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.
Hi everybody. So good to be back.
Natalie was right, man. We love being here, Love just
seeing you guys and seeing what God's doing here.
And you know, Psalm One is the perfect way to end our Proverbs
series. You know, like it's not even the
same book, man. How can you like you're
conflicted. It is.
Psalm one tells a story of our choices and two paths, halves
that we walk based on the decisions that we make.
So with that said, I want to bring us to our confession.
Our confession is, you know, the truth is the part that you say
our, our, our identity is, is in our belovedness.
And the reality that we have to walk that out in is the reality
that despite the fact that we are so loved by our Father, we
are so loved in his name. We continue to walk out things
that are destructive, that are hurtful.
We continue to practice selfishness and division and
hurt and pain. And yet this unbelievable love
of God, he continues to meet us in that place with love and
invite us into a deeper experience of that.
So our confession, each week we declare this, we say we are
badly broken. Yes, you are.
Grace and peace to you. Deeply loved indeed.
So again, Psalm One talks about these two paths, right?
One that leads to life like a tree planted by streams of water
in season and the other this wicked this way that leads to
destruction. And that's kind of been this.
The idea behind our whole Proverb series is wisdom is laid
out before us and it's an invitation to choose based on
who we are, based on our belovedness.
And so if you'll. Allow me just a second.
I want to speculate what some of you may have experienced
throughout this throughout this series.
At some point, we've talked about our speech, the way that
we've talked. We talked with the fear of the
Lord and just being this acknowledgement and recognition
that God is God and that we're not.
We've talked about our relationships.
We've talked about about provision and security and work
and finances and money. And my guess is at some point
you may have experienced what we call conviction.
It's that sense in your heart or that sense in your spirit where
you just go, Oh, that's about me, Dang it.
Right. Like, and I, and I've heard
several of you have come up to me and you just said like, Hey,
it's like you're reading my mail.
I just want you to know I'm not that's a felony.
I wouldn't, I don't, I don't do that.
But the reality is I'm not really, I can't be that familiar
with the details that are going on in your life.
So if you come to this place and you hear a guy who doesn't
really know the insurance and outs and the details of your
life, and yet you have that experience that you should go,
that's about me. We call that conviction.
And what I want to tell you is it feels weird, right?
Like I don't like it. I don't, I don't like the way
that it, it feels right. It can feel invasive.
What I want to say to you is that is actually really good
news because what I would say to you is that is what it feels
like when the Holy Spirit uses the Scripture to show.
Us, our own heart. And the good news in that is
when he shows us that it is never.
I never say always and never except what I do.
And it is never. God never says that to shame
you. He never says that to make you
feel just terrible about yourself.
He always says that to invite you into something deeper and
more real. He invites you out of death into
life. And so if he exposes something
in your language, what he's showing you is your heart.
So you can say, hey, there's something there that needs to be
tweaked right when the check engine light in your car comes
on, it's not so that you feel bad.
It's so that you go to the mechanic and so at some.
Point in this series, you may have felt a moment of conviction
where you're like. And my guess is at some point
you stood up and you go. I'm going to fix that I'm.
Going to walk out of here and I'm going to get it right.
So you walk out of here and you have this conviction about your
speech and you're committed, man.
And you walk out of here and you are so serious about changing
the way you talk. And then you got home and you
have children. And so it immediately went out
the window, right? Like you're trying to decide
what you want for dinner and there's just no, like nobody can
disagree. And so anger just comes flying
out of your mouth and your face again.
And then you have this rant and then you have this moment where
we have to decide, do I double down or do I back off?
And at this point you may think something like, I can't do it
anyway. So I'm just.
Going to double down. I know what I can get with
anger. Maybe you walked out of here and
we talked about gossip or we talked about our relationships
and you just you had that conviction about that that Co
worker at work. Or is it maybe it's about your
own heart and you realize like maybe I'm the the gossipy Co
worker. And so you walked out and you
committed, man, when I go to work, I'm not like I'm not, I'm
not rejecting anybody. But I'm going to try to gently,
sincerely, but gently put some space in that relationship just
for a little while so that I can get my bearings under me.
