FULLNESS: The Fullness of Christ in Me

FULLNESS: The Fullness of Christ in Me

Rev. Dr. .Ken Pruitt, Guest Pastor | October 12, 2026

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At South Run, we read every message personally. Whether you have a question, want to share how God is moving in your life, or are thinking about visiting in person, this is the place to start. If you click the link below, Pastor Eric will personally reach out to you.

• Sermon Transcript

  FULLNESS: The Fullness of Christ in Me

  Dr. Rev. Ken Pruitt - Guest Pastor

  And all God's people said, I am so honored to be with you, South Run Baptist Church. Thank you for your commitment to Jesus, the love you show me and my family each time I'm here. And praise team, musicians, vocalists, thank you so much for how you're bringing honor to Jesus. In this time of worship, my dear friend Eric, man, I love you. I praise God for you. And thank you for entrusting the preaching of the word to to that which God, I believe, desires to do in this moment. I'm honored to be with you, and I invite you to join me where the scripture takes us today to Colossians chapter 1. I'll be reading from chapter 1, verses 18 through 20. Colossians chapter 1, verses 18 through 20. And he, Christ, is the head of the body of the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have supremacy. For God was pleased to have all of his fullness dwell in Christ, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven. Did you hear that, church? God in Christ has a desire to reconcile all things to himself. Can you say all things with me? All things. In the Greek that means all things. He's desired to reconcile all things to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross. Father in heaven, I thank you for the reading of your word. Thank you for the hearts that are receiving. and for your spirit who will instruct us. Father, I certainly desire that the words of man not be understood or any attempt of interpretation of your scripture. But Father, may your Holy Spirit quicken our hearts to hear your word. And we commit this moment to you in Jesus' name. And together we said, amen. Again, so honored to be with you. If you were to look at the screen of my cell phone, you would see a lot of apps. but you'd also see a lot of unused apps. And I'll tell you why. It's this simple phrase, add-ons. A lot of my apps no longer function because I refuse to pay for add-ons. You know what I'm talking about. The app looks promising until it tells you it is not. And I placed this 360 app on my phone recently because we all enjoy keeping up with ourselves and our household. And I wanted to advance a little bit, Eric, so I hit a button. I pushed the button and the app said, oh, no, you don't. You need an add-on. And so the app started pushing my buttons. I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that. spirit of refusing add-ons is remarkably similar to why Paul wrote this letter to the church of Colossae in 62 AD. This congregation was very young. They'd been founded not by Paul, but by one of the young men he had discipled, Epaphras. Paul writes to the church because something dangerous was afoot. There was in their century a problem with add-ons. Although the church in Colossae, the recipient of the letter of Colossians, had placed their trust in Jesus and was following the Christ and was committed to His words, there were voices from without speaking within the church, encouraging that there must be something added to the gospel. Paul said, oh no you don't. And the Holy Spirit raised him up to write this letter that is transferable as a part of God's holy inspired word into our lives today. These voices encourage the church at Colossae to add to their faith in Jesus philosophy, spiritual experiences, even the rites and rituals of the Hebraic tradition. And Paul writes to refute this, to remind them that in Jesus you have all you need. God's salvation for you stands perfect and complete exclusively, not in part, but exclusively in Jesus. And yet these voices continue to say something must be added. This is why in the second chapter of Colossians, you'll hear Paul say, see to it that no one take you captive with hollow philosophies. See to it, Paul would write, that no one deceive you with hollow philosophies that will bring in man's truth in an attempt to combine with the gospel to present something that is most assuredly not the gospel. This happens today, does it not? If we spend just a moment in some form of a media platform, we will see that there are truths that attempt to delude and to mix in with the Christian faith. This is happening in the 1st century. This was a young congregation, so Paul was quite concerned that some might buy into this early development of what is now known as Gnosticism, meaning that there are special revelations that can only come from God, not through Jesus, because matter is evil. Only spiritual things are holy. And so the incarnate God in Christ was dismissed, and many other heresies came out of this moment in history. Paul wrote to them about the fullness of Jesus. In fact, you and I can understand Paul's heart behind this letter by looking at something he prayed in chapter 1, verse 9. In that verse, Paul wrote and literally prayed, we continue to ask God to fill you with a knowledge of His will. What is that knowledge of the will of God that would keep you and me from being pulled into deceptive voices of vain philosophies and other teachings that are against the gospel. What is this full knowledge of the will of God? This is a bit more transcendent. In fact, it is way more transcendent than how you and I might think of knowing the will of God. We at times will seek God's will for where we will attend college or what career may be ours or who we will marry. Those are the big life episodes wherein we will sometimes say, God, I want to know your will. That's not at all the categories from which Paul says, oh, I pray, church of Colossae, that you will be filled with the knowledge of God's will. Here the idea of God's will is much more transcendent. And to better understand this, it's always important to allow the whole of the scripture to be our commentary for one specific scripture. And there is a partnering verse here that will help you and me to understand why of all the things Paul could have prayed for this church that was being hit by heresies, why Paul would pray, oh, that you would have full knowledge of the will of God. What is that will of God referenced here? Well, a partnering passage in Ephesians chapter 1, verse 9 and 10, Paul writes that the mystery of God's will, he has the word mystery there, the mystery of God's will has been revealed, and then Paul names it, that all things will be brought under one head, Jesus Christ. So when Paul prays for the Colossian church that they would be full of the knowledge of God's will, He's praying that they would have a deep, a full, a complete understanding of all that God has accomplished for them through Jesus. Paul writes, I pray that you'll be filled with understanding what God has done for you in Christ. Now immediately, you and I, especially those of us who've been in church since the day we were able to take our first breath, will quickly say, well, Ken, I know the gospel. I've heard the gospel. I could reiterate the gospel. So why would I need to know more, have the full knowledge of a gospel that I've already heard all my life? Well, your question, if that would be your question, makes the apostle Paul's point. And it makes the teaching of the Holy Spirit's point here very clear. Paul is not saying that you would have a recognition of the gospel so that you can recite it. Paul is not saying that you have some cerebral understanding of the gospel. Paul writes that you would have a full knowledge and experience that you would truly know the fullness and the essence of Jesus. Here lies more than simply an idea or a truth that we hear about and try to respond to. This is looking at Jesus and seeing him for the fullness of who he is so that our lives are responding to him. There is a formula of this, knowing the truth and responding as far back as Psalm chapter 89. In that Psalm, the Psalmist said, God, please teach me your ways so that I may respond to your faithfulness. Paul writes in that same formulae to the Colossian church, oh that you may know the fullness of Christ so that your lives will respond to who he is in all of his glory, in the vastness of who he is as the reigning King of Kings and as the one who died to redeem us. And so Paul does this for a specific purpose, to lead Colossians away from those deceptive philosophies. And how does Paul do that? By focusing upon the Christ. Last week as we were together in God's Word, I shared with you as many as five marks of the true essence of Jesus brought out here so that we might more fully understand the Christ and not give in to those dangerous add-ons. And what did we discover? We discovered that Jesus is indeed the exact image of God, that He is supreme over all realms, and that He's head of the church. But we pick up with that 4th mark in verse 18. He is the firstborn from among the dead. Of all of these amazing and powerful demonstrations of the true identity of Jesus, we hear The scripture pronounced powerfully, he's the firstborn from among the dead. He has power over dead. If there was any question that the heresies would bring to the minds of the Colossians, those questions should have been erased. dismiss completely learning that Jesus has actually conquered everything that would separate us from God, including the grave, including death. He is the firstborn from the dead. Now, if you and I were to walk our way through the scriptures together, we would discover in that chronological reading as many as 9 to 10 stories about people being raised from the dead. Yet each one gives the narrative of their life resurrection being followed by immediately dying again. They were resurrected because of sin or some injurious thing, and yet they would be resurrected to die again. Only one has been resurrected never to die, and his name is Jesus. That's why he is held here in all of scripture as the firstborn among the dead. This is why Revelation chapter 1, verse 18 announces clearly that he holds the keys of death and the grave. You know, someone holds the keys, they're pretty much in charge, so we think. That was the vernacular and that was the intimation of Paul's words and of the words in Revelation. He holds the keys. He controls, he has defeated death and the grave. But also look at a final mark here, emphasizing the greatness of Christ so that we look to Him and are not swayed to the need for an add-on. That we look to Christ so that we're not saying it's Jesus plus. ceremony. It's Jesus plus special revelation. It's Jesus plus ascetic behavior of denying my body certain pleasures. Or it's Jesus plus man-made ceremonies or rudimentary principles that will eventually trap us in darkness. No, it's Jesus only. And Paul concludes this amazing hymn-like paragraph from the scriptures describing the essence of Jesus in its fullness And he ends by these very powerful words in verse 19 and 20. For it was God who was pleased to have all of his fullness dwell in him. Focus on verse 19. We will find reason why these verses are so important to push away false beliefs both then and now. For God was pleased to have all the fullness dwell in him and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven. This is Paul's language, things on earth in heaven, not referencing our home heaven, but referencing every possible part of the created existence, the heavens and the earth, all things. There's nothing here that will not be touched by the power of Jesus giving us the opportunity through our faith in Him to be reconciled to God. And all of this, is done because Jesus has made peace through his blood shed on the cross. Absolute in redemption. That's our Jesus. There's nothing missing. Only in Christ can mankind truly know God. This is Paul's message. It seems simple to you and me. We've heard this The entire existence of our life, at least some of us have, and yet here it becomes so profound in the face of our tendencies to welcome add-ons to our faith. And Paul writes, it's only in Christ. It was that great preacher, Charles Spurgeon, perhaps you've heard his name quoted once or twice before, who said this when asked if he had a creed. And Spurgeon said, If I'm asked if I have a creed, the answer is I have but one, and it's Jesus Christ. And then Spurgeon went on to elaborate because he is the sum and substance of the gospel. He is all theology. And he is the incarnation of every precious truth. This becomes the heart of what Paul desired that the church at Colossae see, the fullness of the Christ. And then in this first chapter of this amazing letter, Paul gently but very pastorally carries the Colossians' attention from fullness in Christ to that great application, fullness in Christ in me. What does it look like for you and I to live in the reality of the fullness of Christ in me? We pick up at verse 21. Once you were alienated from God and you were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you, he meaning God, has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you wholly in his sight without blemish and free from accusation. Paul seems to bring into the idea of how you and I are complete in Christ and the fullness of Christ dwells in us through the Spirit, first by pointing to the past. He will in a moment point to the present and the future. But he points to the past, and I believe the focus here can be clearly in the past on the crucifixion. Notice what Paul writes here. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior, this enmity from the very beginning when sin entered this earth, can only become something that is removed because of Jesus. We know this. We know that Romans chapter 5 talks about the first Adam and sin comes in, but then compares Christ like a second Adam, not fully a man, but fully God and fully man, bringing in our salvation completely to remove the curse of sin. And Paul wrote, you were alienated from God. You were enemies in your mind, but But he's reconciled you how? Through Christ, physical body, through death. Therein lies the past tense of Paul's emphasis upon the completeness of our salvation. The past, Christ was crucified. Why would Paul add in body? Why would he mention the physical here because the heresies, particular the beginning seeds of what would become full-blown Gnosticism, held high the perfect holiness of what is spiritual, but denied that God would redeem anything physical or material. And so Paul argues that beautifully and conclusively God in Christ went to the cross to redeem us. Church, I ask you, Do you not desire that it would be your testimony in mine to be like that of Paul's when in Romans chapter 6 verse 6, in Galatians chapter 5 verse 24, in Galatians chapter 6 verse 14, Paul over and over again said, I am crucified with Christ. He articulated that in Galatians chapter 2 and verse 20. Each of those verses have something powerful in common along with the word crucified. It is the tense of the word. The grammarian in Greek would call it the aorist. It is the completed action never to be acted upon again. Paul wrote, I'm crucified with Christ. I laid my old self down and I have been raised to a new life. in Christ and I fear that today in the church at large, many are struggling to let go of the identity of a sinful past because in our minds we think we must do something. that will give us a true essence of God's being pleased with us when scripture says it is impossible for us to do that without the grace of the cross. But I fear many people are held in the clutches of that guilt where we do not feel good enough. And Paul writes, we have been crucified. That's been done in the past. What Christ did on the cross and then through the empty grave and now ascended on high, is enough. It's complete for you to be fully redeemed. This is the fullness of Christ in us. But look at the present tense. Paul writes, but now he has reconciled you. You've been brought together with him. This is present tense. The actual tense in that verse is now you are reconciled through Christ to God. Second Corinthians 5, In verse 19, that announces God in Christ reconciling the world to himself. And then future tense, from the crucifixion to reconciliation to this powerful statement, God presenting us. Do you see that? How powerful God presenting us. Free from accusation, without blemish. This is the future reference of salvation that Paul articulates here, that on that day you'll be presented to God without blemish. He's made us right with Jesus. through the death and resurrection. He's reconciled us in the present. He's making us right. And He makes us right eternally for the future as He presents us wholly before God. And on that day that our breathing stops here and our eyes awaken there, we will be presented perfect, fully as Christ has died to make us perfect. And this becomes a powerful recognition of how you and I live on these truths of the fullness of Christ in me. The fullness of Christ, the image of God, supreme over all spheres, head of the church, the fullness of Christ, in all of the glory of God, being absolute in redemption, the fullness of Christ in me. He died on the cross that I might say I'm counted as crucified with Him. He's reconciled me to God now. Nothing can break that, and He's presenting me holy and blameless when I stand with Him. in heaven what a beautiful picture of the fullness of Christ and the fullness of Christ in you and me there was a young man in 16th century Germany who wrestled significantly with the idea of being pleasing to God He read the scriptures but would see phrases like the righteousness of God as only punitive, interpreting that God's righteousness is actually that which punishes the sinner. And this young man felt the guilt as a sinner. So he attempted many acts of what he would call acts toward righteousness. He prayed relentlessly. He confessed rigorously. He fasted severely, even to the point of fainting, with a desire to somehow taste what it's like to be right with God. But nothing worked. This young man, over many series of prayer and before the scripture, saw that phrase, the righteous will live by faith. And his life became changed. He confessed Jesus as his Lord. And you have probably guessed who this young man in 16th century Germany is, Martin Luther. And this is what he said, this is actually what he wrote looking back on his conversion. It was like walking through a gate into paradise where I'm truly free in Christ. So today, from the bottom of my heart, I ask, can you say of your place with Jesus that you feel free, like you have walked through a gate and you're free in Christ to know who He is and to know who you are and what He's done for you. so that you can have a life that is free to worship, not perfect, but free to worship, free to live for Him, free to have a desire to honor Him and to fulfill what He directs us to do as we follow after Him. Oh, I pray that you will have that freedom. And I pray that in just a moment as we come to the table of observing what our Savior has done, that when you allow the observance of the Lord's table to affect your sight and your senses and your taste, as you partake of the bread and the cup, would you allow the amazing truth of Jesus to wash over you? And I desire to do the same so that we leave this place knowing full well that we are going to respond to Jesus for who He is. and for who he is in us as we desire to live for him. Amen, church. Would you pray with me? Father in heaven, thank you for your word speaking to our hearts. And now, Father, as we come to your table, we do so, Father, not tritely, not out of routine or habit. Oh, Father, forbid that we would come simply because this is just another step, but oh, Father, may we come anticipating a renewed sense of who you are and what you've accomplished as we live for you Father we pray this we offer this in the precious name of Jesus our Lord and together we said amen

October 4 - FULLNESS: Knowing Christ Deeply, Living Christ Daily. Part 1

FULLNESS: Knowing Christ Deeply, Living Christ Daily. Part 1

Rev. Dr. Ken Pruitt - Guest Pastor

Check out the weekly sermon here or on our SRBC podcast on Apple Podcast and Spotify. While you’re at it, check us out on Facebook and Instagram too.

Like what you hear? We’d love to know.

At South Run, we read every message personally. Whether you have a question, want to share how God is moving in your life, or are thinking about visiting in person, this is the place to start. If you click the link below, Pastor Eric will personally reach out to you.

• Sermon Transcript

  FULLNESS: Knowing Christ Deeply, Living Christ Daily, Part 1

  Rev. Dr. Ken Pruitt, Guess Pastor

  . . . statement. No, the gospel is not another dying myth. It's not just another story. It's the story from where all other stories find their meaning. That statement encapsuled the conversion experience of this young man. And on that evening He asked Jesus to become his Lord and his Savior. And the impact of this young man is still felt today. His name is, of course, C.S. Lewis. And his friend who encouraged him is certainly none other than J.R.R. Tolkien. I love this story of Lewis's conversion. And later in his life, Lewis wrote a summary of that night. I'd like to share this summary with you. Lewis said, I now believe in the Christian faith, not only because I can see it, but because by it I can see everything. Lewis testified that Jesus Christ had filled his life. He had become full of the meaning and message of the gospel. This reminds us of a phrase that Pastor Paul Tripp used once, being compartmentalized in our faith. Lewis decided no longer to compartmentalize, but to see Jesus Christ as Lord of all and to see His fullness alive in all of our existence. So I ask you today to consider our response to Jesus. Many of us come to this place of worship from different locales and maybe even different spiritual postures. We come to this place with different experiences. But there's one question that would drive us all together. How are we responding at this very moment in our daily lives to Jesus? Do we tend to compartmentalize? Pastor Paul Tripp said that at times we treat our Christian faith like drawers. in our house we have different drawers. We have drawers for socks and we have drawers for towels and drawers for utensils. And sometimes in our faith maybe it feels as if we have different drawers and that Jesus and the truth of the gospel has just but one drawer to occupy in our life. Lewis would say note, it is vital that we receive the fullness of Christ in our lives and then walk in that fullness. Well, that's the message of the whole of Scripture of the New Testament and of this small letter that we know as Colossians, written by the Apostle Paul, that 1st century pastor and church planter who ministered indelibly in the lives of many brand new churches in the 1st century, particularly in Asia Minor, and Colossae being one of these congregations to whom Paul wrote a letter around 62 AD. And the purpose of his letter was to remind them, Jesus is all you need. He's sufficient. And Paul began through this letter expounding upon this idea of the fullness of Christ. I'd like to walk into this letter with you for just a moment to experience the first of two messages I'll share with you. And in this part one of knowing Christ deeply and living Christ daily. Can we focus for a moment on the fullness of Christ in us? And then we'll focus on the fullness of Christ next week in the church. As we open up the book of Colossians, I'd like to remind you of the theme of Colossians that we find in the opening two verses. In Colossians chapter 1, verse 1 and 2, before we move into the verses that were read for us, we notice a greeting that Paul shared that sets the tone for the remainder of the letter. Paul wrote in Colossians chapter 1, verse 1 and 2, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, he identified himself, by the will of God and Timothy our brother, to God's holy people. And Paul presented two identifications here built upon the fullness of Christ. Paul said, I'm apostle of Jesus by the will of God. And then he addressed the church as being the holy people of God. I don't know if you've ever seen yourself as holy, but if you were among the Colossian congregation, you would be addressed aptly, even as you should be today, as a holy people. You may say, and Pastor Ken, that's far from what I would think of myself. Well, Paul addressed the entire church. transferable even to you and to me today that you're a holy people. But Paul also identified himself in that same light by saying, I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ. Why are these two identifiers so important for understanding this entire letter and for understanding the fullness of Christ in us and in the church? When Paul said, I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ, he added, by the will of God, Anytime Paul uses the phrase will of God, he's referencing not just God having a will for our lives per se for a career or some type of broader guidance. Paul uses the phrase will of God to reference what God is up to in our lives by giving us Jesus. to redeem us and save us and set us in a right relationship with God Almighty. That becomes for the message of the gospel, the will of God. So Paul writes, I'm an apostle by the will of God. He didn't mean that by the sake of his career or calling, but because of what God had done in his life through Jesus. So I stand here today to say I'm a messenger of God by the will of God. I'm leading a seminary by the will of God. I'm a father and a husband by the will of God. But not because these are choices only that have filtered into my life, but this is because of what God has done to redeem and to fulfill his purposes through a relationship with Jesus. Paul then identified the Colossian church as being the saints. You holy people, the saints of God, meaning set apart. You are set apart because of what Jesus has accomplished in you. And so when Paul gave this greeting, he was off and running in this amazing small letter to remind the church that all that we are, all that we do is built upon the fullness of Jesus at work in our lives. Then Paul does something unique. He offers a prayer that we see in chapter 1, verse 9 and 10. Paul said, I pray and ask that God would fill you What did he ask God to fill the church with? Listen to this, the knowledge of the will of God. Paul writes, I pray that you'll understand not just that God's will is real for those of us who preach and lead and plant churches, but God's will is real for you in Christ Jesus. God is doing something in you, which is why Paul prayed in chapter 1, verse 9 and 10, that you would have the fullness of the knowledge of the will of God. Over in chapter 2, I add this because this is vital for this word fullness. Paul gave some exhortation in chapter 2, verse 9 and 10, when he said, oh, I pray that in Christ you are brought to fullness. That the fullness of Christ made known in bodily form, meaning that God sent Christ to us, He lived, died, and rose again, and ascended, and he's ruling and reigning on high. Paul writes, I pray that the fullness of Christ becomes your fullness. This word fullness, although out Colossians from the Greek term pleroma, actually indicates to be complete. So what Paul is saying in all these verses is not too different from what C.S. Lewis said of his conversion. Jesus has filled my life. All that I am and all that I think and do and the lens through which I look at everything is Jesus. This was Paul's message and this was his exhortation to the Colossian church to walk in the fullness of Christ, to know him deeply and to follow him daily. Paul then continues writing and he comes to an abrupt halt at verse 15 and this is where we pause for an application today. In verse 15, it's as if Paul stopped for a moment. Paul is likely writing from a Roman prison, so he's likely dictating to what you and I would call an emanuensis, a secretary. We know this to be reality because at the end of the letter, Paul says, I took the pen and wrote this closing myself. But here Paul seems to pause, he may have put up his hand to the one that was writing down what he was speaking to this church he'd never visited, but his dear friend Epaphras, whom Paul had discipled, had actually been a part of the church's founding. And Epaphras had traveled the 800 miles from Colossae to Rome where Paul was in prison and had given him a report of the new Christians in Colossae, which encouraged Paul to write these words. And I can almost see Paul lifting his hand, telling the one writing his thoughts to stop for a moment. Because in verse 15 all the way through verse 20, it's as if the entire tone of the letter ceases for this one paragraph. Some of your older translations use an indention here to show that there's likely some form of hymnody happening here. It's as if there is a hymn-like presentation. Wright comments that yes, this is actually a hymn, but it's not apart from Paul's writing. There is evidences of Paul's writing all through this great section of verses about the person of Jesus. So for just a moment, having looked at the backdrop of Colossae and this word fullness that will appear all through the letter and having understood that Paul is concerned about a brand new church that's just been founded, And a church that was inundated by all types of heretical teachings that had begun to attempt to undo the foundation of the gospel. Paul prayed, oh that you'd be filled with the knowledge of God's will. Paul exhorted that the fullness of Christ would dwell in you. But between those two statements about the fullness of Christ, Paul presents Jesus. He presents Jesus. I'm here this morning. for no other purpose than to present to you Jesus. If there are questions in your life about some event or some season, if there are fears and concerns and unknowns, I'm just here to present Jesus to you. If you're tired and frustrated and overwhelmed, perhaps confused and maybe even a little apathetic about faith, I'm just here to present Jesus. If you are inundated through the media and all types of social interlocutors who are out there attempting to have a conversation with you and maybe even to present to you some type of delusion of what is truth, I'm just here to present Jesus. Because when we truly look at the Christ, We understand him in his fullness. How can we not but surrender all that we are to him so that we can live in that very same fullness? So as we move into verse 15 and as time comes to a close, I just want to share 5 identifying markers. of Jesus. The theologian would say 5 marks of pure Christology. But since none of us are in the posture of a theologian this morning, I like the simple phrase. These are five identifying marks of Jesus. Yet the hymn is full of pure Christological emphases that will truly be transformative. So listen to verse 15. The Son, meaning Jesus, is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. The first identifying mark, Jesus is the exact image of God. You may say, well, can we know this? is the meaning of Christmas. This is the incarnation. But do you understand from this verse, there is an overwhelming flood of theology that comes from the scriptures that presents Jesus as the perfect representation of God and the highest manifestation. Paul wrote, Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. Paul, a former Pharisee, understood that the Old Testament law prohibited that there would be any image set up to represent God. So when Paul says that Jesus becomes the exact image, Paul actually articulates that it is Jesus who is the full perfect expression. Jesus becomes the sum total of God. Like Hebrews chapter 1 verse 3 articulates, Jesus is the exact representation. You need to look no further to understand God than the perfect love of Jesus. Christ himself said in John 14, verse 9, if you have seen me, you have seen who? The Father. Jesus is the perfect demonstration of God. Why is this important? Because there were heresies circling about the Colossae church that was tempting the Colossian Christians to add something to the gospel. Are you with me, church? There were influences that would cause these new Christians in Colossae to add to the gospel a practice of Judaism so that my ceremonialism and my legal response to the law must be added to the gospel for me to be acceptable to God. There was another temptation to add asceticism to the gospel. These are the strange heresies. that were trying to pollute the church, to which Paul writes this letter and argues. And asceticism would be not like Judaism, you must do this, but asceticism would declare, you must stop doing this. And so the ascetics were tempting the Colossae Christians to realize that their only true approach to God would involve those restrictions, bodily and otherwise, that would indicate that they are holy and right with God. Paul says, no, Jesus is the full demonstration of God and the highest manifestation. He has brought to you complete salvation. You need no other. You need to look for no add-on. But all our culture produces add-ons to the gospel just as quickly as you and I can boot up our Facebook page or some other public media that allows the culture to sit down with us and to bring influence. Paul said, Jesus is the fullness of God. You need no other. It's as if Paul was saying, I'm not asking you to make Jesus #1 in your life so that there might be a #2 and three. Paul was saying to the Colossian Christians, Jesus is everything, not just #1. He's everything. The highest manifestation becomes evident when Paul said he's the He's the exact image of God and he's the firstborn over all creation. This phrase firstborn I must explain to you because it does not mean that Jesus was created. Jesus has always existed. Is that a shock to you? The scripture teaches he's always existed. But to call him the firstborn in this great hymnody of pure teaching of Jesus indicates not that there was some chronology that made him evidenced here and others followed, no, it indicates the highest manifestation from the Greek word protocols, which means first. There's no other, first in high honor, first in allegiance, first in the pureness of God demonstrated to men. There is no other Jesus is the exact representation of God. When our middle daughter was very young, she picked up a crystal figurine that had an image of Jesus right in the middle of that crystal rock, a picture of Jesus on the cross. Friends of us had traveled and they found this in a shop and had brought it to us. And if you picked up that crystal rock and turned it a certain way, you could see Jesus appear. But you had to tilt it just right. And you had to work with it until it became manifested as a picture of Jesus. Our middle daughter picked it up one day and she was very young and she began turning it. She's turning it and saying to me, dad, where's Jesus? As if he's no longer inside this rock. Where is he? Sweetie, keep looking. She turned it and she finally said, I see him. I see all of him. Because you see, if you didn't turn this figurine just right, you'd only see a glimpse. But her phrase, dad, I finally see all of him. resonates with perfect clarity what Paul's doing here, that the Colossian church would see all of Jesus, not just a glimpse, not just a drawer in one's life to say, well, I'll pull this drawer open and think about Jesus whenever it becomes appropriate. Paul said he's God. He's over all things. He's firstborn, meaning he's first place. Look at this second identifying mark. He is supreme over all realms. Verse 16 and 17. For in him all things were created, heaven and earth, thrones, powers, rulers and authorities. They've all been created. Are you ready for this trifecta of an explanation of Jesus? They've all been created in him, through him, and for him. In him can mean in the locality of the Greek language, a sphere, a place, meaning that Jesus rules and reigns as Lord over all of this. All things are made, principalities, powers, darknesses in Him, meaning unto Him, meaning under His Lordship. My father used to say, not rather quickly, but sincerely and often, if Jesus is not Lord of all in your life, He's not Lord at all in your life. Because Paul's describing Jesus here as all things being under his rule and ring, all things are in him. The Greek would have it the sphere, the location. All things are in him, all things are through him. We know that Jesus as the Son, a member of the Trinity, has that expression of being creator. John chapter 1, verse 3, in him all things were created. What do you mean by all things? If anything has been created, it was created through him and in him and by him and for him. That's the message of John chapter 1 verse 3 and the message here. All things are in him through him and for him, for his glory. Jesus is supreme over all realms. Look at the third identifying marker. Jesus is head of the church. He is head of the church. We're going to stop here today and let this become the A place where we sit down to apply, what does this mean for me? Hear this phrase. Paul writes, he is the head of the body, the church. You see, the heresies that surrounded the church at Colossae were influenced by early forms of what later became known as Gnosticism. You don't have to worry about that term, other than it identifies a belief that something material was evil and that Jesus could not have been incarnate. And so God had to reveal through angelology and other mystical, inspirational experiences, God had to reveal himself that way. And Paul wrote, the scripture indicates, no, God has revealed himself perfectly in Christ. Jesus is supreme over all realms, which will send a message to the Gnostics that that Gnosticism is wrong. These heresies are wrong because Jesus is Lord over all spaces. He's Lord over all. But then Paul adds, he's head of the church. Well, if he's already said Jesus is over all spheres, that would include the church, why would Paul have to add the church? Simply because the gospel not only disarms the dangerous heresies that circle about, The gospel also proves that there's only one way to the Father. There's only one faith that will bring you to the Father, and that's through Jesus. He's the head of the church. This indicates that he is head of the church in authority and majesty. I pastored before coming to lead the seminary for over 31 years. In those 31 years, you know how many days I acted as head of the church? Hopefully none. Hopefully none. Do you know how many days in those 31 years I was head of the church? None. None. Do you know how many elders I met in 31 years that were head of the church? None. Do you know how many deacons and church founders and church planters that I met that are head of the church? The sum total would be none. Because there's only one head. His name is Jesus. Paul said he's the head of the church. There are others here you can see, but I focus on these three for our time this morning. He's the image of God. He's supreme over all realms. He's head of the church. Why would Paul emphasize this so much? Because later in this chapter, Paul would write, that you were once separated from God in your sins. You were alienated. But because of what Jesus did on the cross, absolute redemption, because of what Jesus did, you've been brought to God. You're no longer enemies to God. You've been brought to Him. You've been given new life. If your faith is in Christ, you have been given adoption as sons and daughters of God. You belong to Him, to God, because of what Jesus has done. And Paul, led by the Holy Spirit, emphasized these truths to a very young church that had become inundated with dangerous heresies because Paul, in the Spirit, knew what you and I discovered today. If we can see all of who Jesus is, if we can see all of him, has my daughter turned that little crystal rock If we can look at the truth to say, I see the fullness of Jesus, then our lives can respond to that fullness. And we are walking in the fullness of Christ in us because Paul would say in chapter 2, verse 9 and 10, and you have the fullness of Christ through the Holy Spirit. All that Jesus is, He's He's accomplished that in you. So church, today, those of you who your faith is in Jesus, I want you to know you have the fullness of Christ. He's working in you. He's alive in you. This is why Paul said, I am an apostle by the will of God. Jesus is alive and at work in you. So I encourage you to join me in walking in the fullness of Christ by knowing him more deeply according to these truths and living for him daily. When Queen Victoria of England reigned as Empress of India, the Maharaja of Punjab was a little boy. To show his allegiance, he sent her a magnificent diamond. This diamond he sent Queen Victoria became one of the crown jewels of England and it was safely kept in the Tower of London. When the Maharaja of Punjab grew up to become a man, some two decades later, he went to London to pay his respects to the Queen. When he arrived, the young man went into the Queen's chambers and he asked in shock to the Queen if he could see the diamond. Can you bring the diamond that I gave to you a long time ago when I was a little boy? So she Motion for her attendance and the diamond was brought to the Indian prince. Everyone was stone silent because it seemed as if the prince had a change of heart. He took the diamond, he knelt on one knee in front of the queen. And he said, Queen, when I gave this diamond to you a long time ago, I was but a boy and I really didn't know what I was doing and I didn't know you. But now I really know you. So when the fullness of knowing what I'm doing, I kneel again and I give you the diamond again in full heart, in full strength, realizing that what I do is in response to your majesty. I think sometimes we can become so busy being good church people and good religious people then maybe we lose glimpse of seeing the fullness of Jesus and responding to him. I'm not sure when you bowed your knee and said, Jesus, I invite you into my life as Lord and Savior. Could have been recently, maybe it was a couple of decades ago. But is it possible that at times we need to see Jesus in his fullness so that we can return to the devotion of giving our life to Jesus. Maybe, maybe for some, scales have come off and we've matured in our faith. And maybe now we need to say, Jesus, I know I'm yours, but in the fullness of understanding you and knowing what I'm doing, Jesus, I just, I say, Jesus, I'm yours. Use me as you desire. Perhaps that's a prayer that God may be leading you to pray. Jesus, I know I belong to you, but I just want to say I'm yours because I see you more fully for who you are. Church, I pray that you and I together will know Christ deeply and we will certainly live Christ daily. Amen. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this moment we have not just to have heard your word and to have been led in beautiful worship, but Father, now to respond to you, to understand that God, you gave us all when you gave us Jesus, and there is nothing more that we need for our salvation to be complete. And so Father, you've made it complete, and perhaps at times we've lost sight of this. May we return to you having been reminded of your fullness in Christ, and may we return to say, God, I'm yours. Father, we know that if we've trusted you and we're saved, that has no expiration date. But Father, sometimes we lose sight of who you are and the fullness, the beauty of our salvation through Jesus. And maybe we need to pick up that truth of Jesus and look until we can say, I see all of Christ. And how much more I need to say, Jesus, I'm yours. Jesus, I'm yours. May this be our prayer. And we offer this in Jesus' name. And together we said, Amen. Would you.

