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.
We. Begin with our confession.
Our confession just grounds us in the truth.
Which is what we believe. Our confession is that we are
badly broken. Grace and peace to you.
We've been in Proverbs. We took, you know, Snowpocalypse
Part 2 week off last week. So I will probably refer to last
week, but it wasn't last week. It was the week before.
And we've been talking about wisdom as this, the illustration
is like a path that leads us. God has set this vision before
us, before his people of the life of you know, we find it in
Revelation, right? A place where every tear is
dried and where God comforts and meets His.
People, we won't experience that fully in this world and in this
life right now, but we believe that His wisdom is what leads
us. Towards.
That and one of the things that the Proverbs assumes, but it
doesn't explicitly state, right? Like there's, there's not a
verse that specifically says that, but it's the assumption
behind, behind all of it, behind the way that it's formed and
structured. The, the assumption is that
wisdom is cumulative, right? It builds on itself and it
starts, we saw that last week and kind of like the structure,
right? Like what we said is it starts
in a moment and each moment as I begin to choose the path of
wisdom or not the path of wisdom.
Last week, two weeks ago, we talked about speech, right?
And in every moment there's the choice.
What am I going to say in this moment?
Am I going to choose wise speech or foolish speech?
And what the cumulative part is Then as we make those decisions,
choice by choice, moment by moment, word by word accumulates
to our character. We become the kind of people who
either start fires, who either separate people who cause
division and separation and anger and angst and fear, or
we're the kind of people who dial back from that.
And it's not about you telling me.
I'm the kind of person who we can see it.
We see the fruit in our lives. Jesus said that.
It says they will. It said you will.
You don't get good fruit off of bad.
Trees. And he said you'll know by the
fruit. You'll know what kind of tree it
is by the kind of fruit. That they bear and then as that
accumulates and it builds we become the kind of people like
that and as I become that kind of person and my friend Aaron
becomes that kind of person and my friend Teresa becomes that
kind of person, what happens is then we.
Get formed. We become a.
Culture where wisdom is reflected in our speech.
To our time and our moments and our relationships and our and
our context. It forms us and it shapes us.
And so we're going to kind of look at that form again, kind of
how it begins at a granular level, how it expands to our
character and what it looks like.
The idea that we do it that way is so that what we don't want to
do is just flatten the proverbs to be like promises, right?
Like you've. Heard the promise, right?
Train up a child in the way that they go, and when they're older
they won't depart from it. It's hard because that's not an
ironclad promise, that if you make your kids go to church,
that they'll never make bad decisions, that they'll always
turn and they'll always come back.
As a general principle, the idea is the Lord watches over what's
His and He develops what is in him.
That's my story. My story was a disaster, train
wreck, all that. The Lord was faithful and the
Lord honored the wisdom of my parents in making us go to
church. Did we want to go to church?
No. Are they good churches?
No. But the Lord honored and was
faithful, however faithful this is.
So again, the idea is these proverbs, they're not, they're
not promises. They are paths and they're paths
in line with reality and the ultimate reality that this
wisdom leads us towards to the nature and the character of God.
Wisdom leads us to be like what God is like.
We see that in the New Testament.
It's called formation into Christ likeness, right?
And that's the idea, and it looks like.
This here's how the. Proverbs articulate that.
Proverbs chapter 13 verse 20 says this.
Walk with the wise and become wise.
Associate with fools and get in trouble.
Now you may have a different translation that you're using
today. You may be using the CSB or the
NIV or the New American Standard or or ESV or whatever it is.
Your translation may say whoever associates with fools suffers
harm. It's the same kind of it's the
same kind of idea, right? Like there's there's trouble out
there, right and notice the connections notice what he's
saying, the ideas of walking right and associating with those
are proximity terms. Those are terms of relationship.
And when it's set, when I say relationship, I don't mean that
relationship means besties. Relationship is literally how
people are aligned towards each other right now.
You and I are in relationship to each other, facing each other.
What's important to know is this doesn't necessarily require
intimacy. It is literally being in the
same place at the same time over time impacts us and affects us.
We notice in our culture we call it virality right?
You exposed to a TikTok and you pass it on and it goes viral.
At no point in my life have I woken up and said today I think
I'm going to go catch COVID. I am really looking for a good
case of the flu today. Right?
