I am
the way and the truth and the like.
What Jesus says is I am what God has been saying since the
beginning. So we need the Old Testament
because it points us to what Jesus is.
It points us to who Jesus is. But what I mean, but I mean is
you don't get to trump Jesus. With Leviticus we don't get to
say, We don't get to say right. When Jesus says love your
enemies, we don't get to talk about Babylon and
Nebuchadnezzar, right? Like when when we don't get to
trump Jesus with Paul. What we do is when we read
something like Paul and Paul says something and we look at
Jesus and Jesus seems to be doing the exact opposite, what
we do is we reconcile it. And this is where we need
community, this is where we need all of those tools.
But what it does is are you listening?
It removes from us a flat reading of scripture.
It removes from us every opportunity for us to use the
scripture as a hammer to destroy or fix or win.
Because what we look at the word of God is Jesus, who found his
enemies and redeemed them and loved them and restored them.
And so when we read in the scripture something that Paul
says what we've asked is our prayers.
Jesus, help me find you in this. Help me know and understand you.
And so my hope when I say that I want River City to be a church
radically saturated in the scripture, what I mean is I want
us as His church to have a radical awareness of the
presence of Jesus in our lives. I want us to be growing in the
things that Jesus grew in. And we know in Galatians chapter
522 and 23 Love if we're getting the doctrine right, but we're
not more loving. We've made an idol of something.
Joy. If the church isn't the most
joyful gathering of people in the world.
We've made an idol of something. And it's keeping us from what
God has. Because remember, what an idol
does, right? It lies to you.
It seduces you. It it tells you that it's all
up, it's all according to you, right?
So Galatians 5. Love and joy and peace and
patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and
gentleness and self-control. And we may have the most
biblically educated church in history, and we may not actually
live be living the kind of life that Jesus wants to call us into
now. It feels like, feels like I'm
like, mad or angry, whatever. It's not it.
I think that's what we've been talking about with the idols,
right? Like you got to see him to know
him. And the question then becomes,
what? What is it that Jesus wants from
us? Like, why?
What will following lead to? Listen at the end of that
Matthew 8 passage. Matthew 8, John 836 says if the
sun sets you free, you will be free, indeed freedom.
Galatians 51 says that it is for freedom that Christ has set you
free. So don't be burdened again by a
yoke of slavery. You were created to be free
Christian, so don't give in to bondage.
Don't give in to don't give in to slavery again.
Here's this kind of the big idea.
Following Jesus will lead you into the freedom that you were
created for. And I humbly submit to you if
you're night, if you're, and I'm not talking necessarily day by
day, minute by minute, but I'm talking about over.
When you look at the broad movements of your life, if you
are not increasingly free, there is a better than likely chance
that you are not actually following Jesus.
You may be doing lots of Bible study.
You may be here every time. You may be doing all those
things. But Jesus wants to lead you from
lead you to freedom from bondage, from slavery into
freedom. And again, Now this question
comes back. Do we believe that?
Because you may have been following Jesus for 20 years and
there may be this thing that you don't have.
And listen, what I don't want to do is I I don't want this to
become some heavy kind of hammer thing.
Jesus comes with grace. What I want us to do is take an
honest and authentic look at our lives and just say I'm not as
free as as I should be. And Jesus doesn't do that to to
yell at us or to punish us. He does that.
He reveals that he's the light to show it to us so that we can
go, oh, I want to be free in that area.
I want all the freedom that Jesus can muster.
We started the year by looking at the Garden of Eden, right?
And you know, the thing about the Garden of Eden is there were
no boundaries to it. There are four rivers that
flowed out of it but there was number end to it.
It was boundary less well. He told him not to eat that
fruit. 1000 seeds trying to crush their right.
It's like you just want to apple, right?
What if the whole idea behind the apple was there had to be
some way for humanity to tangibly acknowledge and
recognize that they are there is a God, and they're not it.
And the only way to make that happen is to obey.
And the temptation in the garden was you provide for yourself.
You provide what you need, what's good for you, you be God
without God. And I just say to you lovingly,
my hope is this invites you into freedom.
You are not created or capable of being God.
Your frame was not designed for it.
And let me just say this. If you're tired, if you're
exhausted, if you're anxious, if you're angry, if you are
frustrated, that's what trying to be God feels like.
The awareness that there are things that you just can't.