Your Faith Has Saved You

Your Faith Has Saved You

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrist, Pastor { September 27, 2026

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• Sermon Transcript

  Your Faith Has Saved You

  Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor

  I hope you'll stick around as we pack together for the community that is around us. As I was watching that video, it strikes me that what we're doing downstairs in just a few minutes is a wonderful extension of what I want to say today, which is that, maybe in brief, that Jesus cares about our bodies as much as he cares about our souls. He cares about this world as we see it and experience it, as he does about wherever we end up in the next life. And too often, Christianity, and I am guilty of this myself, we focus so much on what's to come that we fail to see that the here and now is actually where heaven and hell begin. And so unless we can take care of the bodies in front of us, our own included, I do wonder how we are prepared to enter into the next life. Let's pray and we'll jump into what I'm trying to say here. Heavenly Father, we come this morning expecting you to be present and speaking, to be active in the world that is around us and the world that is inside each of us. Lord, our minds can race, our hearts can thump, anxiety can get the best of us. Thinking about what tomorrow might bring can get us all wrapped up around the axle. But Lord, today, in this second, we ask that you set those aside, that you breathe your breath of peace into us and that you speak to us the truth that you have for us this morning. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen. The sermon takes place in three parts. I've tried to give you the three parts on the bulletin at the bottom of your, at the bullets, at the bottom of the bulletin. Part one is kind of stating to you the problem that often exists. And then part two is maybe showing you the path forward and where I see a solution to this problem. And then three, as often is who cares, is the question that I'll pose. Like, what does it mean for us today? The question at hand is, what do Jesus miracles have to do with the crucifixion and the resurrection? I don't know if you've ever thought about this question, but Jesus spends his whole life doing all kinds of things. He lives in earthly existence, just like you and I do. And then he has at least three years of a ministry where he's going about doing what? He's healing people of their diseases. He's casting out demons. In today's story, he he power came out of him to heal the bleeding woman. There was a girl who had died and he raised from the dead again. But then he goes to the cross and he forgives us of our sins. And I don't know if you feel this way, but sometimes it feels like those two things are worlds apart. And what is his healing of all the bodies in the first part of his life have anything to do with what he does on the cross? Have you asked this question? Have you wondered this? Has this ever come into your mind at some point that these two things feel a little unrelated? I heard a speaker a number of years ago. His name is NT Wright and there's a quotation from him at the bottom of the bulletin. He's a famous biblical scholar. And he was talking at a conference that I was at. And he named this ever so clearly. He said that too often in American Christianity, we split these two things up. And truth be told, we actually mostly just focus on the cross and maybe the resurrection, though mostly the cross and the forgiveness of sins. And then the hope that we have at some future point in heaven someday. But then we don't always know what to do with those miracles that he did. And they just kind of become a sign that, well, maybe maybe Jesus is just like proving he really is God. And so he's done all the signs to prove that he's God. And therefore, the cross is real. I suggest to you actually that's maybe an anemic or small view of what Jesus is doing in his earthly ministry. And he's showing us a much, much better way. But the problem doesn't seep in recently. It's actually an older problem. It actually if you were to read the Apostles Creed, right, it goes like this. It says, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And I believe in Jesus Christ. And then what does it say about Jesus? It says he's God's son. He's our Lord. He's conceived by the Holy Spirit. And he's born of the Virgin Mary. And then it skips over all the life of Jesus. And it says he suffered under Pontius Pilate. He was crucified, dead and buried. Right. And so even the Apostles Creed jumps from his birth, which seems really important, and then the suffering and death, which is obviously very important, doesn't really give us some theology or an understanding of why it all mattered at all. I think there's help on the way, though. So the first place I turn you to is Matthew, Chapter eight, verses 16 to 17. We read the following. That evening they brought to him many who were possessed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word. And then he cures all the sick. And this was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah. He took our infirmities and bore our diseases. Here, Jesus is quoting from Isaiah 53 for which is often called the suffering servant passage. If you've been with us on a good Friday, there's a good chance you've heard this passage multiple times. It's a famous one. And it's a really important one, because in Isaiah, we get this foreshadowing of the kind of Savior we should expect. It's the kind of Savior who dies that we might live, who suffers. But very specifically here, he bears our infirmities and our weaknesses or diseases. I know we often just immediately kind of translate that into he bears our sins, and he does. Like this is mission critical. Like I'm not trying to lower this. I'm trying to explain to you that salvation might be a little bigger than we've thought it is. And so Isaiah tells us and Matthew echoes that there's something about Jesus bearing the infirmities and the diseases of us. And this is part of what he's doing on the cross. The quote from NT Wright goes like this. Jesus' resurrection is the beginning of God's new project. Not to snatch people away from the earth into heaven, but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. The project that God has embarked on from the day Adam and Eve were ushered out of the Garden of Eden is not to one day create this place off in the sky somewhere that we all fly up to by and by. It's to redeem and restore the creation that is, which is to say that your lives matter here and now in deep and profound ways. Your bodies matter here and now. The trauma that sits in your mind, it matters. And God is desirous to heal it all. But we also know that we live in a fallen world. It's become almost cliche to say we are living in a fallen world, but it is true. And so the difficulty of living in this life is a real one. And while I would wish to you that all of our infirmities can be whisked away today, before you leave, just come on up and I'll pray over you. And you'll walk out a healed person. I can't make that promise to you today, but I do hope to show you some other things. Part two of the sermon is about the many faces of salvation that we find in the Gospel of Luke. In Luke's Gospel, he uses four times the same phrase, and it says, Your faith has blanked you. Now, the most obvious translation is to just simply say your faith has saved you. This is what the Greek says every one of these times. Sozo is the Greek word. Your faith has saved you. And if you've been around the church at all, and if you've read Paul's letters, and if you've just simply had conversations with Christians, you know that faith and salvation, they go hand in hand, don't they? Faith, salvation. But in a few of the translations of these words, we actually don't get salvation as the word. And in fact, we saw it today when I read to you the ESV. But ESV isn't alone. It's actually most translations. The Greek is up here on the screen in case you want to learn Greek someday. It says, Your faith has sasoken se, has saved you. Sozo is the root word here. Let's go ahead and read Luke eight again, and I'll show you where it pops on the on the scene. Now, when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him for they were all waiting for him. And there came a man named Jairus, who was a ruler of a synagogue. And he fell at Jesus feet and implored him to come out of his house. For he had this only daughter about 12 years of age, and she was dying. As Jesus went, the people pressed around him. And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years. And though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. She came upon him and touched the fringe of his garment. And immediately, her discharge of blood ceased. And Jesus said, Who was it that touched me? And when they all denied it, Peter said, Master, there's a bunch of people around you. They're all pressing in on you. And Jesus said, No, somebody has touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me. And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling and fell down before him. And she declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him and how she had been immediately healed. And then Jesus said to her daughter, Your faith and here's the line has saved you. At least that's what the Greek says there. Daughter, your faith has made you well go in peace. Your faith has made you well. Indeed, her faith has made her well. It is what has healed her. She came to the Savior. She touched the garment and power flowed out of him. Whatever that means exactly, I'm not sure, but it sounds awesome. And I wish I were there to see it. And flows into her and she's healed. Or as Luke says, she is saved, but doesn't actually stop there because then there's the next two lines. And it says, while he was still speaking, someone from the ruler's house came and said, Your daughter is dead. Do not trouble the teacher anymore. But Jesus on hearing this answered him and said, Do not fear, only believe, and she will be saved. Sozo is the word sitting here. But of course, the ESV and probably most of your translations, maybe all of your translations out there say she will be well. She will be well. So what is going on? What is happening in this passage? I first want to offer a shameless plug. You should come to Wednesday nights at six thirty. We're talking about how to study the Bible. We're spending about an hour together. Half of that is spent in some study. And then we break out into sessions with the men in one room and the women and another. It's a good time. And we talk about these kinds of things. On this Wednesday, we're going to talk about translations, in fact. And so if you've ever wondered what are the differences between the translations, how do the translations work? Where they all come from? Are they connected to one another? The answer is yes. Well, you should come on Wednesday. This last talked about the contexts in which you should read your scripture. We talked about like the the the really near context, like the paragraph that sits around it. Maybe it's the chapter around it. Maybe it's the book that it comes from, the linguistic, the historical. There's lots of context to read scripture in. I want to start in this passage by showing you a little bit of how this might work. There is the immediate context of this passage. We'll say Luke eight as a whole. It uses the word sozo four different times. Back in verse 12, there's this cryptic passage where Jesus is kind of prophesying. I think it's Isaiah he's quoting from that they may not believe and be saved. Here's sozo again. They may not believe in faith, by the way, faith and salvation again, hand in hand here. Or first thirty six. There's this demon possessed man and it says that he was saved or made well. And then there's daughter. Your faith has saved you as we saw in verse forty eight or again in verse fifty that if she believes or if the father believes Jairus, then she will be saved or made well. And so you can see in this path in this chapter rather the theme of salvation is running pretty hot. And it seems to be ever present. But if we kind of scan out just a little beyond that to maybe the book level, then what we find in the book level is this exact phrase. Hey, Pistis Sue, so can say those five words used the exact same way for separate times in one book. You cannot tell me that there's not something tying all of that together. But there's not a tradition that Jesus hasn't said this to the disciples again and again and again. And what is he saying to them again and again? It is that your faith has saved you. I mean, that's the literalist translation. And so Luke seven fifty back a chapter. This is actually how your ESV or your translations are going to translate it. She comes to him and she she wipes his feet and and she's crying. Meanwhile, the Pharisees are all scandalized by the fact that this woman's in there and he looks at her and he says, your faith has saved you. But then we get to the chapter we're in and there's the bleeding woman. And the choice of translation here is that your faith has has made you well, which might make you think that this is not somehow part of the salvation that Jesus is bringing to this earth. I would say that you'd be wrong if you thought that or there's in Luke 17, the Samaritan leper. And there's all the lepers who go and then there's this one who comes back and to that one who comes back. Jesus looks and he's like, where where'd all the others go? Why didn't the other nine come back? And then Jesus says to the leper, your faith has again saved you or made you well. Or again, one last one, the blind man in Luke 18, where we see much the same thing. If we pan out one more layer to Luke's other writing this time, it's not his gospel, but the Book of Acts, which was also written by Luke. We find something very interesting in Chapter four. In fact, I love that Dave read this this morning. We hadn't planned this, but here it is in Chapter four, verses nine and twelve. You see two very different uses of this word or seemingly different. If we are questioned today because of a good deed, maybe the context of this is Peter's on trial. He has done a good deed. He's healed a lame man. And now the tribunal is upset with him. And how could he do that? Why? Why? Why has he done this? And so he says, if we're questioned today because of this good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked now how this man has been sozo, how he has been saved or healed. And then just a few verses later, it says there is no salvation. Same words, sozo in no one else. No other name under heaven by which we must be sozo saved or healed or however you want to put it. What I'd suggest to you is that an ancient context in a biblical context pulls together this immaterial salvation and a material salvation in a way that you and I might feel uncomfortable with. Or or maybe we've gotten too comfortable pulling these two things apart as if the only thing that matters are the souls that go off to heaven and not the bodies that we inhabit in the here and now. And I think we see this throughout Luke's writings. He teaches us that faith and salvation are not only interdependent, salvation is a little bigger than we think it is. One more pulling out. This time, let's bring Paul into the picture. We all know Paul likes to talk about faith and salvation. So, for example, in Ephesians 2, 8, by grace, you have been saved through faith. All right, this is Paul, classic Paul. In fact, you've been saved through faith or in Romans 1 16, another passage that's very famous. I am not ashamed of the gospel. It's the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith. Again, faith and salvation. But now the kicker and the one that we often miss comes from Romans, Chapter eight. It's a passage you've certainly heard before, but maybe after today, you'll read it slightly differently. Romans 8 23 and 24 goes like this. Not only the creation, but we ourselves, although I would add the creation to the stuff of Earth. Who have the first fruits of the spirit, we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope, we were saved.

  We were saved. Paul holds out this hope that the creation itself is in groaning and is in need of a savior. That our bodies are in need of salvation.

  Part three. What is on offer this morning? What is it that Jesus is offering to you? There is a prosperity version of this offer, and it simply says that if you go to Jesus, if you pray hard enough, if you just believe enough, or maybe you know what? If your tithe is big enough, well, we are going to find ourselves completely healed and great, just like the bleeding woman or like Jairus and his daughter. You too can be saved in this fashion. I don't want to make you that promise this morning because it's not always what is on offer. What is on offer is nothing less than the person of Jesus himself. And the person of Jesus is standing before you and saying to you, have faith, believe, trust me, follow me.

  And so I don't come making empty promises. I do not stand here to tell you that if you pray to Jesus, your cancer is just going to magically go away. Or that your marriage is going to be fully restored, or that your PTSD will go away immediately. Like the bleeding woman who grabbed the hem of Jesus' garment or the desperate dad who did everything he could to find Jesus, the one he knew who could save his daughter. But I would say this. We shouldn't underestimate the power of Jesus. Miracles can and do happen, not just back then, but still today.

  When miracles happen, they almost always happen with some sense of faith and trust that it is Jesus who is doing it. Truth be told, if you can't see it as a miracle, then you're probably not walking with faith. And so maybe it requires the faith and the trust to even see the miracle at all for what it is. A miracle.

  I might not even need to ask, but I will. This morning, what is it for you that is crippling you? What is it that you would immediately bring to God if you could? And if you could wave that magic wand and say, take this away, what would that be?

  Like I said, I probably don't know what that is. Like I said, I probably don't need to ask, but my guess is you were already thinking it.

  I got choked up as I was reading the scripture because I was thinking about the bleeding woman who had been laboring for 12 years under this pain that she had. And how hard that must have been and the relief she must have felt in the moment. The power went out of Jesus and into her.

  And then I got doubly choked up when it was clear in the scripture that there was a dad in the world who existed at some point who lost his daughter. And he was desperate to find Jesus, and it felt like all was lost.

  My guess is you can find yourself on the pages of scripture in the people that Jesus reaches out to and who reach out to him. And they are looking for answers because we all are. We're all looking for some kind of answer in this life. The answers don't always get answered the way we want them, and so I want to be careful here to say that we can reach out and sometimes what we get back. Is that God's will is enough.

  God's will is enough.

  Jesus teaches us this himself. The days before he's crucified, he's in the garden the night before he's in the garden and he's praying and he's saying God take this away. I don't want this at all. And then he says, but your will be done. Your will be done. How many of us would say, God, I don't want this at all. And then he says, but your will be done. Your will be done. How many of us would say, God, I don't want this, whatever it is at all. I don't want this.

  But we must follow it up with your will be done. It's not just Jesus who teaches us this. It's Paul himself too. Paul, he has the thorn. He's walking around. He says, Look, I don't I pray for this thing all the time. I want this rid of me. But what happens? Jesus says to him, like almost in a vision, maybe like that. What I offer to you is enough. And Paul says that actually I've learned in my weakness that I am strong.

  And so this morning, what is on offer to you? What is on offer to you is nothing less. Than the creator of the world is on your side. When we look at Jesus healing the bodies of the the girl who was 12 and the woman who was bleeding for 12 years, we see the face of God who desires that we all be made whole, that this world be made whole.

  But we live in a fallen world. Things are broken.

  So what is on offer is that Jesus is enough that we follow him. And that we do things like packing lunches for people in our community who need it because we can help feed them and we can help sustain those bodies because it turns out Jesus cares about them deeply. And so should we. Let's pray together.

  Heavenly Father, this morning as we have gathered together, I firmly believe that you are looking at your children in this place and you are saying, I love you. I love you. And I want what is best for you. And I want you to trust me. So, God, we reach back out and we say, Lord, we do trust you. Help us when we don't trust you enough. Help us keep walking in the trials and may we rejoice when things are going well. And for those who are around us, may we rejoice with those who are rejoicing and and weep with those who are weeping, as we just read in Romans 12. Lord, for the ones who are indeed hurting right now, my heart breaks. It is difficult walking through the valley of the shadow of death. It feels like the world is caving in. And so, Lord, surround that person. Surround them with people who can weep with them, but who can also lead them out of the valley, who can walk with them in this time. Hold them upright until a better day arrives, where they are once again walking with head held high, knowing that you brought them through that valley.

  Father, we give you thanks. You are a good God. And when we look into the eyes of Jesus, we see a God who loves us dearly. And for that, we give you thanks. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

The Divided Life

The Divided Life

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrist, Pastor { September 20, 2026

Check out the weekly sermon here or on our SRBC podcast on Apple Podcast and Spotify. While you’re at it, check us out on Facebook and Instagram too.

Like what you hear? We’d love to know.

At South Run, we read every message personally. Whether you have a question, want to share how God is moving in your life, or are thinking about visiting in person, this is the place to start. If you click the link below, Pastor Eric will personally reach out to you.

• Sermon Transcript

  The Divided Life

  Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor

  Good morning, friends. We are talking about hypocrisy this morning. I'm calling it the divided life, which is to say that we all, let's just say it, we all have parts of us that we shield from others some of us more than others. So that who you show up here and now for in the way you show up may not look the same as who you show up like on Monday morning in school or at work. And it may not be who you show up as when you're celebrating Thanksgiving with your families. I think we all know this kind of inherently, but I'll give you 1 brief story of what this could look like It was a colleague of mine who was at the institution I was at in Alabama when I was teaching there. And on the weekends, he would preach at churches in the area around Alabama. And then he would also help with a soccer team. This is not a story about me, in case you're wondering, is this really a confession? I promise this one's not. And so at the soccer games, he would kind of let loose and he'd get angry. He would let a few words fly. And so there was this one weekend where he's coaching his son's soccer team and a guy comes up to him after the game and says, hey, weren't you our preacher last Sunday? Which he has to say, I guess I was, right? And then in this moment, he realizes, my goodness, the two worlds, my 2 divided selves are colliding. And who I'm presenting myself as over here is different from who I'm presenting myself as on this day. And he finds himself in the the world of hypocrisy, which is, I don't know if you've found yourself there, at least in a public kind of way, but it's an uncomfortable place to be. As we get started here, I do want to begin with some prayer and then we'll dive into our scripture for the day. Heavenly Father, I give you thanks for your word. I give you thanks for the life of Jesus Christ who has shown us the way to abundant life and has given us the door to eternal life. Lord, this morning, may we settle our souls so that we can hear from you. Lord, we each live divided lives. In some ways, it's part of being human, except that, God, you have shown us a different way. And in the person of Jesus, he did not live the divided life the way we do. And so, Lord, may we learn from you. May you teach us how to live this life and live it to the full. In Christ's name we pray, amen. This, yeah, so there's a guy named Kevin Roose that I really like. Kevin Roose is a maybe was, actually, I think this is his last week at the New York Times. He was a columnist and then had a podcast of his own. He came onto my radar because a few years ago, he wrote this article that was kind of frightening in which he reports on technology. And he had a conversation with the Bing chatbot at the time, who then confessed herself to be someone named Sydney, the AI chatbot did, and then began to try to get Kevin Roose to leave his wife and to marry the chatbot. And it got weird quick. And so he naturally printed all of this up and published it in the New York Times. And I thought, well, boy, the world is changing very quickly when our technology is trying to convince us to leave our spouses and to marry someone else. But so he's been on my radar ever since and I listen to him pretty regularly actually for all things tech. He has given me a lot of great insight into what is happening in the world of technology, specifically regarding AI, which is why it was a shock to me when like 3 days ago A friend of mine said, hey, have you read this book? It is called The Unlikely Disciple. It's by a guy named Kevin Roose. I was like, I definitely know Kevin Roose, but I don't know this book. I look into it. I kid you not, I have not been able to put this thing down for two days straight. And I haven't finished it yet, but I'm like just about to finish it. And it has everything to do with the topic this morning. It has nothing to do with technology, mind you. But here's what Kevin Roose did. See, when he was a college student, he was at Brown. And for his junior year of college, he decided to go abroad. And he took a semester at Liberty University. You might have heard of it. Kevin Roose is an atheist. Kevin Roose does not believe in Jesus. His parents were Quakers at some point, and so he has some vague knowledge. But he's also very liberal, and he is everything that Liberty University is not, we'll say. And so his goal in going there was to really embed himself in that community and to figure out what do they believe? What do they do? And he was very curious the whole time. And I give it to him. He is very generous to the community in how he talks about them and how his curiosity kind of knew no bounds. This isn't like a tell-all. He's not standing in judgment. He's not writing and saying, can you believe they did this and that and the other? In fact, if anything, it's him trying to live the life of a Liberty student for one semester. And he's having, though, to hide where he came from and who he actually is, because he knows that if he tells them, then they're all going to treat him differently and it's not going to be the same kind of experience. And so what he does is he goes there and He, of course, finds a church to attend, which happened to be Jerry Falwell's church. And so he's attending the church every Sunday. That's not enough, though, because he likes the choir, and so he decides to join the choir every Sunday. He practices with them, and then he sings on stage. He attends all the classes that a Liberty student would attend, including your Old Testament and your Christian theology. I mean, he does it all, right? And then he's living in the dorm. And so his friends and all the people that he meets are the Christians and they're deeply involved in the Liberty experience. And I mean, the whole thing is deeply fascinating to me on multiple levels. It doesn't stop there. He really takes it as far as he can with embedding himself in this community And he decides that when spring break rolls around, he's going to do what other Liberty students do, which is to go on a mission trip with the Liberty students. Well, they went to Daytona Beach, where they were taught how to do St. evangelism. Now, I would not encourage any of you to do St. evangelism, so I'm just kind of telling the story here. But he explains that they were trained on what to do and how to have these conversations. For some reason, and he couldn't figure out why either, though, they chose the most difficult location possible, where they're on the beach and people are partying and having fun and drinking too much. And it's a Daytona Beach spring break scene. It's everything you would expect. And so he's there trying to convince people that God is real, that judgment is coming, and that they should believe in Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, even though he doesn't. The whole thing is this mind-bending experiment that he's running. But as I've already said, he's He's very genuine about it all and he's trying to live into it, but he's having to keep up a ruse. He's having to keep up the divided life. And so he gets pretty close to these students and realizes that he loves them and he really enjoys being with them. And they're actually starting to rub off on him. He has been praying now this whole semester and he realizes actually it's very good for his spirit. And he'll even say things like, at Brown, where he was, he was partying most weekends and he just felt gross and was constantly kind of hungover and had no energy. And there was a pessimism about kind of the way he lived his life and many of his friends too. And he said, a lot of that just was removed in the experience of liberty because you're not allowed to drink. And so he wasn't doing any of that. And you're not allowed to party the way they party at Brown. And so he wasn't doing any of that. And he was actually getting up earlier. And he was praying, as I said. And he's doing very healthy things. And so he reflects and he says, look, I'm kind of the happiest I've ever been. And I'm more optimistic than I've ever been. But he has to keep up the mask. And he's got to pretend to be someone that he's not quite yet. And this gets back to the subject matter for today, which is the difficulty of living in hypocrisy, of living the divided life that so many of us live. Because there's fallout for you, but there's also fallout for the people that you're with. I think it's worth taking stock of both of those things. Let's go ahead and open to Luke chapter 12. We'll read bits together and then I'll talk about the bits and we'll keep reading. Luke chapter 12, we'll start in verses 1 to 3. In the meantime, when so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one another, he began to say to his disciples first, Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be known. Therefore, whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and whatever you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops. First thing to note is that Jesus' ministry is really at its peak, numerically speaking. The word for thousands here is myriad, which is actually like 10,000. I don't think Luke is trying to be exacting with his language here, but you can imagine a group of 10,000 people, literally it says trampling one another, right, who have gathered to be with Jesus. He's got to feel good about this, and the disciples definitely feel great about this. Which is why in this moment of his heights, Jesus chooses to say a word that is specific to the disciples. Did you catch that right? Let me speak to you in private here, because I have a warning. While things are going well here, I want to just let you know that it's not going to always be this way. And it feels great now, but I need you to take stock of who you are and what's happening so that when the trouble comes, and it will come, when the trouble comes, you'll be ready for it. And so he says, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is kind of just a way of tossing the Pharisees under the bus for a moment. He had just, in chapter 11, been excoriating them and really just tearing tearing into them. So he says, beware, and then he names it, though, hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the problem. Hypocrisy in brief is being one thing in one circumstance and another thing in another circumstance. It's the wearing of the mask. It's the divided life. And then he goes on and he says, nothing is covered up that will not be revealed and hidden, that will not be known. Basically everything you say, everything you do, who you are, it will come to light at some point. And so you better know who you are and you better live the undivided life, the singular life, and be that person. The aside I would want to give you, and if you're going to write notes down, is to plan for the worst when life is at its best. which sounds, nobody wants to plan for the worst when everything's going well, but it's probably a good time to do so. Because Jesus knows here. He knows what's coming, which is it's not always going to be good times. And in fact, just maybe months later, it's not clear how long, maybe it's a couple years at most, Jesus will be crucified. And all these 10,000 crowds will change their tune and they will no longer be following him, and instead they will be crying out for his death. And for the disciples' sake, he is saying, that day will come, and you are going to have to make a decision on this day and the days that follow what you are going to do with your life. The passage goes on, and in verses 4 and 5, we read this, I tell you, my friends, And this friends part is really important. He's, maybe I'll say it this way. I'm always amazed at how different pastors and preachers can make the Bible sound depending on the way they read it. And so if you read a passage with anger and ferocity, you can make anything sound awful and terrible. But if you read it with a softness, And if you read it with kindness, it can sound quite different. If me and you've been around here for a while, I tend to read more with kindness than with the harshness. Who knows, maybe some of you are thinking he should be a little harsher. But in this case, my kindness comes through in Jesus' words themselves because he says here, I tell you, my friends, my friends. And I can imagine him kind of like getting down and looking them in the eyes and saying you shouldn't be. be afraid. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of the ones who can kill your body. Right? Don't be afraid of the ones who will kill the body and then after that have nothing more that they can do. Instead, I will warn you whom you should actually fear. Fear the one who ESV, I don't love this, but it says, after he has killed, here's what it really says. After the killing has been done, which is likely the state has done the killing, or maybe like a Jewish mob has done the killing. And so after this person has been killed, he's talking to his disciples here, after you have died, you should be afraid of the one who has the authority to cast into Gehenna. Yes, I tell you, fear God. Fear the one who has the authority to do these things, not to your body, but to your soul. Who has control over your soul? He says, fear that. The divided life, the hypocrite's life is one that is marked by fear. If it's marked by anything, it is marked by fear. In your bulletin, I've tried to start writing things that maybe in case you're not taking notes, you can kind of glimpse at the bottom of your notes. And that way, if you walk away, you're kind of like, what did the pastor speak again about this morning? It's right there. The last one says, the divided life is rooted in fear, afraid to trust the people who might judge you and afraid to trust the God who guides you. The opposite of this is what we simply call a life of faith. On Wednesday night, we started a new Bible study. I want to invite all of you to right now by way of telling you what we talked about very briefly. We talked very briefly about, or we talked in depth about the difference between reading scripture as what it meant and the scripture as what it means, which is to say to read scripture as what it meant in that context versus then how we take that scripture and we apply it in the here and the now. I think this passage And this whole set of passages here give us a wonderful example of what this might look like. You see, in this context, the context that Jesus is writing in, Christianity hasn't even been formed yet. Jesus is still in the process of his life's ministry. He hasn't died yet. And the apostles and the disciples haven't started the church yet. But they're about to. And by the time Luke gets written, Here's what's happening in the world. Luke and other Christians are looking around and they're realizing it's hard to be a Christian. We are a persecuted bunch, quite literally. Like they are being thrown out of their synagogues that they were part of, the churches that they were part of. They are being excommunicated from society. They may even be killed for their faith, right? And so in that context, Jesus is speaking this word and he knows what's coming to them. And he's saying, look, we're riding high right now. We've got 10s of thousands of people around us. They love us. But a day is going to come when y'all are going to get kicked out of churches and when you're going to have to answer for your faith and what's going to happen then. So that's the what it meant. You might too quickly jump to what it means is the same thing. And I would just kind of pump the brakes for you a little bit. I've said this before and it's worth repeating, that if we were living in Saudi Arabia and this church service were taking place in Saudi Arabia, well first of all, it wouldn't be happening in a building like this. We would be underground somewhere. We would be sheltered and making sure we are safe and sound so people didn't figure us out. We would be hiding. We might even be living a form of the divided life because we had to just to survive. That is not the state of the United States of America. We actually have lots of freedoms. We have a way of being that welcomes faith. And yet we all know that sometimes by being a Christian, there is some blowback from that. I want to give you a very specific example from my childhood. I heard it repeated in this book I told you about. And then how I differ from it. When I was a kid, we had sermons preached at us quite regularly. about how we were going to be persecuted and how if you're a Christian in this world, it's just one roadblock after the next after the next. And it's quite likely you're going to lose a job over this or terrible things are going to happen to you. And I remember as a child living in fear and thinking to myself, boy, if I talk to my friends at school about my faith, They're going to, they're going to excommunicate me. They're going to say, Whoa, like what's up with this guy? He's strange and different and we're not going to, we're not going to be friends with this guy. And so we would have these events like see you at the pole, right? Or we would do we had these t-shirts that we would wear that were unnecessarily like graphic with like blood on Jesus' hands and things like that, things you wouldn't normally wear maybe, we'll say it that way. And then quite naturally, in that kind of environment, what would happen is people might actually look at you a little oddly because you're wearing a shirt in which there's blood on it, right? Or to see you at the polls a little different, but like if you're trying to share your faith with somebody and you're telling them about all the ways in which they're a sinner and they're bound for hell, like it's necessarily a confrontational kind of relationship. And so if you get shut down in that moment, or if someone says, I'm just trying to enjoy my Daytona Beach trip, thank you very much. Then it feels like rejection. And so I would present to you what I think is actually a better way. And this is certainly how I've raised my kids. And I asked Ezra not too long ago about this. I asked him, you know, At your school, was it weird to be a Christian? Did you ever feel like you were not able to talk about your faith? And he said, not ever. He's like, everybody in my school had different faiths and I learned that some people were Christians and I could talk to them freely, but people would often ask me about what I believed and I felt free to just simply tell them. And so I was able to have many conversations about what it means to be a Christian and I didn't feel at all scared to do so. I thought, wow, that is a remarkably different experience than I think many people have. And perhaps the biggest difference, and this is what I want to give to you this morning, is that there was no need for fear in those conversations. You see, the fear is what keeps you from saying what you should say and from having some of those conversations and from just simply being who you are. And what I've learned in this life is that if somebody loves you and somebody maybe not even loves a big word, somebody likes you, somebody like knows you and you're their friend, we'll say it that way. once you start talking about anything that you like, they suddenly are very interested in it. I mean, maybe not totally. Like if I talk to them about my stamp collection, they're probably not going to be totally into that. But if my faith is an important part of who I am, then they're probably going to sit there and listen to me talk about it. And if I can talk about it in a manner that is endearing and that says, look, this is what I believe and why I believe it and why this is important to me. They're going to be open and receptive to these kinds of conversations. And it can reduce the fear and it can decrease the need for this divided life and instead incorporate your faith into who you are and what you do and the things you talk about. This would be my hope for you this morning. Let's keep reading though. The passage goes on and in six and seven, we get more kindness from Jesus. He's reminding us of who this God is. He says, are not 5 sparrows sold for two pennies and not one of them is forgotten before God? Why even the hairs of your head are all numbered, fear not, and there it is again, fear not. You are more value than many sparrows. The divided life happens when we are afraid. And when we are afraid, we lack trust or faith in God. That by living the life I should live, that somehow it's going to all go off the rails. maybe I'll lose my job, or maybe this person will think less of me, or if I don't hide this part of who I am, well, then it's just going to go bad in some fashion. And I would just simply want to say to you that the life of faith means that this God who knows the hairs on your head and he sees all the sparrows fall, he is ready and waiting to usher you into whatever that next phase of life is. And that even if things do go off the rails, that God is waiting and ready to help you get back on again. But it's not just a lack of trust in God. When we live the divided life, we actually don't trust others. There's sometimes in which you shouldn't trust others because they have known to let you down some. And so we see Jesus, for example, he doesn't entrust his whole self to all the people. I don't know if you've noticed this, but he does have this small group of friends who get the really, really, really real Jesus, right? He's got his inner core. And I'm talking the three now. And then there's the 12, and they get the really real Jesus. And then there's those who follow him and they get the real Jesus. And then there's the Pharisees and the Sadducees and they get a more guarded Jesus. And the reason is because trust. There are reasons to not trust them, right? And so I'm not saying you got to be your really, really, really, really real self with every last human being on this planet. You actually shouldn't do this. But I do think There's more room for trust in your brothers and sisters, certainly in the church, but even for humans out in the world somewhere than we might think. Frankly, this was one of the things from the book that came through. See, Kevin Roose, he goes to Liberty expecting them to be awful, terrible human beings. Can you imagine? Because I'm sure if they knew who he was, they would expect him to be an awful, terrible human being because of where he was coming from and how different he is from them. But the miracle of it all is that they all actually really enjoyed one another. And he came to love those people and to even trust them some. And he began to realize that this life of faith was something worth pursuing. And in an interview after the fact, he was asked, so are you a believer now? And he said, no, I'm not a believer. But I will say this, I've changed my life because of this. I pray every day now. And I don't do some of the things that I used to do. And by being with this community and by letting them in, right, And by letting my mask down some, I have begun to change. And I thought, what a remarkable, remarkable story. What it took though, and what it's going to take from you, is the lowering of the mask for others who are in your life. And so letting people into your life is how change really happens. The divided life happens because we are afraid to let others into our life. If they knew who I was, if they saw the things that I have done, if they knew what I thought, the doubts that I have or the life that I've lived, well, they would never accept me for who I am. I'm asking for you this morning to walk the life of faith, which simply means to trust God with all of your life and to learn to trust one another with more and more and more of your life. Because if we can do this, we will begin to live an undivided life, which is the kind of life we were all designed to live. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we thank you for sending Jesus who shows us the way, the truth, and the life. This morning, as we've gathered, we have been talking about living lives that are divided and undivided. My prayer this morning for those who are listening to these words is simple. That you convict them, God, of the parts of their lives that they've divided off and that they've kept for themselves and that they've lived in ways that are not to be lived. And we ask, Lord, that they begin to incorporate that into the unified, God-filled, Christ-centered, spiritful kind of life that you have for them. God, this morning, do a work in their hearts. May they turn to you. May they choose the undivided life. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