And I'm going to, I'm going to really do better about not kind
of gossiping in that. First lunch and sit down and the
lady that sits next to you just wore this terrible thing and
you're just like, well, I I can't ignore that.
I like I have to address that. Almost the inevitable.
Result of that is shame. Right, like, why can't I just be
better for Jesus? I mean, like I, I like, I hear
and I know and I understand, I know the problems in my own
heart. I know the problem is, is
insecurity. I want to do right.
And listen, I, I even see some good stuff, right.
Last one we talked about margin. You walked out here and it's
like, I'm going to have margin, man.
I'm going to, I'm going to wake up 15 minutes early and I'm
going to pray and I'm going to read my Bible.
And then you just woke up in the cedar and attacked your face and
you're just like, I need to sleep more than I need anything
else. And it just seems unrealistic.
And my guess is if you're like me, in those moments where you
said the thing that you weren't going to say anymore, you, you
gossip the way that you weren't going to gossip anymore.
You, you just lived with the same minimal or non existent
margin or ever you start chalking those things up to wins
and losses, right? And it becomes this very binary
system of I'm either doing what the Lord wants or I'm not doing
what the Lord wants. And and so we're we're kind of
conditioned to feel this way about things either I've the one
or I've lost. I'm either good or I'm bad.
And what happens then is when we have this kind of binary way of
looking at life, when I when my willpower gives out and your
willpower is inevitable, like you're, listen, I love you so
much. Willpower is never going to
sustain you. It's not, it's not really even
even a thing. But the problem is then when our
willpower inevitably gives out, what we do is we tag that with
the word failure, right? I failed at that.
I failed at establishing margin. I failed at guarding my heart.
I failed at guarding my tongue. And what happens is it doesn't
take very long to for I failed at that to become I am a
failure. And let me just first tell you.
The. Best.
Thing that you can do. For yourself is remove that way
of thinking. Remove that binary sense of I
either got it or I didn't. That perspective always bear.
That's twice, right? Never and always, always bears
bad fruit because if the only choices are I either won or I
lost, that puts us in a position to start having to defend things
that we shouldn't be defending, right?
Because we don't want to stand before the Lord and go, I failed
again, Lord, I know that I'm a failure.
And So what we do is we start doubling down and then we start
getting defensive, right? Like when people just say, man,
that hurt my feelings When you say that we get defensive, we
go, well, that's your problem. You shouldn't be so sensitive
all the time, right? Because I can't bear the
thought. I'm standing before a righteous
God again, having failed and let him down.
The other side of that, right? Like we talked about fight and
flight last week, That's kind of the fighters.
That's kind of the puncher's instinct, right?
Just get defensive and and just make sure that everybody knows
why I did the things that I did and why it really is justified.
On the other side of that, as we begin to embrace defeat, we
begin to walk in that identity. It's right.
Not that I didn't measure up, but I don't measure up.
And if we're not careful, right? Like we can take even that even
our our confession, right? Like I'm badly broken.
And we don't see that as an irreparable condition.
We don't see that as our final or ultimate identity.
We see it as the reality of the day that we walk in.
I'm not able to live the life that I know that God has killed
me or I'm able, but I'm not doing it yet.
I haven't chosen it yet. And So what happens is as we
place to feed and over again, we begin to embrace it.
And we don't just go, I didn't measure up, I don't measure up.
I didn't just fail at this. I am a failure.
What happens is we get hardened against change.
We start to believe, well, I can never live the kind of life that
Jesus calls me to. I could never be the kind of
person that God wants of me. I could never do that.
And so maybe we keep going through the motions.
Maybe we keep coming to church, we go to the small group.
We maybe we, you know, we say, well, maybe if I put an extra
percent in the tithe box, we do those things, maybe that'll
measure up. But we lose the hope that we can
ever really be different. And that point?
When we either get defensive against change, defensive
against our need to change, or we embrace our brokenness so
fully that it becomes identity. At that point, we become what
the proverbs call foolish. Failure can lead to foolishness.