For all of your trying and wishing and hoping, you just
can't fight and you just can't figure out and you just can't
make it happen. So let's talk about a truth,
right. There's a truth that will set
you for just that you know. You'll know the truth and truth.
Let me show you a truth that will set you free to this.
You thought we forgot? Maybe.
There it is. This is our confession.
We say this every week. We are badly broken.
Let me just tell you, Church, that statement right there has
the ability and the capacity to deliver a measure of freedom in
your life that you have never experienced and understood.
We love this statement. We have it on our shirts.
We have it on our hats. Listen, people come to me all
the time and they wonder, like I believe that Badly broken is
deep and deeply loved, is embedded into the culture of who
we are. But the question isn't do we
know it. The question isn't do we love
it? The question isn't even do we
believe it. The question is, is it setting
us free? Is this reality that we are
broken but loved? Is it setting us free?
So the question is, are we less anxious then?
I'm not just talking about River City, I'm talking about the
church at large. Are we as a church less anxious
than the culture at large? Are we less afraid than the
culture at large? Are we less angry within the
church than those who are without the church?
Are we less divided within the church than we are without of
the church? Are we less likely to be
offended and get our feelings hurt inside the church than
outside the church? My experience is the answer to
all of those is no, we're not. Not universally.
Not that there aren't some pockets of it.
But listen, church, I'm not trying to yell at you here.
I'm not trying to. I'm hoping that you will embrace
this idea that there can and there is supposed to be more for
you. How do you respond when you get
into the Scripture or you hear a preacher preaching and he
preaches a text, a verse, a teaching that confronts some
kind of sacred belief of yours? I'm allowed to do that.
I'm allowed to be that. I'm allowed to.
God would never. And we read in the scripture and
it says that and we go find. It says how do we deal when
Jesus confronts our idols, when there's a teaching that we just,
I can't imagine how a God would do that.
And we look in here and just go, I've either got to make this go
away or I have to change or I have to be God in my own life,
in my own world. There's a passage that I often
read at Easter Luke chapter 19. It's on Palm Sunday and Jesus is
ridden in to Jerusalem where he's standing outside the city
and everybody's just celebrating Jesus, Jesus, right.
And they're so happy. And Jesus gets off his donkey
and he walks over to the edge of of the mountain and he looks
over Jerusalem and the crowds are behind him and like
Jerusalem right where the where the chandelier was, where the
temple was, where the very presence of God dwelt, right.
And and Jesus stands over there and listen to his words and look
19 verse 41. And when he drew near, and he
saw the city, he wept over it. And what did he say?
Or that you even you had known on this day the things that make
for peace, but now they're hidden from your eyes.
See, the problem wasn't that the Israelites.
The problem wasn't that the Jewish people in the 1st century
didn't know what the goal was. They knew the goal was peace.
They had looked for peace. They just thought it went
through a different source. They thought the secret to their
peace was getting rid of Rome. If we can just get political
freedom from Rome, then we'll be fine.
If we can just kick them out of Jerusalem and finally get Temple
worship back to what it was supposed to be, then we'll be
OK. And Jesus stands up and he says,
if it was that easy, you would already be free.
But he says, but you can't. You haven't, right?
That's not it. And so my question for us is, we
read these fruits and spirits. We come to church, we do all the
Bible studies and we do all the stuff right in the fruits.
We talk about love and joy and peace and patience, kindness,
goodness, faithful and genitals, self-control.
And what I would ask about your way of life, about the way that
you live, the way that you approach your finances and your
marriage and your relationships and sex and money and
rock'n'roll. How's it working?
Are those who attend this meeting and meetings just like
it all across the country? Are we more free than the
average citizen? And again, lovingly, I would say
that's not always the case. So this series is loosely based
on the 12 steps of recovery and the 12 steps of recovery have a
word they say for kind of the life that we lead, where we look
and we just go. That's where I want to get.
But I'm not getting there doing the things that I do.
They're not leading me to where I am.
But I'm going to keep doing the things that I'm doing and hoping
that tomorrow I will get there. I'm hoping that by turning left
I will go right. I'm hoping that by pursuing
peace with bullets and guns and knives, I'm hoping that by
pursuing happiness and wellbeing, by by money and power
and prestige, that those will leave me, even though that they
never have before. Do you know what the word that
recovery people use? I think it's a valid and a good
word, insanity. What they say is our lives have
become unmanageable without anxiety.
Our lives have become unmanageable without addictions.