But what I have done in my foolishness is felt like I was
bulletproof and lingered in spaces where people who have
those illnesses are. And the reality is, to know that
a person has an illness and to stay in the place where they are
is to choose to get sick. There's no, I can't be in a room
with someone and say, oh, well, like I think I'm just going to
be exempted from this, right? Like, so it's true that my
family, I am unapologetically I am a music snob.
It's not that I like some, but it's just that I have better
taste than a lot of people, right?
My family does not have the same gift that I have in this.
They are willing to just meditate on any old drivel that
they that they will. But an interesting thing happens
many times I'm sitting in the car and they're all just like,
Hey, you gotta listen to this song.
And I'd sit down and just, well, that's just terrible.
The Lord. Frowns on that like there's no
redeeming in that and that in anyway.
But what happens is like we'll just get again because I'm
humble, right and I'm like Jesus, right?
I like submit to them and it's like, well, you guys can listen
to whatever and the craziest thing happens over time.
I find myself just singing along a little bit, right?
Literally repeat. Rewires my brain and I find
myself tolerating all kinds of stuff that at once.
I thought was just terrible and they love to rub my face in that
when it when it happens, right, that I thought this was a
terrible song. It is a terrible song.
I'm just growing, you know, in that it brings an important
point. And we've seen this, right?
How our preferences, how our tastes, our responses can change
and be transformed by the people of Rhiannon and important ideas.
That wisdom is contagious and so is foolishness.
We catch what we're around. We become what we associated
with the actions of the foolish. If you've got and if you look in
the Proverbs and you go throughout Proverbs, they may
talk about it may use the word folly and folly is simply what
foolish people do. It is foolish behaviors of
foolish. Accents So we read this proverb
in 1320 and it says if we associate with fools, we will
get in trouble. And the dangerous part in this
is this kind of leads into a picture of God that some of us
have where he's up there just like waiting to spank us.
And the idea here isn't the idea that the proverb is trying to
communicate, isn't that if God doesn't like your friends, he's
going to ground you from wisdom, that he's going to somehow hold
back wisdom from you. The idea is this contagion
effect that you will become who you hang around with.
Your experience, your exposure will compound on you.
It's the natural consequences of the choices that we make.
It's the analogy. You've heard the analogy right?
I've got to dig myself out of this hole.
If you pause and you think about it, that's foolishness.
You will never get out of a hole by digging.
The only way to get out of a hole is to stop digging and
start climbing. If your friends make bad
decisions and your associates make bad decisions, and the
people that you hang around with if they're if the if your
closest network of. Associates, how they treat their
spouses over time will be how you treat your spouse.
How they respond with their finances will be how you respond
your finances, how they treat spiritual disciplines will be
how you treat spiritual disciplines.
I have had some relationships in my life that I know and, and,
and you know, even some, you know, extended family that you
have to get around and that their approach on the world is
just heavy and, and kind of bitter.
And never have I woke up in the morning like, you know, what I
need today is a healthy dose of toxic anger.
Like I just, I just need to go get mad at somebody and want to
destroy something I've never. Said that, but what I.
Have done is over an extended period of time placed myself
into proximity in proximity to people who that's their
perspective and that's their worldview and without exception,
without fail, I it leaks it gets on me and I find myself picking
up those habits picking up those those patterns of speech picking
up those world views and so in the same way that we used
talking about. Being sick, exposure to fearful,
angry, divisive people is choosing to be afraid and angry
and divisive. You cannot fill your head with
people who speak about anger and division and fear and not have
it impact you and not have it rub off on you and not have it
be part of how you respond. That's what it means when we say
that wisdom forms us as we walk in it and as it gets in us and
as it affects the way that we think.
We become that. We become what we watch on the
news. We become who we listen to in
social media. We become what our closest
friends and associates do. Formation isn't abstract.
We don't wake up and suddenly find ourselves to be something
that we weren't before. What is happens is we wake up
and we find ourselves having become what we were always
becoming. When I was in high school, I
love to play baseball, but I hated to do anything like
physical stuff. And so I would cut every corner
that I could. I would take every shortcut on
the running path that I could. And one day in my 30s, I had a
very clear reality that I had become the kind of person who
takes shortcuts. And that's a character issue.