The Long Journey from the Head to the Heart

The Long Journey from the Head to the Heart

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor | September 13, 2026

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• Sermon Transcript

  The Long Journey from the Head to the Heart

  Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor

  . . . are few. And so for this last season of Church Life, we've been talking about these two different paths, right? There's this one way to live a life in which you find yourself down roads of destruction that you should never have walked down. And then there are ways of living a life that lead to real life. And Jesus warns us, he says, the way to life is not easy, It's narrow. It's probably going to cause you some difficulty at times. This isn't to say it's the easy road at all. If anything, the other Rd. is the easy one. But it is a road that leads to life. And so I've been talking about different ways that this gets played out and different topics. This sermon is A little bit like if you've ever watched a television show where you're watching these characters unfold over a span of time, and then the storyteller goes back in time, right? And the storyteller starts to tell you about the roots of the character. I remember the first time I maybe encountered this completely was the show Lost. They tell you about the various characters, Jack and Kate and a guy named John Locke. And then you're like 3, four, five seasons into it. And then you're finding out about John Locke as a little kid or something and like what happened to his life. Or if you've read good books, maybe, I'm blanking on this, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, right? He does this well. He gives you not just like the world therein, but he builds the world out. This sermon's a little like that, where we've been focused on what Jesus offers these two ways in Matthew 7. But truth be told, Jesus is not making this up whole cloth. He's actually pointing to the passage that Dave just read for us back from Deuteronomy chapter 30. And it's worth knowing this because there's actually a whole history of this that's sitting in your Bible that predates anything that Jesus says or does. And it's worth knowing what's really happening in these scriptures. And so today my hope is to kind of walk you through a few of them to show you what Jesus is pulling on and then to show you that Jesus' intent is to actually fill all of that out and to make a way where before there had not been a way. Let's begin with prayer. God our Heavenly Father, we thank you. for sending your Son Jesus Christ to die on a cross for our sins, to cleanse us from our iniquity, that we might have new life. We thank you for raising him from the dead, that he might defeat death once and for all, and offer true life, eternal life for all of us. And Lord, we thank you for sending your Holy Spirit. And we ask right now, here and now, that you send your spirit into this place, that Lord, you speak through my words to the hearts of those listening, that they might know what you are trying to tell them this morning. We pray this in Christ's holy name, amen. So if I were to ask you what is Jesus' famous sermon, you would probably say, the Sermon on the Mount. Is there another one? It's kind of the only one that I am aware of that maybe gets a title, like the sermon something or other, right? If you were to go home today and want to read the Sermon on the Mount, you would go to Matthew chapter 5 through 7. It's long. It's 3 whole chapters long, right? And in Matthew 5 through 7, If I were to ask a follow-up question, like what's the text Jesus is preaching his sermon from, what would you say to that? No, nothing? Okay. Yeah, that's fine. Because here's the truth, right? I would say it this way. He's preaching from the whole of the law. And he's teaching us how to read the whole of the law, which is to say the first five books of the Bible, Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy. This is where you find the Torah. Another word for law, by the way, frankly, a translation I would prefer is instruction. These are instructions on how to live a life. both communally, for Israel as a whole, like how Israel as a whole is supposed to live a life, and then for the Israelite himself or herself, or for you, yourself, like how you're to live a life. These are the instructions. And so Jesus is kind of flipping through the instruction manual, and he's then preaching through this sermon of chapter 5 and then 6 and then 7, and he gets to the end of seven, and then he delivers the line that I just read earlier about the two different ways. perhaps not surprisingly, he's doing precisely what Moses did. You see, Moses delivers the law, and he gives us things, the memorable ones like the Ten Commandments, right? And then he gives all these other little laws, and if this happens, well then do that, and if this happens, well then do that, and you shouldn't do this over here, and you should definitely do this over here, and then he gets to the end of it all. In Deuteronomy 30, is kind of the capstone of it. And then he says, he's kind of looking back on all the commandments. And in brief, he says, look, I've laid before you two options. The one option leads to life and the other option leads to death, which is precisely what Jesus does, right? He says, I've preached my sermon, my most famous one, the Sermon on the Mount, and I get to the end of it all and I'm offering you two things. There's the one way that leads to life, and there's the one way that leads to death. So let's take a look at Deuteronomy 30. We'll start in verse 15, though. Deuteronomy 30, starting in verse 15, and we'll see what Moses says. Because this again is filling out this backstory that predates what Jesus is doing a few thousand years later. And so in verse 15, he says, see, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. And if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today. And then he explains like how to obey these commandments. There's 3 parts to it. So if you obey these commandments by one, loving the Lord your God, two, by walking in His ways, and three, by keeping His commandments and His statutes and His rules, well then you shall live and multiply. It's interesting to me, and I think it should be to you, that what Moses gives us here is, here's how to obey the commands. And he doesn't get around to actually telling you to obey the commands until.3. He starts with, you obey the commands by, right here, loving in your heart, loving the right thing, namely the Lord your God. And then the next part is you move from loving to doing the thing, to like walking in his ways. And then finally third, When you're doing that, you are finally keeping the commandments and the statutes and the rules and the instructions and all the things that Moses just laid out in the first five books of your Bible. And if you do those, well, that leads to life. This sounds a lot like what Jesus says, doesn't it? Like you should do these things. And Jesus knows, and frankly, Moses knows, and I'm gonna guess you all know too, that actually doing the thing is a whole lot harder than it seems. It's a whole lot harder. We'll finish up the passage here starting in verse 17. If your hearts turn away, and you will not hear, but you're drawn away to worship the other gods and you serve them, well, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you're going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today. I have set before you again two options, life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life, that you and your offspring, your kids and their kids and their kids. they might live, loving the Lord your God, and here they are again, by the way, loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice and holding fast to Him, for He is your life, He is your length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob to give to them. Now I'll say, if I'm preaching a sermon like Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount, this is a great text to draw from because it's stirring, right? He's putting before you, like, are you going to choose the way to life or are you going to choose the way that leads to death? And then he gives us some ways to actually do this. But what Moses knows And what Jesus definitely knows and what you probably know too is that knowing the thing that you should do and having it sitting here in your heart to do it, two very different things. They say that the 18 inches from your head to your heart is the longest journey you can possibly take. To get something that you know to be true Down inside here, this is a lifetime of a journey. Turns out that knowing the law and doing the law are two entirely different life tasks. If I were to ask you right now, should you lie to your neighbor or your kids or to your pastor? You would most certainly say, of course not. I'm not going to do that. And if I were to say, should you steal from your workplace? should you take things from there? And no. Who's going to do that? Why would I do that? Should you defraud people out of their money? No. I'm not going to steal from somebody. Should you cheat on your spouse? No. way. Should you beat up your little brother, right? No, I shouldn't do that. But somehow the knowing of it is very different from the doing it. And you find yourself in places and doing things that you thought, I shouldn't be doing this. How did I get here? Why? am I here? And for some of you, it's why am I here again? And then again. And then again. You've probably met the doctor who dispenses all the advice and tells you, well, you shouldn't drink and you shouldn't smoke. And then you walk outside after your appointment and there's the doctor smoking away, right? Or I like to I know some ethicists who have PhDs in ethics, and I like to say that these are some of the most clever people knowing how to get around ethics and doing all the wrong things because in their mind they can make the mental gymnastics. Or maybe the lawyers who know all the rules, right? They know the laws, But do they keep them? That's a different thing. And here again, it's this length from the head down into the heart that we're trying to examine this morning. And it's the problem that Moses poses. Moses poses. And Jesus poses and I'm posing to you. What did Moses expect though? If we just back up a few verses to the beginning of what we were reading this morning. Starting in verse 11, Deuteronomy 30, 11, he says this. He says, the commandment that I'm commanding you today, it's not too hard. These are his words, not mine. This commandment, these set of laws, it's not too hard for you. And it's not far off. It's not in heaven up there somewhere that you should say, who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it? And neither is it beyond the sea. It's not like way out there somewhere that you've got to say, who's going to go over the sea to find these commands and to tell us what it is to do? He says, no, it's none of that. The word is very near to you. It is in fact, it's in your very mouth, and it might even be in your heart, so that you can do it. And so Moses is clearly expecting these people, the Israelites, and frankly us, to do the right things. And he's saying it's not too hard. But if you know the Israelite story, What happens to these folks? Well, you just fast forward a few books and you get to the prophets and what is happening to them is the exact thing that's foreshadowed here at the end of Deuteronomy, which is that they are being ushered out of this promised land into a place called Babylon. And they're told very clearly why, which is that they weren't capable and they didn't keep the Mosaic law. They did all things that they shouldn't have done. And there's a people group that did things that they shouldn't have done. And now, well, now they're being ushered out of the promised land, the land of the living, and they are in exile. And this brings us to two more passages that connect deeply with what is happening both here and what Jesus will pick up on later. The first is Ezekiel, chapter 36, 26, and 27. Here, the Israelites are in this foreign land where they can't get back. It seems the promises have been broken. It seems the covenant between them and Yahweh is toast. And yet, God's not done with them. And he says the following. He says, I'll give you a new heart, and I will put this new spirit within you, and I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and I'll give you a new heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. And he's basically saying here, a time will come when I will show you how to get this law in here. So it's not just up here in your head, but it's made its way into your heart somehow. And it appears that there's some sort of movement of the spirit that is involved in all of this. Well, then there's this other prophet, Jeremiah, speaking about the same time. Israel is in exile. They're in Babylon. And he too comes saying some promises about what's to come. And in verse 31, 31 and 33, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. This won't be like the old covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. The very covenant, by the way, I was talking about in Deuteronomy chapter 30. And so Jeremiah is saying, it's not going to be like that one. That one was in stone. That one mostly lived up here in their heads, if it lived anywhere at all, but it never made its way down into their heart. And so he says, I've got to make a new covenant. And Jeremiah promises that God is making a new covenant. By the way, if you don't know, maybe you're new to all of this or maybe I just need to teach a little better, but we're going to take communion momentarily. We're going to use these exact words, so pay attention to what's happening here. And Jesus from that upper room is going to say to his disciples in the moment he's handing the bread and the cup to them, he's going to say, this is the new covenant in my blood. And he's using Jeremiah 31. He's directly echoing it. And he's saying, what's happening right now in this upper room? This is the new covenant. And this is where All of these promises back in your Old Testament are finally coming to fruition. Back to Jeremiah 31, 33 now, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they will be my people. And so the problem back in Jeremiah's day is we need to know how to put the law in our hearts. This is the same problem today. I don't want you to think that you get scot-free out of here without somehow getting it inside of you. I know plenty of people who go by the name Christian and they got all the right things up here, but none of the right things sitting here and the way they live their life is not shaped by the law or by Christ or by anything connected to either of those. The big question for the day is, how does one get the law out there to in here? I want to point you to another passage in Scripture. By the way, if you want, you can just write these down and really dig into them later. But for now, I'll just keep burning through them. This is New Testament this time. This is Romans chapter 10. It's a very famous passage. You've probably heard it before, but if not, we'll certainly read it together. And I want you to notice that Paul here is quoting directly from our passage. He is quoting directly Deuteronomy chapter 30. And he says this, Moses writes, about the righteousness based on the law. That the person who does the commandments will live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, and here's the quote from Deuteronomy 30, don't say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven? You remember this part of Deuteronomy 30? You can go back and read it again. But then Paul adds what's in the parentheses here. He says, that is to bring Christ down. And then he goes on, he says, who will descend into the abyss? This is the way Moses had written it was who will go out to the seas or beyond the seas, right? And then Paul says, that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? And here's still Moses, right? The word is near you. It's in your mouth and in your heart. And this is Precisely. I mean, he's quoting directly from Deuteronomy chapter 30. But he's doing something very unique and you need to know precisely what he's doing. Do you see what he's done? When Moses is talking, Moses is talking about the law. Who will go up to the heavens and find the law up there to teach us how to live a life, right? Who will instruct us on the way we should live? And Moses says, you don't need to go up there. I'm giving it to you right now. And Moses says, you don't need to go over the seas to find the law and to bring it back because I'm telling you right now it's been given to you. But that's not what Paul does. Paul substitutes out the law for Christ. It's A radical move. You have to believe the Jews hearing this might be a little scandalized, But if they've been around the church for a few years, they will know Paul makes this kind of move on a regular basis. He reads his Old Testament and he sees Jesus on these pages. And specifically, he sees Jesus where the law is sitting. Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 5, the very beginning of his most famous sermon, he says, I have not come to abolish the law, I have come to fulfill it. I've come to fill it out. And then Paul tells us what this looks like. He's telling us that if you want to know how to live a life and what it means to live abundant life and what it means to have eternal life and the way we were designed to be in this world, well then look no further than the person of Jesus. Paul has a very interesting take on the law generally speaking. But what he definitely does is he says, look at Jesus because Jesus fills out how this law was always meant to work. And if you want to know how this law was always supposed to bring you life, well then just simply do the kinds of things Jesus does. Paul doesn't stop here though. You see, Paul keeps going with this Deuteronomy passage and says something, again, very interesting and now this time very familiar to some of you. Verse 9, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. But the scripture says everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. We're still left with the question, how does one get the law from their head into their heart? And there are two ways I would want to offer you. One is far more important than the other way. The one way is God. This is an act of grace, a gift that God gives to you. And the other way is your part, the part you play in all of this. And both of these are really important. So what Paul is doing in this passage and what Jesus is teaching us is that in order to have this gift of the Spirit, And to get the law and the person of Jesus into your heart, it requires an act of grace on the part of God. And that we must confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord. And we must believe in our hearts that He has been raised from the dead. And if we do these things, then yes, we will be saved. Which is to say that the movement from the head down into the heart has begun. But then there's also the part that you play. And this is the part where you have to step in and you have to step up and you have to do the things that the law commands of you and that Jesus desires from you. And so if you want to get that 18 inches from the head down into the heart, what we're really saying is that you've got to make the faith that you have really real. It's got to mean something. It can't just stand out here somewhere. It's got to pierce your heart. This is not something I can do for you. I can teach you about it. I can speak to you, hopefully inspire you. But at the end of the day, this is a you thing. And you've got to want it. You've got to desire it. You've got to, use the scriptural term, you've got to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. In just a few seconds, we're going to take communion. The external and the internal are miles apart, and there will be people in the room who take the same bread and cup and they are taking it as an external act, a rote thing that you've done hundreds of times and let's go ahead and get this done so we can head off to lunch and all will be well. And then there are some of you who want to make it really real. who want to actually experience the body and the blood of Christ, who want to take communion because you want to encounter the living God. My prayer for you this morning is that you're in that second camp, is that you are doing what you need to be doing to get God in here. Quick word of warning, Some of you will say to me in private moments, God, or Eric, I've been trying this thing. Maybe you're praying, God, I've been trying this thing where I want to know you're in here and sometimes I just don't know. And I would say to you if you told me this, I get this. And I'm sorry that it doesn't feel real just yet. But I would encourage you to keep showing up. and to show up in this place and to show up reading your scripture, show up reading or praying to God and meeting with others who have a spiritual life that has clearly transformed them in some way and asked them, what was it like for you? What is it like for you? What is it like to follow Jesus for real along the way? And I assure you, over time, the small steps and acts of faith that you participate in will begin to seep its way down into the very core of who you are. Before you know it, you are being transformed and you are being changed into the Christ-like person that you were always meant to be. When we take the bread and the cup, we say, this is the body of Christ and it's broken for you. And this is the blood of Christ and it is shed for you. And this is for the forgiveness of your sins. We do ask for one more step. You and me, that is. And it's the Pentecost step. Pentecost is the day where the Spirit comes down. Because the tradition says that Jesus was raised from the dead and ascends to the Father and is seated at the right hand of God. And that's great and all, but we want the Spirit. We want something closer. We want God here with us. And so the promise is not just that Jesus is far off, but He sends His Spirit with us, to live in us, to participate in our transformation. So this is my prayer for you and for me this morning. Let us pray together. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as we gather around your table this morning, we ask for clean hearts and clean hands because we come with hard hearts and dirty hands. We know that we need you. We know that we have failed you and ourselves and the ones we love. But God, we know that forgiveness is available at this table. We know that you welcome us home with the open arms of the Father with his prodigal son. And so this morning, we come running. We come running back to you, God. But we also ask for a movement of the Spirit so that as we take these elements, or meet us in this place, meet me, meet each person who will walk up and will receive the body of Christ broken for them, the blood of Christ shed for them. Meet them, Lord. And when we eat and drink together, Lord, we will celebrate together what you have done. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen. If my communion service would come forward, we will begin. We have some new folks here with us today. The way we take communion goes like this. We come forward down the center aisle and there will be two stations. One will have, well, Each person will have a bread and a cup and you'll simply put your hands out and they will give you the body of Christ, which is broken for you. And then you'll grab the cup. Now if you need gluten-free or if you want a wafer that's not been touched by one of their hands, we have those where the cups are located as well. But then you'll take that back to your seats. We will take communion together as one body. While you're waiting in the pew with the bread and the cup in your hands, I would encourage you to do some reflecting, some praying, and see if we can't make this really real this morning. On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took the bread, he gave thanks, he broke it. The body of Christ broke it for you. And he took the cup And he said, this is the new covenant in my blood for the forgiveness of your sins. Please come forward the table is open.

70 X 7: A Sermon on Forgiveness

A Sermon on Forgiveness

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor | September 6, 2026

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• Sermon Transcript

  A Sermon on Forgiveness

  Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor

  Good morning everybody. A couple of things before we get started. I know Clint already said it, but I am personally so pleased to have Erin Ovenshire as our new admin. She has been wonderful to work with already, and I look forward to good things there. I just wanted to make sure everybody knew and to welcome her in this role. Second, though, so one of my new favorite things these last few weeks has been the number of children in our worship service. I don't know if you feel this way too, but I definitely do. And I also want those parents to feel very comfortable having their children in the worship service. This is something that at South Run Baptist Church, we prize. We hold this as very important. I don't say this enough, so this is part of what I'm doing right now, which is we have intentionality behind having the kids in here. There are many churches you could attend where you ship the kids off and they're gonna be somewhere else for the whole time that you're here. And by kids, I mean like even up through like junior high or something. We've learned, but studies say Having your kids in here, like seeing what the adults do, watching your parents worship, this is very, very important for their spiritual development. And so this is why we want the children in here. With that said, we also want you to feel comfortable taking your kid out if you need to. And so if at any point you need to, we have a room downstairs. I think it's the Birch room, whatever the middle room is down there. where the TV's on with me on it, and you can participate in the service down there if that's what you need at any point. So feel free to utilize that. All right, let's get started here. Please bow your heads in prayer. God, our Father in heaven, your name is holy, and we seek your holy name this morning. God, I ask that you speak your words through your humble servant this morning, that those who are in attendance and those who are listening, whether online or at some future point, will hear you. They will hear you speaking to them loud and clear. Lord, this morning you know what we're talking about. We are talking about forgiveness. And Lord, we are the recipients of your boundless forgiveness. And so we begin with thanks, but we also now open our ears to what you wish to say to us. In Christ's name we pray, amen. We're talking about forgiveness, but we're also kind of the macro level. We're talking about the two ways. There's the narrow way and there's the wide way, and the wide way leads to destruction. And Jesus is trying to get us to walk down that narrow Rd. right? Which is to say it's a harder Rd. to walk and it requires some intention behind it. And it means that we have to pay attention to what we are doing and should not be. And some of those things we're not doing, but we should be. And so this morning, we have a wonderful test case in forgiveness. Forgiveness. This is certainly something that we've all been on both sides of the coin for. We've needed to forgive somebody, but we've also needed to be forgiven by somebody. But I wanna begin with a question that I asked our deacon ordinands on this last Wednesday. We had a deacon ordination meeting, council, where we brought in the two gentlemen who were being tried and tested, and it was grueling, and we really put it to them. They did pass, so next week we will be voting on our deacons, which will now include Brian Sands and Dan Ovanshire. We're very happy to have them on that slate, and you'll get to vote on them along with two others next week. But the question I asked was, what is the gospel, right? What is the gospel? Somewhat simple question. And I would hope that each of you, if you've been around the church for a while and if you confess Christ as Lord, you would have some kind of answer to this. What is the gospel? So I want to offer to you kind of a version in brief of how I think about this. It starts at the beginning of the creation, which is to say that in the beginning, God created all things good. In fact, he finishes it all and says, this is very good. But we know it doesn't stay there for too long. And there's the fall, Genesis 3 happens, and Genesis 4, they're kicked out of the garden. And then we're living in this world. And if you look around, you see what? You would currently see three hurricanes are sitting in the Pacific Ocean. Something is broken with the world itself, literally. There's a flood in Nepal that led to over 1000 deaths. There's all kinds of illnesses that are just waiting to infect each and every one of us. But it doesn't stop with the brokenness in the world, does it? then kind of seeps into us, you and me, or maybe there's other people, right? the sin sickness that covers humanity. And we are all people who do things that we shouldn't do and we don't do the things that we should do. And then when we're really honest, we look inside and we realize that it's sitting in here. And if you think back through your past, you realize, you know what, there are things that I regret There are things that I need forgiveness for, and I'm reaching out to a God that I need forgiveness from. And so then the gospel is God looking down and saying, I'm going to do something about the state of the world. And to do something, well, he sends Jesus, the Son of God, into the world, And Jesus dies on a cross, as we say, every single second Sunday of the month when we take communion, for the forgiveness of your sins, to make things right again. And then he is raised on the third day, defeating death and offering eternal hope into the future. This is what's happening. And so then the macro story says that what God is doing is he's taking the very good thing that had been broken and he's putting it back to rights again. This is good news. And it's the hope that we all hold on to. At the very center of all of it is a God who loves us so much that he keeps coming after us offering forgiveness when we don't deserve it. Offering forgiveness when we don't deserve it. Which then gets to what Paul says to us about forgiveness at large. He says, for example, actually, sorry, slide one, I had this on here. So what is the gospel? It's the good news that God has chosen forgiveness and mercy instead of punishment. He has chosen reconciliation instead of walking away, and he has chosen restoration instead of pushing us out. And here's what Paul, the move Paul makes in Ephesians 4.32. He says, forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you. And so this morning, as we're talking about the need to forgive one another, we should be reminded that the gospel story is the frame to it all. And as Paul says, God forgave you. And how did he do this? In Christ, in the story that I just told you, on the cross, through his death and through his resurrection, you have been forgiven. And so we too are to what? We're to take that same model and we are to apply it, everybody around us. forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you. Now the goal of forgiveness with both God and man is restoration. If the story of scripture from front to back is a story of restoration, well then that's what we're doing in our relationships when we forgive as well. We're seeking to restore. to make all things new. Now I should say very clearly that this does not mean consequences don't matter. They matter deeply. And so if you are seeking forgiveness from somebody, you must be ready to acknowledge that there is going to be a fallout to whatever it is that you have done in this life. And so consequences matter. There's a famous theologian from the mid-1900s named Bonhoeffer, and he had this famous book in which he talks about cheap grace, cheap grace. And I would offer you, there's something that is kind of a corollary to this, which is cheap forgiveness. Cheap forgiveness wants the benefits of forgiveness without the cost. Costly forgiveness is the willingness to do what it takes by the person who needs forgiveness to be reconciled. And so if you have harmed somebody and you are seeking their forgiveness and you are seeking to be made right again with them, you must recognize that there are consequences and there are costs to whatever it is that you've done. And we'll talk more about that momentarily. I've put a few things at the bottom of your bulletin. Some bullet points that I'm hoping you walk away with after the sermon, if you don't walk away with anything else. And here's one. Forgiveness restores you and reconciliation restores the relationship. Forgiveness restores actually the one who is doing the forgiving. It's the one, when you forgive, like you have been made whole, there's kind of a weird logic to this. And then reconciliation is when the relationship has been made whole again. Now I confess, I've kind of teased two things apart that may not be obvious just from the kind of a flat reading of scripture, but I do think this is really important for you to know that there are two sides to this. And sometimes forgiveness is all that's possible because whatever that other party they're doing, they may not want reconciliation. But in the ideal world, both parties are involved, and that's when reconciliation actually happens. But for the time being, I kind of want you to piece these out and keep them separated one from the other. Forgiveness or restoration and reconciliation are two different things, and it's important for you to hold them apart from one another. But in the best case scenario, both happen. With that then, let's turn to our scripture for today, which is Matthew chapter 18, verses 21 and 22. Matthew 18, 21 and 22 goes like this. Then Peter came up and said to him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him as many as seven times? And Jesus said, I do not say to you 7, but 77 times. Now the observant among you will immediately say, wait, I thought it was 70 times 7. We could dig into the Greek here and we could look at precisely what's there. And even if we did that, here's what you would find, that we actually don't know what the answer is. It might be 70 times 7, which would be what, 490? Or it might be 77. But the truth is, neither matter, because that's not what Jesus is saying, is he? He's not asking you to count up how many times you forgive, and then once you reach 77, done. No, he's saying forgiveness should be ever ready. This is something that as followers of Christ, that narrow way, like at any moment when somebody calls on us to be forgiven, like really be forgiven, we are willing and ready to offer that to them. The passage today is followed by a parable, which we won't read together, but I'll just simply tell you what's in it. It applies directly to the gospel story that I gave you up front and it goes like this. There's a master and he has a servant and the servant owes him the equivalent of $4 billion, a billion with a B. This is like the math works out this way. And the servant comes and is pleading with the master. He says, please just let me go. He was about to sell, the master was going to sell the servant into to slavery. And he said, please, I can't. And the master had mercy on him and said, you know what? I'm actually, I'm going to forgive the debt, $4 billion, and I'm going to let you go. As the servant left, he found somebody else who actually owed him some money to the tune of about $6,000, which, That's A lot. Like $6,000. Somebody owes me $6,000. You better believe I'm going to want that money back. But if I've just been forgiven $4 billion, you know, I think I might be generous. I would hope. But this servant was not. This servant instead, he went after the guy who owed him $6,000. And then when he couldn't pay, what did he do? Well, he sold him into debtors prison. Well, when the master found out, he said, how could you do this? You are wicked. Do you not know how merciful, how forgiving I have been to you? And then you turn around and with this debt, sure, it's some money, but it's nothing what you've been forgiven already, right? Hopefully you can see the comparison to the gospel itself. God has offered each and every one of us forgiveness in abundance. And so when he calls on us to forgive others, to forgive our neighbors, to forgive those who have done something wrong to us, our friends, our spouses, our kids, or whoever, we should be ready at any moment to say yes. But there are some parameters. And this is worth our time because oftentimes forgiveness turns into that cheap forgiveness. And I don't want it to do that this morning, and I don't want to leave you with the wrong impression about how forgiveness works. And so if you're in the Matthew 18, I just encourage you to back up just ever so slightly because the forgiveness stuff doesn't start there. It actually starts in 1815. And here's what Jesus says here. He says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. And if he listens to you, have gained your brother. The scenario is a simple one. Somebody has done something wrong to you and you go to them and you say, you've done this wrong thing to me. And you're coming with open arms and you're saying, I would like to forgive you. I just need you to own what you've done. And if they say yes, well, then you've got your brother back. Reconciliation has happened, right? Luke actually. gets a little more pointed here. There's a version of this same saying that happens in Luke's gospel. If you return there at some future point, if you want to, it'd be in chapter 17, verses 3 to 4, go like this. If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in the day and turns to you seven times, I say, repent. Or saying, I repent, you must forgive him. Here's what I want you to know about this passage. Some of us are really good at rebuking others. Others of us are really good at forgiving others. But in my experience, very few are good at both. I want us all to be people who are good at both. rebuking or bringing to someone else, here's what you've done wrong to me. None of this passive aggressive stuff. Just be honest and straightforward and say, you've hurt me. I need you to apologize. Here's what's wrong. And then when that person actually does, and when they own the problem that sits between you and that person, then you forgive them and you make things right. This is the ideal, right? That you're doing both the rebuking and then the forgiving when it happens. Which is another way of saying that in every scenario where forgiveness is involved, there's always two parties. If you were to come to me in pastoral counseling or something and you would say, Eric, I need to talk to you about forgiveness, my immediate question, well, which one are you? the one who needs forgiveness or are you the one forgiving somebody else? Because the conversation is going to look a little different depending on what side of the ledger you're sitting on. So we'll start with the one who's in need of forgiveness. Maybe this is you this morning. The first thing I would say to you in that counseling session would be to own your sin, no matter how big or small it is. Own whatever it is you've done wrong. And maybe you don't even want to call it sin. Maybe it's like, you're thinking it's this thing. But I need you to own it and to say, you know what, I really did that. And then you need to recognize the consequences that happen and flow out of whatever that thing is that you've done. And depending on the severity of the thing you've done, you might expect that some trust has been lost and must be restored with that person. And that again, depending on the severity of it all, it might take a while. It might take years or even decades to restore some of the trust that is lost. Once you're ready for it, I would then encourage you to apologize to the other person. But in my household, we have a way of apologizing that isn't just merely saying, I'm sorry, and then you move on. I would call that cheap forgiveness, and that's what we're trying to avoid this morning. Instead, we have a fourfold model of what apologies look like. includes, I am sorry. It was wrong because in the future I will. And then will you forgive me? Now, parents, you can take this and use it for your kids. That'd be great. But parents, I would encourage you to use it for one another as well. And it goes like this. I am sorry for. And this is when you actually name the thing that you did and you own it. and you say it out loud so that the other person knows what you've done wrong, and they know that it was wrong. And then you say it was wrong because, and here's where you get to explain to the person that you now understand why it was wrong. And you've put yourself into their shoes, and you show them or explain to them what it must have been like for them to be on that side of it all. And then in the future I will. And here is what you should have done instead. It's more than just next time I won't do X, Y, or Z. Next time I just won't get angry with you. It's in this moment that you get to demonstrate that you understand why you did the thing that you did. And so maybe you came home from work and you were just in a rage because somebody at work had offended you, and then you come home and you take it out on your spouse. when you apologize, you say, in the future, if I know I'm in this mood, I'm just going to tell you right up front, and then I'm going to encourage you to maybe avoid me for a short time, and I'm going to go cool off, and then I'm going to make sure that I'm a good man or a good woman so that you have the spouse that you deserve in that moment. And then finally, once you've really explored what went wrong, then you're in a place to say, will you forgive me? Let us make things right. And hopefully, prayerfully, you're with a spouse or maybe it's a friend or maybe it's, again, your kids or whoever it is. This works with anybody. Hopefully they will say, yes, I forgive you. Now the flip side of the coin is the party that needs to forgive. Jesus tells us 70 times 7. If someone seeks your forgiveness, you need to be ready to forgive. This is the way to life. Life abundant is living with a heart ready to forgive at any moment. Again, remember Ephesians 4, forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you. Remember, There was the billion dollars and there's the thousands of dollars and the ledgers are very, very different. And I would also encourage you to remember that forgiveness, it restores you. First and foremost, to withhold forgiveness is an affront to the way God operates in this world. And therefore, It is an affront to our truest nature as children of God. If we were made in God's image, and I believe with all my heart that we were, and God is a God who forgives again and again and again, then if we want to live into our truest nature, we must be people who forgive. But if you want a more selfish reason for why you should forgive, it goes like this. It's good for you. To forgive somebody else, it feels good to just let it go. In fact, there's a famous saying that holding on to anger is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. It's not going to happen. And so you must stop drinking the poison and you must forgive the other person and let it go. Now there is a deep struggle that happens if you've been hurt. And the struggle is, do I trust this person again? There are the memories that I have of when they wronged me. There's the fear that they're going to do it again. And so again, depending on the severity of what has happened between the two parties, I just want to affirm that sometimes is going to happen. And that's okay. And it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you and your ability to forgive someone. It is a reminder that trust It's not a guarantee in a relationship, and it must be earned and it must be kept. But the question left then is when do you choose reconciliation and when is it okay not to? I've said that these are two different things, forgiveness and reconciliation. And the goal is reconciliation. Two parties coming back together. This is what God does with us. God is, we are rather, estranged from God, but God seeks us out because God wants to be with us. This is the truest form of forgiveness. But there are times in life where reconciliation may not be possible, because it does depend on both parties participating. But there's also this. There is the example of abuse in a relationship. And so if you've ever been a part of an abusive relationship, whether physical abuse, emotional abuse, or otherwise, you know that there is a gap that sits between forgiveness and reconciliation better than anybody else knows this, or at least you should. And so I would want to talk to you and to say, forgive. but not too quickly. To return to Luke, if your brother sins, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. You must first learn to rebuke. It is possible that if this abusive relationship you've been in has gone on for too long, you're probably pretty good at the forgiveness side but maybe need to learn some things about rebuking, holding someone accountable for their actions, to build boundaries and to tell someone that they can no longer do this to you. And if they do, there are clear consequences for it. But the other thing that needs to happen is that the abuser must learn to repent. Repentance is actually a big word. It's more than just, baby, I'm never gonna do that again. It's actually walking the walk. It is not cheap forgiveness, like Bonhoeffer warns of cheap grace. True repentance in relationship is the same as it is with God. When we truly repent, it means we turn around and we start walking in a different direction, not just by words, but in our actions. We no longer do what we used to do. We take necessary steps, radical steps, to stop doing the old and to start doing the new. So if the abuser is showing no signs that they are taking steps in the opposite direction, well they aren't getting help from a counselor, or they haven't changed their behavior in some fashion, then repentance has not really begun. Repentance hasn't really begun and reconciliation should be off the table until they are ready to truly repent. If you keep reconciling with someone who refuses true repentance, you are not righteously walking as Jesus teaches us to. You are simply putting yourself in harm's way. And if I were in the room with you, giving you counsel, I would say you need to walk away until true repentance is part of what is happening in that reconciliation. So how to seek reconciliation, how to offer forgiveness, a very quick word to our married couples in the room, but everybody else can listen in because I think this applies to everyone. Empathy is mission critical. Empathy. It's the ability to see the world as somebody else sees the world, to put yourself into their shoes. If you're going to apologize to someone, you need to understand what it is that they're experiencing and feeling in the world. And as they walk through the world, they see it a certain way. And you need to be able to say it and to name it. Because if they're going to understand that you get it, or they're gonna need to know that indeed, you see it and you're able to say it and you're able to speak it out loud. I came across this wonderful quote this week by a guy named Oswald Chambers. He wrote the devotional that, I don't know, everybody in my generation seemed to grow up on. And he says this, spiritual maturity is going from being thin-skinned and hard-hearted to thick-skinned and tender-hearted. I loved this. There's so much wisdom in this. Too many of us Christians who have been in the church for way too long are too thin-skinned and way too hard-hearted. And when it comes to our relationships, we're too thin-skinned and we're too hard-hearted. We're too quick to judge and not quick enough to forgive. But the maturest ones among us are what? They are the thick-skinned ones, and they can see why someone might behave the way they do. And they don't take it personally always. Sometimes they do if they should, but they don't always take it personally because they have this thick skin needed to be a mature person. But more than that, they are tender-hearted, looking out for all the opportunities to make things right in the world, to breathe life into the world, into other people, and to reconcile at every possible opportunity. We are to be people who are thick-skinned and tenderhearted. Back to the gospel. The world was created very good, but we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to atone for the sins of the world and to make all the wrong things right. He forgave you and me 70 times 7 times. The billions of dollars that you and I, oh God, have all been wiped away. So let us heed Paul's advice together. Forgive because in Christ Jesus, God has forgiven you. Let us pray. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in this place right now, are a group of your children. We're a messy bunch, often harming others and being harmed by others, sinning and having sins committed against us. And so Lord, we need a few things about forgiveness. And so Jesus, we look to you. We look to you to offer us the billions of dollars of wiped debt that we've needed. But we also look to you to show us the way to life, the way that you have already paved for us. You've made abundantly clear on the cross, Lord, the kind of God you are, a God who forgives. And Jesus, you even say, forgive them, and they don't even know what they're doing. Jesus this morning, teach us to be more and more like you, our king, the one who rules on high right now, the one we say that we serve, the one we say that we love, the rabbi that we say that we follow, God make us more like you. We pray all of this in Christ's holy name, amen.

Lust

Lust

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor | August 30, 2026

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• Sermon Transcript

  Dr. Eric J Glchrest, Pastor

  It's good to be with you this morning. I come bringing an exciting sermon to you.