But let me say this here, if you, if you've identified
yourself already as kind of one of those places, what I want to
say is failure. Failure doesn't have to
inevitably lead to foolishness. It's not an inevitable result of
right. Like it's possible to not
complete the things that we want to do, not do the things that we
swore up and down that we were going to do, and still not be
lumped in with what the proverbs call fools or their folly.
The only way that failure doesn't become foolishness is if
we are willing. And able to recognize and then
adjust our direction. If we can recognize, man, no
matter how much I swear I'm not going to do that.
I just keep doing it and then say maybe I need to find a
different way. That is when our failure
actually leads to life. When we look at our failure as a
diagnostic and just go, man, no matter how bad, I don't want to,
my kids keep triggering me. The kids keep making me want to
pull my hair out right. I got to that realization too
late. So what I would say for you?
Right now, and this is kind of where the proverbs are going to
come in today, one of the first things that we can do, and this
isn't just in our own personal formation and development, but
as a general rule, right? Like when we look at at the
world at all of it, de emphasize this binary reality of winning
and losing. The world doesn't.
I mean, now in baseball it does, right, because one team will
score more runs than the other. One team will score more
touchdowns than the other and you know, and all those things.
But in most places in our life, it's not an either or
proposition. In most places in our life, it's
not he won and he didn't. In most cases in our life, we
can much more find a spectrum or a graduation that is movement.
We call it growth and growth is better.
Growth is a better evaluative metric than winning and losing.
So what that allows us to do is wake up and walk through our
lives and recognize or realize progress, movement.
Hey, I was less angry today. It took me longer to start
pulling my hair out. It took me longer to engage with
that gossipy person and then to recognize and realize that's
progress. That is movement and small
victories are OK. As your pastor who is so
invested in you learning to follow Jesus, I want you to
tell. I want you to hear from me.
Small victories are victories. Small movement is movement.
Small growth is growth. At one point I weighed 8 lbs and
1 oz. I'm significantly more than that
today. And it's been a process of 50
years to get here. And that's OK.
That's how it. Works.
Mostly, and that's what the proverbs show us.
That's where we find ourselves in Proverbs, how moments of
failure are actually they, the way that wisdom is formed in US
by acknowledging and recognizing those moments that are not
absolute and interminable and undoable moments of failure, but
are actually ways that we can begin to align to ultimate
reality. That's how wisdom gets into it.
So what does it look like when we read in Proverbs chapter 4,
verse 18, it says this, the way of the righteous is like,
there's that word. What does a like tell us?
What kind of figure of speech is this?
Simile. You guys are.
English majors, now you even know it, right?
The way of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, which
shines ever brighter until the first light of day.
So now that we know that this is a simile, what that tells us is
slow down. This tells us that we don't rush
through this. So here's I want to give you a
super important Bible study technique.
Are you ready? Close your eyes and imagine
this. I want you in your brain to
think about what is the first gleam of dawn like.
Can you imagine a sunrise in your in your mindset?
Have you ever seen one? The Sun.
Rises over the corner of our house and so long before I ever
see the sun. Keep imagining this, keep seeing
this. Long before I ever actually see
the sun, I begin to see the clouds light up what is dark and
Gray with the night gently becomes purple and then orange.
And after I see the sunrise on the clouds and in the sky after
that, then I begin to see just gently at first, the first
Crescent of light. And it's different now.
The colors really change. Things that were hidden or
invisible before become visible now.
Things that were dull and and featureless begin to take on
shape and substance. You see it.
You can open your eyes now if you want.
You don't have to. May.
If you're in a nap, that's OK. The Scripture tells us is that
righteousness is like that. So what's the first light of
dawn like? It's gradual, it's progressive,
it's visible. We see things before we ever see
the thing. It's not like the noonday
intensity all at once. The gradual light of dawn, it
grows and it progressive and it and it builds and it begins to
color things and what the scripture tells us, are you
listening? What the scripture tells us is
that righteousness is like that. Some of you think, whoa, man,
like Al talks about they got saved within the last three
years here at this church. And the most the greatest thing
that our enemy wants to tell you is you're doing it wrong or
you'd be better. And what the scripture tells us,
it's not like that at all. It's gradual, it's progressive,
it's little bit by little, maybe the. 1st.