Whether it's a fault or a flaw or whatever you want to call it,
it was a reality. I was that kind of person.
And that's what we read and we find in Proverbs 17, Chapter 9.
Love prospers when a fault is forgiven, but dwelling on it
separates close friends. Man, this can be heavy.
We saw it last week, this idea about our words.
Our words reveal the character of our heart.
We already kind of mentioned it before.
And what I want to say, especially, what our words
reveal when we have been wounded, when we have been hurt,
when we have been wronged, and when we suffered.
How we respond to pain and suffering and rejection is an
indicator of how our heart has been formed.
And again, we began with the declaration that we're badly
broken. We understand and acknowledge
that there are things in us that are.
Unformed or misformed or, or or maladjusted.
And so the love of Jesus brings us back.
But the point that we want to see is like the way that it
brings us back in the way that it heals us and restores us is
not by idolizing our pain and not by idolizing our wound, but
walking towards Jesus. And so I want to take a second
right here. I just want to.
Pause and I want you to just, if you'll give me just a second of
like real focus and, and attention on this, because when
we start talking about forgiveness of defense, and then
we start talking about broken relationships, we're standing on
holy ground. And what I mean by holy ground
doesn't mean that that our pain deserves worship.
It's like where Moses met God and he said, take your shoes off
because the place where you're standing is holy ground.
What I want to say when I say that your pain and, and our
suffering in these broken relationships are our holy
places, What I mean is that God is standing in them, that he's
waiting for you there. And so as we talked about this,
right, it's very important that I kind of set the stage for this
and just acknowledge a reality. Not all wounds are the same.
Not all brokenness is equal. And the implication of that is
that not all forgiveness costs the same.
There are some people that have been wounded in a way and in a
place that is so deep that to forgive is to cost greatly, to
seemingly cost everything. And there are some honest
wounds, right? To be the wound of being abused
by a parent, to have had power and authority misused, to wound
and to destroy and instead of give life is not the same wound
as someone who gets passed over for a promotion or who doesn't
get invited to lunch. I'm not saying that your pain,
whatever it is, is invalid. What I'm saying is that the Lord
sees each pain specifically and individually and meets you in
that place. There are some wounds and some
pain that honestly, as your pastor, my the best advice I can
give you is humble yourself and forgive and move forward.
And there are some pains and wounds that I know are very are
violations of your very humanity.
They seem to confront the image of God in you.
And maybe the best that you can do today is open up to the idea
that forgiveness would even be something that God wants for
you. But what I want to say as we
talk about that is that Father again, Father sees your specific
unique pain. Your father sees how it has
affected the way that you respond to other people.
They've seen what it has done to you and how it has formed you
and shaped you. And what I want to say is I want
to both acknowledge that and because of how we have seen
that, I want to hold up a high value of forgiveness and say
that forgiveness is how we move from being defined by what they
have done from your identity being they have done this to me.
What he wants the the path of wisdom is for you to be able to
see this is how that pain has formed who I am becoming.
It takes the power away from what has been done to you to
what is being done in you. And so why is why is forgiveness
that in light of some of the wounds that I know, I know some
of the wounds that are in this room in light of that woman, why
does God insist on forgiveness throughout the Scripture?
Forgiveness and love are inextricably linked.
To say it. Another way to forgive is to
love like Jesus. When Jesus says the great
commandments to love God and to love others, what he's talking
about is forgiveness. Because we find in 2nd
Corinthians 5 what what he says is that we have been forgiven.
We have been reconciled to Christ, and the forgiveness is
not counting their sins against them.
And we're going to talk about that in just a second.
But what we have to identify and articulate is that.
Love and forgiveness go hand in hand.
To walk in the path of Jesus is to forgive.
And so we can make that choice to walk towards Jesus in this
area, however slowly it may need to be, however tenderly and
gently. And I want you to know the Lord
is not in a rush to heal and to unpack and to do all of these
things. He simply is looking for that
willingness to say, Jesus, I want to go and be where you are.
And so listen, I understand that some of you have been devastated
by a pain that is so big and so great.
And I'm not saying you have to cross this bridge today, but
what I do want to say is that to experience that the love that
Jesus wants for you. Is to walk towards forgiveness,
because that's the way that Jesus walks and it may not
affect your feelings for a very, very long time.