  I'm glad you're here today. If you are new to South Run Baptist Church, I first want to say welcome. We are so pleased that you have chosen to join us this morning. I believe you're here for a reason. I do believe that God has brought you to this place at this time because he has something for you. I believe this of all of us gathered together here. But you should know you've come on a unique Sunday because we've been working through, well, actually, I was thinking about this. We're kind of like a set of Russian nesting dolls this year. So the broad theme is transformation. We've been kind of working on that all year long. And then we've been on this two ways journey where there's these two ways that Jesus offers us abundant life, but he says it's the narrow way, right? And so it requires some adeptness at traversing that narrow way. And then he talks about the broad way, which leads to destruction. And on the broad way, it appears that this is in many ways the easy way. This is the path of least resistance. And so we've been, the nesting doll has been on that path of least resistance. And to do that, we've been talking about the seven deadly sins, right? And so here we are, we're at the 7th of seven. And so if you've come for the first time this morning, you've come on a Sunday in which we are talking about lust. Before we get there, this is a test for those of you who have been with us the whole journey to see if you can name the other six. And if you can't, well, then we're going to start it all over again and we'll do it together. So say them with me and I'll parrot them back to you. What would one of them be? Enri. Gluttony, wrath and sloth, greed, I think we said anger, and vanity, somebody said. I think we got them. Those are the six, leaving us today's message on lust. Part of what we've been trying to do with all of them is also tie together how our technologies the phones in our pockets, the computers that we all sit behind every day, they shape us and they form us and they misshape us and they malform us into beings we were never intended to be. And so my hope through this whole time together actually has been to demonstrate to you that the object in your pocket is not value neutral, that it is having an effect on you in one way or another. And I can really think of no better example than this morning's topic. And so we will talk about some sensitive issues. I've tried to do so in a fashion that is sensitive to all of the various ears this morning, but do know that this is what we're talking about. Let's begin with prayer. God our Father in heaven, you look down at your children and you want what is good for us. You want what is best. You want us to live lives filled with life and abundance and all that is good. And God, yet sometimes we choose the lesser way and we find ourselves going down paths we were never intended to go down, being shaped into people we were never intended to be. And this morning, Lord, speak to us. Speak to our hearts. Speak to our marriages and our families, that we might live lives according to your word, but according to the grain of the universe that you have created, the good universe, the one we intend to live in, the kingdom of God. I pray this in Christ's holy name, amen. You should have gotten a handout when you came in, at least the adults in the room. Yeah, I'll take it, just to wave it around. At some point in the sermon, we will get to this. And this may end up being the most practical sermon I could possibly give to you where there's an actual handout that you can take home with you to give you some resources for how to walk this way well. The Bible has a lot to say about sex. If you've ever read the Bible in full cover to cover, you might be surprised about what you find there. And now that I think about it, I should probably use this as a pitch when I try to get you to read the Bible more often because sex sells and it's filled with it. even has a whole book devoted to it. Did you know this? It's called the Song of Solomon. who himself had 1000 wives and concubines and apparently knew something about the matter. If you think it's a prudish book or that its authors would clutch their pearls at the smallest innuendo, well, you've simply not read close enough. But if you're new to the Bible reading thing and you thought this way, you would be forgiven. Because often this is how we Christians approach the topic, sheepishly in whispers And I confess it's how I often approach this topic, especially from the pulpit. I get nervous and frankly a little weird about it, which is why I'm writing this sermon out rather than trying to go off script. It'll keep me from blushing, hopefully. If the Bible is okay with this topic, then we probably should be too. So I'm going to speak frankly about the matter while recognizing that our congregation has members of all ages listening right now. Parents, you shouldn't feel on edge for what is about to happen, but know that it might spark some interesting conversations around the lunch table that I think you're ready for. And in fact, I encourage these conversations. It's a hope that I have for all of us to be a little more open and in dialogue with one another about this matter. But that said, if at any point you feel the need to take a bathroom break with your child, please go right ahead. I won't be offended. In the beginning, God created the Garden of Eden. And he said to that first couple, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And I know of only one way to be fruitful and to multiply. There's also the matter of Genesis 2, 24, in which God tells the first couple while they're still enjoying the safety of the garden, that when the two are joined together, they become one flesh. Two bodies united into one body. Sounds like a description of the topic we're talking about today. which means to me that God creates it as part of the good creation. It is something that is beautiful, is certainly enjoyable, and I would even say it is spiritual. Two becoming one is a mystery. But don't take my word. It's what Paul says in Ephesians 5 when he compares marriage to our union with Christ. And he also raises the two becoming one mystery as a warning to the Corinthian people in 1 Corinthians 6, who are uniting themselves with temple prostitutes. And Jesus raises the two becoming one mystery as a way to affirm marriage and to limit divorce. Which is all to say, that Genesis and Jesus and Paul, they talk about two becoming one flesh as something to happen within the marriage covenant. The covenant binds two people together by law and by custom, and it requires that the two people remain together in sickness and in health and richer and poorer till death do us part. And why? because it is only this kind of union that makes it safe to practice the deep magic we call sex. There are two ways to preach a sermon about sin, one that I would call an Old Testament sermon and the other a New Testament sermon. The difference is subtle but important. The Old Testament sermon relies on the law. It tells you where the boundaries are. are external to you. For example, an Old Testament sermon tells you the rules to keep and then you simply keep them. Don't murder, don't steal, don't lie, don't break the Sabbath and so on. An Old Testament sermon on adultery would stick to the basics. Don't have sex outside of marriage and you're good to go. But A New Testament sermon, the kind that Jesus would give, drives us deeper to the heart of the matter. which is always a matter of the heart. Jesus is helping us fulfill the Old Testament promise that Jeremiah 31, 33 expresses when he says, I will put my law within them and I will write the law on their hearts and I will be their God and they will be my people. Jesus is trying to write the law on our hearts and to do that, You must look below the surface, which is what Jesus is doing in his most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5. Please turn there now and we'll read verses 27 to 30. You have heard it said, you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. And if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. Now some people want to read their Bible with a precise literalism that demands that every last passage be understood with no nuance. But let's all hope that Jesus is here using hyperbole. Pulling out your eye or cutting off your hand is a bold move. But I'll say in all of my years of church life, and I've had many, I've met a lot of people with a lust problem. but I've never met a single person wearing an eye patch. Here's what Jesus is saying in brief if you ask me. The root of the external act of adultery happens in your heart well before it happens when you walk into a bedroom. If you are to be a kingdom follower, living life abundant, then you will need to get radical in your attempts to root out the heart condition because the alternative is a road that leads to Gehenna, a place that elsewhere is said to be filled with weeping and gnashing of teeth. If you've ever known someone whose partner has cheated on them or who has been sexually assaulted or abused, or someone who has lost a spouse or a job or ministry because of this sin, then you know that the weeping And the anxious grinding of the teeth isn't just waiting on the other side. It starts in the here and the now. How many lives have been broken by this sin? How many marriages and families have been shattered by it? So let's talk about what's in the heart. When I was a kid, Before the internet existed in my house and well before the iPhone had the internet in everyone's pocket, I remember my mom telling me that I shouldn't look at dirty magazines. When my neighbor, Sam Weissman, came outside with his dad's Playboys, I ran inside because I did not want to disappoint my mom. And then later, about a year later, we were digging in a forested area at my friend's house. His name was Brian. And we dug up a stash of more magazines. And once again, I ran away back home because I did not want to disappoint my mom because I wanted to be a good boy. This was a different age and a time when temptation didn't follow you everywhere you went. The magazines stood waiting in a forest for years. But the screens that you take everywhere are constantly offering temptation. The internet made *********** readily available, cheap and easy to find. The smartphone, it made it available everywhere you went. The algorithm and social media learned who you are and began to feed you whatever it takes for you to spend more and more time on your device. If you're a boy or a young man, the girls too, the algorithm knows, and it knows that lust is a powerful drug, and so it is ready to feed you images again and again before you finally say yes. The magazines no longer stay put. They follow you home and everywhere else you go. Let's start with some statistics. Common Sense Media surveyed teens between 13 and 17 years old in 2023 and here's what they found. 73% have watched *********** online, 54% saw it by age 13, 15% by age 10 or younger. The average age of first exposure is 12 and 58% first encountered it accidentally. That's just the kids, the adults in the room. Barna and Pure Desire did a survey in 2024. Here's what they found. 54% of practicing Christians reported viewing **** compared to 68% of non-Christians. Among pastors, 67% report a personal history and then nearly one in five of those currently struggle. of practicing Christians view it weekly. 75% of Christian men and 40% of Christian women report viewing occasionally. And 62% of Christians agree a person can regularly view *********** and live a sexually healthy life only four points below the general public. Jesus says that lust is part of the broad Rd. that leads to Gehenna. But 62% of Christians seem to disagree. The statistics bear out something very important here. Lust and *********** is something that doesn't just go away when you get older. We must all learn to fight this battle, no matter the age. Running from the magazines weren't the end of my personal history. So for me, I know I need to stay vigilant about this. In my house, we talk about these things openly. We have rules and protocols that I want to share with you around our technology. If you were here for a Sunday morning Bible study, we've talked through some of these and you should have received a sheet of paper, adults, as you walked in that hopefully will guide you through some of what I'm going to say that we went a little deeper this morning in Sunday school. I think of lust a little bit like I think about the weeds in my yard. As long as there's a plan and a strategy that is actively keeping the weeds at bay, the yard is going to look great. But as soon as that stops, the yard goes untended. And then once you start looking for it, you start to see more and more weeds popping up here and there until eventually you look out and you realize there's weeds everywhere. And you wonder how'd that happen? If you're a child, it might happen like this. You're simply playing a video game and up pops an ad with a voluptuous woman in something that can't really be called clothing, encouraging you to visit her website. Or maybe you're simply on a website like me, Bible Gateway, preparing a sermon on lust when up pops an underwear ad. Yes, this did happen. Or you're on X or Instagram and they begin to put pictures and products on your screen that you're not really seeking out. But the more it shows up, the more you're interested and the more you click and then the rabbit hole goes deeper and deeper and deeper. And so what does one do in this situation? You should think of yourself and your marriage and your family in the middle of a castle, and your job is to protect it at all cost. You will want to put up high walls, thick walls, a big moat around all of it. And so I want to offer you some very practical advice in two parts. Part one is how to build the walls, and part 2 is what to do if your castle has been sieged. So the protection piece. The first thing I'd want to say here is that you cannot wait on the technology industry to keep you safe or to keep your kids safe. They will not build this wall for you. In fact, they are selling a drug and they are hoping that you get hooked and that your kids get hooked. You may have heard it before. There are only two industries that call their customers users, illegal drugs and big tech. Therefore, you must get radical and take matters into your own hands. Number 2, start with locking down your devices. There are computers and there are phones and there are iPads and whatever else you have in your house. Each will be a little different, but parents especially, both for yourself and for your kids, learn how to limit their screen time. Learn how to manage their content. Learn how to use what the tech companies actually do give you at their disposal to limit what is coming through those big walls that you're trying to create. Number 3, your computers are a little harder to lock down. And so in my house, we pay for something called covenant eyes. We pay $200 a year for this. It might sound like a lot of money. I think it sounds like a very little amount of money for the peace of mind that it gives me, knowing that I'm offering protection, another wall for my kids and my family to feel safe within. Whatever you choose, I would encourage you to once again get radical. Don't just find yourself floating down the broad Rd. just because everyone else seems to. Instead, you have to take matters into your own hands. Number 4, there is the matter of your internet or your routers. And you can try to create as high a wall and a moat as you can. And one tool in the toolbox is using your internet provider to block certain sites or to even automatically turn off at certain times of day. Let's say 1 A.m. There's no good reason for somebody to be on the internet at that point. Number 5, know that with all your best efforts, there will always be workarounds that you haven't thought of, which gets to the most important thing that I can give you. Have a good relationship. with loved ones, with your kids, especially spouses with each other. Have open, honest dialogue. Reduce the shame. It is the shame that drives you into the closet and into the darkness. And the only way out is to get rid of some of that shame and to be willing to talk about it. And so make this a regular conversation in your house. The more you do it, the less awkward it gets. Men talk to your sons. Women talk to your daughters. Have these conversations with your kids. And please, spouses have them with each other. The easiest rule, no devices in the bedrooms. If you're wondering, what's the one quick win that could come out of here as to how I manage my own household and what the kids can do and can't, This is probably the easiest thing that you could make happen right now. But what happens if the army has already sieged the castle and you're in the middle of a fight that you're losing and you are struggling and you can't seem to find your way out? Well, that's the backside of the sheet that I've given you. I've got 4 steps for you. Step one, step out of the darkness and into the light. It will have control over you until you tell someone who is safe and importantly, someone who will force you to do something about it. Men, I want to offer you this morning that I am safe and I will help you do something about it. I have heard stories from young boys to very old men and nothing will shock me, I assure you. Step 2, depending on your situation, and the level of your problem, you should probably find a group to meet with. There are lots of groups dedicated to helping people break their addictions, some in person and some online. Two groups I'm aware of and I know meet locally are called Pure Desire and Celebrate Recovery. I would start there if you're just simply looking. Number 3, develop a strategy and know where the weak points are in your defense. Share these with an accountability partner. For example, maybe you're on a work trip. We'll have your spouse keep you honest when you come home. Late nights or certain times of day. We'll just know when that is and don't be alone during that time. Maybe it's a certain device. Go ahead and ditch that. Is alcohol involved? It might be time to address that problem too. And know that stress will always cause you to do things you might not do when you're not in stress. So manage that. Fourth and finally, replace the bad habit with good habits. More exercise, a new hobby, intentional time with your family. We had this conversation, as I said, this morning with the Sunday morning Bible study. And it was brought in that we should certainly infuse all of these steps with a healthy spiritual life that loves God with all our hearts and souls and minds and strength and our neighbors as ourselves and our spouses as ourselves. But sometimes we maybe keep praying to God and we say, oh, help me with this and help me with this and it never seems to go anywhere. That's what this roadmap is for. It has helped you if you've been there again and again and again and again. One final word I would want to give is to the spouses in the room, because the part I haven't yet addressed is that lust and adultery is not a victimless crime. There is often a spouse or a family that feel the effects of this betrayal. If that is you, know that God sees you too. And you too need help and you need encouragement. And the steps for what you should do are not the same as the above. They are similar. It involves talking to someone. Maybe it's finding a group. Some of the groups offer spouses groups as well. And so if the person who has hurt you needs to build their defenses, I would encourage you to build some of your own as well. Build walls and boundaries that they should not break in order to keep yourself from being hurt again and again. And develop lines that cannot be crossed and communicate those clearly and what would happen if they do get crossed. And finally, do things that will fill your soul as well. In the beginning, God created all things good. And this includes sex. But it is a powerful force. And a desire for it sits deep within us. And we live in a dangerous world where the temptations are everywhere. So let me encourage you to protect it. Keep it safe. Build the walls of a covenant marriage around it. Put them up high. Build a moat around it so that you keep temptation at bay. Talk to your spouses. Talk to your kids. Have these conversations regularly. Help is available. Victory is available. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, let us pray. Father in heaven, Jesus, King Jesus, who sits on the throne, who has power over all the universe, Holy Spirit who has been sent to us to live in us, to dwell in us, to cleanse us from the inside out, empower us this morning, convict us of where we need changes, Give us the path forward. Show us how we can be transformed by the renewing of our minds and to take on the mind of Christ and to live as you would have us live, O Lord. May we walk that narrow way, the hard way, but a way that leads to life abundant because Lord, we know that other way leads to the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. God, this morning, no doubt if the statistics bear out, some people hearing my voice right now, whether in person, online, or on a podcast into the future, they are wrestling. They are wrestling with something that has sat hidden for way too long. It is time to take the thing that existed in the darkness Bring it out into the light. Because God, you have a better way. You have a way that is filled with joy and freedom. So Lord, this warning, convict of sin, but also convince us that you are powerful enough to heal. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

Sloth

Sloth

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor | August 23, 2026

Check out the weekly sermon here or on our SRBC podcast on Apple Podcast and Spotify. While you’re at it, check us out on Facebook and Instagram too.

Like what you hear? We’d love to know.

At South Run, we read every message personally. Whether you have a question, want to share how God is moving in your life, or are thinking about visiting in person, this is the place to start. If you click the link below, Pastor Eric will personally reach out to you.

• Sermon Transcript

  Transcript

  Pastor Eric J. Gilchrest

  Good morning. It's great to be back with you. I've missed you.

  I wasn't here on Sunday, last Sunday that is. I was dropping Ezra off at college, which was an incredibly emotional, powerful experience. And then I had been out of town on sabbatical for a time, but I'm promising you I'm here for a while. Does anyone else hear that? It's the sound of... Oh, it is. Yeah. It's the 250th. There's like flyovers happening. I was going to say, I never hear, you know, anything quite like that. Yeah, we'll let the airplanes kind of die down a second. They'll be done in a moment, hopefully, unless it keeps going for a time. Yeah, just turn me up. Thank you. All right. Where were we? Where we were for the last month is we are talking about the way, which is the name for the earliest Christians. They were called the way. They were the ones who followed Jesus appropriately. And then we were also talking about the fact that there are these two ways that Jesus talks about. One way that leads to destruction. And this is the path that We've been talking about the seven deadly sins for. It is the path we're talking about today. It is the path in which we lead lesser lives, and we lead lives that are not intended to be led by God. Today we're talking about sloth, and this is, as it says, following the wrong way home. There's a lot of city stuff in the picture if you're looking at this, and there's a lot of hubbub and there's a lot of movement, and you might be thinking that's not very slothful. But actually, it kind of is. If you were in the Sunday morning Bible study, what we learned is that there are two faces to sloth, actually. The one that is the slow creature from Zootopia, who's amiable and enjoyable to be with, but is is so slow that it's infuriating, right? And they don't do much. But the other face of sloth actually is the person who's so busy and is distracting himself or herself with all these other things in life, and they're not attending to the one thing that they should be attending to. Our lives are actually filled with these sorts of slothful moments where we distract ourselves quite easily and we escape into our devices and we lead lives that are in constant distraction and not attending to the one thing that we should be doing. So Jesus talks about this road that leads to destruction. And this morning we're going to talk about sloth in that way. But he does talk about a road that leads to fullness of life, abundant life. And all year I've been trying to get you to realize there is abundant life waiting for each and every one of you. And this is in fact what God wants for you. Jesus wants this for you. It's the promise. It's frankly the great promise of Christianity. It's what Jesus teaches us, and he shows us the way. He walks the path before we ever do. And so when I got captivated earlier in this year by what I take to be a very simple idea, and the longer I sit with it, the more powerful it gets. And the idea is very simple, that Jesus lived a life showing us how to live a life. And if we just simply model ourselves after the life of Jesus, if we do the things Jesus does, if we speak like he speaks, if we walk like he walks, if we do what he does, then we too can have abundant life. So this morning, before we jump into sloth and we talk about what this means and what it doesn't mean, let us begin with prayer. Heavenly Father, We come this morning and we lift our hearts to you. We slow down in an appropriate way as you call us to every 7th day taking a Sabbath, a rest from the busy work of life, but not to be lazy, but to fall back in love with you, to be open to what you have to say to us and how you're directing our lives and where you're trying to move us to, the ways in which you are trying to grow us and the ways in which you have kingdom plans for each and every one of us. May we attend to you this morning. In Christ's name we pray, amen. I want to begin with an analogy from marriage. If you are not married, hopefully you can grasp what is happening here. This analogy takes place on the 2nd anniversary of a marriage when a couple is past the honeymoon phase and the 2nd anniversary happens and the husband forgets that it's the anniversary. And the wife is now deeply frustrated with her new husband and lashes out and says, how could you forget? James down the street, he took his wife to the Bahamas. You didn't even remember that it was our anniversary. You are a terrible husband. How dare you? And she storms off to the other side of the room. The husband, feeling very defensive and stonewalling, He just kind of turns in on himself and he walks to the other side of the room and he says, doesn't she know? I work so hard for this family, 80 hours a week. I am just, the pressure is so great. And so what? I forget one day, right? And he begins to get defensive. And so the couple is on each side of the room and And they both know that they love each other, right? This is why they married. They both know that they love each other. But the love requires sacrifice. And it requires the both of them to do the one thing that in this moment they're not sure they really want to do, which is to walk back to the center of the room and figure some things out. And to try to understand the other person and where they're coming from. And so what do they do? Hopefully they do what you don't do. They actually stay on the other sides of the room and they nurse their grievances and they choose sloth over love. And they choose to not reconcile. Instead, of choosing to die to self and to choose to try to work it out and love one another. If you've been married, then you know that building a relationship is not easy. What it really requires of this couple is to not exactly just figure it out in that moment. It actually requires figuring it out over a lifetime what the other person needs and what makes them happy and what makes them tick and what you need and where you need to stand up for your own self. And relationships require work and they require growth and they require you to talk about it and to do some hard things and to dig in together. Maybe on occasion going to a counselor or somebody who can help you grow together. And so a good relationship It doesn't just come together in that moment and all is well. It requires day in, day out, doing the hard thing. But if you don't want to do the hard thing, we call this sloth. Sloth is the willful rejection of growing into the person that God wants you to be. It is the willful rejection of growing into the person that God wants you to be. The marriage is just an analogy. It's an earthly analogy that should then be understood in terms of the spiritual realm, that God desires a relationship with you. And this God wants something from you, and he wants you to grow. And he wants you to be a bigger person, as we talked about again in Sunday school. He wants you to be magnanimous, which is to say big sold. But it's going to require work. And it's going to require some pain, maybe some late nights, some early mornings. Sometimes it requires eating some crow and saying, I'm sorry, and man, I really messed up. And coming to God and saying, please forgive me. It requires doing some soul searching. And it requires understanding what is it that God has called me into this life for? Why am I on this planet at all? And how can I serve the kingdom of God? Sloth is one of these sins that requires us to think about what sin is. Most of the time, someone might tell you, well, it means don't kill anybody. Check, not done that. Don't commit adultery, check, right? Don't steal, right? Okay, And you can think of all these things that you're not supposed to do. Sloth doesn't work this way. It requires actually the opposite. Sloth is what you don't do. It's the sin of not doing. It's the sin of not showing up when you should show up. It's the sin of knowing, I really should go do, I should really call this person, I should really go say I'm sorry to my wife and then not doing it. That, is the sin of sloth. The Book of Common Prayer has lots of prayers in it. one of which you might be familiar with. The prayer goes like this. Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought and word and deed by what we have done. And these are all the things that you've done. And it's a moment and opportunity of confession, right? To say, I've thought these things and I've said these things and I've done these things and God, I'm sorry for those. But the prayer continues and it says, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. And it's that. That's the sloth. That is what you're also saying. God, I am sorry that I didn't show up in this way. And then it goes on and says, we have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. Often, the not loving others and not loving God with our whole hearts is just as much about what you leave undone as it does what you actually do. And the prayer ends, we are truly sorry and we humbly repent. This year is a year of transformation. If you've been here since January 1st, we gave out bracelets and it says transformed on them and we read from Romans 12, 2, and it says, be transformed, right, and take on the mind of Christ. And this whole year, my hope has been that you have been engaging in thoughts and words and deeds that are in fact transforming you. We even had a marriage conference where we came together and the hope is maybe we can transform some marriages. And we've talked about doing hard things. Sloth is enemy number one against transformation. It is week two of the transformation process where you say to yourself, you know what? I'm going to be the guy who wakes up at 5.30 in the morning and I go to the gym and I'm going to start each day with a good workout. And then by week two might be generous, right? A few days later, you're thinking to yourself, boy, It is early. I think I'm going to stay in bed this morning. That's the physical forms of sloth coming at you. But there are spiritual forms of this too. It is where you say to yourself, I'm going to be a guy who prays regularly. Or I'm going to be the guy or woman who comes to church every Sunday. That's who I want to be because that's important to me. prioritize this. I'm going to be the dad who shows up for his son's or daughter's stuff, right? And spiritual sloth can creep in and we shrink back from how it is that God is trying to form us and to shape us. In this year of transformation, we began with Romans 12, 2, and I would ask that right now you open your Bible to that chapter. Because interestingly, our passage for today comes from this very chapter, Romans chapter 12. As you're turning there, I'll go ahead and start reading from verse 1. The passage today is from verse 9, but we'll get there. Paul says, mind you, while you're turning there, Chapters 1 through 11 are what often get called orthodoxy. This is Paul teaching you how to think right. These are the things that matter and how we are to understand what Jesus did on the cross and what his resurrection means from a kind of cognitive viewpoint. 12 and after is orthopraxy. This is the life you are to live in light of all of those things from chapter 1 to 11. And so this is what Paul says here. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies, your very lives, as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. And then the passage for the year, do not be conformed to this. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Be transformed. These are lofty ideas, aren't they? And if you've been trying this for the last eight months, you realize lofty ideas turn out to be really hard when you're doing it for a while. And the process of real transformation takes some time. And it takes some energy. And sometimes it's just easier to forget about it and to give up. In fact, this whole living sacrifice thing from verse one, every day, a living sacrifice, you're telling me I've got to put myself back on that altar day after day after day? Eric, that's a lot to ask. I would say to you, it's not me who's asking for it. Paul is, but this is the life of faith. He goes on, and in verses 3 to 8, he calls us all together and he kind of reminds us of what it means to be the body of Christ together. And he says, we each play a part in this body and we each have things to do. And being a living sacrifice means playing my part in the body of Christ that is the church, both the capital C church and the lowercase C church, the church worldwide and the church local. And he says, for by grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, don't think of yourself more highly than you ought, but to think with sober judgment each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not have all the same function. So we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. If prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. What does all that mean? I just say it like this. To be a living sacrifice means giving back to the body of Christ. If you're a deacon, be a good deacon. If you're a Sunday school teacher, be a good Sunday school teacher. If you're making meals on a Wednesday night, make great meals on a Wednesday night. But find some way to give, to be plugged in, to do something. Because that is part of what it means to be part of the kingdom and to do the things of the church. But he goes on, and this is our passage for the day. He says, let your love be genuine and hate or abhor what is evil. Love what is good, hate what is evil. It's really that simple. And hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. one another in the showing of honor. And then here it is, right? How I landed here at all. Do not be slothful in zeal, but be fervent in the spirit. Now let me just kind of back up one second. There's 2 ideas sitting here. Don't be slothful in your zeal, but be fervent in the spirit. The slothful in zeal, these are two words we don't really use ever, sloth and zeal, right? This means don't let your passion wane, but instead be fervent, another word we don't use a lot, but it really means boiling over. But be somebody who is alive in the spirit, and the spirit is boiling within them. And what Paul is calling us to in this in some ways is perhaps quite simple. He's saying that when you became a believer and you said yes to Jesus and maybe you walked down an aisle or at a camp you gave your life or you prayed, yes, Lord, yes, Lord, I will be your servant. There's probably some kind of fire burning within you in this moment. What he's saying is, don't let this fire die. Don't let it die. Instead, let it boil up. Because it's the boiling of the passion that then is very useful to the world that is around you. But if the passion that is in your heart, and all of these deadly sins, by the way, are heart issues, they're malfunctions of the heart. And if that heart is, it's lost its passion, then I don't know what's going to happen next. There is this ancient word that gets used for sloth. It's a nice fancy word. You can use it with your friends to impress them. It's called acedia, A-C-E-D-I-A, acedia. And it means, well, the word a means not, and cedia means care. It means you don't care. It means your heart isn't in it. means you've lost passion for the thing. If I could take you back for a minute to the couple standing on the other sides of the room. There's a real danger that might creep in if that couple doesn't figure out a way to get back to the center of the room. The real danger is that in year 20, when they are celebrating the 20th anniversary, and they no longer really celebrate much of anything, and they kind of, maybe they even sleep in separate rooms, and they've no longer come back to the middle. They have acedia. They no longer care. And the worst thing that could happen is that wife stops yelling at the husband to say, why didn't we celebrate our 20th anniversary? Because she no longer cares. And the husband no longer gets defensive and he no longer needs to protect himself because he too no longer cares. This is what sloth is. It's the stopping of caring. I coach soccer sometimes, although in the fall here I'm hanging up my coach's hat for a minute. I hope to again someday. But if you've ever worked with kids, you know what I'm about to say to be true, which is I can deal with kids, of course, the ones who care deeply and are really passionate about things. And then I can deal with kids who are passionately negative about something and they have some skin in the game and yet it's not working and they get upset about it, right? What I can't deal with is the kid who says, I don't care. That is a lack of love, if nothing else. If they say, Whatever. Okay, sure. Fine. Fine in my book is a four-letter word. It starts with the letter F. The reason being is it means that there is no passion. There is no love. There is only a cedia, a not caring. Sloth. is the willful rejection of growing into the person God wants you to be. For a lot of us, this happens because we stop caring. Sloth has a bodily form and it has a spiritual form. It's easy to see the spiritual form if we kind of first look at the bodily form. I mentioned last week we took Ezra down to Blacksburg and we dropped him off and it was a very emotional experience. I've never really had that kind of emotional experience before where I was deeply sad for myself and deeply happy for him because I know he's entering this window of life that is awesome. College is so much fun. There's so much growth that happens. And to be honest, there are days where I miss working with college students because of that window of time that is so cool. Yesterday, it hit me. Ezra wasn't there to mow the lawn for me. I had gotten out of the habit of mowing lawns It's been a few years, six years, my wife tells me. And I looked outside and my lawn was very full. And I thought, well, he's not here to do it. And Lizzie's, well, I don't know, I could try to train her. And Ezra's, Ashra's a little too young and looks like it's on me. I didn't want to do it. the sloth in me was saying, just stay inside, the air conditioning is comfortable. Maybe you could find another high school student out there somewhere and start paying that student. But I tried to, I overcame it and you'd be proud of me. I went out there and I mowed my lawn for the first time in six years. And it was fine. But sloth creeps in, a variety of ways. When we stop doing something over and over again and we offload it, right? And maybe it is like a physical thing, like mowing the lawn. But as I've already said, there are these other ways in which we become spiritually sloth. It's possible that like as parents, you were raising your kids in the house and And you knew, what, it's important that I teach this child like some things. And so I'm going to teach them how to pray. And I'm going to teach them to maybe read their scriptures. I'm going to teach them a few things about the life of the spirit. And then, they grow up and they leave the house. And well, now you don't have anyone to teach. And perhaps some of those muscles, for some of you older folks in the crowd, have begun to atrophy some. What I'd ask of you is to not let sloth jump in there. In fact, now's the time more than ever. There are people in this church who need you. They need your years of wisdom. They need what you've learned over a lifetime, and they need the food that you are able to feed them. Sloth can present itself in the body, but frankly, it's the spiritual sloth that is most dangerous. What should we do about sloth? With just very quick, I've got 5 steps I want you to take and then I'll pray and we can go home. But the five steps go like this. One, wake up. Wake up to the ways in which you've allowed a smaller life to creep into your life. in which God has called you into something bigger, but you've said no again and again. Or maybe it's like a sin that is sitting in your life right now, and you've just kind of grown accustomed to it, and you've allowed it to sit there, and at some point you say, I should probably work on this. I shouldn't let this just keep rotting inside of me. That is sloth on top of whatever that other sin might be. And so wake up, Number 2 would then be to rekindle that passion. So if Paul says in Romans 12, don't let sloth steal your zeal, but boil in the spirit, I'd encourage you to find that passion again. What was it that made you come alive? Or maybe it is in the workplace. what makes you come alive in life generally speaking? When I talk to young people and they ask, what should I do with my life? I often point them to, well, when you do something that makes you feel like invigorated, what is that thing? Because likely that is your gift to the world somewhere in there. And so what's that passion that is inside of you and how can you be using that for the kingdom? Number 3 would be to raise necessity. Raise necessity, which means somehow you've got to take this thing that God is trying to do in you and you've got to make it a necessary part of life where you are uncompromising about it, where you say, you know what, I'm going to do this no matter what. I'm going to drop all these other things and I'm going to do the one thing that actually matters. And then four would be to find accountability. Tell somebody, tell me, tell your friend, tell your mom, tell whoever and say, hold me accountable. This is my one thing. This is where God's growing me. I know it's going to be hard. I'm going to wake up at 5.30 one morning and not want to do it. And I need you to hold me accountable to it. And #5, just stay in the game. One foot in front of the other. In January, we started the year with transformation. My hope is some of you made some commitments. Some of you thought, you know what? I really do this year. I want to work on this. And over time, maybe you drifted. And this is the sermon that's ringing the bell to say, wake up and get back on track and do one thing, 1 foot in front of the other, in front of the other. Because sloth is coming for us And it's trying to steal our lives from us. And those screens that you keep looking at, they're taking your time and they're taking your attention. And that's part of what we need to put down in order to live the lives that God is calling us into. Let us pray. God our Father in heaven, we come this morning with confessions. Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought and word and deed by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. And so, Lord, we are truly sorry and we humbly repent. God, it is our desire this morning to live lives that are magnanimous that are big-souled, in which we are challenged by what you are calling us into. We are ready to take the next step of faith. And it's going to require some sacrifice. It's going to require being a living sacrifice if the transformation is going to happen. And so, Lord, I know my part. I'm saying yes this morning. And I know there are people in this congregation who are saying yes too. Let us find some accountability. Let us find some necessity. Let us fix our eyes on you, the perfecter of our faith. We thank you. In Christ's name we pray, amen.

Love, Period.

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• Sermon Transcript

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The Body of Christ

The Body of Christ

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor | August 9, 2026

Check out the weekly sermon here or on our SRBC podcast on Apple Podcast and Spotify. While you’re at it, check us out on Facebook and Instagram too.

Like what you hear? We’d love to know.

At South Run, we read every message personally. Whether you have a question, want to share how God is moving in your life, or are thinking about visiting in person, this is the place to start. If you click the link below, Pastor Eric will personally reach out to you.