Do you know how we have addictions to control that
feeling of being out of control? And so we drink, or we spend, or
we have sex, or we do whatever The thing is for us.
And we hope that tomorrow I can have enough of a drink to be
over it. Tomorrow I can earn enough money
to be over it. Tomorrow I can have enough likes
on my Facebook that I will feel powerful and important.
And what happens is we're stuck. And the word that we have for
that stuckness is denial. And denial is the mortal enemy
of your freedom. As long as we continue to deny
that Jesus wants to lead us somewhere and we're not getting
there, or that he hasn't let us there yet, that this isn't it,
this isn't the full and the total thing.
As long as we do that, we won't be free analyst and we talk
about it like we love America. Jack, what about freedom?
Not going to happen. Freedom.
America rightly exists. Good.
We do have sociological freedom. We have political freedom.
It's a wonderful place we can have this conversation, and we
should have conversation. But I found a helpful idea and a
helpful definition of freedom in Martin Luther King's book Where
Do We Go From Here? And he uses kind of three big
posts to identify what freedom is.
The first thing that freedom is we're going to have, if we're
going to be free, is we have to have the capacity to consider or
weigh our options. OK.
We have the ability to imagine a life that's different from where
we have now. So here's what that looks like.
Now in the life of the alcoholic, of course you can say
I'm free to have a drink. I can do whatever.
Great. Can you imagine a life without
it? It's not.
The question isn't are you free to drink?
The question is, are you free not to drink in a real and
practical sense? In a way where not drinking
wouldn't cause your entire world to unravel, do we have the
ability to make a choice? That's the second one.
Do we have the the capacity to weigh our options?
Then do we have the ability for those options?
So those decisions to express themselves in decision.
Like you can just say I'm free, whatever.
Can you take a month off of Facebook?
You just say, man, my anxiety is so high right now.
Can I take a month off of Facebook?
And of course, intellectually you're free.
Like, you're free to go. Like, like, of course I can.
I've just never actually done it, despite the fact that it
causes me anxiety and fear. And it makes me, and it turns me
against people that I shouldn't be against and it makes me
resent people that I shouldn't resent.
And the third one, I think this is really great.
This is the one that kind of, like, impacted me.
The third component of real and actual freedom is
responsibility. Do we?
Do you have the capacity to acknowledge my life is what it
is because of the decisions that I have made?
And listen, There's a lot of stuff outside of your life that
you can't control. You can't control the person who
abused you. You can't control the abuse that
you suffered, but you can control what you do with that
pain. You can't control what kind of
person your boss is, but you can control how you respond at work
and how you respond to your boss.
You can't control your how your spouse treats you.
And let me be very clear. If your spouse is abusing you,
if they are, if they are physically hitting you, if they
are day after day assaulting your personhood and your
humanity, I want you to know there's a breaking covenant
there. That's not, that's not what God
created and designed marriage to be.
But I'm just saying, I'm just talking about like your your
husband's a little annoying and we're all a little annoying.
There's no iteration of marriage where that's not the reality.
But what I would say in the normal flux and warp and wolf of
life, are you prepared to own your part in the dysfunction of
your marriage? Are you willing to own your part
and the dysfunction of your relationships?
And this all comes back to idols.
So you can stand on my desk and tell me that you that sex is not
an idol for you. But the question I would ask is,
has have your relationships ever been affected or destroyed by
pornography or by infidelity? If you've chosen sex over a
relationship, over a person, a person, a relationship, that
means everything to you. Sex may be an idol.
It may be something that you have to root out of your life.
But it begins by acknowledging it.
It begins by recognizing that's the thing that I have to deal
with. You can just say politics isn't
an idol for me. I'm not an.
I'm not a slave to politics. But if knowing a person's
position or stand on a political issue has ever made you question
their salvation or cause you to fear them, it very well may be
an idol. I love the way Johnny said if
you if for political reasons, you have ever expressed vitriol
to a person created in the image of God, you may have an idolatry
problem. You can say that social media
isn't an idol, Isn't an idol. And while I was on my break, I
had a moment, I was sitting on the couch and I was very anxious
and my chest was tight, right? And you know what, like, And I
was watching a baseball game. I was watching the Astros.
It'd be terrible. And so all this anxiety in my
heart and right. And So what?
My, you know, my response was right.
The first thing my mindset was I got to get distracted, right?
I got to distract myself from the anxiety rather than backing
up and evaluating it and looking at it and saying whatever.