Call us to forgive whether we feel like it or not.
And when we say I can't because I don't feel like that, what
we're doing is saying I will obey my feelings more than I
will obey anything else. And danger in that is is
manifest. It's easy to see what happens if
we become a people driven by our feelings.
And so how do So what does that? What does that mean, right?
It says to to forgive is to what does he say?
Love prospers when a when a fault is forgiven, right
contrast to forgiveness here is to dwell on things, right And so
here we see a picture of what of what forgiveness is it's not to
say that didn't hurt me. It's not to.
Say, oh, it's OK that you hurt me.
It's not to. It's not to say it's not
anything like that. It's not that it didn't happen.
It's not that I never think about it.
It's not that I don't ever feel about it again.
It's not that they have to apologize before I can do that.
The opposite. To forgive is to just say I'm
not going to take them to court every single day until they bow
and bend the knee. You'll never get that
satisfaction. You'll never get that.
What to forgive, then, is to give it to Jesus and to begin
walking your life out. Into the future.
The opposite of forgiveness here is to to dwell on it, to
constantly rehash it. And I want you to know like I'm
in the middle of this process in formation, just like, just like
you are. There was a night this.
Week I woke up at 2:00 in the morning with an anger fantasy
running through my head that was so strong my heart was beating
fast was flood of the. Endorphins.
And I said all of the things. You wouldn't believe how
convincing I was cutting them. Aw man, I was like a ninja
getting them to it. And guess what?
The more I did it, guess what happened?
The more I wanted to do it, the angrier I got.
The more I wanted to be angry. The more I meditated on how they
had hurt me, the more that I wanted to hurt them and I wanted
to get over that, the more I wanted to seek vengeance.
More, I wanted to have the final say and the problem is in that
moment what I did was make my wound ultimate reality.
And what Jesus says is I have a better reality for you.
I have something that's. Good for you beyond that wound.
Now again I want. To be so careful, I want to be
so tender and gentle to say abuse.
Physical and. Emotional and psychological
abuse these gross violations of personhood that assault the
image of God in your heart. They can and should result in
termination of relationship. I am not.
Saying that you have to stay in bed with your abuser.
What I'm saying is that forgiveness softens my
bitterness. Even if it may not.
Restore their access. It may not give them proximity,
and it may not require me to trust them.
Forgiveness says I will not be defined by what others have done
to me, but by what Jesus is doing in me.
It's not to. Be to forgive is not to be a
completed work, it is to walk towards a completion that we can
only imagine. And as I look around the.
Room. I know some of the wounds.
And I want to. Give you this as you're going.
I couldn't possibly forgive the father who dehumanized you.
It's not to forget, not to. To accept the path that the
spouse who ignored your every need and every humanity, to
forgive that father, To forgive that spouse.
To forgive that church told you that you weren't.
Acceptable. To God because you didn't fit
their package of what it was supposed to do.
It is not to let them off the hook.
You got to hear me when I say that it's not to let them off
the hook. It's.
What it is? Is to acknowledge the fact that
I need forgiveness too. What it is?
To say is. That I'm not just in this.
The problem is the reason that we live in the world that we
live in is because if we don't choose the path of forgiveness,
if we choose the path of rest of, of what's the word
retribution? If we choose that path, it
always escalates. I'm always going to give out
more than I received and then they're going to get more than I
received. And what I want to say is if
we're going to step back from that, there has to be the real
assurance that justice exists, that there is a God who is
righteous and just and who says I won't just excuse.
I don't just turn a blind eye to to abuse.
And I want you to know it's in there.
Here's the reason that we forgive the apostle Paul writing
to the church in Rome, people who were people just like us.
He said this Romans chapter 12, verse 19, Dear friends, never
take revenge. Stop.
Never. Take revenge.
I know your wound was defining. I know it was unjust.
I know it hurt you. I know it feels like it
destroyed you. Never take revenge.
What do we do in response then? Leave that.
To the righteous anger of of God, for Scripture says I will
take revenge, I will pay them back, says the.
Lord, you serve a God. Who is just and who sees your
wound? And he has promised to respond
appropriately. And the reason we do that is we
can now, you can now take that abuser and you can say your
influence in my life is over. I will not.