• Sermon Transcript

  The Body of Christ

  Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor 

  . . . thank you, Matthias. It was nice to meet you both. But James, I will miss you. And I am so glad you have spent 10 weeks with us this summer and 10 weeks last summer. And South Bend Baptist will always have a home for you here. Renee, you literally have a home here. And we are so glad that you have been with us these 10 weeks as well. Let's begin with prayer and then we'll get into the sermon. God, thank you for these two young lives, Renee and James, who have offered us 10 weeks of their time and of their talents, the gifts that you have given them. And we thank you for the ministry that they have offered to our kids and our youth, and to the church at large. And so for them, we ask for a blessing over their lives, their future, that you continue to work in them and grow in them, that you plant your spirit deep down in, Lord. And we pray all of this in Christ's name, amen. It's good to be back. Where were we? So I will say I listened to Jim's messages and I thought they were wonderfully profound and kind of this perfect segue into where we've been and what we're doing. Jim, if you were here last week and the weeks prior was talking about, well, you tell me, what was he talking about? The deadly virtues, which is this nice symbiosis of what we were doing before and now are heading back into, which is there's a virtuous life and there's a life of vice. And sometimes, and Jim showed us the way here, these two things weave together and what is a virtue for many becomes a vice if you're not careful. Today we are on a the good path, which is to say the things that we should be doing in this life and Jesus teaching us how to live a life. And being Communion Sunday, I thought it would be a wonderful time to reflect on the practice that we have every month where we gather together and we break the bread and we share the cup. and what is happening in this moment. And so before I left for my sabbatical, I was in the series on the two ways. And the first way is this way that leads to life, and it's abundant life in the here and now, and it's eternal life in the life to come. And then there's a way that leads to destruction. And it's the ways of living that Scripture warns us about, that Jesus warns us about, that leads to death in the here and now, and it can erode your soul, and it can shrink your life down to just about nothing if you're not careful. And the premise of all of this is that I believe, and you should believe, that Jesus is trying to teach us how to live a life. It's a simple idea. It's been around for quite some time. But sometimes I think the church gets so focused on the life to come and maybe how do we punch the ticket for the next life that we often neglect? Like what is Jesus teaching us about the here and now? The premise for me is actually simple, is that life in the here and now is not all that different from life in the life to come. And that if Jesus is teaching us about eternal life in the same breath, he's teaching us about this life, because life is life. And the author of life, Jesus, the Father, they are teaching us what it means to live the life that they designed. They are the author of life, and they're showing us the good way. And if we walk that good way, well, then we have life abundant. And if we don't, then we have destruction. And Jesus does warn us that the way to life is narrow, which is to say it requires intention. It requires a purpose. It's going to bob and weave. And then the life that leads to destruction is wide and it's really easy to kind of get caught up in and to find yourself just moseying down the path of least resistance. If I could put the series into one sentence, it goes like this. If you want to be tutored on living a life by the one through whom all life was created, the one who has the user's manual to life, the author of it all, then you should follow Jesus' words and actions. Or as we said it in the 90s, WWJD. I can already hear one pushback to the whole premise though. And it's probably coming from the back row, the back row Baptists back there. And they would probably say something like, Eric, there are some things that are just Jesus. They're like his domain, and then we're not really called into doing that. And I want to say yes. this is an important critique, or it is an important line that we need to draw, that there are some things that Jesus does and that we are not called into doing, that we can't do. And as the table sits before me, it reminds me of what some of those things are. Jesus saves us from our sins. This is something we cannot do. Jesus makes the new covenant in his blood. The new covenant is not in our blood, and we cannot follow him on that road. It is Jesus who welcomes the world with his arms wide open, and we cannot do that. And so when we come to the table and we break the bread and we say, this is Christ's body, it is broken for you, and this is Christ's blood and is shed for the forgiveness of your sins, we can't do those things. But the longer I have sat with all of this, and the longer we've been walking down these roads together about the good way and the bad way and the narrow way and the wide way, it does occur to me that some of that line might need blurring. There is a line, and I don't believe at all we should cross it. There are those things that are fully Jesus. But I think sometimes we mistake what are fully Jesus and we just simply push that off to him completely and then we don't participate at all. And we need to. Because Jesus himself says things like Matthew 16, 24, pick up your cross and follow me. Or Luke 9, 23 to 24. He said to all, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. For ever would save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. And it seems Paul got the memo too. He invites us to have a relationship with the cross That is not all that different from Jesus. It's different enough and there needs to be that line. But we too are invited into the cross. And so in Galatians 2.20, Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And so yes, there are some things only Jesus can do. like dying for the sins of the world. But then he turns around and he invites us to mirror even some of that. And I think it goes one layer deeper still. But I first want to tell you a story. As I confessed earlier, I went to another church last week. That church too had a communion service They only do communion 4 * a year, and so the pastor, I guess, takes a moment every quarter to explain what it is that their communion service does. My daughter informed me that I'm a better preacher than he is, and she's an unbiased observer, so I take her at her word. But there was something he said that stuck with me. And it's funny because I actually don't remember much at all of what he said, which gives me grace for you. But he simply said this, is the body of Christ broken for you. I've said it 1000 times. I've said it multiple times today already. He said, this is the body of Christ broken for you. And something in his telling or rendering of that or statement or maybe it was just the Holy Spirit himself came into me and said, the body of Christ, the body of Christ, well, this is the body of Christ too. And Paul will talk about the body of Christ, not just as Christ's body, but as us, the church. And is there a way in which us, the body, should be broken for the world? And the answer I've come to is yes. that we too, our wounds, our hurts and our pains, specifically the ones that he has healed, those are meant for the healing of the nations. If I have one premise in this sermon, and if you're wondering like if somebody asks you, what did the preacher talk about today? It's this, it's that your lives, your wounds, the hurts, the brokenness that sits in your soul right now, that is the very thing that might heal somebody else. In the same way, that when Thomas comes to Jesus, he finds Jesus whole, but with what? With the scars in his hands and the wound on his side. And it is those scars that heal us. And it is the wounding of Jesus, as Isaiah 53 says, that heals the world. And so if we are to walk the Jesus path, It shouldn't be surprising that the very things that have wounded us over lifetime, the things that hopefully, prayerfully, you have allowed Jesus to do the work of healing within you, those are the very things you can take into the world and heal other people with. One of the joys of being on sabbatical is that I got to read some and I finished a book and I commend it to you. I don't always commend books, but this one was a good one. It's called Theo of Golden. Has anyone read this one yet? Theo of Golden. It's an absolutely beautiful book. I promise not to give away the ending. Kendall hasn't finished it yet and I'd be in real trouble if I did give away the ending. Also, I want you to read it. so that I won't say too much. But as I was reading it, felt very Christian without being explicitly Christian. The main figure is named Theo, and he becomes something of a God figure or Christ figure in the story, which shouldn't be surprising given his name is Theo, which is the Greek word for God. But it's not a Christ figure in an unrealistic kind of way. This isn't an allegory as if he is Jesus and he's going around doing Jesus things as Jesus. He's a very human figure. He's just another guy. But we've been talking about transformation all year long and being transformed. And He strikes me as a character who has spent his life being transformed and then taking the gifts of that transformation into the world that is all around him there in Golden, Georgia. And what is necessary for this sermon for you to know is that he is a man who has been deeply wounded, who has been hurt, who has pains of his own and a past. but a past that has been healed and that propels him to do the things that he does and to look people in the eyes and to speak into their souls and into their lives. And so the way the story goes is he walks into this town, Golden, Georgia, and he finds the center of town where there's a shop with art all over the walls. And there's an artist named Asher who has drawn all of these portraits of the people in the town. And Theo, who admires beauty and understands the depth of beauty and art, he sees them for what they are, which is these wonderful works of art. And then he has this idea where he begins to purchase them one by one and bestow them, that's what he calls it, bestow them to the people who are indeed portrait painted or they're drawn. And he sets up a meeting in the center of town with each person, one by one, because he wants to spend time with them. And he gets to know them and he asks them about their lives and they begin to reveal things to him about who they are and where they've come from, their own hurts, their own pain, the places in life where they've been wounded. And then Theo takes time to simply be with them and to help them in the ways that he can, to not worry about the ways that he can't. And then at the end of the meeting, he usually does two things. The one is he bestows this portrait to them. He gives them the portrait of themselves, mind you. And they perhaps see themselves for the very first time in a way that Theo can see them. And the way that he sees them is the second part, which is that just about every single time he says to them, in you I see sainthood. I see something in you that can grow into something great. And often the person will say, not me, I'm no St. and none of them are. But that's not the point. He is able to see into them that they are a child of God, and that they were made to be something more, and that God has good things for them, and he is speaking life into them. It's a beautiful book. As I said, I won't give away too much more. I promise what I've given away already is just simply the premise of the book. But it's worth knowing that all of that can only happen because Theo has some wounds in his life that have been healed for the most part at least, and that he then ministers to those people of Golden out of. There's a prayer from Saint Teresa of Avila that I quite like. It almost feels heretical, but I assure you it's not. She's writing in the 1500s, and she says this. She says, Christ has no body but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which his compassion looks out upon the world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours the hands with which he blesses the world. Christ has no body but yours. What I take her to be saying is nothing less than what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 12. When he looks around the room in Corinth and he says, You're an I. and you're a hand and you're a foot and you're an ear and every part of the body has a purpose here. And Paul finishes up and he says, now you, are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it. This is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12. But if you were to turn back just one page to 1 Corinthians 11, what you would find is Paul's version of the Lord's Supper, in which he reads the same thing that we're reading in Matthew 26. And it's Jesus saying, this is the body of Christ, and he hands them the bread, right? And this is the blood of Christ shed for the forgiveness of sins, and he hands them the cup. And then just one chapter later, Paul is saying that we're the body of Christ. And so my assumption, and I think it's a good one, is that something in our brokenness, in the ways that we get broken, are then meant to go out and to feed the world, that Christ has no body but ours. We are the hands We are the feet of Christ for a world who needs Christ. Every time we take communion, I tear the bread in half and I say the same words, the body of Christ is broken for you. And so, of course, this is a reference to Christ's body himself. It is the giving of his life, the shedding of his blood for the forgiveness of sins There are certain things that only Jesus can do. The salvation of the world, the restoration of humanity, the making of the new covenant in his blood. These are things that only Jesus can do. But the older I get and the more we've talked about following Jesus on this narrow way, living like Jesus, going left when he says go left, jumping when he says jump, and stopping when he says stop, the more I believe that Jesus is calling us into something far more radical than we've allowed for so that we become like Christ in every way. And when we say the body of Christ broken for you, I think Jesus is calling us, the church, his body, to be broken open for the people who are around us. In conclusion, I do have just a few pieces of advice on how to live this way. The first is, like Jesus, you should not go out of your way to seek the brokenness. Even Jesus was not wishing for it or wanting it. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he stood there saying, take this cup away from me. He didn't want it, but when it came, he submitted to it. The second thing is that because we don't seek it is one thing, but it will come at some point whether you want it to or not. The world will break you in a variety of ways. Sometimes the wounds are from the outside, and sometimes they are self-inflicted. But a wound is a wound. It might look like a spouse who died way too early. or an addiction that ate up years of your life, or the loss of a career that you loved and worked hard for, or a friend who left you when times got tough, or a dad who abused you when you were a child. There are lots of different kinds of wounds in life. But there are two responses to these wounds. One is to make yourself into a victim, which might be the most reasonable thing because it's possible you were a literal victim to a literal crime. Some wounds are of that nature. But just because it's reasonable is not the same as being good. And at some point, you must decide that remaining a victim and letting this wound fester and eat you up from the inside out, well, this is the way that leads to destruction. It is not the Jesus way that leads to life. The power of Christ in you is that healing is possible. The scars may remain just like Jesus' scars, which were touched by Thomas, and then it is out of the wounded place that you, like Jesus, are able to help heal others. It is what Henri Nouwen calls the wounded healer. This person has been healed by the great physician, has the scars to prove it, and then walks out into the world healing others through the very thing that God has healed in them. Perhaps like Theo of Golden. Or perhaps in real life, like the alcoholic who brings others to a place of recovery. Or the widow who helps other widows find healing in a grief share program. Or perhaps in one of the most powerful examples I've seen, there's a woman named, and I'm going to mess this up, Immaculee Ilabagiza. She was a young woman during the Rwandan genocide who watched her entire family and most of her village be killed by Hutu soldiers. But out of that deep dark brokenness. She learned to teach others about forgiveness of all things. Forgiveness. Now the last thing is that there are those in the room who have not been broken in at least any big way. And this is a good and beautiful thing. You do not need to feel ashamed or worry about this. You are likely young or have had a charmed life to this point. And this message is not yet for you, but someday you might need it. And when you do, remember that you too have a choice to make. You can live as someone who is a victim, allowing the world to eat you up from the inside out. Or you can live as a victor through Jesus Christ who heals all things. As I reflected on this message, in the drive over to the church today, I felt like there was one last thing I wanted to say. And I discovered it as I pulled in, and it goes like this. I think this might be the most hopeful message that I've ever preached, and here's why. Whatever darkness has beset you, and I mean whatever, Christ has been there in the darkest night of his soul. That Good Friday, when it seemed like the light of the world was snuffed out, the author of life was snuffed out, and we were left in utter darkness. We know that three days later, he was raised from the dead. And though the scars remain, he is victorious. And he becomes the greatest of the wounded healers who then goes about healing all the world of yes, our sin, yes, our darkness. But it is also a hope that whatever you are going through in this present moment, that God knows, and that God cares, and that God sees, and that there is a light waiting at some point at the end of this tunnel. This is the great Christian message. It is the great hope of the Christian faith. That death does not have the last word, that sin does not have the last word, that evil does not have the last word, but God does. that life wins, that love wins, that God will have the final say. Let's pray together. Jesus, we thank you. We thank you for doing what only you could do, for dying on a cross, for the forgiveness of the sins of the world, for undoing all the curses of this world, for making all the wrong things right, and for setting this world back on a path toward you. We thank you for making a way where there was no way. We thank you for opening up a door of a promise that we can now walk through and find relationship with you. We thank you for your body that was broken. We thank you for the blood that was shed, for the forgiveness of our sins. But none of this is deserved by us. All of it is gift. And so we say thank you this morning. Pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen. Friends, we will take communion now. If you've not taken communion with us, this is how we proceed. We, in just a moment, I'll call the servers up front and there will be one on left and one on the right. And You will come and you will put your hands out and someone will look you in the eye and they will grab the piece of bread and they will say to you, this is Christ's body, the body of Christ. It is broken for you. And then you will grab a cup and this is the blood of Christ. It was shed for your forgiveness. It is the new covenant in his blood. You will then take both of those around to the sides and you'll find your way back to your seat. At which point I encourage you to sit with the body and the blood of Christ in your hands and to think about it and to ponder it and to pray and to take this moment with deadly seriousness and to reflect on your life and perhaps where you've fallen short and where you need that forgiveness once again. Spend some time with God. Open yourself up to his word. Open yourself up to what he might be doing in your heart right now. And then when the time comes, we will all gather back together and we will take the elements at the same time. Let us pray one more time. God, on the night in which your son was betrayed, Jesus took the loaf and broke it. He said, this is my body and it's for you. It is for the world. And he took the cup, the new covenant in his blood, and it was shed for the forgiveness of our sins, God. Lord, we proclaim this today, this morning, and we say thank you. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen. My servers, will you come forward, please? Let's pray together. Father in heaven, Christ our Lord who sits on high on the throne and Holy Spirit. God, three in one, we give you thanks and praise for opening up the way to salvation, for offering new life in your body and blood. God, we give you thanks for the gift that is Jesus Christ, in whom we live, in whom we walk, in whom we have our being. Lord, we are so grateful to be here in this moment with you. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

The Deadly Virtue of Certainty

The Deadly Virtue of Certainty

Jim Weaver | Guest Pastor

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• Sermon Transcript

  The ‘Deadly Virtue’ of Certainty

  Jim Weaver, Guest Pastor

  Well thanks to Pedro and Matthias for that great lesson for all of us. And the fourth Sunday with you is here. How it has come quickly for me. Thank you for the opportunity to be with you in these four Sundays and I certainly appreciate your welcome and your hospitality. We've been talking in these four Sundays about what I've called some deadly virtues. These are genuine qualities, attitudes, virtues of the Christian life. But they can get twisted, distorted, and they can become deadly. This morning we're going to talk about the deadly virtue of certainty. I heard this story at a Baptist meeting. It's not a true story like those I told last week, but it does make a good point. There was this couple out west that had a cat. Actually, the wife had the cat. Every time the husband would sit down on the sofa and stand up, he'd have cat hair all over him. When he'd go to the kitchen to open up a can of soup, he'd always find evidence on that can opener that it had been used to open a can of cat food. Somehow it was assumed that he would be the one to empty the litter box. Well, one day his wife was gone for several hours and the husband gathered up his wife's cat And he drove down to the river and he used up all nine lives of that cat all at once. Later that afternoon, the wife returned home and after a while she began to miss the cat. She started to look for it. didn't take her long to become frantic because of course she couldn't find the cat. And she broke down and she cried for hours. And this went on late into the night. And the husband tried to comfort her. Now dear, you don't worry about it. We'll keep looking for the cat. I'll tell you what I'm going to do. Tomorrow at work, I'm going to offer a $5,000 reward to anyone who can help us find this cat. the wife thought she had the most kind, compassionate, wonderful husband there was in all the world and he just smiled this smile of self-satisfaction. The next day, the husband did what he said he was going to do. When he got to work, he said to the fella at the desk next to him, My wife just lost her cat. I'm going to give a $5,000 reward to anyone who can locate this cat. The fellow said, $5,000 for a cat? Suppose somebody finds your wife's cat. Aren't you taking a big risk? And the husband said, well, I guess I am. But when you know what you know, you can take some risk in life. When you know what you know, you can take some risk in life. When you know what you know. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. When you know what you know. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. When you know what you know, God demonstrates His own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. When you know what you know, why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen. When you know what you know, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is passed away, behold, the new has come. When you know what the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign forever and ever. When you know what you know, you can take some risk in life. What we're talking about is assurance, conviction, certainty. We know what we know, and so we can live our lives with confidence and courage. We can take some risk in life because of the certainty of what we know. And actually, to be more precise about it, it's not just knowing what we know, it's knowing who we know. God who has come to us in Jesus Christ. This certainty, this assurance, this conviction that we have about God is not the certainty of visible scientific proof. You may have studied the classic philosophical arguments for the existence of God. Maybe you have reflected on some of the evidence about the empty tomb and the boldness of the first disciples in the formation of the church that supports the credibility of belief in the resurrection of Jesus. All of this is helpful. All of this shows that belief in God is reasonable, that belief in the resurrection of Jesus is believable. But all of this is not the proof of facts that can't be disputed. Not everybody will be convinced. A woman asked Bertram Russell, who was perhaps the best known atheist in the 20th century, what he would do if he found out that he had been wrong and he discovered himself standing there at the gate of heaven. Russell's eyes lit up and he said, Why I should say, 'God, you gave us insufficient evidence.' The certainty of the evidence that we have is the certainty of a different sort. It's no less valid than the evidence of the certainty of proof that the world relies on. But the certainty that we have is the certainty of faith. The writer of Hebrews says, Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Some versions use the language of certainty in their translation. Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Some of God's promises are out there in the future, but we're sure that these promises will become reality because of faith. We can't see God with our physical eyes in the way that we can see each other here, but we're convinced that God is real because of faith. We see with the eyes of faith. In the physical world we can't see the wind with our eyes, but with our physical eyes we can see the evidence of the wind and flags that are waving and trees that are blown over. In the same way, we can't see God visibly, but through eyes of faith, we can see the evidence of God at work in the world, especially in changed lives, including our own lives. We're sure about God because we have encountered God in Jesus and we've come into a relationship with God that gives us real life. This is what faith does. Faith gives us the assurance, the conviction, the certainty on which we base our lives. Faith gives us the confidence, the courage, the risk-taking freedom to live our lives in the kind of world we live in. Our certainty is the certainty of faith. Then the words of Paul, We keep on walking. We keep on living by faith and not by visible sight. But perhaps we need to say a word about doubt. In case anyone is thinking, my faith is not so certain. Maybe if we're honest, we can be like that father of the boy who had an unclean spirit, who cried out to Jesus, I believe, help my unbelief. There may be doubts and questions and anxieties that come. And if this is us, we're in good company. The Bible is full of people who wondered about God and God's purposes. Abraham wasn't sure God was going to keep the promise that God had made to him, that he would be the father of many descendants. Moses thought God had made a mistake in calling him to lead the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt. Jeremiah struggled with the way that it looked like the wicked people were winning while the righteous people were suffering. Job couldn't understand where God was in the tragedy of his life. John the Baptist wondered and wanted to know whether Jesus really was the Messiah or should he look for somebody else. And even Jesus called out on the cross in the humanity of his nature as fully God and fully man, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? As finite people who live in a world where not everything makes sense and the props can be knocked out and people can be cruel, We can't have our doubts and our questions and our anxieties. This is part of life. This is a part of being human. And the truth is doubts and questions and anxieties can lead some people away from God, tragically. But in the context of faith, doubts and questions and anxieties are an invitation to deepen our relationship with God and to grow in our faith in God. The Christian author and minister Frederick Buechner said, Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving. When we struggle our way through doubts and questions and anxieties, we can come out on the other side with stronger faith. Just as exercising our muscles can make stronger muscles, exercising our faith as we deal with doubts and fears can make faith stronger. Maybe our faith has become complacent Or maybe we've taken our faith for granted. Doubts and questions and anxieties can shake us up and stir us to more vibrant faith. Maybe there is something in our faith that is shallow and superficial and it can't bear the weight of life in our kind of world. Doubts and questions and anxieties can sweep away everything that is shallow and superficial and lead to the building of more mature faith, more certain faith. I don't think we would say to go out and look for doubts and questions and anxieties, but if they come, when they come, We can see them as the opportunity to grow in our faith. They're like spiritual growing pains that can lead us to trust even more in God. God isn't threatened, God isn't offended by our doubts and anxieties and questions. If we're open to God, God can use them to keep our faith alive. and to keep us moving toward God. I imagine that most of you are familiar with the soul and R&B singer Bill Withers. One of his classic songs is Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone. Maybe you recall that in the middle of this song, there is the repetition of just one phrase. 26 times, Withers keeps repeating the phrase, I know, I know. There's an interesting story about this. When Withers went into the recording studio for the first run through of this song, he hadn't finished writing the lyrics for the whole song. And he got to what was going to be the third verse, the unfinished verse, and he improvised. And he just kept repeating the words, I know, He intended to go back and write lyrics for the third verse, but all of the people in the recording studio, and there were some big names there, urged him just to leave the song the way he had sung it. And that's just what he did. There may be times when we're not sure what words come next in life. There may be times when life seems so unfinished, so uncertain. Maybe we just need to repeat what we know. We hold on to the I know of faith. Or maybe better put, we know that God is holding on to us. This is the way Paul puts it. I know whom I have believed and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day. This is the assurance of faith. This is the conviction of faith. This is the certainty of faith. And faith that is certain leads to courage and confidence to follow Jesus in our world. When you know what you know, you can take some risk in life. This kind of faith, this certainty of faith is a virtue, it's a quality, it's an attitude that is the anchor at the very center of a Christian's life. None of us can make it very far, very long in life if we don't have this assurance of faith. But this Certainty of faith can get twisted and misguided and become deadly destructive to our spiritual lives. And it happens when we become too certain about things. This uber certainty about things impacts our relationship with other people, even in the community of faith. You've probably heard the watchword. In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity, which may go back to a bishop in the church in the 17th century. People who are too certain about things can turn non-essentials into essentials and think that they have all of the ideas and they want everybody else to think that they have all of the ideas. But somebody once said, Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong. There was a situation in the church at Rome where people were too certain. Some had a Jewish heritage, some came from a Gentile background. They had different interpretations of the only written Bible that they had at the time, the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament. Some observed particular holidays and some didn't. Some ate just vegetables and some ate meat and vegetables. And the result of all this was tension and strife and hostility and name calling. So Paul stepped in and he said, may the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had. so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Accept one another, then, as Christ accepted you in order to bring praise to God. When we are tempted to be too certain in our dealings with other people, especially brothers and sisters in the family of faith, we need to remember the attitude of Jesus. We need to be more like Jesus. But being too certain can also take us in another direction. It can impact our relationship with God. We can begin to think that we know all there is to know about God. We can begin to think that we have God all figured out. Now I don't suppose that we would ever articulate anything like this out loud. This may not even be the way that we think that we think. But the way that we live and the way that we act may betray something else. We may decide that God would do this, but God would never do that. God would work in this way, but God would never work in that way. We may limit God in that creative powerful grace of God to just what we think God ought to be about in the world. And we can put God into a box of our own making and we can miss God and miss out on what God is doing. Once I went to the airport to pick up a man who was going to lead some special services in our church. I hadn't seen the man in several years. and I walked right past him in the terminal. He had aged some, and I had two, and I just didn't recognize him. I was trying to find the man that looked the way that he used to look, and I wasn't anticipating the man as he was right now in the present moment. I missed him. And we did miss each other until we sort of stumbled onto each other and reacquainted ourselves. It's possible we can do something like this with God. God may come doing a new thing, but we fail to recognize God and where God is at work in the world because we're still looking for the same old things. God may come and want to touch our lives with a fresh wind of God's Spirit, but we may have God boxed up in some stored away notions. We may have in mind exactly what God can do, and we're in our comfort zone. Because we've got a God who is predictable, there are no surprises for us to expect from this God. Life can be easier for us this way. But God can never be put in a box. And the truth is, we're the ones who can become boxed in. God is at work in the world. And we may not see it because we've shut the windows to our lives. When we're too certain that we know exactly what God will do and we know the ways and purposes of God, God might come right at us and we miss Him. There's always a wonderful mystery about God and God's purposes and ways. We just need to sing with Paul his doxology. O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable His judgments and His paths beyond tracing out. Who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been His counselor? Who has ever given to God that God should repay them? For from Him and through Him and for Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen. As long as God is God and that's forever, and as long as we are who we are, God has some things for us that we have never thought of. God has some things for us to experience that we have never imagined. It's a tragedy when somebody slips into this deadly virtue of being too certain. and they miss out on God and they miss out on what God is doing in the world. There's also another variation of this deadly virtue of certainty that can undermine our relationship with God. It's the need to be too certain before we step out and follow God in faith. And the result is that we can miss out on the life of abundance, the life to the fullest that God has for us. A man once came to me and told me that he believed that God had something special for him to do with his life, but he didn't have any idea what it was. We talked about some particular interest a man had and the needs that he saw, and the gifts that he recognized God had given to him. And I suggested that maybe he might try to match these gifts and interests with the needs he saw and see if it felt right. And maybe in this process of connecting interests and gifts and needs, God would show him what direction to go. And perhaps God would make it very clear for him in all of this exactly what God wanted to do with his life. The man thought about all this for a moment and he thanked me for my time. And then he said, But I need to be certain right now before I start doing anything. I think I'll just wait a little longer and see if I can figure it out. The last I knew about this man, he was still waiting to figure it out. Mark Twain told the story of a man who died and met St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. The man knew St. Peter was very wise and he thought he'd ask Peter a question that he had been thinking about all his life. He was quite interested in military history and he wanted to know who was the greatest general of all time. Saint Peter said, why, that's an easy one. It's that man right over there. The man looked at that fellow, the person Peter was pointing to, and he actually knew him. And the man said to Peter, you have to be mistaken. I knew that man on earth. He was a common, everyday guy. He was the manager of a snore near my house. Peter said, You're right. But he would have been the greatest general in the world if he were a general. What is God calling us to be? What is God calling us to do? There's probably not anything that could be much sadder than to come to the end of our lives and to regret what could have been if we followed God in faith. Now it's the nature of a life of faith that God isn't going to give us all of the answers up front. And God usually doesn't give us the whole map at the start of the journey. God calls us to faith. God calls us to follow Him and to step out in faith, even if it's just the one step that we can see right there in front of us. For many years, Henley Barnett was seminary professor in Christian ethics. He grew up in a poor family in a mill town in North Carolina. And sometimes Barnett and his family would cross the mountain near his house to visit another family on the other side. It would be about bedtime when Barnett and his family would head back home. And his father would lead the family single file along that narrow mountain path. It would be dark. There would be dangers on either side if you wandered off the path. But there was always light for the journey. His father carried a kerosene lamp. It didn't give out a lot of light, but it was enough light. The tiny flame of that lamp spread a circle of light around the father's feet as he led the family home. Barnett said about this experience of his childhood, I learned a great lesson. Each time my father took a step, the light went with him. Following God who's come to us in Jesus sometimes is going to be like this. God is here with the light for us. Sometimes it may not be as much light as we want it to be. Sometimes the light may not shine out as far in the distance as we want it to shine. But God is the one with the light, and God calls us to follow Him. And if we want to stay in the light, we've got to move out with God, following God one step at a time. This is what a life of faith always is going to involve. It's going forward even when we don't know all of the answers. It's going forward even when things aren't crystal clear. Now there is risk in all of this. Following Jesus is not risk-free. But we shouldn't expect it to be any different when the one that we're following ended up on a cross and passed through the tunnel of death and burst back into life. We can be certain, in spite of the risk, that God is always here with us with the light and we can trust God to keep the light burning. You know, faith isn't always knowing exactly where we're going. But faith is always being certain of God who leads the way and who is keeping us in His love. Somebody has said that following Jesus in faith is like riding a bicycle. Either you're on or you're off. You can't stay still with your feet suspended on the pedals for very long. Either you are pedaling and going forward or you are putting your feet on the ground and you're standing still and you're not going anywhere. There is no staying still place for the person who is living by faith in Jesus. We need to fix our eyes on Jesus, the one who is the founder and perfecter of our faith. And we need to keep on peddling because He is the one who shows us the way and He's the one who gives us the strength to ride. Anybody who needs to always be too certain about every step of faith, isn't going to make it very far along toward that finish line where Jesus is leading us. And that's deadly destructive to our lives. Today, God invites us to be sure about him, to be certain about him. We're never going to have God all figured out. We certainly can't put God in a box. But God calls us to follow Him in a life of faith, where we will find out more and more about God and the new thing that God is always doing. And out there in that journey of faith, we'll find out more and more about the life that God is calling us to live too. God doesn't promise us that this way of living our lives will always be smooth and easy and comfortable. It's not that way. But when you know what you know, you can risk your life on it. When you know who you know, you can risk your life on him. Would you pray? Father, help us to keep our eyes on you in all of your grace and your love for us in Jesus. And help us to follow you in faith. For we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

The Deadly Virtue of Religious Devotion

The Deadly Virtue of Religious Devotion

Jim Weavor | Guest Pastor

Check out the weekly sermon here or on our SRBC podcast on Apple Podcast and Spotify. While you’re at it, check us out on Facebook and Instagram too.

Like what you hear? We’d love to know.

At South Run, we read every message personally. Whether you have a question, want to share how God is moving in your life, or are thinking about visiting in person, this is the place to start. If you click the link below, Pastor Eric will personally reach out to you.

• Sermon Transcript

  The ‘Deadly Virtue’ of Religious Devotion

  Jim Weaver, Guest Pastor

  thanks again this morning to Pedro and to Matthias today. You all do a great job and to the worship team thanks for preparing our hearts for experiencing God's presence today. In these Sundays together we've been talking about what I've called some deadly virtues. These are genuine Christian virtues, qualities, values that are important for us as we follow Jesus. But it's possible for them to become twisted and distorted and confused and misguided and they end up being destructive or deadly to our spiritual life, to our relationship with God. This morning we're going to talk about the deadly virtue of religious devotion. I served with churches for about 40 years before I retired from full-time pastoral ministry. In 4 decades in churches, you will encounter some interesting people and see some curious things. Here are some happenings I remember from different churches. And lest you think I'm indulging in some ministerial exaggeration, you can't make all of this up. There was a Bible study class of older adults who wanted the church to convert a space near their classroom into a restroom. The building and grounds committee investigated the project and They determined that the cost was just too great to justify constructing A restroom with other financial priorities the church had at that time. Not to be denied, this Bible study class, most of the members of it, began to designate their offerings for the construction of the restroom. This went on for several years. I became pastor of this church when the monies that this class had donated, contributed, was getting closer to the amount of money that was actually needed to construct a restroom. Most of the members of the church were long past ready for this issue to just go away. And at this church there was a procedure that was an effort to control the practice of designated giving. If a designated gift was given to the church, it actually had to be accepted by the church in a business meeting before the money could be used for the purpose that it had been given. the Building and Grounds Committee decided to take some money that had been left to the church from the estate of a man who had recently died and add this money to the funds that had been accumulated by the designated gifts of this class. And accept these designated gifts in a business meeting and then the restroom be constructed. At the business meeting where we were approving all of this motion, somebody made the suggestion that a plaque be put on the door of the restroom in order to acknowledge the gift from the man's estate. His name was Ralph. Now the members of the Sunday school class weren't real happy with this suggestion because they had given the bulk of the money and they wanted credit where credit was due. And if there was going to be a plaque on that door, then that plaque needed to have their classes named too. There was some discussion back and forth. And then somebody stood up and said, Ralph was a good guy. I liked Ralph. And I don't want to have to think of Ralph every time I go to the John. The discussion ended, the restroom was built, and there was no plaque anywhere near that door. On another occasion, an anonymous donor gave a small organ to the church to be used in the choir room for choir rehearsals. This organ was to replace an old organ that had just worn out. At the business meeting where we were voting to accept this organ, a woman who was a part of the family that had donated the old organ raised an objection That old organ was a memorial gift and there was a plaque on the organ that identified it as a memorial gift. And she pleaded that she didn't want the memory of her family member to just be discarded. Well, for a moment things were at an impasse. And then a wise retired minister in our congregation made the motion that the memorial status of that old organ be transferred to the new organ. And we accept the gift of the new organ. That woman was satisfied that this would still honor the memory of her family member. And so the new organ was accepted. And the plaque was moved from the old organ to the new organ. and the choir had a new organ to sing by. There was a businessman who was a member of the church, but he had a reputation in the town as being something of a dishonest scoundrel. When he died, he left a large sum of money to the church with instructions in his will that a fund be set up to provide financial resources for educational programs within the church and for scholarships for students who are going to seminary. This had happened long before I or many other members of the church had become connected with that church. But everybody knew about this man because of that fund in his name. And I don't know, but some old timers would tell you that this fund was this man's attempt to ensure his way into heaven. One man every year, once a year, would come and ask what equipment or resource the church especially needed. And then he'd make a big gift so that this item, whatever it was, could be purchased. When that item would show up at the church, it soon would be common knowledge who had actually bought this item. What most people didn't know was this man didn't contribute at all to the church's general budget or provide any kind of financial support for the church throughout the year. This one big gift that got a lot of attention was it for this man. One year it was political primary season and it was the Sunday before election day. In the part of the state that we lived in, there just wasn't any place for you to campaign on a Sunday morning because everybody knew that it was church time. A man who was running to be the nominee for a lieutenant governor came to our worship service that morning. He made his way down to the center of the sanctuary and sat in a place where he'd be the most visible. His county campaign chairman, who was a member of our church, wanted this man introduced and recognized in the service. an introduction and a recognition that he didn't get. The man told his campaign chairman after the service that he had just wasted his time being there that morning. If you're wondering, this man finished way, way down in the pack in the primary. There was a man who started to attend our church along with his family. In a conversation I had with this man and his family about our church, he mentioned the names of a couple of men and wanted to know if they were members of our church, which they were. One was a manager with the electric company and one was a manager with a natural gas company. As it turned out, this man wanted a job with a utility company. And he had started to attend our church in the hopes of getting to know these men. Well, this guy didn't get a job with a utility company. And we no longer saw him or his family at our church. There was a woman who had a song that she always liked to sing at Christmas time as a solo in worship. One year she wasn't asked to sing the song. The Minister of Music selected somebody else to sing the solo. And she quit the choir. But the song was sung and the rest of the people celebrated Christmas. You know, all of these stories have something in common besides being true. They raise the issue of why we do the religious things we do and who we do them for. It's the issue of motive and audience. This issue has been around as long as people have been doing religious things. Jesus deals with this issue when He tells us, Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. When Jesus talks about practicing our righteousness, He's pointing to all those religious things we do in that ongoing process of being transformed to be who it is that God has called us to be. People who are in a right relationship with God will practice righteousness. It's an expression of our inner life and of our growing faith in God. Today we're just going to use the general term religious devotion. Beware of practicing your religious devotion before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Religious devotion is essential to the Christian life. It involves experiences of prayer and silence before God and worship and devotional study of the Bible. Religious devotion is all about our personal spiritual discipline and growth. But religious devotion also involves ministry to other people and serving other people and sharing our faith with other people and touching other people's lives in word and in action with the good news of Jesus. Religious devotion will sink deep into our hearts, but it also reaches out into the world. Religious devotion isn't just about something that we do or say. Religious devotion reflects who we are. Religious devotion involves everything about us as we go about living our lives before God and in response to God. closest model, the clearest model that we have of a life of religious devotion is Jesus Himself. Jesus began His ministry alone in the wilderness in prayer, away from the world. But then Jesus went into the world to minister to people with a heart of divine love. And even in that final night of Jesus' life, He gave hours to prayer, seeking the Father's will. And then the soldiers came to the garden and Jesus stepped forward and he went to do the Father's will on the cross. Jesus' first disciples followed this model. They lived in community and in communion with Jesus. And then they moved out into the world with the gospel to seek the world's transformation. This model of religious devotion is still very valid for us today. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, describes religious devotion in the terms of spiritual respiration or breathing. God breathes into us and we breathe back to God. God's grace breathes in our hearts and our devotion and praise flow back to God. God's love is breathed into us. That's the inhaling. And then our actions of love breathe back into the world. That's the exhaling. In our physical lives, if somebody isn't breathing in and breathing out, That's a kind of respiration that leads to that person's expiration. Breathing in, breathing out, inhaling, exhaling. That's necessary for there to be physical life. And it's the same way with our Christian lives. There is opening up our lives to the presence of God. There's drawing in God's grace into our hearts. There's letting God do His work of transformation in our lives. And then there's going out into the world of people who need God's love to be made whole. There's living. There's serving as followers of Jesus Christ who ourselves are always in that process of being made new. This is religious devotion and it is an essential virtue for the Christian. But this virtue, this quality of the Christian life can can get twisted into a deadly virtue that is destructive, that's harmful to our relationship with God. What can distort this virtue of religious devotion involves that issue of motive and audience. Jesus says, beware of practicing your righteousness, your religious devotion before other people. in order to be seen by them. For then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. In effect, Jesus reminds us, to borrow the words of another author, all the world's a stage. We're going to live our lives before an audience. And we choose who our audience is going to be. And the audience we choose is based on our motives in life. One audience for our religious devotion is God. And God will be our audience. We will choose God to be our audience when our motive is to live our lives to please God and to grow in a relationship with God. But it's also possible to choose something other than God as the audience for our religious devotion. We choose somebody else as the audience for our religious devotion when our motive is to get noticed and to impress somebody. And the audience that we're living our lives before makes all the difference for us in life. And so Jesus said to those hearers long ago, and he still says to us today, beware, be careful, choose wisely your audience as you live your life. Jesus goes on to give some illustrations to demonstrate how some people in his day chose the wrong audience for their religious devotion. He focuses on three activities that were central to the religious life of the Jewish people. Giving to the poor and prayer and fasting. Jesus says, when you give to the needy, sell no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. Those who were needy in the community were cared for by the contributions that were collected in the synagogues. And Jesus tells us that some people were sounding a trumpet as they gave their gifts. We don't know exactly what Jesus envisioned here. Maybe he's talking about that practice of sounding a trumpet to call people to worship and to give their offerings. Maybe he's pointing to people who made a loud noise to draw attention to themselves as they would pour a lot of coins into the collection boxes that were shaped like trumpets. Or maybe Jesus is just using a figure of speech. We have the same one in our culture. They were just blowing their own horns. They were playing to a human grandstand. Then Jesus turns to the practice of prayer. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. It was appropriate for somebody to pray individually at any time of the day, but there were three set times of prayer, in the morning and at noon and in the afternoon. And it didn't matter what you were doing. At the times of prayer, you were to stop what you were doing and pray. And some people always made sure that they were standing on the most crowded St. corners whenever it was time to pray. And in the Jewish manner of praying, they would stretch out their arms with hands reaching out and bow their heads and raise their voices to heaven. Nobody could miss that public spectacle. Then Jesus talks about fasting. And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. Fasting was a spiritual discipline that was associated with repentance and confession. But some people would broadcast their fasting. They'd put on sackcloth. They'd cover their head with ashes. They wouldn't wash their face. They wouldn't comb their hair. They were making a public display of their confession of sins to God, complete with wailing and with weeping. Jesus calls the people who were practicing their religious devotion like this hypocrites. The word hypocrite is literally an actor on a stage. These people were practicing their religious devotion not just out of some commitment to God, but as a performance, as a show for other people to see. Their audience really wasn't God. Their audience was other people they wanted to impress. And they got what they were after. They got the attention they desired from their chosen audience. But that was all that they would get. Nothing else would come from Jesus. So their religious devotion had become deadly. It had become destructive. And they had fallen into a trap that is still possible for us to fall into. We constantly need to beware, as Jesus warns us, and to examine our lives. Why do we do the religious things that we do? For whom are we doing them? Am I trying to impress a human audience? Is what I am doing really being done as an act of devotion to God? These questions are necessary because we do choose an audience that we are focused on as we live out our lives. Maybe our real audience is other people. We want to impress people with the quality of our religious devotion. This is the motive for the things that we do. Our religious devotion can become a performance for other people to observe. Maybe we come to worship for the points it gets us with somebody when they see that we're here. Maybe we do some act of service because of the recognition that it brings us. Maybe we give because we want people to think we're generous. There are a lot of different ways that we can keep our eyes on other people as we're doing things for God. Sometimes our real audience may actually be ourselves. The audience that I'm performing for is me. I'm doing religious things so I can feel good about myself. I'm doing things so I can pat myself on the back and maybe at the same time I can feel like I'm better than you. We can be our own audience at times. And sometimes it's possible that our audience is God, but we've gotten confused the nature of our acts of religious devotion. We're not doing all of the things that we do in response, grateful response to God because of God's grace and God's transforming work in our lives. Instead, we're doing the things we do in an effort to impress God with what we're doing. We're trying to win God's approval. We're trying to earn God's favor, which we can never do. And we've lost sight of God's grace. In all these ways, when we have the wrong audience, Our religious devotion has become destructive to our life with God because we really don't have our lives fixed on God anymore. Now chances are we don't set out to choose the wrong audience for our religious devotion. Chances are we would never say, I'm going to show off my religious devotion for other people. I'm doing this just to feel good about myself. I'm going to earn some credit on the ledger with God. I don't think all those people I told stories about would say something like this, and chances are we wouldn't either. Chances are we know that God needs to be the only audience for our religious devotion, and we really want to be genuine before God. But chances are we also know that we can be people with mixed motives and we can let another audience come into view that we want to impress for our self-centered reasons. And our religious devotion gets distorted and deadly. So what can we do? We open up our lives to the breath of God's Spirit who wants to keep on remaking us. We stop trying to be noticed by somebody else, and we recognize that the one who matters the most, God, has already noticed us. We live our lives in response to God. who we can never impress because God knows us for who we are. And we let sink in that amazing truth that God has already accepted us in His grace in Jesus. And then we keep on practicing our religious devotion, always asking God to purify our motives. this kind of life, this kind of religious devotion always brings a reward. Three times Jesus says, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. You know, there are radically different kinds of rewards. There is an extrinsic reward. This is a reward with no natural connection to the action that leads to the reward. Suppose you promise your child you'll give them a reward if they make all A's on their report card. And they make all A's and you give them a $20 bill. You could just as well have given them a concert ticket or a meal at their favorite restaurant. There was no natural connection between the action that they did and the reward. But there is an intrinsic reward. This is a reward that is naturally and essentially connected to the action that brings the reward. When your child makes all As, there's a natural reward that naturally comes. They've gained some knowledge they didn't have before. Maybe they qualify for a scholarship. Maybe they're better equipped to apply for a job. The reward isn't something that is just tacked on at the end of an activity, and it could really be many sorts of rewards tacked on. The reward is something that is a natural outcome of the activity. I tend to think that intrinsic rewards are what Jesus has in mind when he says that our genuine religious devotion will bring a reward. Spending time in prayer is spending time with God and being with God is its own reward. When we focus our attention on God in worship, We can experience the presence of God and the encouragement of God and hear the voice of God. And all of these things, they're their own reward. When we give our gifts to help those who are needy, we're being shaped to be more like God because God is a giving God. and taking on the qualities of God is its own reward. When we serve other people, we're being transformed to be like Jesus because Jesus came to serve. And becoming more like Jesus is its own reward. When we do our religious devotion for God, with God really as our only audience, we get God. God is our reward. A deepening, growing relationship with God is our reward. And there can be no greater reward than this. And so beware of practicing your righteousness, your religious devotion before other people. in order to be seen by them. For then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. But do practice your religious devotion before God to be seen by God. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you with Himself. Would you pray? Father, as we are gathered here in this place, we know that You are present. And indeed, may You be our only audience. Help us to breathe in Your Spirit that we might become more like Jesus. And then help us to go into the world to share Your love. For we pray in the name of Christ. This morning.