So what I did is I got on Twitter.
Anybody's anxiety ever been made better on Twitter, right?
So the question thought in my head, I do not get to complain
about what I'm willing to tolerate and as long as I turn
to Twitter, I am tolerating anxiety in my life.
Delete. Set it down.
And so then what I was doing, I was like this.
I don't know what to do, but you know what I'm not doing.
I'm not going to that idol that promises if you just scroll for
if you just doom scroll for 10 minutes, then you'll be free.
Then you'll feel better and it never does.
This is the time where Facebook is going to be rich and full and
positive. This is the time where I'm going
to find life on Instagram, right?
It's never friend. And So what if we just say
anxiety is so intolerable to me that I will not log into Twitter
and all the things I will not get on Facebook.
I will not because I like I know if I get on Facebook I'm going
to gossip about somebody, right? And so all the lies you'll be
left out you won't know what's going on.
You won't do that, right? All the lies at the I'll tell
and what have you said. I would rather be non anxious
for my family and present in this moment than out there
somewhere worrying about the end of the world because you can't
make Putin back down or whatever.
You can't do it. And friend, I'm just not sure
that you were created to bear the entire weight of sin and
struggle for the whole human race.
I'm not sure you were created to understand every dark and evil
thing that's going on in this world.
There's enough in here to worry about.
And so we can deny our idols, But the fruit is there standing
at us. We can deny that money is an
idol. But have you ever fought with
your spouse? Do you get anxious and tense and
nervous at an unexpected expense?
Money may be an idol. You can deny that religion is an
idol. But if you continue to show up
year after year and do the same thing day after day and week
after week and month after month, and it never bears any
fruit, and it never grows in you, and you're not becoming
more loving and you're not becoming more kind and you're
not becoming more joyful, what you may have is a religious
idol, which is no better than any religious idol.
They're all religious idols. And So what I say is we have an
idolatry problem and what I want you to grasp like like this is
its six week process, right? Like this is the thing that
we're going to, we're going to be going like self-serving as
heck. I know, right?
Come back next week and I'll tell you right a little bit
more. Not going to tell you the answer
next week either because it's a long walk for the rest of our
lives. But here's where it begins
today. Can you admit that your life has
become unmanageable? Can you admit that the way that
you deal with stress and tension and problems does not produce
the freedom that you desire? And listen, if it does, if you
sit here and just go, I have no problems with the way my habits
are. Like, good, you should teach.
Next week we'll add you to the teaching team.
Good, I say that. But here's the thing, I say that
with all seriousness. If we won't face and confront
the pain and the hurt and the emptiness in our lives and the
things that lead us there, we will never be free.
We will live lives of desperate insanity, doing the same thing
day after day, getting no different results, and wondering
and lamenting why not. So what do we do today?
First thing you have to just come back.
I'm just going to read a passage real quick, real quick.
Hebrews chapter 12, first one. Since we're surrounded by so
great a cloud of witness, let us lay aside every week, every
weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with
endurance the race that is set before us.
Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith for
the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising his
shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Three things real quick. The first thing you have to do
is accept that there is a race chosen for you, and you know
what that means. That means it's not your race to
run. It means you don't get to decide
who you are, how you go, where you're going, the path by which
you get there, or all the rules that take you there.
It means that Jesus has the right to change your mind at any
time. It means that there may be
things that you have closely held for years as beliefs and as
you get in the Word and as you pray and as you talk to levers
and you get wisdom, wise counsel and wisdom, and may mean that
you have to set aside some things that are very close and
very near and very dear to your heart.
And the reason we do that is because the race that He has set
before us is a race to freedom. And it is a marathon, not a
Sprint. And you won't get there
tomorrow. You'll get there on the day that
you die and you open your eyes in eternity and you'll go, This
is what it was for. But here's the hope.
The hope is that if we begin practicing and doing that right
now, heaven won't be that much different than this.
And I don't mean that heaven is going to be like this.
I mean that this will begin to take on the very nature of
transcendence of people. I've known people who have since
that now he's turning is going to be infinitely more
spectacular than anything that we can imagine.
But you can begin to have a real and liberating sense of God's
presence right here and right now.
But you have to give up your race.
And he may say you've been worried about winning your whole
life, and I don't want you to care about winning anymore.
I want you to care about your child at home.
And when you say I will do whatever it takes to do that,
you will begin to experience life.
That's the second thing we ought to accept.