Light of righteousness that you've seen through this Proverb
series is that the simple awareness that I never knew that
the Bible talked about my speech before.
I never knew that the Bible had anything to say about the way
that I have my relationships. Maybe you never understood what
the Scripture has. Maybe you always heard the
Scripture just talk about money as some preacher trying to get
in your pocket. And maybe this week for the
first time in in a way and it's and it's not complete.
It's not full, it's not fully formed.
Maybe it's just a sense in your gut and in your soul that says
I've never thought about that. I never knew that the Bible
wanted to say that about this. And what I would say is that is
progress. And I want you to know, do you
know why it goes? Like that because the Lord is
gentle and He is kind and he is faithful and he doesn't want to
just beat you over the head with a hammer and go.
Why haven't you fixed all your habits?
Yet that may have been your dad. That may be your boss.
That may be you, but the Lord is different.
He is gentle, He is progressive. He's willing to say slow.
And the promise is, and the wisdom in this passage is that
if, then we will stay with that, if we will continue to look at
the horizon. That's the thing about the
sunrise, right? When I walk out my door and I
see the sunrise coming over there and I see the colors on
the sky, it's perfectly realistic for me to turn around
and walk back inside and miss the whole thing, right?
But if we will remain, if we will stay, if we'll even park
and camp out and put a little chair out and look off at the
horizon, the eastern horizon, then we'll see them.
If we will continue to stare at wisdom, what happens then is
that we'll begin to see ourselves.
Begin to see, hey, it's not just that the Bible talks about our
relationships, but I see through the scripture that my
relationships are causing me to have the anxiety that I have.
Maybe my anxiety isn't out there, it's in here.
And with some simple changes, I can begin to see different
fruits. Maybe if I'll just reorder my
time, maybe I would. Maybe if I would just start, you
know, practicing generosity. If I would start practicing
getting up and putting some margin in my life and in my
space, I'll begin to be free in some areas.
We begin to see not just out there, but how the scripture and
how wisdom grows in US. And notice you haven't done
anything yet. You're just acknowledging this
is for me. You just see the world
differently. This is the key moment.
This is the moment where we're going to set out on that path to
decide. Are we going to be transformed
by wisdom? Are we going to keep looking
because it's uncomfortable? I don't want to think that my
relationships have anything to do with my internal sins because
then I might have to change something.
And change is uncomfortable. And what if I offend them?
Or what if I hurt their feelings?
Or what if I do it wrong? Or what if I'm just crazy person
thinking that God talks to me? Will we stay with that sun?
Will we look at the sunrise and watch it continue to grow if we
face it or not? That is the key of whether we
will increasingly walk the path of wisdom or we'll go off the
trail. Now let's acknowledge something.
I want to acknowledge something real quick.
This passage in Proverbs doesn't use the word wisdom.
It uses the word righteousness and some of you may have been
beat up. By the word righteousness, but
we're not going to let that happen when we.
Read about like what you may have heard about.
Righteousness is some standard of moral goodness that you don't
measure up to. When you read the Bible and the
Bible talks about righteousness, it is always man, I'm saying.
Always a lot this week, right? Righteousness is always
relational first, Remember, we talked about relationships.
We talked about proximity, right?
Like how we're transformed by the people that we're close to,
and if we bring people close to us that that draws to the Lord
will begin to bear that fruit. What righteousness is, First of
all, proximity to Jesus's heart and to Jesus's character.
We find it in the Word, we find it in community, right?
A group of people that love us that point us to Jesus.
That's where as we draw close to him through these, through these
things like, listen, I want you to know, like we're talking
about Ash Wednesday coming up. We're not becoming a Catholic
Church. You're, you're just like, well,
Lent is for the Catholic people. I love my Catholic friends love
to celebrate Lent. We're not becoming Catholic, but
we are acknowledging that there are seasons.
In the year that allow us to draw close to him, allow us to
recognize him in the seasons and in the scripture.
And so for the Lenten season, we're focused on the journey to
the cross. How Jesus get, how do we get
right? Because we want to talk about
Easter. Well, we got to talk about the
cross. If we don't know about Good
Friday, then Easter's just another day with bunnies and
rabbits and stuff. So we're going to talk about the
long part. We're going to stare into truth
and wisdom and let it transform us.