The Deadly Virtue of Discernment

The Deadly Virtue of Discernment

Jim Weavor | Guest Pastor

Check out the weekly sermon here or on our SRBC podcast on Apple Podcast and Spotify. While you’re at it, check us out on Facebook and Instagram too.

Like what you hear? We’d love to know.

At South Run, we read every message personally. Whether you have a question, want to share how God is moving in your life, or are thinking about visiting in person, this is the place to start. If you click the link below, Pastor Eric will personally reach out to you.

• Sermon Transcript

  The ‘Deadly Virtue’ of Discernment

  Jim Weavor, Guest Pastor

  Thanks to Renee and James. You all make a good comedy team there. And thanks to the worship team who's led us to this point. It's good to be with you again today. If you're not familiar, I'm not the person that's usually here. I'm Jim Weaver and Pastor Eric is on sabbatical leave this month. After today, his sabbatical leave will be half over. I'm sure it's just flying by for him. But I'm grateful for the opportunity to share with you in these four Sundays while Eric is gone. Last Sunday, said we would be spending this month talking about something that we might call deadly virtues. These are real Christian virtues. They're vital for the Christian life. But they can get misguided, distorted, twisted, and they can become destructive of that abundant life that Jesus wants us to have, that life to the fullest. This morning we're going to talk about the deadly virtue of discernment. Now I'm going to venture to say that there is something that we have all done this morning besides come to church. We've had opinions about things. If you live in a household with somebody else, you probably had an opinion about what sort of mood they've been in today. If you have read some news or listened to some news in the media, you've likely had an opinion about what's going on in the world or what somebody has done. If somebody drifted into your lane or cut you off as you were in your vehicle coming to church today, you had an opinion about their ability to drive. If you were in Bible study this morning, you probably had an opinion about how helpful you found the discussion to be. If you've seen some children in the building this morning, You may have thought they sure are cute. Or it could have been, I sure am glad they're going home with somebody else. Maybe you had an opinion about the music in the service. And I imagine you're getting ready to have an opinion about the sermon. Somebody once said that opinions are like noses. Everybody has one. And I don't think we would try to dispute the truth of this observation about life. But because of the way that we are wired in creation, we do have the capacity to think and to distinguish one thing for another. It's just built into us to have thoughts about the way things are or the way things need to be. But the mental powers and faculties that we have go beyond just this natural inclination to form opinions. What is most important is that God has given us the capacity of moral discernment. God has given us the ability to make moral judgments. We can put things into the categories of good and evil. We can distinguish right and wrong and choose between them. And this is just part of our human nature, the way that God has made us in His image. The other creatures in God's world of creation just don't have this ability to make moral judgments. If you've got a pet dog, you can put out a bowl of food for them. And then they can decide whether they're going to eat what's in that dish or whether they're not going to eat it. And if they don't like the food that you've put into that dish, they don't say to themselves, I sure have a lousy master. I wish I lived in the house across the street. Instead, they eat what's in that dish or they come running gladly when you offer them something else. But we human folks are unique. God has made us so we can think and reason and evaluate things. God has made us so we can distinguish things. God has made us so we can make value judgments about what people are doing, including ourselves. Moral discernment, making value judgments is essential for us as a follower of Jesus. Now somehow the rumor has circulated that Christians aren't the judge in any way. And I suppose this rumor goes back to what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. Do not judge or you too will be judged. But just think about it. If God gave us that power of moral discernment, then Jesus couldn't mean that we're never to use our ability to judge that God has planted within us. And there's even more evidence that Jesus doesn't mean don't judge, period. Notice some other things that Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. He tells us, do not give dogs what is sacred. Or in other words, don't give what is holy to unholy people. And then as Jesus is beginning to bring the Sermon on the Mount to its conclusion, he says, watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. It's impossible to identify what is unholy. and to tell the wolves from the sheep and to pick the good fruit from the bad fruit unless we're making moral judgments about people. When Jesus says, Do not judge, He's not telling us to be value neutral and to suppress this capacity of moral discernment that we have. We are to be able to put things into categories of right and wrong. We're not to ignore good and evil. God wants us to know His truth and to live by His truth. But there are different ways of judging. There is Jesus' way of judging, and there is a way of judging that really doesn't connect at all with the way of Jesus. And this is the way of judging, the way of making moral judgments that Jesus has in mind when He says don't judge. The Christian needs moral discernment. And moral discernment is a Christian virtue. It's a genuine virtue. It's an indispensable virtue that we neglect at the peril of our lives and of the world too. But this virtue of moral discernment can become a deadly virtue. It becomes destructive when it crosses over the line from the way of Jesus to something that's self-centered and severe. It becomes destructive when it's fueled by a negative and critical spirit that's far detached from God's spirit. It becomes destructive when it demonizes and it condemns. Now there are a lot of words we can use to describe this moral discernment when it crosses the line into a non-Jesus way. There are the words judgmental and hypercritical and fault-finding and self-righteous. And there's the big word censorious. This is a fancy word that comes from a Latin word that means to give an opinion or to assess. In the time of the Roman Empire, censors were officials who were appointed to register the citizens and their property and to supervise the moral conduct of people. The censor felt that he was a cut above everybody else. He felt like he was in a class by himself. And this is the attitude of somebody who has fallen into that deadly virtue of making judgments in a non-Jesus way. They feel like they are morally superior. They enjoy looking for the faults and the failings in somebody else. They think the worst about somebody else's motives and they're quick to form their critical judgments. They're condescending in their negative, and they're always against something, whether they have anything positive to offer or not. They'll demonize someone they don't agree with. And they'll regard them as their enemies to be attacked and to be eliminated at any cost. They'll just wash their hands of certain people and dismiss them as beyond hope and not worth the time. They'll render on certain people that verdict of condemned, people that don't measure up to their standards. And they'll go beyond thinking and saying, you did a bad thing to you are a bad thing, and just write somebody off. This attitude is deadly destructive. And it's even more deadly if it's done in the name of God and we suppose that God thinks exactly the same thing about somebody else that we think about them. This attitude of moral discernment in a non-Jesus way is deadly destructive because it does something to us. It distorts our view of ourselves. If we start looking in another direction, then we're not going to see ourselves for who we are. If we begin to point out what's wrong and what somebody else is doing, then we're not going to see so much what's wrong and what we're doing. The more we point out the flaws of somebody else, the less we have to look at our own. The more that we tear somebody else down, the taller I seem to be. To look at somebody and say how bad they are can be a really subtle way of thinking about ourselves, how good I am. But the truth is we all have our weaknesses and our flaws and our broken places and our sins. Company inspection was taking place at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. The inspection was going well until the colonel who was doing the inspection came up to this certain soldier. The colonel stopped. They looked the man up and down And then he stepped, Soldier, button that pocket. And the soldier was rattled and he stammered, Right now, sir. The colonel said, Of course, right now. And very carefully the soldier reached out and he buttoned the flap on the colonel's shirt pocket. we all have unbuttoned pockets, so to speak, and often it's easier to see the unbuttoned pocket on somebody else. In a comic strip, the benign witch Broomhilda asked the troll Irwin, Irwin, what would be the best way to make the world better? And Irwin thanks for a moment and many answers. Well, start with yourself. Give up your bad habits and evil pleasures. Then when you're good, when you're perfect, you'll stand as a shining example to others. Broomhilda says, Well, what's the second best way? You know, a lot of the times we don't want to start with ourselves. We'd rather zero in on somebody else. But Jesus says, Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrites, first take the plank out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. In a word picture, Jesus is really drawing a cartoon that would make his audience smile until they got the point. There's this fellow who has a plank of wood that's stuck in his eye. And there's this other guy who has a tiny speck of sawdust that's in his eye. And the fellow with this huge plank in his eye ignores the fact that he's walking around with this board that's big enough to be the major beam in a house. It's sticking out of his eye. And yet what he wants to do is to focus in on the tiny speck of sawdust in that other guy's eye. And all the while he is looking for this sawdust in that other guy's eye, he's moving around, bumping into things and knocking things over with this plank that is stuck in his eye. If we get the point, Jesus is saying to us that if we really are concerned about dealing with the wrong and evil in the world, the first place to look is in our own hearts. where we're sure to find something that's not right and something that doesn't measure up to God's intention for us. If we only want to look in somebody else's life for the wrong and the evil, we're showing that we're really not all that concerned about the wrong and the evil in the world because we're overlooking that wrong and the evil that's the closest to us. And that's the wrong and the evil in our own lives. I imagine we're all tempted to do something that psychologists call moral splitting. We can divide the world into the people of light and people of darkness. And we usually put ourselves into that first category, the people of light. The Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn was arrested because he had written a letter critical of Joseph Stalin. And he spent eight years in labor camps and prisons, and then he was exiled for three more years in Kazakhstan. You would think that a person who would experience such suffering, such injustice, such evil would divide the world into people of light and people of darkness with no question about who belongs in each group. But instead, Solzhenitsyn wrote, The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor classes, nor between political parties either, but right through the human heart and through all human hearts. This line shifts inside us, it oscillates through the years. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds. And it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. In the way that Jesus' teaching can often catch us off guard and disarm us, Jesus' command, do not judge becomes the command, judge yourself. Jesus wants us to look into the mirror and to shine that bright light of self-examination within us. Jesus wants us to see the way that line dividing good and evil cuts through our own hearts. Jesus wants us to have clear vision, not distorted vision to see ourselves as we really are. Jesus wants us to get the plank out of our own lives. But this deadly virtue of making judgments in a non-Jesus way is also destructive because it does more than just distort our view of ourselves. It even more distorts our view of God. It keeps us from seeing who God really is. It's actually an act of adultery. Excuse me, idolatry. Got the sermon from last week somewhere still in the brain. Idolatry, putting ourselves in the place of God. It's like we're putting ourselves on the judgment seat where only God belongs. We're climbing up there and we're taking the place of God. And we decide to make the final judgment about somebody. They're stupid. They're worthless. They're evil. They're whatever it is. We act like we have the last word about somebody's life. But this job really is God's job because God only can be the final judge. Only God knows all the facts about a person's life. Only God knows what's in a person's heart. Only God sees perfectly and is all right in his judgments. So only God can be that ultimate judge. Only God can judge our lives in an ultimate way. But you know it's still possible that we might insist on being the judge and jury of somebody. And Jesus warns us that when we do, we then end up ourselves in the courtroom. But we're not there as the judge and the jury. If we take what Jesus says seriously, we're there as the person who is on trial. And we've already set up our standard of judgment in the way that we have judged other people. Because Jesus tells us, for in the same way you judge others, you will be judged. And with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Just think of this picture. We're standing there before God at the judgment. We're going to give an account to God of the way we've lived our lives as His people. Would we be quick to say, hey God, just judge me in the way that I've judged somebody else? I'm not so sure about that. The way Jesus describes it, it's like we are traveling on the road to meet God and we come to a fork in the road and we can travel on only one of the roads. One of the roads is the road of the critical and judgmental spirit. It's the road of the superior attitude and just writing people off. It's the road of condemnation. The other road is the road of grace. It's the road of mercy. It's the road of pardon. If we travel this road of condemnation, this is where God meets us. And God says to us, You've forgotten that you need mercy yourself. You have forgotten what forgiveness is. You've shown that you have not let forgiveness sink all the way down, deep in your heart, throughout your heart. And so I'm going to give you what you have coming to you because you've been traveling on this road. And that's the judgment that you've dished out to somebody else. But if we're traveling on that road of grace, if we're looking at other people with mercy, if we know that we're just pardoned sinners ourselves, if we don't close the door on somebody else because we know the gospel of grace is for them too, then this is where God meets us, on this road. And God welcomes us home. That wise philosopher Yogi Berra once said, When you come to a fork in the road, take it. Jesus wants us to follow that road of grace on which He calls us. This deadly virtue of discernment can be really harmful to us. And it can be even more harmful to our relationship with God. But it is even harmful to the person that we're condemning. When we confront somebody in a judgmental way, when we demonize somebody, when we just dismiss somebody with condemnation, there's going to be a reaction. They may respond to us in defiance and bitterness, They may strike back in anger. They might become even more entrenched and hardened in their patterns of thinking and acting. They might just decide to shut us out and think that we're just mean people. That poet in song Taylor Swift wrote, You've pointed out my flaws again as if I don't already see them. I walk with my head down trying to block you out because I'll never impress you. I just want to feel okay again. Why you got to be so mean? When we condescendingly look down on the faults of somebody else, they may just think that we're mean. And the bigger problem is they may just think that mean is what Christian people are. There's something in common with all of these ways that somebody might react to our negative judgment and condemnation. We're leaving somebody just like they are. Jesus says that people can have specks of sawdust in their eyes. There is something in a person's life that needs to be removed so they can see clearly. And when we reach out in negative judgment and condemnation, It may just cause somebody to turn away from us. And even more, it may cause somebody to turn away from God in whose name we're speaking. And that means that something good, something that God wants to happen in a person's life, that new life may just not come to that person. Negative judgment, condemnation, they never did anybody any good. There has to be a better way, and there is a better way. It's the way of Jesus. It's the way of grace and truth. A pastor had a lawn that was weed infested, and he called lawn service to have them come out and take a look at his lawn. And they didn't want to have anything to do with it because it was in such bad shape. The man in the pastor's church volunteered to come and to dig up the old lawn and to start a new one. The pastor was just about to take the man up on his offer when he talked to a farmer that he knew and the farmer had some other advice for him. The farmer said, Don't worry so much about getting rid of the weeds. Just concentrate and focus on growing grass. And the grass would take care of the weeds. And the pastor took the farmer's advice, and he did everything he could to grow green, healthy grass, and in a couple of years His lawn looked just as good as all the other lawns in the neighborhood. This pastor had to decide what was going to be his main focus. Was he going to be concerned about killing weeds or about growing grass? And he chose to do everything he could. He gave his best time and energy to growing grass. we can spend our time and energy on trying to kill off the weeds in somebody else's life and we're probably not going to get much of anywhere. Or we can plant seeds of the good news of Jesus. And we can seek to cultivate the good news of Jesus. And we can work to see the good news of Jesus grow in somebody else's life. Just think again about Jesus' cartoon of the man with a huge plank in his eye and the man with the sawdust in his eye. The speck of sawdust and this plank didn't belong in the eyes of these men. This sawdust and this plank were foreign bodies that had gotten into the eyes of these men. These men weren't a plank and a speck of sawdust by nature. These men were people, real people who had gotten something into their eyes that didn't belong there. Jesus is saying to us that we always need to distinguish between the real person, the person God has made in His image and Jesus came to redeem. We need to distinguish between the real person and the foreign bodies, the unhealthy things, the flaws, the moral failings, the sins that have gotten into a person's life and need to be lovingly and gracefully removed so the person can experience real transformation and find God's wholeness. Jesus didn't just talk about all this. This is the way that Jesus treated people as real people. This is the way that Jesus loved people. When some religious leaders brought a woman who had been caught in adultery to Jesus, He related to this woman as a real person who really mattered to God. He didn't call her all of those hurtful names that she was used to hearing. He called her a woman. And He said to her, I don't condemn you. Now go and leave your life of sin. Jesus didn't ignore this woman's sin. He didn't tell her to go and do whatever she wanted to do. Jesus held her accountable. But Jesus didn't condemn this woman, a real person either. Jesus saw her for who she was and not just for her sin. Jesus saw her sin as a foreign body, something foreign to that way of life that God intended for her. It was just like a speck of sawdust and it could be removed. This woman could be forgiven and transformed. She could make a new beginning because of the real person within her that God loved. Jesus treated this woman the way that nobody else had ever treated her and it made all the difference in her life. We might say that Jesus in this scene demonstrated His way, which is the way of grace and truth, because this is who Jesus is, grace and truth. The Gospel of John tells us the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. That's Jesus. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. Truth, let's go and leave your life of sin. Grace, that's I don't condemn you. Grace and truth, and both are necessary. Jesus' way of grace and truth is really at its core the way of God's love, that love that we see most clearly in the cross. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. The cross is evidence of the truth of God's judgment on the world's sin and evil and brokenness. But the cross is even more evidence of God's grace that brings forgiveness and transformation and wholeness. The cross is both grace and truth. And Jesus calls us to His way of living with both grace and truth. God has given us the capacity of moral discernment and exercising clean, keen moral discernment is certainly a vital Christian virtue in this world in which we're living. It's vital for us to be able to make this kind of moral discernment. That's the truth side of things. But it is indeed possible that all of our judgments can cross that line and become condemnation. And that's where we always need the grace side of things. Followers of Jesus need to be people of grace and truth. We need to be people who can say in the world with a humility that comes from being a redeemed sinner that we are, go and leave your life of sin. But we also need to be people, perhaps even more, who can say in the world, I do not condemn you. The good news is you're loved by God, who can take that speck out of your eye and let you see clearly and become whole. This is Jesus' way of grace and truth. This is Jesus' way of love. There is nothing easy about living this way of grace and truth. There's nothing easy about living this way of love, but there was nothing easy about the cross. With grace and truth because He loves us, Jesus is here to help us follow Him in His way. Would we follow? Would you pray with me? Father, we thank you for that way of grace and truth. We know so desperately that's the way that we need. So help us to experience your grace and to live out your truth. And as we live in this world, help us to be that kind of people. People who know your truth and live it. but people who most of all show your grace and love this world that you have loved in Jesus. For we pray in His name. Amen.

The Deadly Virtue of Childlikeness

The Deadly Virtue of Childlikeness

James Weaver | Guest Pastor

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• Sermon Transcript

  The ‘Deadly Virtue’ of Childlikeness

  Jim Weaver, Guest Pastor

  . . . was a minister can gain a renewed vision, become re-energized besides physically resting during that time. And as a minister comes back to the church, the whole church benefits from the fact that the minister has had that sabbatical. And besides all of that, while the pastor is away, you may play, but you also have the opportunity to develop and grow and exercise ministry skills. So a sabbatical really is mutually beneficial. And I commend you for providing this time for Eric and his family. As I understand, you have been talking in these months about what it means to follow Jesus. Jesus said there is a broad gate, a broad way, and there's a narrow gate, a narrow way. The broad way is the way that many people follow, and it's a way that leads to destruction. It's a way of an empty life. It's a way of life detached from God. But there's the narrow way, the way of Jesus, the way that leads to the life that Jesus gives us. Life to the fullest, real life, abundant life, life lived with an eternal quality now and forever. It's a life that makes a difference. I think in some of these recent weeks, you have been looking at the classical listing of seven deadly sins. In these Sundays that I have with you, these four Sundays, we're perhaps going to be doing a variation on that and talk about some deadly virtues. I ran across this term some years ago in a work by a Christian author. For our purposes, a deadly virtue is a genuine Christian virtue, an authentic Christian value, real Christian qualities, characteristics, and traits that can get twisted and distorted and misguided and they become deadly. They become deadly to our spiritual life. They take us away from that life of abundance that Jesus has come to give us. This morning we're going to talk about the deadly virtue of childlikeness. I once read a story about a minister named Bruce McIver who wrote a book in his retirement about some of his experiences as a pastor. One Sunday he preached a sermon on the text that tells us to love God with all of our heart and all of our soul and all of our mind and all of our strength. And he focused on the call to love God with our minds. He talked about our responsibility to use those mental abilities that God has given to us and the need for us to think seriously about our faith. after the service, a concerned young mother was waiting out in the foyer to talk to McIver. And leaning up against her was her five-year-old son, Andrew, who was obviously tired and worn out. And the mother said, Pastor, I hope that my child didn't disturb you today while you were preaching. MacIver said, no, not at all. I wasn't aware of any kind of disruption. The mother replied, well, good. I guess you couldn't see us very well since we were sitting near the back of the sanctuary. Well, that piqued MacIver's curiosity. And he asked, well, what is it that happened? The mother began to explain, well, Andrew got very fidgety. He just wouldn't sit still. And I tried to concentrate on your message and do what you were asking us to do, that is to think. But while I was trying to think, Andrew somehow got off the pew and he started to crawl around under it. Well, MacIver tried to reassure her, oh, don't worry about that. Children often get restless in a worship service. But the woman had this slight smile and she said, but Pastor, Andrew wasn't restless. And what was he doing? MacIver wondered. And the woman said, well, I asked Andrew the very same thing. And what did he say? MacIver wanted to know. And the mother continued, well, Pastor, you know how in the sermon you were talking about worshiping God with our minds. And you said you don't come into a worship service and sit down on a seat cushion and unscrew your head and place it under a pew. Well, when I asked Andrew what he was doing there crawling around on the floor, he said, I'm looking for the heads. You know, children take us at our word. They believe what we say. Children have a huge capacity for trust. And one main reason that children have this capacity for trust is that they instinctively know that they must depend on somebody else for their lives. The Bible tells us that we human folks are the crown of God's creation. We have the powers of mind and body and soul and emotion that no other part of created life possesses. But for all of this, we human folks are maybe the most unfinished of all of God's creations. When we're born, We can't raise our heads. We can't roll over. We can't sit up. We can't walk. We can't find food for ourselves. And it takes human infants longer to develop all these capabilities than any of the other creatures of God's good handiwork. Newborn children are totally dependent. If a child is going to survive, A child has got to rely on somebody else for food and clothing and protection and care. A child must depend on somebody else to live. And it's this absolute dependence of little children and their capacity to unconditionally trust somebody else with their lives for everything. that make little children the perfect illustration for describing the way that somebody comes into the kingdom of God. Jesus said, Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. Only people who recognize their absolute dependence on God for life, both now and in eternity, can enter the Kingdom of God. Only people who trust God unconditionally with their lives for everything can become a part of the Kingdom of God. I think we can all get this point that Jesus is making about little children and the Kingdom. But in Jesus' own day, this illustration about children was even more powerful. In the Greek and Roman worlds, children weren't idolized. Children weren't looked upon always with a warm and fuzzy sentiment and feeling. Children weren't always considered to be the apples of our eye or our most important resources or our future or anything else like that. Children were often held in low esteem with no legal rights, no social status. Children were often regarded as the least important members of a society. Where to grow older meant that you had more honor. One of the reasons why Jesus' disciples tried to keep some little children from gathering around him one day was that the disciples did not want Jesus to waste his time with such unimportant members of society as these little children. But Jesus had plainer vision than anyone else. And Jesus rebuked his disciples and Jesus hugged these little children close to him and Jesus blessed them. And then Jesus said that the kingdom of God is only for people who know that they're like one of these small, helpless, powerless, dependent children. The Kingdom of God is only for people who know that they don't have any right to it. The Kingdom of God is only for people who know that they can't deserve it or earn it or buy it or manipulate it or achieve it. The Kingdom of God is only for people who receive the Kingdom of God because they know that it comes to them as a gift. and they receive the gift with joy. The Kingdom of God is like a relationship with God for people who are like a little child. The Kingdom of God is for people who are childlike in their trust in God. The Kingdom of God is for people who are childlike in their complete dependence on God. The Kingdom of God is for people who receive the Kingdom in joy. They're childlike in their readiness to receive this gift from God. Have you ever watched a child tear off the wrapping paper off of a package to get to the gift? That's genuine excitement. That's real joy. And this is the way for people to receive the kingdom of God with the sheer delight of a little child. Childlikeness. Childlike faith, as we sometimes call it. is a virtue that is central to the Christian life. It's at the core of attitudes and qualities of the Christian life. In fact, this childlikeness, this being like a child, determines whether we belong to the Kingdom of God, whether we receive the Kingdom of God at all. Jesus couldn't have been any plainer. Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. But this virtue of being like a child never means being childish. This virtue of being childlike becomes destructive and deadly if it becomes being childish. The Apostle Paul reminds us that there are some things that we can see in children that we need to outgrow. Paul declares, when I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. There are probably enough childish ways that we can be slow to give up to provide material for a month of Sunday sermons. But if you boil it all down, our childish ways come into focus in one basic fact about children. Children are by nature self-centered. Now I don't mean this as a negative judgment or in a pejorative way. It's just the nature of things that children think about themselves and their needs first. It's just a necessary ingredient in our human desire to survive. Children operate at that me level of motivation. What will happen to me? What's in this for me? What's going to come to me? Who's watching out for me? Children are at the center of their own worlds and most everything else revolves around them and their needs and their wants. Just think about it. Have you ever known an infant that woke up in the middle of the night and thought to himself, now I know I'm comfortable. I know that I'm getting hungry and I'm going to need something to eat before too long. But mommy had a rough day and she needs her sleep. And so I'm just going to lie here and not disturb her until the morning comes. Have you ever known a child that thought like that? No child thinks like that. No infant has that kind of thinking. The baby squeals and wails until somebody comes and feeds him. Or have you ever seen an infant with a soiled diaper who reasoned with herself. Now this diaper really makes me feel bad. It's bothering me. But daddy is busy with my big brother. And it just wouldn't be convenient for him to stop what he's doing right now and come and change my diaper. I'll just show a little patience and I'll wait my turn. There's no infant that ever reasoned like that. The baby fusses and hollers until she has a new diaper fastened in place. Maybe at times we might agree with the person who said a baby is a loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. At any rate, perhaps we can affirm the reality about children. Children are born with a fundamentally self-serving and self-centered perspective on life. And this perspective is okay for children. This perspective is acceptable for children. But this perspective is not okay for adults. People are expected to mature and grow up. A person who has never really come to acknowledge that there are other people in the world and cares about them. A person who's never really learned to share and to give and to live life in community. A person who insists on their own way in their own time. A person who keeps on living at that me level of motivation, that self-centered of motivation. That person is no mature, well-developed, grown-up adult, no matter their age. Paul said, when I became an adult, I gave up childish ways. But sadly, not everybody does. Life often gets lived out with the attitude of, it's all about me. And this attitude of all about me, wherever it shows up, it wreaks havoc. In families, in the workplace, at school, in sports leagues, in community organizations, in politics, in government, even in church. This attitude of it's all about me being in childish is an especially deadly virtue when we find it in our Christian lives. Paul describes some believers in the church in Corinth as infants in Christ. And so perhaps it shouldn't surprise us that our first tiny steps toward faith in Jesus may have involved some me-level motivations. Maybe we were looking for security or comfort or contentment. Maybe we were seeking to escape God's judgment. Maybe we were hoping for God's heavenly promises. Maybe we were wanting to become about a person. Whatever it might have been, we saw in Jesus that source of everything that we desired and everything that we needed, and we responded to Him. Now there's validity in all of these me-level motivations. There is something in it in following Jesus for you and for me. But if we're honest, I think we have to admit that this me level of motivation really does function and operate more at the level of a child's self-focused concerns. Baby who is crying wants the security, the comfort, the contentment a parent can provide. Child often modifies his behavior to avoid punishment. Child is quickly attracted to the prospect of some kind of reward. Child thrives on affirmation, on hearing somebody say, what a good boy you are, what a nice little girl you have been. It's this kind of me level motivation that may have led us toward that first baby step of faith in Jesus that we took. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with all of that. But the tragedy is that for some Christians, that first baby step of faith becomes the only step of faith. Some people don't move beyond that me level of motivation as their primary attachment to Jesus. But as followers of Jesus, we're called to grow up into adulthood in our faith. We're called to mature in our faith and to become like Jesus. Unfortunately, some Christians experience stunted growth. Some Christians may really not have a childlike faith, but a childish faith that never grows up. Growing Christians, maturing Christians, Christians who are seeking to become like Jesus are called to a more excellent way, to use the Bible's phrase. This way knows that there are other motivations for following Jesus besides what's in this for me. This way is a journey that moves from me concerns to other people concerns. This way is a journey that moves from self-serving to other people serving. This way is a journey that moves from self-centeredness to selfless service. This way is the way of Jesus who said, For I did not come to be served but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many. The unfortunate truth is that many Christians may see their relationship with Jesus and with His Church sometimes or maybe even a lot of the time as a matter of being served rather than of serving. The church may become just the place where we get served rather than the way that we go about getting involved in serving God by serving the world. For some people, the church may be just the place that we go in the same way that We go to a garage when our car breaks down, or we go to a restaurant because we're hungry, or we go to a hospital because we're sick. The church becomes a place where we get something done for me. It's a place where I can get repaired and nourished and cured. It's all about me. And the result is that We can lose sight of our mission and our full identity as the church, the body of Christ. The church is the community of followers of Jesus who are being equipped to become the mechanics for a broken world and the cooks for starving souls and the physician's assistants who serve other people for the great physician. This is who we are. This is what we're called to do. And if we forget all of this childish attitudes and self-centered ways may be slipping in. I recently saw the story about a pastor who came home as her spouse was cooking dinner late one afternoon. The pastor said, I thought I'd heard it all, but I got a new one today. Someone came into my office to talk to me about joining the church. I gave her my standard question, why do you want to join this church? And she said the most amazing thing. The spouse continued to be busy at the stove, but beautifully asked, well, what did the woman say? The pastor replied, the woman said she wanted to join the church because she wanted to learn how to love other people. And she thinks our church is the place where she can learn to do that. The pastor continued, and all my life I've never heard anything like that from somebody. Most people talk about what the church can do for them, how the church can meet their needs. give them all the love they deserve for a place of support, find new friends, offer programs for their children, whatever. You know, the whole service is rendered for offerings paid thing. I almost fell out of my chair. Somebody who actually wants to put their hands to the plow. And the spouse said, whoa, and almost burned the gravy. in a world where it's most often all about me, it can surprise us when someone takes Jesus seriously and shows up to serve and not to be served. Do you remember what Jesus said to those people who became his first followers? It was this call. Come follow me and I will make you become fishers of men, fishers of people. In other words, Jesus said, become my community of faith and I will send you into the world with the good news of God's love and the invitation to God's kingdom. There's no me level motivations in this call. Jesus didn't promise to do anything else for these people. these people who were fishers of fish except to make them to become fishers of people. But it's also true that as these people followed Jesus and they became fishers of people and they served other people with the love of Jesus, they received for themselves everything they ever really needed or ever could desire. They became a part of something bigger than themselves. Their lives had meaning. Their lives had purpose. Their lives had spiritual vitality. Their lives made a difference in the world. It's still the same way would Jesus call to us to become fishers of people, to become servants of other people in his name. Several years ago, an 18-year-old young man named Toby traveled to Africa with a Christian humanitarian organization. Toby and a few other team members were distributing food and supplies to some impoverished people in a village. A young boy came up to Toby and tapped him on the shoulder. This young boy had been watching Toby and he had compared his own ragged, worn out t-shirt with the sturdy, well-made clothes that Toby was wearing. And this young boy asked Toby for his shirt. Toby hesitated. He knew he was going to have to work out in the hot sun all day, and he knew it would be evening before he could get back to camp where he could get another shirt. Without saying a word, Toby stepped back from the boy and he turned and he left the boy behind. That night back at camp, Toby reflected on what had happened that day. He broke down and he cried. A few days later, Toby returned to his home in Michigan. But he just couldn't get that young boy who wanted his shirt off of his mind. Toby determined that he was going to start a t-shirt drive in his hometown and he called it, Give the Shirt Off Your Back. The media picked up on the story and soon 10,000 t-shirts had been donated and the humanitarian organization stepped forward to transport these t-shirts to Africa. And Toby's constant prayer in all of this was that God would make sure that young man he had walked away from got one of these t-shirts. This is the story of someone who moved beyond looking out for me to looking out for other people. It's the story of someone who learned that being a child before God never means being childish. And this is a lesson we all need to learn. You know, none of us here is ever going to outgrow that truth that we are somebody's child. I was always my mother's child and my father's child as long as they lived, no matter how old I was. But even more, we always need to recognize and to know that we're God's children. Depending on God for our lives, trusting God with childlike faith. no matter how long ago it might have been that we first entered the kingdom of God. But we also need to know that maturing children, spiritually growing up children, are always being more faithful to God than childish children. So how do we grow up as followers of Jesus We keep growing in Christ in the same way that we first entered the kingdom of God. By grace. By the sheer grace of God. By the power and presence of God in our lives as a gift. We grow by grace. God's grace. But we have to grow by a willingness to grow. And the willingness to open up our lives to let God's grace do God's transforming work within us. You know, I think it's just possible that being childish is the most serious obstacle to the faithfulness of the church to be the church we're called to be and to fulfill that mission that Jesus has given to us. That's why being childish is so deadly. What we always need is grace. And God's grace is here for us in Jesus. If we just receive it like a little child, if we just receive him like a little child. Would you pray? Father, we thank you for life that we have in Jesus Christ. We thank you for that ability that we have to trust our lives to you, to be dependent on you, to know that we're your children. But Father, help us always. to be children who are growing, focused on the world that you have made and you've come to redeem in Jesus. Help us to be serving children and not childish children. For we pray in the name of Jesus who came to serve and not to be served. Amen. This morning we come around this table, this table that Jesus invites us to. We take the bread, we take the cup, we celebrate what Jesus has done for us. In the words of Paul, we proclaim His death until He comes. It's time for us to reflect on who we have been and who we are and who we're becoming in Christ. This is a table for people who will come with childlike faith. And so I invite you to come and let us confess all of our childish ways and know God's forgiveness. And let us come and renew our faith in Jesus, knowing that we're completely dependent on Him. Our deacons will come and we will share The bread and the cup.