There are behaviors in us that are keeping us from freedom.
It's not externally imposed on us.
That means it can externally be taken away.
I don't care what legislation they pass.
Jesus wants me to be free, whether I live in wherever I
live, whatever the case is, our freedom is not exposed, is not
given to us externally. It comes inside.
You are free to be as loving, and it's joyful and it's
peaceful and it's patient and it's kind and as good and as
gentle and as self-control as you can possibly imagine.
But what keeps us from that is sin.
And you have to acknowledge that you have chosen the path, you
have chosen the way. And the last thing that we have
to do once we've done that is you have to begin to look at
Jesus. Well, how do we do that?
He's not here. I don't see him.
Right. We look at Jesus in the Word
because we believe that the Bible is a faithful and
indispensable reflection of the life and teaching and purpose of
Jesus in this world. So what do you do is you start
reading John this week, and I'm not going to tell you to read a
chapter of John because you may get 3 verses in and you may just
have to stop and you may have to pause and look at it and go and
go. So what is this telling me?
How do I do? What is this?
Keep doing? Do that.
The purpose isn't to get through it.
The purpose is to go, to make it to the end.
And what we do is the problem is we read, we go to the Bible and
we start reading. What are the people doing?
What are the Pharisees doing? What do they listen?
You know what they do? They do what you do.
They're just like you. And every single way, what I
want you to do is look at Jesus. What is Jesus teaching?
What is Jesus saying? What is he correct?
Acting? What behaviors does he correct?
How does he encourage his people?
What are the teachers, the things that he's teaching and
saying? What are they getting at?
And you begin to make the life and the ministry and the
teaching of Jesus the very center point and the very hub of
your life. And what will happen is truth
will begin working itself out in your life and you'll begin to
experience it. Now we're going to practice that
today through the taking of communion.
And communion is a tangible symbol of what Jesus came to
give us. It was the Passover meal,
another one of those celebrations that got it
ordained for his people. And the Apostle pile, the
Apostle Paul rights I received from the Lord what I passed on
to you, the Lord Jesus. On the night he was betrayed, he
took his took bread, and when he had given thanks, he said,
listen, are you listening? Said, This is my body which is
broken for you. Do you know why that's
important? Listen, Jesus was the eternally
existing Son of God. In him there was no brokenness.
He did not ever have. He did not ever in his in his
eternity. His character was perfectly
holy, perfectly righteous, perfectly good.
He was never touched and strained by sin.
He was never actually broken. But when Jesus said what did he
say? He says, this is my body, which
is broken for you. Do you know why he had to be
broken for us? Because we are broken.
Not just in a general sense, in very specific, deliberate,
practical ways. We are broken, and what this
cracker means for us is that Jesus is perfectly willing to
identify with you in the most heinous moments that you can
imagine. See, we don't want to confess,
because what if that makes God angry?
The body tells us that he is not angry.
So as much as this is a reflection of Jesus's love for
us and his willingness to identify with us, Church, we are
now the remaining body of Christ and we continue his ministry.
Not of being highly polished and well put together, of being
broken for a world that is broken, hurting with a world
that is hurting not because we don't know that there's God, but
because they don't. So, Jesus, we thank you that you
met us where we are. You gave us this tangible
reminder that you are not afraid of our sin.
We don't have to deny the things in us that are broken, even
though we want to. And so as we take this bread
today, we confess our brokenness and your provision.
Let's take the bread in the same way after suffer.
He took the cup and he said this cup is the new covenant in my
blood. Do this as often as you drink it
in remembrance of me. So the idea behind covenant,
when Jesus was talking about at the past over Passover would
have been out forgiveness. The question is what does Jesus
do with all of those things that we confess to him?
What does Jesus do with all those things that we announce?
The old covenant said that there had to be a death, a spotless
lamb. And so for thousands of years,
good Jewish people would March their lambs all the way up to
the temple and they would drop them and they would leave them.
And then one time of year, one guy had to go through all these
rituals to be righteous enough to stand before God and after
and offer sacrifice and and praise.
But it was always just a lamb. And all those people always knew
that they had to turn around and go back to their house and be
just as enslaved as they were. They looked around and Rome was
still in the house. Lambs are still marching, the
sacrifices are still going. And it didn't really change
anything, did it? Jesus instead comes and says
there's a new covenant, and it's not in lambs that don't have a
will. The new covenant is in that God
who is willing to identify with our brokenness and then lead us
out of it. And the way that he leads us out
is with life and gives his spirit to us.