So righteousness is being transformed by just simply
staying with Jesus. And what the Proverbs tell us is
that it is progressive, that it is ongoing transformation.
It's not, man. Listen, if if you grew up and
every third word that you heard was a cuss word, Jesus isn't mad
that your first 40 years take a little bit of time to deprogram.
Jesus may be perfectly Jesus, perfectly willing for you to
just go, man. I kind of feel like maybe I need
to deal with that. You realize that's growth.
And listen, here's what I want to tell you.
Are you listening? That growth, Jesus in heaven, is
like, yeah, we're getting it. Because as soon as you say that,
you're ready for the next step. You're ready for Jesus to just
go, Hey, now, let's talk about why you say those things.
Now let's talk about the wounds that cause you to be defensive.
Let's talk about the things that were taken from you when you're
a child that caused you to feel like you have to provide for
yourself and anticipate every fear and failure that comes,
right? Let's talk about that.
And you don't have to get that all at first either.
It's a path, it's a progress, it's walking in.
See, when we talk about righteousness and wisdom in the
Scriptures, wisdom is formed simply in staying with the
light. Just stay there a little bit
longer. Just keep going a little bit
more. How about the end of the road?
I don't know. I'm not there yet.
I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, but I know
what's in front of me today and I know what I'm feeling today.
I don't want to let a lot of you off the.
Hook, if you've looked at this wisdom and you walk down and
just go, man, I don't have any wisdom at all.
Listen. You cannot produce wisdom.
You cannot manufacture it on your own.
You can't white knuckle it. You can't extract it from
moments. You can simply stay where you
are, oriented to the light that God shows you, and you know what
happens. Then you get to spend a lot of
time with Jesus and you get to spend those moments where you
just go, Lord, I don't feel like I'm very good at all.
And you get to. Hear him whisper in your ear.
Are you listening? You get to hear the God of all
creation go. I just love being with you, man.
My kids are sinners. There's almost no one in the
world I'd rather spend my time with.
And I will drop what I'm doing to be with them.
And when they've screwed it up and they're hurting because
they've screwed it up, those are my favorite times because I, I
don't have the answers. You know what?
I can tell them you're going to be OK.
This isn't going to define you. What if we just let the Holy
Spirit say that to us? What if instead of running to
the next thing, we just pause and stop and let Him speak to
us? If we read righteousness.
Has some behavior set that we have to that that allows us to
earn or to keep access to God? If we read of righteousness as
this thing that we have to do to make Jesus approve of us, we're
going to miss it. We're going to miss the Father.
We're going to miss all of his goodness and his comfort.
And most of all, we're going to miss the contrast that's coming.
Because the next thing that he says is this, and I want you to
know this is hard, right? He says this.
The way of the wicked is like total darkness.
There's that word like again, right?
It's like total darkness. They have no idea what they're
stumbling over, right? So here's another simile.
So what is total darkness? Like we read about total
darkness. It's the opposite of the
sunrise. It is not progressive in any
way. It doesn't dawn on us.
It doesn't get progressively darker.
It is total, absolute right now, everywhere.
It's like walking into a cave so dark that your eyes will never
adjust. Now you can reach around and try
to find a way. You can try to find a wall.
But listen, you don't know what's in The Cave.
You might be poking a bear, bear about to bite your arm off
because you don't know what's going on.
And here's the uncomfortable part.
The word that the Scripture uses to define this kind of lifestyle
is wicked. And my great fear is we're going
to hear that wicked and instantly go, well, that's not
me. I'm not wicked.
I don't kick puppies. I'm not.
I'm not cruel. That's what wickedness is.
The problem is that's not how the Scripture talks about
wickedness in the same way. And this is a contrast, right?
Righteousness is like this and wickedness is like this.
If righteousness is a relational trajectory over time, then so is
wickedness. The.
Comparison between righteous person and the wicked person
isn't a contrast between a nice person, a generally moral
person, a civic minded person and a cruel.