Give you one more day, and by the way, the Lord is better.
At it than you are. The reason that those.
Wounds come is because they don't care that much what you
think. So your.
Retribution is not going to be that painful.
Instead you hand them to the living God who loves you and
loves them and trust him to bring about his way and his path
and his life. That kind of response when we
become the kind of people who say I have suffered great wrong.
He's given me a. Love and righteousness.
It doesn't mean that I invite him over for dinner.
It doesn't mean that I pretend. Nothing ever happened.
It doesn't mean. That I go, hey, I'm.
OK, you're OK. I know it wasn't that big of a
deal it. Just.
Means I give them to the Lord and I trust his justice and his
righteousness more than I and see what happens is as you do
that and the person next to you does that, what happens is we.
Become kind of place. That does that and I want to
pause right here and say very clearly River City.
This is one of my favorite things about you when Brian a 40
year old executive pastor Brian Schneider when he first came
here at River City and I'm always interesting what the new
what the new guy thinks right like as he gets in and see in
the 1st place that he went had access was our men's ministry.
He went to our Wednesday night men's ministry and there's,
listen, there's something of a revival going on there.
There are guys that are that are just finding the Lord and
falling and walking them from the most unbelievable places and
circumstances. And Brian's take was what makes
the men's ministry such a such a unique and a special places.
Lots of people talk about being authentic and vulnerable.
Those guys actually do it. They share their.
Struggles and they share their pain and they share their fears.
And I want to say is the only reason that that this is a place
that can do that is because this is a place that does it.
We understand that to be badly broken doesn't mean to be
excluded from the love of God. And if we're not excluded from
the love of God, we can't be excluded from the love of each
other. See, that's what happens.
When we choose over and over again, at great cost to
ourselves and to our pride, to walk in that and so.
The choices that we make. Affect the atmosphere, they
affect who we become. And so the reality is we, you
know, remember I said that to my kids every week.
You have to live in the world that you create.
And so we are. Either creating and living in a
world of entrenched warfare. Or.
We are living in a world of growth and grace and redemption
and restitution or and and restoration cannot live in both.
And the messages and the people that tell us that those people
out there are our enemies. It's not the voice that leads to
redemption and restitution. That's the voice that further
deepens the divide and the gap. It's not to pretend that every
idea is equal, It is to acknowledge that every human
being on this planet bears the image of God.
And is in some. Measure being called out and
redeemed and restored again. And so our words and our
relationships and our responses are either furthering.
That. Or they're hindering it cannot
do both We. Cannot make people.
Our enemy and pray for their restitution to the Lord.
It's one or the other. That's what Psalm 27 says this
is like the is like the the charter verse for every men's
ministry in the country and it's wonderful right Proverbs 2717 as
iron sharpens iron so a friend sharpens a friend Imagine the
picture is you have an axe and you're out cutting a tree right.
If you cut a tree for long enough, the axe blade is going
to get dull, and So what happens at the point about this is that.
Sharpening isn't. Accidental, it doesn't just
happen. It isn't automatic.
It is also not easy the way this is set up.
So I'm a language guy like my training is in, I'm a literature
guy. I read, when I read the
scripture, I read them as letters, I read them as, as you
know, all of these genres as history.
And you look at it and you read it and words are important.
The way that the words these are communicated means something.
And so some of you are going to remember freshman English, some
of you are actually probably in freshman English.
And that's great, and that's wonderful.
Right. And so you'll know.
So a comparison, a metaphor that uses the word like or as is
called a simile woo, right? And so when we find the
scripture as iron sharpens iron, what we're being given here is a
simile. And what it should do is it
should force us to ask how is iron sharpened?
If we can understand how iron is sharpened, then we will
understand how friendships sharpen each other.
So how are how is iron sharpened by great friction?
There are often sparks, there is heat, it is loud and there is
stuff that gets knocked off. There are edges.
That are worn smooth by friction over time in the same direction.
Friends sharpen. Friends when they are willing to
go beyond politeness. Friends.
Sharpen friends when they are unwilling to let silence
masquerade as peace. This happened in my.
Life. When we started River City and I
came over and I was a mess. So you think this is messy?