Holy Rhythms

Holy Rhythms

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest | July 5, 2026

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• Sermon Transcript

  Holy Rhythms

  Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor

  Morning. It's great to be with you. So if you've been with us a while, you know what we're doing here, which is we're talking about the ways in which Jesus teaches us to live a life. But if you're new, then what we're also talking about is there's like a good way to live a life. And Jesus says this is the way that leads to abundant life in this life, eternal life in the next. And then there are ways in which we can live a life that leads to death, and death in this life and into the next. And so we are alternating back and forth between these two paths, and this morning we are on the good path, the good way, the way that teaches us how to live the good life. This series for me has actually been eye-opening. I think sometimes We take Jesus' teaching to be something otherworldly, as if it's maybe just like spiritual things you do at some part in your life and getting the connection into the real world. It doesn't always happen. My hope and goal through all of this is to find real ways in which Jesus right here and right now is teaching you and trying to convince you to submit to the kinds of ways in which he lived and do the things that he taught because this is how to live a life and this is the way that leads to abundant life. Before we get started, let us begin with prayer. Heavenly Father, we come this morning and we are so grateful to be in your house. We give you thanks for South Rum Baptist Church and for the many decades of ministry that has been done here. Lord, we thank you for this nation, 250 years. What a gift you have given to us who have the privilege to live in it. And what a gift you have given to the world that when we are doing what is right, Lord, we have been a power for tremendous good. Lord, we ask for your presence here in this house today, but also in the United States of America. Lord, as we wrestle through some really hard times, we ask, Lord, though, that you prevail, that your will be done, and that we participate in that will. In Christ's holy name we pray, amen. So this morning we read from Mark chapter 6, and in Mark 6, Jesus is telling his disciples, head on out into the wilderness, get to the lonely place, to the desert place, to the desolate place, and take some time away. Just to read the scripture again, it was Mark chapter 6, 30 and 31. The apostles, they had returned to Jesus and they told him all that they had done and all that they taught. They were very busy and hard at work. And then he said to them, come away by yourselves to a desolate place or a lonely place or a place where you can get alone and rest for a while. For many were coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat. And here Jesus is teaching us something deeply important about the rhythms of life. That there are times, really important times, where we should be hard at work and we should be teaching and we should be going to our places of employment or to school, and we should really be pushing ourselves as much as we can. And then there are times where we need to pull away and where we need to rest. As I was preparing for the sermon, I tried to find a good example of this in the sports world. And I came across the story of a little known basketball player named Steph Curry. And he did not always start well. His career in the NBA was off to a pretty rocky start. And he kept having these ankle injuries. And it wasn't clear that he was actually going to become the superstar that he became. And he was plagued by a twisted ankle after twisted ankle, was constantly sidelined. And then he began to do a little bit of research into how his body works and began to realize, there are ways in which I need to take care of myself if I'm going to be extra healthy and if I'm going to be a better teammate to this team that is counting on me. At this point, he was not the player. He was just one of the players on the team. And then through a couple years of more or less rehab, What he did was revitalize his own body so that he was as strong as possible. But how he did this was not through just push, push, push, pain, pain, pain. He did it by resting and knowing when to stop and recovering and eating right and knowing when to push and knowing when to pull back. I think there is a real lesson here for the soul, because there are times in life, there are actually many times in life where we should be pushing ourselves, maybe to the limit, maybe beyond what we think the limits are of our own very selves. But then if that is not countered with or that is not met with a pullback that allows you to rest and to recuperate, well then we find there's things like burnout and there are ways in which you break down. Nature is filled with examples of this, and so is our scriptures. Every night, you being human requires you to do what? To sleep. If you were to push yourself every day, day in, day out, I'm just not going to sleep. Sleep is for the week. You'll have eternity to sleep, like now is the time to. And I would just say to you, no, your body is trying to tell you that there are proper rhythms of life, a daily rhythm. And then the week, right? The week tells us, in fact, the scriptures even command us, and they say, well, you're supposed to work for six days, but then on that 7th day, you're supposed to do what? Recuperate and rest. and be with the Lord. And so there's this rhythm that is inherent in a week, or there should be anyway. And what God is doing there, he's not like forcing you to do something. The Sabbath is made for you, not you for the Sabbath. This is what Jesus teaches, right? The Sabbath is for you. It is for your benefit. And just like the athlete or the trainer who goes to the gym and is pumping weights and pushing himself to the limit, in order to actually grow, that athlete has to stop. Because believe it or not, it's not actually the lifting of weights that causes you to get strong. That's like one part of it. But when you are doing the lifting, it's actually tearing down your muscles. It's putting little tears in the fibers of your muscles. And then unless you stop, unless you slow down and you recuperate as necessary, all that training that you're doing actually might lead to injury and not to something that leads to muscle development. I think our lives are much the same, including our spiritual lives. that we are intended to push hard. And some of you need that message this morning. I should just stop and say, every time I preach a message, I'm always worried like the wrong person's gonna hear the wrong thing here. And somebody's gonna say, oh no, pastor told me I get to be lazy. And just kind of, that is not the message this morning. It is a both and. In fact, there's six days for the one and there's one day for the other, right? But the one day for the other in our workaday world where we go, go, go, go, go, that's the thing that often gets lost. And so we need to learn to slow down and like the athlete who pushes and then allows the body to recuperate and then pushes and allows the body to recuperate. So also your life is this way. But it's not just the days where you sleep, and it's not just the weeks where you take a day of Sabbath, right? It's what? It's the year. The year is filled with holy days. Now we call that a holiday, right? And that is where this word comes from. But they are intentionally there as well. Days like yesterday, July 4th, we did what? As a nation, we stopped. and we enjoyed and we rested. And if we had a grill, I would have used it. But it broke. It rusted out. If someone has one for me, call me up. But no, we rested as a nation and we celebrated, right? And our lives are to be this too. And so there are these rhythms to life, to a good life. And Jesus teaches us that to live the good life, requires, yes, the work and the teaching and the feeding and the ministering and the going to the Pentagon and whatever you guys do there, right? And then the days where you just breathe and you let all of those little tears that were made in the fiber of your being heal back up and grow you back stronger. This is a life well lived. Now I'll warn you that our world is waging war against this way of living. The world does not have healthy rhythms to it, certainly anymore. I don't know if it ever did. It was at least healthier than it currently is right now. It goes like this. When I was a kid, there was a movie that came out called Hook with Robin Williams playing the role of Peter Pan, who had grown up, right? And if you've seen the movie, what happens is the grown-up Peter Pan carries around with him those cell phones that were like brick-sized, right? And he's on the phone talking to his his business, and he's so important that on his vacation, he has to constantly be checking in. And all of his family is doing what, saying, dad, come play with us. Be present with us, right? Just take a sec. The world in that time period, this was probably what, late 90s? I probably should have looked this up, 1990s. The world knew that what Peter Pan, the grown-up one, was doing in that moment was killing him. That this was bad rhythms to life. But the truth of 2026 is that we are all the grown-up Peter Pan now. And we all have the cell phones in our pockets. And we're all connected to work at all times, but we're also connected to family at all times. And we're connected to the soccer team that you're supposed to be keeping up with at all times. And you're connected with this person who lives out in Washington at all times. And it's this constant drip of being pulled here and there. And the only place you're not really fully there is here, in the present moment. And we have all grown up just like Peter Pan grew up and became the businessman who was too important for the people who are in front of him. And the world that we live in is this kind of world. A world where we are constantly distracted. We're pulled away from healthy rhythms. Rhythms where we are with someone and we are totally with that person. And then we leave that and then we go somewhere else. I don't know if you remember this, but there was a day and age in which there were beepers, right? And the people who wore the beepers complained about them all the time, unless you were a youngster like me who it was cool to have the beeper. But the adults didn't think so because they were constantly leashed to it and constantly called. Here again, like the beeper was child's play. as compared to the phones that are now in our pockets, constantly pinging us and asking for our attention. The world has lost its rhythm. And what we can do about it, we've got to set some boundaries. We've got to set a life in which we intentionally create holy rhythms. I'm not doing this very well, but I try. And if there's one kind of rule that I've got, it goes like this. If somebody emails me, well then I will get to your e-mail in due time. It's not urgent. Now if somebody texts me, it's definitely more urgent and I'm more likely to get to it. But if you call me, if you really want my attention, you pick up the phone just like the old school and you give me a phone call. I know that, well, something's really happening here. This is, you know, like, I feel like this is just like communications 101. And yet we're all so connected to these things that are phones. And so they pull us out of normal rhythms of life and they break down the barriers that were necessary in creating a good life. The other thing that happens is it's not just the phones, it's all of our technologies. All of our technology, if me, is something that I actually quite enjoy. I love technology. I think it's fascinating and fun and wonderful. And yet I think it's incredibly dangerous. Technology, especially as it has advanced to this point, has made us think that we are God-like. This is what it's trying to, if you don't know this, is what it is trying to do for you. It's trying to make you like a god. And what do I mean? It goes like this. When the loom was invented, right, now you didn't just sit there with the needle and very slowly put one fabric together. Now you could do like a lot of work at once. And then when electricity was harnessed, What happened? Well, now you've got lights on all time of the day. And so what do you do? Well, now you can work at night. Now you can work in the middle of the night. Now there are no rhythms to the day because we have conquered the day and the night and we can make nighttime look like daytime. And so we can just go, go, go. And then we created computers. the internet, and now AI, and information is everywhere. And you, much like the gods, should know everything. And so you can put that information in your head at all times. And there's lots of different ways you can do it. You can put your AirPods in and listen to podcasts all day long, like I do, right? And it's a real problem. Or you can read the news constantly or whatever it is, however you get your information. And some of it's good or some of it's okay and some of it's just wrong. And so we've got this information overload. And so what are technologies, they're trying to make us like gods in that we are now expected to be omnipresent, right? Everywhere, all at once. so that instead of me having to physically meet you somewhere like we used to in 1850, now through the miracle of the phone, I am present with you at all times. We are expected to be omniscient, knowing all things. And why? Well, because especially with the dawn of AI, now we have access to the knowing of all things. And pretty soon we are expected to be omnipotent, able to do whatever we want to do in this world. Once the robots come alive and the AI brains have inhabited the robots, now we can tell them to do whatever we want them to do. And pretty soon we will have harnessed the power of God. But I come this morning warning you, you're not a god. You're a human being. And human beings are slow, intentionally so. We are biological creatures, not technological creatures. If you look out and you see the trees and the way the earth grows and it takes time and it's slow, that is you and me. We are not the internet. in which you can snap a finger and upload all the information you might want. That's just not how we work. We are finite and God is infinite. So I come warning you this morning, you might think because the technologies that we have that you are godlike. And indeed our technologies give us tremendous amounts of power that we have never had before and that at least at present I don't want to be taken from us. But if you fail to think that you as a human being need holy rhythms in your life, well then it's just a matter of time before you break down. Because we were not meant to be gods. We were meant to be humans. We were meant to rest. and to work. We were meant to play. We were meant to have joy. But all of this requires us understanding the limits of who we are. And so God gives us sleep. God gives us the Sabbath. God gives us holy days so that we can slow down and be with one another and allow the healing that needs to happen for the sake of growing stronger. All year long, we've been talking about transformation. We started day one of 2026 with a year of transformation, Romans 12, 2. What's happening? Well, we are supposed to be renewed by the transforming of our minds into the mind of Christ. And you might hope That if you just plug the right thing into your brain, you could do it real quick and we'll be done by May. And that's not how this works. It takes time because we're human and we're slow. We learn slowly and we grow slowly. We transform slowly. I would encourage you, in order to really, really be a transformed being, it requires holy rhythms. where we work hard and then we rest, and we work hard and then we rest. This is how growth, this is how transformation happens, and it happens to be exactly how Jesus himself lives his life. Multiple times we see Jesus living into the rhythm. We already read Mark 6, but in Mark 1, 35, it says, rising very early in the morning, it's still dark, he departs and went to a desolate place by himself and he prays. Or in Luke 5, but he would withdraw to desolate places to pray. Matthew 14, and after he had dismissed the crowd, he went on the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there all alone. Luke 6, in these days he went to the mountain to pray and all night he continued in prayer to God. Jesus models what it is to live a life with holy rhythms. If it's necessary for Jesus, the Son of God, to pull away, what does that say about you and about me? I do wanna remind us of an important clarification. Some of us need to hear the message that actually what you need in life is to probably push a little harder, is to not take the day off, but actually to begin to do some more discipline in your life and to add the intentional other side of the rhythm. And so if the rhythm has two beats to it, the first beat is the six days of labor and the discipline that is required in those days. And maybe the message you need to hear this morning is that message. And then some of you work really hard, and you don't know how to take a break, and you don't know how to rest and to allow the muscles to heal. And for you this morning, I want you to hear this very clearly. It is okay to stop. The world will go on without you, whether you want to know that or not. Life continues, and it is okay. And it is good. The invitation this morning is to put some guardrails up in your life as to how you create the holy rhythms. On what days will you stop? And some guardrails around your technology so that you're not constantly sitting on it waiting for it to control you, but you have control over it. And so this morning, I encourage you to think through what these guardrails look like. Maybe families, it means no phones at dinner time. You just put them away. Or when 9:00 hits, you put all the phones downstairs and you don't touch them anymore. They're not in your room with you. They're sitting somewhere else. so that you're not constantly being bugged by these devices. Maybe it really does mean taking an actual Sabbath and picking the day of the week, Saturday, maybe it's on Sundays, where you are intentional about not doing the work, not showing up and checking in on the e-mail from your office, but you just stop and you enjoy the life around you, your family, your friends. and you pray that you connect with God on that day. To conclude, if you haven't picked up on it, I am heading on a sabbatical. So all of this is on my mind. I want to say to you that I appreciate the gift that you have given me in letting me go on this. Tomorrow it starts and I am so grateful to all of you. Please know that the sabbatical is what the church does for pastors because it holds a theology of scripture that says that recovery and rest is necessary for growth and for the renewed life. I believe that Jesus knows how to live a human life better than I do. And this is why I take a sabbatical. The same Lord who said, come to me, all who are weary also said, come away by yourselves and rest a while. And so if muscles grow, not during the stress time, but during the recovery, well perhaps our souls do too. That is my prayer for the next few weeks for me. Prayerfully I will return with a larger soul ready for the next training period. God knows that transformation requires both the faithful effort and faithful rest. And my prayer for you isn't simply that you'll work harder for Jesus in all you do, but that you'll learn the holy rhythms by which Jesus himself lived. Training with purpose, resting with trust, saying no to certain things, so that you can say yes to deeper things and remembering every week you are a human being. You are not God. Let us let God be God. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we are so grateful that in your hands sits this world and all things, all time. God, we give you back our lives. And we trust that when we are not in charge of them and we are not running them constantly and we are not overseeing every last detail, we know that you still are and that the world will continue to turn and that you will still be on your throne and that your will be done. So God, today, may we learn to have holy rhythms of hard work and training mixed with rest and recovery. God, I give you thanks for Southrun Baptist, for the gift they have given me. And I would ask God that you bless them, that you pour out your Holy Spirit upon them, that you would fill them in this time, and that you would give abundantly out of the faith and trust that is required to offer a gift like this. All this and so much more. We give you thanks. We give you praise. In Christ's holy name we pray. Amen.

Envy: Luke 15:25-32

We Experienced a power outage in the middle of the service, and unfortunately, only have partial video of the service and no separate audio recording of the sermon

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• Sermon Transcript

Gluttony: Luke 15:11-24

In this series we are talking about the road to abundant life, but this week we name abundance as a problem. Gluttony, if it is one thing, is an abuse of abundance. And if there is one story in the Bible about such abuse, it shows up in the story of the prodigal son. The younger son in Luke 15 asked for an early inheritance from the father and gorged himself over and over until he had spent every last dollar. When the food ran out, he found himself desiring food from the pig trough. Gluttony is a sin with a bottomless pit. At some point in the overeating and excessive drinking, you lose the joy of why you eat and drink in the first place.

Gluttony

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest | June 21, 2026

Check out the weekly sermon here or on our SRBC podcast on Apple Podcast and Spotify. While you’re at it, check us out on Facebook and Instagram too.

What We'll Cover:

• How the story of the prodigal son is a story about sin, death, and the way back to abundant life, and how gluttony fits into this mold

• The difference between a false abundance that leads to death and the Father's abundance that leads to life

• What a 30-day fast can teach you about who is actually in control of your food and drink intake

• Why gluttony is on the list of deadly sins, and why it is indeed “deadly”

• Why confession and accountability is essential to regaining self-control

• How there are seasons for fasting, for feasting, and for ordinary days in between, and how Jesus points us to wisdom in order to determine what time it is

Like what you hear? We’d love to know.

At South Run, we read every message personally. Whether you have a question, want to share how God is moving in your life, or are thinking about visiting in person, this is the place to start. If you click the link below, Pastor Eric will personally reach out to you.

• Sermon Transcript

  Gluttony, the Prodigal Son, and Tying Yourself to the Mast — Sermon Transcript

  South Run Baptist Church | Springfield, VA

  Rev. Dr. Eric Gilchrest

  Luke 15:11–32; Luke 7:31–35

  Father's Day 2026

  This is a full sermon transcript from South Run Baptist Church in Springfield, Virginia. In this message, Rev. Dr. Eric Gilchrest preaches on gluttony from Luke 15:11–32 and Luke 7:31–35. Delivered on Father's Day, this sermon is part of the ongoing "The Jesus Way" series on the seven deadly sins and addresses true abundance versus false abundance, the slavery of an undisciplined life, and practical wisdom — fasting, accountability, and learning when to feast and when to fast — for breaking free of gluttony.

  A Father's Day Blessing for the Dads in the Room

  Happy Father's Day. We celebrate Father's Day, and I celebrate this with you. The world is in need of good fathers right now, and the job of the father is one that has been perhaps too neglected in our society. We need children raised well. We need strong young men and strong young women. We need households in which fathers are capable of raising the next generation of believers. And so my hope and prayer this morning for you, dads, is that you are that kind of dad, and that you live into that kind of calling, because the world needs you.

  Before we begin the sermon, I do want to start with prayer, so please bow your heads with me. Heavenly Father, we come and we have gathered here today to hear your word, to be together, to laugh, and to have joy in the company of other believers. Lord, we open our hearts and our minds to what you would have to teach us this morning. We give you thanks for the dads in the room, for the ways in which they have poured out their lives for their kids and for the world around them. As Clint prayed for the sleepless nights and for the strength in times where they probably felt weak, for the times where they needed your sustenance — Lord, we give you thanks for them. And now we ask a blessing over them. We ask for more strength as they will need it, for courage where they need it. But God, we ask for love, that everything they do and are be rooted in a love that mimics and mirrors your kind of love, a love that poured itself out for the world, did not hold back because you loved the world so much. You gave us Jesus Christ, and you showed us the way forward. And so, Lord, this morning as we come, we give you thanks. We give you praise. And we ask for you to open your word to us. In Christ's holy name we pray. Amen.

  Where We Are in The Jesus Way Series: From Anger and Vanity to Gluttony

  Friends, we are still on this rather lengthy journey together. If you've not been with us, we are calling it the way, which is to say that there's a way to live and then there's a way to not. There are really these two paths in life. There's a way that leads to life, abundant life, and then there's a way that leads to destruction. And on the ways where we're talking about the ways that lead to life, we're digging deep into the teachings of Jesus. And I'm doing my best to show you how the scriptures, how Jesus himself, is very interested in you living, not just half-hearted lives or just kind of making your way through life. He wants you to live an abundant life, like very full, just brimming over with a sense of what life has for you. I think this is what Jesus wants from each and every one of us.

  And then there's this other version, and it's a road that leads not to life, but really to death. And it's a false version of the road to life. And there are any number of ways that we can go down that road. And so I've tried to frame this in kind of what the tradition has given us, and we call the seven deadly sins. And so we've already talked about things like anger or wrath. We've talked about vanity. And this morning we're talking about gluttony. Happy Father's Day.

  And this is one of these that we probably take less seriously. I think there's probably more laughs out of this one because we all are kind of in this together, actually. You might feel called out a little bit this morning, but I want to frame it like this. This sin cannot be measured by the size of the belt you wear. And I will just say, maybe point of confession here, I think I have been given very good genes. This is nothing to do with me, and this is everything to do with my fathers and their forefathers, etc., etc. And I think in a different body — I have not spent as much time in the gym as I should over my lifetime. I've probably eaten things that I shouldn't be eating. And so I give thanks to God for all of this. But this is simply to say that our relationship with food and with drink is one that should honor God. And we all fall short in one way or another. And so if you find yourself in the evening unable to resist the cravings of that bag of chips that's calling out to you, this is what we're talking about this morning.

  The Prodigal Son: Two Versions of Abundance

  So in order to talk about gluttony, we have read this morning a passage that no doubt you are very familiar with. Even if you're not churched, you've probably heard the story of the prodigal son. We read it already and we don't need to read the whole thing through. And in fact, we'll probably focus mostly on the front side of it, because this is the son's sin, right? This is where he chooses the wrong path. Like quite literally, he goes the wrong way.

  But I do want to start actually at the very end. The last lines of it — the father is celebrating, right? His son has returned home. But here's what he says. He says, go ahead and kill the fattened calf and let's eat and let's celebrate. And then he says, "My son was dead and is alive again." This is exactly what we're talking about through this whole series. It's how his son was not dead, right? Like literally dead. But he may as well have been. He was living that other life that leads to death. But now he's found his way back home in the right place, and he's living the kind of life that leads to life — abundant life.

  And so when we talk about gluttony this morning, I'm going to fit it over the frame of the prodigal son. Is this the only sin sitting in the story of the prodigal son? No. But I do think it fits pretty neatly into this story. There are really three acts to this story. There's where the son takes his stuff and he goes off to the far country. There's the second act where he comes to himself, is what it says — he wakes up and realizes this is not how life should be lived. And then there's the third act where he returns home.

  And it strikes me, and should strike you too, that the first and the third act are aiming at the same thing for this son. They're aiming at the same thing. And it's a word that I've been using a lot over these last months. Abundance. He is aiming at abundant life. And when he gets home with the father, the father is offering him, once again, abundant life. This is where you're supposed to be. This is the kind of life you're supposed to live. It is filled with joy, and it's even filled with feasting, and it is filled with the people that you're supposed to be around. This is the good life.

  But the first act is the son trying to find abundance, but he's finding it in the wrong places. And so what happens to him is he strikes out on his own, and he tries to grasp the abundance for himself. And then it all falls apart.

  Which is to say — this is a very nice opportunity for me to say what this series has not been and will not be all along. If you've heard me saying, God wants abundant life for you, God wants abundant life for you, for the last number of months here, and you're thinking to yourself, like, health and wealth, and all the good things of life, and I'm just supposed to get, get, get from God — that is not really what we're talking about. There's a version of that that actually doesn't lead to life at all. It leads to what happened to this son here, which is his death. The father says he was dead and has to come back to life. And so there is a version of abundance that is a false version, and you need to be alert to it. And then there's a version of abundance that God wants for you and for me. And it is filled with true joy and is filled with true life. And it only happens in the Father's house.

  Luke 15:11–13: "Father, Give Me" — The Anatomy of Sin

  Let's turn with me, if you will. We're in Luke chapter 15. I want to point out just a few things that I think connect nicely with gluttony.

  "There was a man who had two sons." It's a father. It's a good Father's Day sermon. He's got his two sons out there, right? And the younger one says to the father, "Father, give me." We're already off to a bad start. This is how sin is often framed, actually. We could probably put just about any sin into this mold right here, which is to say, I know, Dad, you've got your way of doing things, but give me. I'm gonna do it my way. And here the son is already off to a very bad start. And so he asked for his share of the property that is coming to him. The father divided the property between them. And then, "not many days later" — it didn't take long, right — what happens to the son when he gathers up his stuff and he goes on a journey into a far country.

  So if sin can be fit into the mold of doing things your way, well, the next part of it is what happens because of the sin, which is to say you are then ushered out of the land in which you are supposed to be living, and you find yourself in a far country. This is the story of Eden, is it not? The story where Adam and Eve are living in the Father's house and enjoying the fruits of the Father, and all is well, and then sin enters the picture, and what happens next? They are in the far country. And ever since, we're trying to get back, trying to get back.

  Buccee's, Buffets, and Using Food to Control Your Environment

  As this young man, the son, heads to the far country, there is no doubt in my mind — my son has asked me to say this — that there's a Buc-ee's along the way. And there is all sorts of opportunity to spend your money and to eat whatever you want. And there are buffets and there are things that just call out to you and are really hard to resist.

  And doing things my way, when we're talking about gluttony, is to say that you are using food or using drink to do what? To control your environment. To say, you know what, I am feeling really restless right now, you know what will help me is that bag of chips that I mentioned. Or, I've had a really rough day at work, you don't know the pressure that I've experienced, I'm going to go ahead and grab that next glass of wine. And you begin to use things like food to do what? To have some kind of control over you, and to fix the problem that is out there somewhere. And maybe a few too many stops at Bucky's, you find yourself thinking that that's going to solve my problem and this will get me through to the next day.

  Much like greed, if you recall — when we talked about greed, it was made real by Dante's La Lupa, the wolf, that is skin and bones, and it keeps eating and wanting more and wanting more and wanting more. But the greed, it never gets filled up. There's always one more dollar that you need, one better job, and then you'll feel satisfied. And gluttony is much the same. One more donut, and then I'll feel good about it. But it never satisfies. It never fills you up.

  Feasting vs. Gluttony: Knowing the Difference

  I will say you should differentiate this between the meal from the meal that you actually really enjoy. The thing that you sit down and you finish and you say, that was like a slice of heaven, that was a really nice meal — because you've probably shared it with some friends or some family. If you were in Sunday school this morning, you and I enjoyed a wonderful conversation together. And for those of you who weren't there, you missed it. And if at 9:45 in the morning you're just kind of chilling and not really doing anything, you should come. This morning in particular was really lively and was really nice conversation. And there was a vibrancy about it. And one of the things we talked about was the difference between feasting and gluttony.

  And God wants you to feast in the right times, in the right places, in the right ways. And so when Christmas comes around and you've gathered your whole family together and you slaughter the fatted calf and everybody's enjoying themselves, sure, there is an opportunity for gluttony there, but it's also a right time to celebrate. Not unlike the father in this story right here who celebrates with the son who comes home. But as we said this morning, if every night becomes a feasting, this is when we run into some trouble, isn't it?

  Luke 15:13–16: Reckless Living, the Far Country, and Rock Bottom

  So the story goes on. He's in this far country. He is separated from the Father. He is living in sin. And then it goes like this. It was there in that far country that he squandered his property — or his inheritance, or the money that was given to him. He squanders it in reckless living. This, too, is a nice definition of how gluttony works. It's a wanting more. It's a taking what you have and giving more. It's an excess. There's no moderation in it, right? And this is what a prodigal is. It's all excess. And then connected with it is the reckless living, which is to say, an undisciplined living.

  And if gluttony is calling us into one thing — please hear me this morning — it is a life of discipline. A life of discipline. And I would venture to say that life in the Father's house, at the end of this story, is a life of discipline, which might be why this son wanted to run from it. No one really likes discipline, right? Until you do. If the discipline is good and right, then it shapes you into the kind of person.

  The analogy I like to use, and I've certainly used before, is the piano player, right? It requires discipline to learn how to play that instrument, and it's practiced time and time and time again. But eventually, the young pianist will get better, and then a little better, and a little better, and pretty soon all of that discipline begins to pay off. And what happens? Well, the disciplined child pianist becomes a master and is capable of entertaining and is capable of joy and treats the instrument like it is a symphony. I don't think it's all that different with other parts of our life. Living a disciplined life might not be the most fun thing in the beginning, but it is the way to add structure and to produce joy and to live lives that are indeed full. And you might push against it as a child would push against wanting to practice his piano. But man, when you lean into it, this is where life is found. Gluttony is the opposite of this. This is the prodigal, off in the far country, living the reckless lifestyle.

  The story goes on, and it says that when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. And this is what we call rock bottom.

  Now, it's a little harder to envision this with food, but you can probably envision this if you've seen enough television — hopefully not experienced this yourself — but with alcohol. The person who's drinking too much and too much and too much, well, eventually there is a bottom to it that they hit. It usually involves something else. Maybe it's a trip to the hospital, but it might be a spouse who leaves you. It might be a family who disowns you. But there's a rock bottom that happens. And what happens in the rock bottom is a wake-up call. It's what happens next in the story, which is to say, he comes to himself, and he realizes, I'm living out in the far distant country, I'm enjoying the feed that was meant for pigs, there's a better way out there. This is what happens in rock bottom.

  Trouble with gluttony is that there's not always a rock bottom. This is why it's actually a little more dangerous. Now, the rock bottom might be a heart attack — so that's real. If you eat too much and you really lean into that, at some point your health is going to cause you problems, and then you might have the wake-up call. For a lot of us, that isn't what the rock bottom is. There is none. There's just kind of a drifting through life in a half-hearted kind of way, which requires all the more somebody — maybe me — coming along, ringing alarm bells and saying, wake up, there is a better way out there. There is more life available to you if you live the life of discipline and not the life of excess.

  Luke 15:15–16: Slavery — The Sign That You're No Longer in Control

  The result of the sin and the far country and the reckless life — the result of it all is what happens there in verse 15. He loses his money. He hits the rock bottom. And so he does what? He hires himself out. This is the slavery piece of sin. The slavery. You are no longer in control of your own life. And in the same way that the son is not in control of his life, he has had to hire himself out now. And he is enslaved to some other master — which is precisely what happens with food or drink when you are living a life of gluttony. You are enslaved to the food, and it is in control of you. You are not in control of it.

  This is how you know, by the way, if you suffer from this. Fasting is a common and a surefire way to figure out if this is a problem for you. Take, again, alcohol. If you say to yourself, you know what, I wonder if I have a problem here — easiest way to figure out is to say, I'm going to stop for 30 days. If over the course of 30 days you can't make it to 30 days, well then maybe, just maybe, there is a problem there. Or if you say to yourself, I'm going to cut sugar out of my diet, and you begin to notice — oh man, I need those sugary things in my life. And why do I need them? I don't even know why I need them. But man, I keep going for them, don't I? This is how you know if something has more control over you than you over it. You are living a life of slavery. There's another master, and it is not you.

  Why Gluttony Is Deadly: Killing Us Softly, Killing Our Joy, Killing Our Trust in God

  Why is gluttony deadly? Let me offer you just three quick reasons. The one is from Roberta Flack and the Fugees. It is killing you softly. It is killing us ever so softly, right? It is making us weaker and weaker. And if discipline is intended to make us stronger and stronger, a lack of discipline makes us weaker and weaker.

  Two is that it actually kills the joy that was intended to be there. Because we've probably all by now figured out that when you eat too many of anything, that thing that brought you joy at the first eating of it is not really bringing the joy at the end of it all. Now you're just eating it.

  The third thing, and this is the most important, is that it kills us. It is deadly because we end up trusting it more than we trust God. We trust it to solve our problems more than we trust God to solve our problems. And so if we get to the end of that workday and we grab for the food, instead of trusting that God is going to get us through, this is the problem.

  What to Do About It: Fasting, Tying Yourself to the Mast, and Accountability

  All right, so then that leaves us with one more question, which is, well, what do we do about this? I've already mentioned fasting. Highly recommend if you're wondering — does this have mastery over me, or am I in control here? Again, simply just say, well, I think I'm just going to give this up for a month and see what happens. And you'll see how much control you really do or don't have.

  The second thing, though, comes to us from a movie that's coming out this summer called The Odyssey. It's Homer's Odyssey, from the 800 BC, I think is when it was written. There's this scene in this, I look forward to, where Odysseus is on the boat. And he's sailing by an island with sirens on it. Do you know this story? And he tells his crew, put wax in your ears. Because if you hear the cry of these sirens, they are going to tempt you to come to the island, and you're going to crash into the island. But he says, I'm not going to put wax in my ears. And instead, here's what I want you to do. I want you to tie me to the mast so that as we ride by, I'm going to listen to them. And whatever I say, whatever I say, do not let — do not listen to what I'm telling you to do. And so if I tell you to go that way, do not go that way, right? And so the boat, indeed, sails on through, and there's Odysseus tied to the mast, and they've all got the wax in their ears blocking them.

  The lesson here is that gluttony, or food — whatever the cravings are — they are calling out to you. And maybe it's the drink. You need to get radical sometimes, and to tie yourself to the mast, or to put the wax in your ears. And what this might mean is, if you don't want that bag of chips at night, well, you shouldn't have the bag of chips in your house at all then. Or if the drink is maybe too much, then just get it out of the house altogether. And don't put yourself in the situation where it's even possible. And so if gluttony is calling out to you, I would encourage you this morning to get radical with this.

  Along with it, Odysseus wasn't alone. He had accountability. He had friends there who had rallied around him, and they all had a pact together on how they were going to get through this. What this might look like for you is a single friend that you reach out to today, and you say, look, I'm trying to solve this problem in my life because I want to be better than this. I want to be stronger than this. I want to serve God rightly. I want to be a righteous person. I want to be a man of character or a woman of character. And so you pull someone into your orbit and you say, I want to deal with this.

  There have been a few times over the course of the last few years since I've been here where I'll offer to you — tell somebody about whatever it is you're wrestling with this morning. I want to offer you that this morning. You should tell somebody. I would encourage you, if you need somebody, I would be happy, more than happy to be that person. Because sometimes people have come to me, and they've shared this with me, and I assure you, this is the best thing that you can do. To bring light into the situation. To not be alone. To not try to muscle through this. But to bring somebody into it. To help you along. To tie you to the mast. And when you say, I don't want to do this anymore, me or somebody in your life says, you're right, we're not going to let you do that.

  Luke 7:31–35: Jesus, the Pharisees, and Learning When to Feast and When to Fast

  There's an appropriate version of fasting, an appropriate version of feasting. If you turn back just a few pages in your Bible to Luke chapter 7, there is something quite nice here that I don't want you to miss. Jesus calls for wisdom in how this kind of life is lived.

  And if you start in verse 31, you might be surprised a little bit about the kinds of things that were said about Jesus and the kinds of things that he does in his life. And it goes like this. "To what then shall I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like?" And here he's talking about his critics, just so we're clear. He's talking about the critics. "And they are like children sitting in the marketplace, and they're calling to one another. And he says, we played the flute for you" — Jesus is the one playing the flute, or John the Baptist too — "and you did not dance" — which is to say, when you should have been rejoicing, you weren't rejoicing. "And then when we sang the dirge, and you did not weep." And when you should have been weeping and grieving and fasting, you weren't doing that. And so you didn't know when to fast, and you didn't know when to feast.

  And then he says — and this is the part that will surprise you — "For John the Baptist" — those Baptists — "they came eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you said he's got a demon." John knew how to fast, apparently, and a lot of Baptists do too. Actually, that's only half true. "But the Son of Man has come eating and drinking. And you say, look at him, he's a glutton and he's a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners."

  Which is it, Pharisees? Are they supposed to fast and do nothing, or are they supposed to feast and then you call them gluttons and drunkards? Which is it? And Jesus is saying, you must learn to feast at the right time and to have that kind of joy, and you must learn to fast at the right time and to know when it is appropriate to mourn with others or to limit yourself and to not give in to excess. And how do we do this? He says it in verse 35. Wisdom. Wisdom is the way. "This is what is justified by all her children."

  Closing: Two Stories of Abundance — Which Will You Choose?

  There are two stories of abundance in the prodigal son. There's an abundance in which we try to take it for ourselves. And then there's an abundance that the Father wants to give to us in his household, on his terms, in his way, with his kind of discipline. The offer this morning is, which will you choose? The one leads to life and the other to death.

  Let's pray. Father in heaven, we believe that you are a good father and that you know how to train your children and you know how to teach us the way to live a life. The question is, will we trust you? Will we do what we need to do? Will we give our lives to you? Or, like the prodigal son, will we flee? Will we take it for ourselves? Will we live in excess? Will we live the undisciplined life? God, this morning, may we be people who choose you and people who choose discipline. In Christ's holy name we pray. Amen.