Person who steals and kills and does all that, The wicked person
in Proverbs, the wicked person in Psalm chapter 1 is a person
who just quietly, sincerely says, I see what the Scripture
says and I'm just not. I see what the Bible tells me
about my relationships, but I'm just not going to align with it.
It's possible, and I say this because I love you.
I don't want you to hear this. It is entirely possible to think
a great deal about God and not actually be with Him.
It's possible to talk a lot about God.
It's possible to attend a lot of church services.
It is possible to have an unbelievable volume of devotion.
So you can it's possible to have the most rigorous quiet time in
your in anybody that you know. And it may just be self
righteousness. That may just be you standing
before the Lord and going look at what I've done for you Jesus,
instead of. Submitting to his way because of
look at what you've done for me, Jesus.
Look at how far you've gone from me.
Getting closer to God is not simply giving more, being more
generous, attending more stuff. Getting closer to Jesus is
simply submitting. It is simply growing, is simply
being obedient. That's the way that we measure
growth. And So what the picture tells us
is that this relational contrast, right?
The the contrast between righteousness, which is his way,
staying close to him in his way, versus my way, which the
Scripture calls wickedness, that different those two paths, they
bear different fruit, right? So the idea is I love you so
much. This is so hard.
I just want to hold that like the goal is not the shame of the
goals to invite us into a reality.
The reality is as I spend time with him, as I walk with him in
relational proximity, my heart will be trained.
I am either my love for other people that are different from
me, that don't look like me, that don't come from the same
place I come from, that don't have the same socioeconomic
standard that I do, that vote differently, that raise their
kids differently. My love for them is either
growing and I'm becoming more like Jesus, or I am becoming.
I'm more rigid in my categories of who does and doesn't get in,
and that is not a binary that the scripture presents.
Now, I don't perfectly love everybody.
I don't perfectly love anybody. But the question is, am I
growing more like him? I am either becoming moment by
moment more aware that the. Person in the world who needs
the most grace is me. It's not them.
It's not those guys, it's not the other guy.
The person in the world who needs the most grace is me.
Or I am doubling down on my reality that I am right and they
are wrong. I am in and they are out.
I am good and they are bad. And what it says here is verse
19. They have no idea what they are
stumbling. Over the fruit of this reality
is right, Like when we when we double down and we get more
rigid and we get less flexible and we get more certain in
ourselves and more self righteousness.
What happens is we begin to keep bumping into the same walls,
right? We keep making the same mistakes
over and over and over again. And listen, I've known people
that have had the same relationship 15 different times.
Why do I keep, man? Why do I keep?
Marrying people that are so selfish because you're not
growing, because you're not changing, because you haven't
learned anything, because there's no progress, because you
haven't stopped this And what is always.
Always. Not this time.
What is often the case in those situations is I prioritize
myself. And what I've said is I want
this. I want to feel this and they
offer me that. I want to experience that and
this offers me that. This isn't neutral ignorance.
Right. Like this isn't the person who
doesn't know anything, the person that has to figure it
out. This isn't that first time you
walk in place. This is the person who just
won't walk out of the darkness. This is the person who just
says, man, I don't know. And this amounts to a
determination not to be transformed, A determination to
say, I'm not going that way. And the reason that we won't be
transformed is because we just won't submit.
We refuse. To let what he.
Says into our lives we listen. Ultimately what it comes down to
is we refuse to let him be God in that area of our lives, our
speech, our, our security, our our hopes, our dreams or
whatever it is. We won't be transformed.
And again, this idea is is big and I want to get in the picture
right from 8 lbs one ounce to significantly more than that was
long. It was a progress over time,
moment by moment. And there were seasons where I
added a lot. There were seasons where I
dropped some. It hasn't been linear.
It hasn't all been up and to the right, and I honestly haven't
always even been looking at the sunrise.
There was a long season of my life where I walked inside and
slammed the door against the light.
But guess what? I found a moment that I opened
the door. I didn't even open the door, so
I peeked out the window. One time was like peeking behind
the blinds and I see the light and the Father's still waiting
there to love me. Father's still waiting there to
invite me into his presence. You realize, church, This is why
we don't judge people, because this is where the light is.