When we take this cup, we participate in the new covenant.
It doesn't mean that we never sin.
It doesn't mean that we have to hide from our sin.
It means that no matter how heinous your sin is, you're
forgiven. You have access to the God who
will give you freedom in your life.
It means you don't have to keep going to the drink, to the
dollar to work to that website. It means you can be free because
freedom has been made. So Jesus, thank you that you
gave your life for our freedom. We take this cup in remembrance
of you. Let's take the cup.
As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim
the Lord's death until he comes. So now I want to do as we close
up this week. I want to give you an
opportunity to just meditate a little bit on what we've talked
about. Maybe there's an idol that's
popped up in your head and you try to think about something
else, but you can't and it's just right there.
What I want to do is Sonia's going to lead us and short a
verse on a chorus. Maybe 2 choruses Verse on a
chorus. I want you to come before the
Lord and go Lord. Here I am.
It's an open invitation. And then listen.
If you've never been a believer for being a Christian, what
being a follower of Jesus is is about saying yes.
It's saying yes. I confess that I'm not God and
you are, and I want you to be boss.
The word Lord just means boss. I want you to be boss.
I want you to be Lord in my life, not me.
And the symbol of that, the expression of that, is baptism.
And so maybe you're in here and you've never followed Jesus
before or maybe you've kind of believed in Jesus.
But you know, I've never done that.
Right after this, I want you to go out and be baptized like, oh,
but I'm in my nice guy. Listen, your church clothes will
dry. You'll be okay.
Don't miss this opportunity to say yes, to walk out of the
shadow of death. That is denial and into the life
freedom Father has for you. Will you stand and let's worship
together? All who are thirsty know who are
we? Come to the fountain, your heart
and stream of a life that the pain and the sorrow me washed
away, and the waves of his mercy his Steve cries out too.
Deep we sing. Come, Lord Jesus.
Come, Lord Jesus,
listen when we sing. Come, Lord Jesus.
We're not inviting him into this room.
This isn't the temple, where the presence of God dwells in four
walls. We are the temple of the Holy
Spirit. He wants to come into your
heart. So when you sing come, Lord
Jesus, you're inviting him into your life, into your context,
into your situation. You're inviting him into your
marriage. You're inviting him into your
finances. You're inviting him into your
singleness. You're inviting him into your
job and into your work. And I have to tell you, as noble
as that is, I would be pastoral malpractice if I didn't tell
you. He only comes as king.
And he will ruthlessly root out every idol that challenges his
authority. So I want saw you to sing one
more time. That chorus and I I listen.
I can't let you sing and have heart of me.
I want you to know. And it's okay to just go.
Lord, this is scaring me to death.
I don't know what you're going to take.
I don't know. I don't know.
Lord, by faith we said I trust that you love me.
I trust that you are good and you desire good.
For me. So let's sing.
Come, Lord Jesus, come. Lord Jesus.
Here come, Lord Jesus.
We invite you into our space. You created us.
You desire freedom for us, and we have rebelled.
We have rejected your guidance and your leadership.
We have made idols of everything that moves.
And yet your great love for us chases us through history and
invites us to believe, and not just to believe intellectually
or academically, to believe in the fiber of our moments, that
you will lead us to freedom. So I pray for those who are
struggling today. I pray for those who feel a
weight of condemnation. I pray that they would be freed
by your forgiveness and they would trust you.
I pray for those who today have realized that they've picked up
an idol and father. I pray that their willingness to
simply turn their heart to you would be enough and they would
know for today and you'll lead us.
There will be things that we have to do.
But today we come to you with our hearts set.
We have the opportunity to make a decision to follow you, and we
make a decision to follow you. And we take responsibility for
our lives as they are, and we ask you to make them different.
Jesus, we ask these things for your glory, alone and in your
name. Amen.
Listen, I'm going to walk right out there, and I'll baptize
whoever will, if that's you. Come on.
May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May he make his face shine upon you.
Be gracious to you. May he let this countenance and
give you peace. Have a great week.
We'll see you next. Time 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
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. If we can help you get connected
to a local church, pray for you, or support you in any way, click
the link in the description and let us know.
If you'd like to financially support the ministry of River
City. Click the give link on our
website in the description. Don't forget to subscribe and
don't forget to share this with your friends.
Thanks so much for listening. May the Lord bless and keep you
in all grace and peace.