You're right, it was worse, way worse back then.
We started and the elders, we started with a three man elder
board. It was me and a guy, Henry
Spindle, who's no longer with us, and Greg Grieman, who
continues to be an elder with us today.
And at the time, you know, I was 35 years old, and I knew
everything of all of the things I thought I did.
But really, I was angry and I was tired and I was worn out,
and I hadn't sufficiently taken care of my heart.
I hadn't done the work that I needed to do.
And so I had a tendency to respond sharply and pointedly
and directly. And I hurt a lot of feelings my
first year, two years Now here's the other thing about this,
about my gift. I know a lot of words and I'm
really good at at apologies. And so I remember sitting in an
elders meeting one day with Greg, and I was recounting the
latest, like, I had this conversation and I did this and
it was the 3rd or 4th or 50th time and heard it in Greg at the
elders table, lean across from me and said, you are so good at
apologies. Wouldn't it be better to not
have to do it so much? Yeah, it's better in the moment,
man. It felt good to just let it fly.
But I'm so grateful. I had a friend who would sit
across the table from me and not whether not worry about whether
or not that hurt my feelings, not whether worry about whether
I would misunderstand it. In that moment, I had a choice.
I could get my feelings hurt. I could get offended, I could
get defensive and make my own way.
But I sat across from this guy and I knew that he cared more
about me than about being comfortable.
And I knew that he cared more about this than about that,
making everything just peace over and smooth over.
And so in that moment, you know, again, I'm all butt backwards
into a lot of stuff. God gave me the grace to accept
that wisdom and to start working on being a person who doesn't
need to ask for forgiveness so much.
However I'm doing I don't, I don't know about that.
But I know that the. More often I'm willing to submit
to that kind of friction, the more often that I'm willing to
let somebody speak hard truth to me, even though it hurts, the
less frequently I need to happen, it needs to happen, and
the less traumatic it is. If I'll sharpen my axe every
single day, it only takes 3 minutes.
If I take if. If I do it once a month, it
takes all day and different equipment and I got to send it
off and I got to go get it. It's better to just moment by
moment, to submit to the person who loves me and who cares about
me, and to let them sharpen the rough edges off of me.
Now let me say a word about mutuality.
Because we cannot. Be fully formed by wisdom apart
from mutual submission. In your prayer for it so.
First of all, like there's a verse in James that says if you
ask for wisdom, God will give it to you.
He will give you wisdom. You just got to believe that
he's going to give you that and start and start walking in it,
right? And so as you start praying for
wisdom, God very well may drop a sign on your head.
You may walk out the door and there are flashing.
Bright. Neon lights that like quit your
job right? Like submit to your right.
It may happen. The.
Overwhelming evidence of scripture and personal
experience in my life is that he's going to send somebody to
you to tell you the truth. That's why we do small.
Groups not as. Organized so we.
Can count whatever. The idea behind a small group is
that you will go to small group and it will be the place where
you just go. I am angry at everything, not to
defend. My position and not to just say
I'm angry because all those people out there have told me,
right? We go to just say I'm angry and
I don't believe that this is what God is of what God has for
me. And the idea would be in the
context of your small group, somebody could even say, man,
you show up angry a lot. Is there a chance that you're
watching the news too much? And you have a choice.
To accept wisdom. Or not.
But what we expose ourselves to, is there a chance?
That you watch too much social media Is there a chance that
that's the. Idea behind community.
And so now a couple words of caution.
Beware of the echo chamber. And what I mean is that our
entire world is designed to tell you exactly what you already
believe. And not only to tell.
You what you. Already believe, but to tell you
that the people who don't believe like you are scary and
bad and to mischaracterize them and they do it for a reason they
tell you that so that you can feel justified and keep tuning
in and. Then when you.
TuneIn Now you're watching their advertising, you're subscribing
to their podcasts. You're just, you're doing their
thing. Our entire world.
Is an echo chamber and you will not.
We will not accidentally find ourselves not in an echo change
chamber. We must decide.
That we would rather. Have a different direction and
choose it day after day, moment after moment.
And that first 20 minutes that you do it, you're going to feel
like the whole world's going to fall apart.
You know how I because I deleted Instagram off my phone and I was
just like, like for a week I was like, Oh my God.