We talk about a Jesus who meets us and loves us, and we don't
want this to be a place of closed doors.
This wisdom in Proverbs, it's not just Old Testament wisdom,
this Proverbs, every week that we've seen, this wisdom is
embodied in Jesus. This wisdom is embodied by the
person of Jesus. It's his story.
And so the idea is if we hear the teachings of Jesus, if we
hear this wisdom and we just go, yeah, but yeah, I hear that.
But yeah, but. Listen, I love you so much as
your pastor be pastoral. Malpractice to say, yeah, but we
may be slipping. He may be walking off the path.
So what does this righteous wisdom sound like in Jesus's
voice? It sounds like a story.
It sounds like a parable. Jesus tells a story in Luke
chapter 8 where he says there was a farmer and he had some
seed and he went out and he scattered the seed.
And then the story in this parable in Luke 8, it's the same
farmer. It's the same kind of seed.
He didn't say, oh, that's almost carrot seed and some was lettuce
seed. And like, no, it's just seed.
It was all the seed. And the farmer went out and he
scattered some seed. Same technique.
But what he says is. Some of the seed got scooped up,
some of the seed grew up real quick, but then it went away
some of the seed. Man it took root and it grew and
grew and grew and what it said it produced 100 times what was
planted. The only variable in Jesus
parable was the condition of the soil.
The only variable, the only thing that was different, the
only difference between the seed that blossoms and bears fruit
and the seed that doesn't, is what's going on in that soil.
The thing that's crazy about this, this is the thing that
confronts us, right? There's no villain in the story.
There's no bad guy. It's not like all of a sudden it
doesn't even talk about a big flood that came, right?
There was no defiant rejection. There's no person standing and
shaking their fists at God. There's just this gradual,
persistent erosion over time. Except in the case of the good.
Soil where the roots went. That's a picture of foolishness.
Foolishness in the Scripture is to have access to seed and the
wisdom of the sower and to not prepare our hearts but look at
how Jesus describes this good soil.
Luke chapter 815. He says this the seed that fell
on the good soil represent honest, good hearted people who
hear God's word and what what does it say?
He cling to it and what's that next word?
They what patiently produce a huge.
Harvest. You know what?
My instinct is white. Knuckles, if you go to recovery,
right, they talk about white knuckling their sobriety, right?
Like it's just like clinging to it.
It is. Determined not to do it.
By my own willpower, friend, Your willpower's not going to
make it. Moment's going to be too big,
too scary for you, and we're going to let go.
But what the scripture talks about is perseverance.
Just don't. Walk.
Away. Just don't quit hoping that
Jesus can do a work in you. It doesn't talk about intense
feelings. It doesn't talk about making
promises to God. Look, Oh yeah, Lord, I'm going
to get it right this time. I'm going to get it right
tomorrow. It walks.
Out of here and goes, man, I'm going to bet a dollar to
doughnuts I'm going to walk out of here and screw it up.
And as soon as I do, I'm going to point at it and I'm going to
go. That's not it.
Nope, didn't want to do that. Lord help me right to talk about
the Jesus prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,
have mercy on me, a Sinner. Listen, I'm a child of God.
I am indwelled by his Holy Spirit.
He is transforming me. He's making me new on the
inside, but I can acknowledge I screw it up.
One of my favorite authors, Eugene Peterson, he wrote a book
and he it's called a long obedience in the same direction.
That's the picture of discipleship.
That's what it is. The parable of the point of
Jesus is parable is that good things grow over a lifetime when
we follow Jesus. I don't, I don't like that.
I like instant fruit. I like, you know, microwave
oatmeal. I like things that I can like
get instantly. And right now, Jesus never
promises comfort. Jesus never says that you're
going to be healthy or wealthy, but he does say that you'll have
access to wisdom. He never says it'll be easy.
He never says that everything that you want will find its way
to you. What he says is that even though
we live in a world that tears itself apart, that divides us
and destroys us and yells at us and makes us feel like a failure
and then judges us for being a failure, he says even in that
kind of world, you can predictably bear fruit.
What does fruit look like? Galatians 5 says it it's love.
Even in a world that hates its enemies, you can be the kind of
person that loves, talks about joy.
Even in a world that tells you that that there's sorrow and
sadness and things are falling apart, you can have joy.
How different would your life? Be if you had durable joy, not.
Cancer. But I know that my Lord is with
me, and I know that he is God, and I know that he is good.
And I know that even this doesn't get the final say.
Peace, not peace because we're winning peace because we serve
the God who created the cosmos and surely he's with me in this.
It's the whole 9, the big nine right out of Galatians 522 and
23. Lovejoy, peace, patience.
Would you like to have patience? Would you like to be more
patient, less volatile? Kindness.
You know, I see those stupid things on TikTok that are, you
know, soldiers coming home and surprising their kids and like,
and people paying for their neighbors groceries.
Nothing gets me shook like kindness.
You live in such a hateful world.
Church of Jesus is supposed to be the kindest people in the
world because he's transforming us, making us new.
Those things grow slowly. They grow almost imperceptible
sometimes. So don't give up.
Don't quit. Don't quit walking.
Forward. Don't believe that God has done
with you yet because He's not. So the question is, do you see
those things growing in your life?
Do you see fruits of the Spirit in your life?
Not necessarily huge, giant prize winning pumpkins, but the
dawn of light on the horizon. If you don't listen, listen,
really. I mean, one minute, I know.
If you don't see that, what I want you to hear from me as your
pastor who has a very. Real intent of like representing
Jesus faithfully to you. What I want you to hear me say
is Jesus isn't mad at you. Jesus isn't here trying to shame
you. He's not here clicking his
tongue or shaking his finger at you.
If you feel that, if you look at your life and just go, I'm doing
everything I can and I got none of that fruit.
What I want you to hear is Jesus going, hey, come here.
Hey, hey, come here. And you know what?
I think he's going to say to you first, I think he's going to
look you right in your eye and go, you must be exhausted trying
so hard doing all that work. What Jesus is going to do it
invite you into a different path.
He's going to invite you into a different way of life and that
begins by considering and this is the reality.
If you don't see that, then it's probable that something else has
been some other kind of soil has been shaping your heart.
Busyness or fear or concern or worry.
And so my is dawning. Just don't turn away from it.
Just keep looking at it. What we call that is confession.
And confession is not, you don't have to stand up in here, right?
If you want to come talk and confess your, it's good to
confess your sentence to somebody else, but just that
acknowledgement and just go like, I'm not doing that.
I'm not bearing that fruit. My life doesn't look
progressively more patient. My life doesn't look I'm the
same 8 LB one ounce baby boy that I was in 1976.
Call that confession. I'm not producing the light that
I want to. And then with that confession
should come the realization that some things, not everything at
once, not all of the things, that some things are probably
going to need to change. You don't have to.
Figure it all out yet just set your face to the light and say
I'm willing to say yes to what you show me, Father, That's
progress, that's growth, and the Lord loves that.
We call that repentance. It's opening the door.
It's turning from the West to the east to see the sunrise in
the morning. And that that is what being a
Christian means. It doesn't mean being good it.
Doesn't mean winning. It doesn't mean saving the day.
It doesn't mean standing up for what's right.
It means being transformed and my inner person so that I
reflect the nature and goodness of God.
It's. Not hard labor hauling rocks.
It's the willingness to give him the rocks and the thorns as he
shows them to us. And if you want that today, it's
as easy as this. Close your eyes.
You just say, Lord, I confess that my life doesn't bear the
fruit that you tell me it should, and I really want that
kind of fruit. And I realized, Jesus, that that
only comes from you. So I confess, Jesus, that you're
the light. I'm not the light and I turn my
face to you and I asked. That you would be gentle with
me. That you would never let me go.
Jesus, teach me how to love you and teach me how to love others
as I follow you. And maybe you're in here and
you've been following Jesus for a long time, but you recognize
it's been a fruitless season in your life.
Turn your face to the sun. Ask him to make you new.
And Jesus, we love you, and we ask all of these things in your
name. Amen.
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.
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
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Thanks so much for listening. May the Lord bless and keep you
in all grace and peace.