Well. How do I?
Even know how am I even going to?
Minister to people, Lord, if I'm not angry and afraid and upset
and scared, how can I possibly tell your truth, Lord, if I
don't know who the enemy is? And he says the enemy is that
voice that tells you that you have to be scared of other
people. If that's the enemy.
Will you delete it or will you walk in it?
Beware of the echo chamber. And if we're going to live free
of the echo chamber, we will have to choose it intentionally
every single day. Another thing to be careful of,
beware of trying to get biblical advice from non biblical people.
Because Jesus is. Going to tell you.
To honor your. Wife, your friends going to tell
you drop an old ball and chain, let's go.
Let's get an apartment. We do it together, right?
One of those ways is wisdom. One of those ways is not that
brings to the this last thing that kind of goes together.
Beware of the wolves. You are of the wolves, that.
Would be the prophets among you that would come in without a
hint of submission in their own life and tell you what you need
to do with your life. People come in all the.
Time and they love to tell me you need to do this Lord and
God, you're not doing this. My question is some person that
comes and my question is who gets to tell you no?
Who gets to? Tell you what to do.
Now, here's the scary part. My high school baseball coach
had a saying. It's not he didn't make it up or
anything like that, but he would say even blind hogs find acorns
every now and then, right? Like you heard that right.
So here's the deal. That unsubmitted person playing
the role of prophet, when they come, they may have a nugget of
truth that I need to hear. So when somebody comes and says
you're not doing not enough, my response is to take that and
just go, Lord, is there truth in that?
Am I that am I overbearing? Am I unkind?
Do I lack compassion? Lord am I like, like whatever,
whatever this the situation is, I can receive that as from the
Lord without submitting myself to unsubmitted, unaccountable
people. Listen, I believe within the
context of this that we read about in Ephesians.
I believe in the context of this congregation, the Lord will
raise up all kinds of people, apostles, prophets, evangelists,
shepherds, teachers. And I want to know.
That after the meeting, somebody came up to me afterward and,
and, and talked about something that God has called them to walk
in and it was and it walk in and it was something.
That we need and we experienced and I said, yes, I see that and
you, I see that as a need for us walk.
And I introduce some of the people so that there can be
mutual submission and accountability.
And I think that's how God does it.
God has a role and a part for you to play within the
congregation, but it's within the context of the congregation
and this congregation within the context of the church in New
Braunfels. No person is an island unto
themselves. No person only answers and
subjects and submits to Jesus because Jesus has placed us as
the body we walk together. So beware when.
People demand submission from you without being willing to
submit to anyone else, and. As we.
Walk in this the kind of people who capture the moments, the
people who become forgiving, not because we feel like it, not
because we we think it's, it's neat, but because we believe
that as we walk in that that's how we're going to get to the
end, where every tear is dried and every sad thing comes
untrue. As we walk in that and as we get
shaped in that, and as our community gets formed into that,
we become like Jesus. This isn't just this whole idea
of redemptive community, of iron sharpening iron, of forgiveness
and peace with other. This isn't just Old Testament
talk. This is the very methodology
that Jesus employed in his ministry.
Jesus came to start something that would live past him and
what he did was he called people together.
Mark chapter 3, verse 13. Afterwards, Jesus went up on a
mountain and he called out the ones that he wanted to go with
him and they came to him. Then he appointed 12 of them.
These weren't the only 12 people following Jesus.
There were hundreds of people in Jesus's circle, but he called 12
people to him and it says he appointed them apostles.
And they were to accompany. Him and he would send them out
to the people. Now, here's the interesting
thing about that. First of all, Jesus could have
done anything that he wanted. Jesus could have gone to Rome
and he could have thrown Caesar out, and he could have
established a feeding land, and he could have done all of those
things. But he didn't.
He called 12 ordinary people to himself, and he taught them what
it's like to be like him. And here's my favorite part. 2
of my favorite disciples go together.
The first one is called Simon the Zealot.
Simon Zealotes. He was a part of a political
party that was seeking, not just praying, for actively walking
out the violent overthrow of Rome.
They loved to kill Romans. And right next to Simon, we find
Levi the tax collector who the Jewish people saw as race
traitors. They sold out the people of
Israel to Rome for filthy lucre. You're trying to get rich at the
hands of your own people and Jesus, said Simon.
Meet Matthew You. Guys are going to be roommates.
We can't even watch. The news channel of the
opposition without our heads popping off.
This is the way that Jesus called us to walk with his
people, submitted, not abandoning our our humanity, not
abandoning the image of God and each other, but walking towards
something that he has done. We read about Pentecost.
It was a group of about 120 people in the upper room
praying. Simon was there, Matthew was
there. That's where the Holy Spirit
came, and it fell on them all equally.
Jesus spent time. With his disciples He spent
time, with the people he didn't. Just give them truth.
He didn't. Just preach at them.
He didn't just write a book. He gave them himself, He gave
them his example. And what's his example as they
nail him on the cross? Father what?
Forgive them because they don't know what they're doing?
Sure looks like it bro. Seems like there was an order.
Seems like there was a trial. It all seemed pretty conscripted
to me. Jesus knew something.
That we don't know. He saw the big picture and Jesus
extended grace. He gave himself.
And then he gave them each other.
And then he trusted. His Holy Spirit to form them
faithfully. That's what's happening in this
place, that's what's happening in your small group, that's
what's happening on your ministry team.
That's what happens when you read your scripture and you call
somebody and ask them to help you walk it out.
So how can we tell if we're staying on track with that?
With that wisdom, had a couple questions last week.
I wanna here's a couple more. The first one, whose voice am I
regularly or voices, whose voice am I regularly and repeatedly
exposing myself to overtime? And what is that exposure
actually forming in me? Who's on repeat is listen, be
careful. You'll end up liking Taylor
Swift over and over and over in your head, right?
If we listen to the. Angry voices of doom and
destruction. We will become angry,
destructive people. Second, what kind of world am I
helping to create with the relationships that are closest
to me? A world of.
Hope. A world that.
Believes that the end is good. Listen, I've read the end of the
book. I read it.
It's good. It's good news.
We get to be. Saved from this kind of world
where our relationships are are heavy and burdensome, we get to
save from that. For a world that lifts each
other up, encourages each other, that blesses and listen, you
don't have to solve all of this today.
You don't have to solve. All of this today.
Just begin by observing and acknowledging and seeing what
it's doing and bearing in your life.
Remember that wisdom is cumulative.
It builds up. And so if your.
Desire is to walk in wisdom, and it's worth slowing down and
taking an honest look at the trajectory of our lives.
Jesus, I just pray that you. Would help us see that.
Holy Spirit. You're in US like you are the
very wisdom of God resident in us.
That means that you will speak in our thoughts, you will speak
in our ears and in our insecurities.
You'll speak in those places and you always point us to Jesus.
And so I just pray that as we go through this week that you'll
help us see the areas where our relationships, our relation to
other people, our relation to to fear our relation, to control
our relation to the forgiveness and and wisdom.
Lord, I just pray that you would help us to see that.
And I know that everything. In US is going to want to solve
everything all at once. We want to be productive, but I
pray that we would just walk with you, that we would just be
in your presence. And Lord, the hope that we.
Have is that you form us minute by minute, over time into
something truly beautiful. Or do you set us?
Free from fear. You set us free.
From anxiety. You set us free.
From the things that undermine and destroy.
And you set us into a world of goodness and hope as an example,
as a beacon in this world. So Lord, I pray that.
Your church would be that, and I thank you for River City.
I thank you for the truth that our brokenness is.
I mean, we don't celebrate. Brokenness, but we thank you
that it is the very context where we experience your love.
I pray that that would be in so ingrained on us that it would
never go away, that it would continue to grow.
And I pray that broken people would continue to find their way
here to be set free and delivered, to be welcomed and
loved in your name and Lord. We don't condone sin.
We don't wink at it, we don't acknowledge it, but we don't see
sin as a condition for withholding love.
And that's hard, and it's awkward and it's uncomfortable,
and I don't like it. So I pray that you would shake
my heart. Help me to be like you.
We thank you for your love and Your grace, and we ask these
things. In your name and for your glory,
Amen. Thank you for joining us today.
River City Church is all about experiencing and expressing
God's love and 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
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your friends. Thanks.
So much for. Listening, may the Lord bless
and keep you in all grace and peace.