  South Run Baptist Church | 8712 Selger Drive, Springfield, VA 22153 | Sunday Worship at 11am Serving Springfield, Burke, West Springfield, Lorton, Alexandria, Fort Belvoir, and Franconia, Virginia. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

The Good Samaritan: Luke 10:25–37

A lawyer asks Jesus how to inherit eternal life, and the answer is “love.” Love God and love neighbor. But because the lawyer is practiced in manipulating the law, he follows this up with a question we all secretly ask: who can I exclude from my love? Jesus answers with a story that inverts everything. Not only is the Samaritan the neighbor, he is the very one who does the heart of the law by loving the neighbor, and by virtue of this fact, it is assumed that he is the one to inherit eternal life. Jesus’ point is this: if you want to walk the path of abundant life now and eternal life in the future, you must learn to love.

The Good Samaritan

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest | June 14, 2026

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What We'll Cover

• Why eternal life begins now, not in the next life

• Why "Who is my neighbor?" is really a question about exclusion and why Jesus refuses to answer it on those terms

• How you can tell whether you actually love God (hint: it's not about your feelings on Sunday morning; its about how you love your neighbor)

• Why love is a verb, and the difference between the right words and the right works

• What the Samaritan teaches us about empathy and compassion

• Why self-giving love isn't a rule we're forced to keep but the design we were made to live

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• Sermon Transcript

  The Good Samaritan and the Age of Life: Love, Eternal Life, and the Narrow Road of Luke 10 — Sermon Transcript

  South Run Baptist Church | Springfield, VA

  Rev. Dr. Eric Gilchrest

  Luke 10:25–37

  June 14, 2026

  This is a full sermon transcript from South Run Baptist Church in Springfield, Virginia. In this message, Rev. Dr. Eric Gilchrest preaches on the Parable of the Good Samaritan from Luke 10:25–37. This sermon is part of the ongoing "The Jesus Way" transformation series and addresses what eternal life actually means in the original Greek, why love and life are inseparable in Jesus' teaching, and how the Good Samaritan parable reveals that walking the narrow road means active, costly, others-centered love.

  Opening Prayer: A Church on Mission

  Heavenly Father, we come today offering you thanksgiving for Ian and for Emma, the great work that they're doing at GW, but also for this church and for the work that those who are in these walls do for those who are outside of these walls. We, Lord, desire to be a church on mission, and we need to keep that front and center. And so, Lord, plant it in each of our hearts that as we go where we go throughout the week on Monday and Thursday and random points on a Saturday afternoon, that we be reminded that we bear your image, we bring your word to the world, and we make new disciples. And so, God, we pray all of this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

  Where We Are in The Jesus Way Series

  We are in a series on two ways, right? There is the narrow way that leads to abundant life, and this morning we are talking about that way, and the way that Jesus teaches us to walk — a way that leads to abundance and to life eternal. And then the other way we'll get back to next week, and that's the broad way. It's the easy way, frankly, and it's the way that leads to death and destruction. On Father's Day next week, we will cover the lovely topic of gluttony, so you definitely won't want to miss that, dads. You're welcome.

  For today, though, we are in a parable that you are probably familiar with. Whether you've been around the church much or not, you definitely know what a Good Samaritan is. We even have like Good Samaritan laws, right? Well, I want to dive down deep, and I'll say this whole framing for me — the whole like two ways, the life, death — has become clarifying, we'll say, in ways that I've not anticipated and I have quite enjoyed as we've gone throughout this series. And I almost think of it as like this lens that I take and then I put it over top of the scripture that we're reading and then I kind of see what pops out, like what's new. And so here we are in a very familiar passage and it is, well, it came as a little bit of a surprise to me, exactly how Jesus frames this.

  So I hope you have a Bible with you. If you don't, go ahead and grab the one that's in front of you — we definitely want to turn to Luke 10 together.

  Luke 10:25–28: A Lawyer Asks About Eternal Life

  So again, Luke chapter 10, starting in verse 25. It starts this way as you're turning there. "Behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test." Here we have lawyers doing what lawyers do, right? A lawyer, though, you should know in this day and age is not what you're thinking of as a lawyer. He does not work for the IRS. He does not do like tax law or something like this. He is a lawyer of the Torah, the Jewish law, right? And so this is a man who knows his law well, but very specifically the first five books of our Bible. And this is going to become important because Jesus is going to say to him, like, what does the law say? Like, what does our Bible say, the one you and I share together, right? And so this lawyer, he has spent lots of time in the law, as we'll see, as good lawyers often do. They know the law in order to kind of skirt through it, and he's trying to do this in this passage, but he actually knows what he's talking about.

  So the passage goes on, and he says, "Teacher" — rabbi, this is Jesus here, our rabbi, the one we should be listening to and following — "what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" And as I'm pulling that lens, remember, and I'm putting it on and I see this phrase, eternal life, I think to myself, well, here it is. This is part of what we're trying to do for this season of our church history — looking at ways that lead to life and ways that lead to death. And here Jesus is being asked like the exact question I'm asking you and I'm trying to get us all talking about, and that I think is of utmost importance. We might even say a matter of life and death. And he says, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

  Now, if you were asked this question, if somebody on the street came to you, it's worth asking, like, what would you say? How would you answer that question?

  What "Eternal Life" Actually Means in the Greek: The Age of Life vs. The Age of Death

  Backing up just a minute, this phrase eternal life needs just a little bit of clarification. The word for eternal here is not exactly the platonic, like, eternal sense that you and I often use it. Now, it might mean that to a degree, but only in like a secondary sense. It actually comes from a Greek word, eon — or the English version is eon. Eon is an age, right? There's one eon, and then there's the next eon, there's one age, and then there's the next age. And he's asking him, well, how do I get myself into the age of life?

  It's important that you know that there is an age of death — or as Paul calls it, the evil age, right? This age actually is that, right? It's the age that ultimately we all know is hovered over by these two things of sin and death and evil, and it lurks about, and none of us get out of here alive, right? That's why this age is the age of death. And this is why the Bible speaks to this matter over and over and over again. And this is the final enemy, death. And so the man is asking a very good question, which is, how do we make it out of the age of death and then make it into the age of life?

  And he has in mind — he thinks like a good first century Jew — and I need you to think this way for a second so that we can maybe make it a little more complicated. His timeline goes like this. There's the age in which we live, the age of death. There's then an ending to that, and there is a resurrection that happens of all people, good and bad. And then there's a judgment that happens, and the people are either judged good or bad. And then there is the age of life. That might be how you're thinking of things right now, in fact.

  But here's the important wrinkle. A resurrection has already happened. A resurrection has already happened. And so when Jesus is resurrected, the timeline gets shoved into the present. And then also, with that happening, there is a real sense in which judgment has also happened, and yet is also going to happen. It's a both-and. And Paul, if we had time, he gives us both of these. But the point is actually this — what Jesus does is he drags eternal life and he puts it smack dab into this life. And this life is where eternal life begins. And he'll say things like, "the kingdom of God is in your midst, is among you." He's referring to himself. He's saying, through me starts this eternal life. It's here and it's now.

  And so when Jesus is being asked this question — what must I do to enter into this age of life? — he doesn't say it out loud, but he is saying, well, it starts right now. It's not something we're pushing off to the future. We don't just kind of do all the right things now and then punch a ticket and then we get into the thing. No, you're in it right now.

  Jesus Tosses the Question Back: How Do You Read the Law?

  And so he says to this lawyer — well, he refuses to answer his question, actually. What does he do? He tosses it right back to him. And he says to him, well, you tell me, you lawyer, you know the law. What's written in the law and how do you read it? I actually love that last question — the "how do you read it" — that is so important. I don't have time to dig down deep here, but just know that we should all be asking, like, how do we read this scripture? Like, how do you read it? We all read it slightly differently, but Jesus wants to teach us how we read our scripture.

  And so the man says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." And Jesus, maybe to his shock, certainly to my shock, says, wow, you're correct. You got it right. Like, that is the answer. And in fact, in the other Gospels, Jesus is the one to say these things. Who knows? Maybe this lawyer got it from Jesus.

  And he says, you're supposed to love God. And by the way, all of those categories — that just simply means your whole being, everything you are. You're just supposed to love God with like every last ounce of who you are. And then love your neighbor as yourself. And this is the simplification of all things. It's the simplification of the law, the scriptures, what God is trying to do with the world. It is just love, right? Love God, love your neighbor.

  Now, I'd add this. When we talk about loving our neighbor, the Bible breaks down for us to love God with our souls and our minds and our strength and all these various aspects of who we are. And I would say, well, that's just a description of how to love. And we should do the same with the people in our lives. We should love them in similar kinds of ways, with our whole being. "He said to him, you have answered correctly. Do this and you will live." Again, there's our word — life, right? Well, how do we live a life? And how do we do it right? And how do we stay on that narrow path? He says, well, do this. The guy gets it.

  "Who Is My Neighbor?" — The Question Jesus Refuses to Answer Directly

  And if we stopped there, we would feel really good about this passage and it'd all be done. But the man, remember, he's a lawyer and he knows his law. And the job of the lawyer is to get around the law and to kind of sneak through it. And so he says the follow-up. He wants to justify himself and says to Jesus, well, excuse me, who is my neighbor?

  Jesus does not answer this question. I'll just go ahead and say that very clearly here. Jesus does not answer who the neighbor is. He pulls up the example of somebody being a good neighbor — that is the Samaritan — treats the robbed man that we're going to meet here as the neighbor, but the Samaritan is not actually technically the neighbor here. He's the one who's doing it right, who is loving his neighbor well.

  All of this explodes the boxes that this lawyer no doubt has, and it should explode ours too. And I can't go into exactly what a Samaritan is, but I assure you, the lawyer is thinking the Samaritan is not one of us. Whoever the "us" is for you — not one of us. He's over there. He's one of them. And Jesus is saying, well, look at the them. Whoever your "them" is, they're doing it right. They're the one who's loving well. And it should cause us to stop in our tracks and to ask, well, if they're able to love well, and they're finding what Jesus is calling eternal life or abundant life in this life that's leading to this eternal life, well, maybe I've got some work to do.

  Jesus replies to the question that the lawyer asks. He doesn't answer it. He, of course, does what Jesus does, which is to either ask a question — which is what he did the first time — or to tell a story, which is what he does this time.

  Luke 10:30–32: The Priest and the Levite Pass By

  And so he says, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance, there was a priest going down the road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Well then likewise, a Levite came to the place, saw him, passed by on the other side."

  I assure you, the Levite knows the law too, right? And the priest, well, he knows the law too. And Jesus is saying, do the priest or the Levite do the law? That is, do they love their neighbor? And the answer is very clearly no, right? They do not.

  Luke 10:33–35: The Samaritan and the Meaning of Compassion

  Now the Samaritan, whether or not he knows the law is actually not exactly clear, and in some ways not even to the point. The Samaritan does the law. He does the thing that should be done here, which is he sees the man half dead, and he goes to help him.

  I would stop here for just one minute and point out this word to you — compassion, at the end of verse 33. Compassion. This word shows up only three times in your gospel of Luke. It shows up in the following ways. The widow of Nain — Jesus encounters this woman who already is a widow. She's lost her husband. She then loses her son in the story that is being told. And Jesus looks at this woman who has lost her husband and her son, and he has compassion. Which is to say, the word itself means like his insides are like turning outside, and he's like physically in pain watching this woman and is feeling her pain, right? It also shows up in the passage we're going to talk about next week as you join us for gluttony, which is the story of the prodigal son, actually. When the prodigal son returns home from his gluttonous encounters, the father is there and he looks at him from afar and he has compassion on him. His insides are turned outside. And then here, the Samaritan — he looks at this man and he has compassion on him.

  I would say if we are going to love at all, we need compassion. If we are going to love our neighbor as ourselves, it is going to require us to put ourselves into the very shoes of the neighbor, to walk the mile with them, to see ourselves as the dead man on the side of the road who needs help, and to ask the question, if I were that dead man, what would I want this priest to do for me? If I were that dead man, what should that Levite do? I'm crying out for him, and he walks right on by. That is not keeping the law. But the Samaritan — the Samaritan sees him and is able to put himself into his place and to see the position that he's in, which is helpless, and he has the ability to do something, and he does.

  Interestingly, this idea of love is then here for the next few verses explained not as a feeling the Samaritan has — because we all have the feeling when we see something bad happen, and we're like, oh, that's awful, oh man, I feel so bad for this person — love requires action. It requires actually doing something, which is precisely what the Samaritan does in the verses that follow.

  In verse 34, "He went to him, to the man dying on the side of the road, and he bound up his wounds, he poured on oil and wine to heal them, and then he set him on his own animal, and he brought him to an inn, and he took care of him." This doesn't even account for the fact that he took time out of his own, no doubt, busy schedule to stop and to help this man and to assist him to a place. And he probably missed a really important meeting. And I'm sure some friends and some family were probably upset with the Samaritan who was supposed to be home for dinner. And he missed the kid's soccer game. But he did this very important thing that was in front of him.

  But it doesn't even stop there. "The next day, he took out two denarii. And he gave it to the innkeeper. And he said, take care of him. And if you spend more, keep track of that, because I will repay you when I come back." This is a man who loves in a way that goes above and beyond, and it is active. It's not just a man who walks and says, oh, there's a person that is almost dead over here, and that's tragic, as he keeps walking on by. This is the kind of love that God is calling us into as well, and this is the narrow road that leads to life. You might understand why now it's a narrow road, because it's difficult to walk. It's the road less traveled. It's the one that requires something of you.

  "Go and Do Likewise": Love and Life Are Inseparable

  And then Jesus finishes up. He says, "Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" And the lawyer has to confess, well, I guess it's the one who showed mercy. And then Jesus says again, well, you got it right. "Go and do likewise." Go and do likewise.

  When I think about this passage and this idea that we are to walk down this narrow road that leads to life — life and love, in my mind, are almost like one in the same. They all come together, these two come together in ways that are almost impossible to pull apart as you dig down deeper and deeper and deeper into what a full life is.

  I was trying to wrestle with the question, why does this road lead to life? Like, why does loving someone lead to life? And here's what I think Jesus is doing. Remember, Jesus has pulled eternal life into this life. The very one that you're in now, listening to me speak. And love in this life, this eternal life we're hopefully, prayerfully in — it is the substance of it all. Love is the design of humanity. It is what we were made for. In Eden, when we were created, we were created to love God. And then it was not good for man to be alone. So he creates Eve, and we were meant to love one another. And then he looks at the first couple and he says, multiply, make more of you, and then love them too. And this is what it's all for and all about.

  The God who made us is in himself self-giving love — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. If the Trinity means one thing, it means pouring out love one to the other to the other. And we are made in that kind of image, which means the great commandment — love God and love neighbor — this is not a rule that gets bolted onto the side of life, as if it's like some sort of external hope that you might do this at some point. It is the manufacturer's description of how this whole thing runs. Withholding love doesn't keep you safe, and spending love doesn't drain your life. Jesus, in fact, says, do these things and you will have life.

  Jesus Is the Good Samaritan: He Crosses the Road to Find Us Half Dead

  We see this love most clearly in the person of Jesus. When he pours himself out on the cross, he redeems us. He snatches us out of death and delivers us into an age of life, eternal life. If Jesus has done this for me, well, then he must love me, right? And if Jesus has done this for you — and he has — then he must love you. But Jesus has loved the whole world and God has sent his son that we all might have eternal life, that we all might be entered into the age of life. And why love? Because God loves you, and he wants us to love one another and to love him as we were intended to do.

  Communion: The Table as the Place Where Love and Life Meet

  As we come to the table this morning, it is important that we recognize that this two-fold command of love — to love God and love our neighbor — it is kind of one thing. I would suggest to you that when God says to us that we are to love him, what he does not mean is that we have like a really nice worship service together and I have all the feels and it's just me and God and I'm loving every minute of it. And I don't even think he means like, well, I love God and therefore I pray every day and I love God and I'm reading my Bible every day. These are all very good things and they actually do lead you to God. So don't misunderstand me. But what I think he means is he pairs that with love your neighbor, because that is the ultimate understanding of whether or not you love God well. Because every person in this room around you right now and every person you've ever met in your life is bearing the image of God. And if you can't love them well, it is worth asking whether you're loving God.

  And so this morning as we come to the table, we are reminded that Jesus has poured himself out for us. He has shown us what love looks like. He literally puts his hands on the cross like this, and he opens himself up for humanity. And he takes the penalty that was due to us, and he offers us a way to God.

  I find Jesus directly in the parable of the Good Samaritan. In fact, many interpreters have. It turns out he's not the priest, he's not the Levite, he is the Samaritan, though. He is the outsider, the despised one, yet the one who actually does the law of love. And he comes to our roads where we are lying half dead and he has compassion on us. He looks at us in our estate and he is moved. His insides turn outside. He says, I want something better for this child of mine. I want them to live a full life now, and eternal life forever. This is what I want for them. And so what does he do? He binds up our wounds. He pours the oil and the wine on them. He pays the price. And he promises he will come back to pay the rest of it.

  And this is what the table is. On the night before Jesus died, he took bread and a cup and he said, this is my body and this is my blood. And it is poured out for the forgiveness of your sins. We have all been robbed by the age of death. But we have also participated in the age of death. And we need forgiveness from that. So Christ, he crosses the road and he offers us a hand up and out of it. And this morning we get to participate in the forgiveness of sins that he offers to each and to every one of us.

  Our Call: To Be the Samaritan for Others

  He then expects something of us. As people who are walking down that road with him, the dust of the rabbi getting all over us — you remember that? — as we walk that way of love, we then too must take up the role of the Samaritan for the others who are around us. Our job in this world is to bandage those who are hurt and broken and to pour whatever oil and wine Jesus has given to us onto their wounds too. And we're to lift them up out of their estate. And this, this is what it means to be a follower of Christ.

  Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, Holy Son, and Holy Spirit, you are self-giving love, perfected. God, we have fallen short of your glory, no doubt. We have sinned and are in need of a Savior. And so, Jesus, this morning, we come asking one more time for your salvation. Some of us, this might be the first time, saying, I need a Savior. I need someone to bandage up the wounds that are just too deep. I can't do it myself. Or somebody is lying there saying, I am half dead. I can't do this by myself. And Jesus, we know you are saying to them right now, I am here for you. I am here to bind those wounds and to raise you back to life again. So God, as we prepare our hearts for the communion table, we ask that we do so with sincerity and with gravity, knowing the cost that you have paid — your very life. And that out of this should flow for all of us gratitude, a thanksgiving. And for all this and more, we give you thanks and praise. In Christ's holy name we pray. Amen.

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  South Run Baptist Church | 8712 Selger Drive, Springfield, VA 22153 | Sunday Worship at 11am Serving Springfield, Burke, West Springfield, Lorton, Alexandria, Fort Belvoir, and Franconia, Virginia. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

Standing Firm: A Look at Stephen

Standing Firm: A Look at Stephen

Deen Salami | Guest Pastor

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• Sermon Transcript

  Standing Firm: What Stephen's Martyrdom in Acts 6–7 Teaches Us About Faith Under Fire — Sermon Transcript

  South Run Baptist Church | Springfield, VA

  Guest Preacher: Deen Salami

  Acts 6:8–7:60

  June 7, 2026

  This is a full sermon transcript from South Run Baptist Church in Springfield, Virginia. In this message, guest preacher Deen Salami preaches on the martyrdom of Stephen from Acts 6–7. This sermon addresses how Stephen — an ordinary believer full of faith and the Holy Spirit — stood firm against hate and persecution before the Sanhedrin, what his conduct, his defense, and his death reveal about the cost of following Jesus, and why the church's first martyr was not a tragic accident but a catalyst for the spread of the gospel.

  Opening: A Passage That Can Almost Preach Itself

  I am a little excited today about the message. We've got a lot of ground to cover. There's a large section of scripture that I want us to go through. I'm going to act as your guide. It's not very often that there are passages of scripture that actually can preach themselves. This passage just might be one of them. So what I'd like to do is just to act as your guide. I'll read through big chunks of scripture and I'll just make a couple of observations for us to consider as we do. To do that, though, I'll only need about another hour. Are you guys good with that? I know better than to get in the way of lunch, so I'll make sure that I'll get through this thing in a reasonable amount of time, and I promise we'll survive the experience, all right?

  All right, why don't you join me in prayer? Gracious God and Father, behold this time. It is you who have called all these people here. None are here by accident. You have assigned me to this task for this day and this hour, and I just pray, Lord God, that you would act and move. Empower now your servant to be able to bring forth this majesty for your people's benefit and for the glory of your great name. May everything that be said and done would be pleasing to you. We pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.

  Context: Who Was Stephen, and Why Does He Matter?

  Now, we've already had the first section of our passage read to us. We're going to look at the first martyr of the early church. If you guys know, that is a follower by the name of Stephen. Before he was crucified, Jesus warned the disciples that the world would hate them because of him, and as a result, they would suffer persecution. So how do we stand firm against the hate and persecution? Well, Stephen is going to help us answer that question because he experienced exactly what Jesus said he would. How he handles the hate is a great example for us to follow.

  Now, again, we've already read that first section in Acts 6:1–8, but as we go into the commentary of it, I want you to consider three simple things: the charges brought before Stephen, his conduct throughout this whole trial, and what it costs him at the end. Three things — charges, his conduct, and the cost.

  The gospel was being preached early on. It's the early part of the church's existence. The gospel was being preached, and after an early reception by the masses, opposition began to rise, specifically from the religious leaders. Stephen was a Hellenistic Jew, which means that his native tongue was not Aramaic, but it was Greek. He was also a Diaspora Jew, meaning that he was not born and raised inside Israel proper. He was born and raised outside of Israel. He came to Jerusalem, heard the gospel, and became a believer. He was not one of the original 12. He had no special place of prominence. In fact, when we first learn of Stephen a few verses earlier, he was in charge of food distribution for the church. In other words, Stephen was a simple, normal person, just like any one of us. His only desire was to serve and to be used by God.

  Now look at how he was described in this section. It says that he was full of God's grace and power, and he performed great signs and wonders. Up until this point, that description was only made of the apostles. But he ran into his fellow Diaspora Jews, and they could not withstand him in debate, because the Spirit of God had given him great wisdom. Since they were unable to defeat Stephen in debate, they slandered him, brought him up on trumped-up charges, and dragged him before the Sanhedrin. And this, by the way, is the third time that a follower of Jesus was dragged before the Sanhedrin. The first time it was Peter and John for healing a lame man. But because the crowds were praising God, they let them go. The second time was with all 12 apostles. They were beaten and sternly warned no longer to preach the gospel. This time, the Diaspora Jews were mobilized as a mob against Stephen, and if you were hearing properly and paying attention, you noticed that Stephen is alone. Incidentally, this is the same council that sentenced Jesus to death.

  The Charges Against Stephen: Disrespecting Moses and the Temple

  So let's hear the charges brought against Stephen. It was the disrespect of the law — which is referred to as Moses — and the disrespect of God, the temple, because they believed that God's presence was in the temple. But Stephen is going to take these two charges and turn them on his accusers.

  But for now, I want to draw your attention to how Luke describes Stephen as he stands before the Sanhedrin. He says that he has the face of an angel. Now, I doubt very much that the Sanhedrin thought Stephen was hot, right? But what is it that made his appearance unmistakable? The question I want us to consider is, how is it possible that a normal person like Stephen — who was not part of the inner circle of Jesus — is able to do the things that Stephen had done and was described the way Luke describes him?

  Acts 6:5 — Full of Faith and the Holy Spirit: What That Actually Means

  And I believe that the answer is found in verse 5 of chapter 6. This is the very first description we have of Stephen: he's a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit. But the question is, what does that mean exactly?

  Let me start with full of faith. Because there are three aspects of faith that we see in Stephen. First, there's an intellectual determination. What do I mean by that? It simply means that he's asking himself, is the gospel true, and do I believe it? Am I a sinner, like the gospel says, and do I need a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ? Stephen's answer is yes. The second is, do I trust Jesus? Will I submit my life to him and proclaim him as my Lord? Again, Stephen answers, yes. But finally, will I commit everything to him, even if it means my death? And as we will see, Stephen will answer that question yes as well.

  But let me ask us all a question here. How are we doing in these three aspects? For most Christians, they're okay intellectually up here. Do I need a Savior? Yes. But it's the other two that they stumble at. Is he actually Lord? Am I running my own life? Do I just need Jesus as an advisor — I'll call on him when I need to? Or is he actually Lord? Do we actually commit our lives to him, willing to die?

  Because Stephen was all in with Jesus, it gave the Holy Spirit free reign to use Stephen any way he wanted. Not like a puppet, but as an active and willing partner in the work of advancing the kingdom. It's like the Fellowship of the Ring. Do you guys remember the Fellowship of the Ring? Remember when Frodo said he was going to go and take the ring to Mordor? Aragorn said to him, if by my life or death I can protect you, I will. Why? Because the fate of Middle Earth hung in the balance, right? But for us today, it's the souls — the eternal souls of people — that hang in the balance. And the only hope for them is Jesus Christ. Amen? If by our life or death, if we have the opportunity to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ, will we? Are we all in like Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit?

  What the Sanhedrin saw in Stephen was the very presence of the divine emanating from him. But let's move on and see what happens next.

  Acts 7:1–16: Stephen's Defense Begins — Summarizing Genesis 12 Through Exodus 1 from Memory

  I'm going to read from chapter 7, verse 1. "Then the high priest asked Stephen, are these charges true? To this he replied, brothers and fathers, listen to me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran. Leave your country and your people, God said, and go to the land I will show you. So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. He gave him no inheritance here, not even enough ground to set his foot on. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no children. God spoke to him in this way, for 400 years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, God said, and afterward they will come out of that country and worship me in this place. Then he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision, and Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him eight days after his birth. Later, Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs. Because the patriarchs were jealous of Joseph, they sold him as a slave into Egypt. But God was with him and rescued him from all his troubles. He gave Joseph wisdom and enabled him to gain the goodwill of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. So Pharaoh made him ruler over Egypt and all his palace. Then a famine struck all of Egypt and Canaan, bringing great suffering, and our ancestors could not find food. When Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our forefathers on their first visit. On their second visit, Joseph told his brothers who he was. And Pharaoh learned about Joseph's family. After this, Joseph sent for his father Jacob and his whole family, 75 in all. Then Jacob went down to Egypt where he and our ancestors died. Their bodies were brought back to Shechem and placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought from the sons of Hamor at Shechem for a certain sum of money. And as the time drew near for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham, the number of our people in Egypt had greatly increased. Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. He dealt treacherously with our people and oppressed our ancestors by forcing them to throw out their newborn babies so that they would die."

  Now, for those of you who may have picked up on it, Stephen just summarized Genesis 12 all the way through Exodus 1. Genesis 12 is where we have God's promise to bless the world through Abram. Stephen starts there and ends in Exodus chapter 1. That is approximately 39 chapters that he summarized from memory under pressure. Now, if you were on the Sanhedrin, what would you be thinking right now about the charge of disrespecting the law? At least at this point, it looks like that charge is on kind of shaky ground. In fact, some of the Sanhedrin might be looking at Stephen and secretly giving him a thumbs up. Way to go, bro. Good job, all right?

  Why Stephen Uses Geography and the Stories of Joseph and Moses Strategically

  What I don't want you to miss, though, is how Stephen is telling this story. I want you to notice the way Stephen is making use of geography — Mesopotamia, Haran, Israel, Egypt. He is summarizing what God did in those places, but why is he doing this? Also, I want you to keep in mind what he says about Joseph and his brothers. I'm going to develop that here in a minute. Just be patient, okay?

  Now, before we move on, I want to highlight how Stephen addresses his adversaries. To the mob, he refers to them as brothers. To the Sanhedrin, he refers to them as fathers. This mob who dragged him forcefully before the Sanhedrin, and this council that not only sentenced Jesus to death but beat the 12 apostles — the question on the table is, why is Stephen so cordial?

  A few observations. First, he does not seem to be taking their behavior toward him personally. The moment is not lost on Stephen. He's acutely aware of the danger he is in, but he remembers his mission, which was the same as Jesus. He does not want to condemn them. He wants them to know the truth. So he speaks to them in a way fitting that purpose. He does not retaliate against them for mistreating him.

  Second, Stephen understands that their behavior is symptomatic of a bigger issue. He knows what the Apostle Paul will later go on to understand and share with Timothy. As we read in 2 Timothy 2:25–26, Paul says this: "Opponents must be gently instructed in the hope that God will grant them repentance, leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape the trap of the devil who has taken them captive to do his will." Stephen understands that these people have been taken captive by the devil so that they would do his will. But Stephen hopes that they will come to their senses. So he begins by instructing them gently. And in his approach, Stephen is reflecting the very heart of God. Back in Ezekiel 33:11, we hear God say this: "As surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways. Why will you die, people of Israel?" Stephen does not clap back at them.

  Third, he is gentle because he is focused. He knows it's not about him. This encounter is much bigger than Stephen, and he is keenly aware of it, and we can tell by the way he conducts himself.

  It's a powerful lesson for us today, isn't it? If we're going to stand firm against hate and persecution, we will resist the urge to take people's behavior toward us personally. We remember that their behavior is symptomatic of a bigger issue. They are captives of the devil, and what we want to stay focused on is our mission to be active agents in freeing them through spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.

  Now one last point before we move on. We are 19 verses into Stephen's speech and in all his words, Stephen is not trying to defend himself. He has not yet answered the question that was put before him: are these charges true? He hasn't quite answered that question, at least not directly.

  Acts 7:20–43: Moses, the Burning Bush, and the Pattern of Rejected Messengers

  But let's get back to the rest of Stephen's speech, because I think we'll find some more for us to consider.

  "Now at that time, Moses was born, and he was no ordinary child. For three months, he was cared for by his family. When he was placed outside, Pharaoh's daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action. When Moses was 40 years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. The next day, Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, men, you are brothers. Why do you want to hurt each other? But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday? When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons. After 40 years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai. When he saw this, he was amazed at the sight. As he went over to get a closer look, he heard the Lord say, I am the Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses trembled with fear and did not dare to look. Then the Lord said to him, take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt. This is the same Moses they had rejected with the words, who made you ruler and judge. He was sent to be their ruler and deliverer by God himself, through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. He led them out of Egypt and performed wonders and signs in Egypt, at the Red Sea, and for 40 years in the wilderness."

  Once again, Stephen has done an excellent job in summarizing that next section. He pretty accurately brings the story to the lawgiver himself, the man Moses. But let me begin to tie some pieces of this puzzle together for us.

  Stephen brings up Joseph and Moses very strategically. Joseph, with his dreams, and Moses, even at his birth, were both marked by God for God's use and for the good of his people. But in both cases, they were originally rejected. In other words, our ancestors, says Stephen, missed God's messengers the first time. Even though the signs were there, they rejected their God-appointed leaders the first time. And Stephen is about to be very clear about the implications of this for them.

  He mentions God being with Moses in Midian and in Egypt. All the geographical references that Stephen has made is the point he's taking aim at — the misunderstanding of the temple. They refer to the temple as this holy place. But yet Stephen reminds the Sanhedrin that when Moses was in Midian on Mount Sinai, Moses was commanded to remove his sandals because where he was standing was holy ground. So which is it? Is it the holy ground that Moses was standing on in Mount Sinai in Midian? Or is it this holy place, the temple in Jerusalem? Wherever the presence of God touches down becomes holy. What Stephen is saying is that God is not bound by any single location. This is what the Sanhedrin failed to see in their attempt to defend the temple. And it is a pattern that Stephen is pointing out for them.

  In addition, Jesus sternly rebuked the religious leaders when he turned over the tables of the money changers and called the temple a den of thieves, because they were keeping people from God. God had left the building, and they were completely oblivious.

  Let me highlight the wisdom Stephen is using here. First, he knows the word and how to apply it to the situation he is presently in. Second, he understands the charges brought against him and how to use those same charges to highlight the error of his accusers. And finally, he does not lose focus of his mission. And the question on the table for us is, if we were under this pressure, could we do the same?

  Acts 7:44–53: Stephen Flips the Script — You Are the Ones Who Violated the Law

  Now Stephen is about to end his time with the Sanhedrin, and it's going to be a colossal end. Let's finish reading.

  "This is the Moses who told the Israelites, God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your own people. He was in the assembly in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai and with our ancestors, and he received living words to pass on to us. But our ancestors refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him, and their hearts turned back to Egypt. They told Aaron, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him. That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and reveled in it in what their own hands had made. But God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the sun, moon, and stars. This agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets: did you bring me sacrifices and offerings 40 years in the wilderness, people of Israel? You have taken up the tabernacle of Molech and the star of your God Rephan, the idols you made to worship. Therefore, I will send you into exile beyond Babylon. Our ancestors had the tabernacle of the covenant law with them in the wilderness. It had been made as God directed Moses, according to the pattern he had seen. After receiving the tabernacle, our ancestors under Joshua brought it with them when they took the land from the nations God drove out before them. It remained in the land until the time of David, who enjoyed God's favor and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. But it was Solomon who built a house for him. However, the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says, heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build me, says the Lord? Or where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things? You stiff-necked people, your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You were just like your ancestors. You always resist the Holy Spirit. Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him. You who have received the law that was given through angels, but have not yet obeyed it."

  Stephen ends his speech with a powerful rebuke of the Sanhedrin and this mob. The history of the Jewish people had been one of rebellion, culminating in the murder of Jesus, their long-awaited Messiah. Just as they did with Joseph and Moses, they missed Jesus the first time.

  I want you to underline verse 53. Stephen courageously tells the truth and provides a proper diagnosis of their problem. In so doing, he flips the script. So you accuse me of violating the law and desecrating the temple? I'm not guilty of either one of these, but you are. The evidence he provides is rightly in the law of Moses, and he records the embarrassing incident with the golden calf. This was abject idolatry, which got them exiled, and it's clear that their stubborn rebellion continued to blind them.

  Making the Means the End: The Sanhedrin's Fatal Error with the Law and the Temple

  The inherent problem the Sanhedrin and the mob suffered from was that they made the means the end and did away with the end itself. What do I mean by that? Well, in Galatians 3:24–25, Paul says this: "So the law was our guardian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian." The law was the means by which we would be ready for Christ, who was literally the end of the law — he was what the law was preparing us for. But they made the means, the law, the end, and did away with the end itself, Jesus.

  Jesus says the same thing about the temple. In Mark 11:17, Jesus says this: "My house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves." The temple was the means by which all the nations would come to know who God is and pray to him. They turned the temple into a money-making machine, and they did away with God altogether. It's the same pattern.

  Acts 7:54–60: The Stoning of Stephen — Dying Like His Lord

  Like all who stubbornly live in rebellion and refuse to hear the truth, they go after Stephen. "When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. Look, he said, I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of the young man named Saul. And while they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Then he fell on his knees and cried out, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. When he had said this, he fell asleep. And Saul approved of their killing."

  Stephen took a bold stand and it cost him his life. But here's the beauty of this passage. Stephen died in the same way his Lord did. He dies praying for the forgiveness of the people stoning him, just like Jesus. And because Stephen was so faithful to his call, the heavens opened so that Stephen sees the Lord Jesus rise from his throne to welcome his faithful servant home.

  How to Stand Firm Against Hate and Persecution: Look Up, Not Around

  How do we stand firm in the face of hate and persecution? First and foremost, we look up, not around. We look to Jesus. We need to be focused on Jesus because he is all he's asking us to be, and he has done all he's asking us to do. That includes suffering for his sake.

  Second, we need to remember one important thing. We're not simply spectators or victims. We are active agents of change. In other words, we do not lose sight of the mission, because this is why we are here. You know, I know some people — I've spoken to some people about this passage — and they seem to think that it's unfair for Stephen to have died. After all, why couldn't God have saved him? He saved the apostles. He saved John and Peter. Why couldn't he have saved Stephen?

  But if we read Acts 1:8, where Jesus told the disciples that they would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and in the uttermost parts of the world, we begin to realize one important thing. Up until this point, guess where the church was localized? Jerusalem. Guess where they had their small groups? Jerusalem. Guess where they had their worship time? Jerusalem. But where were they supposed to go?

  But after Stephen was killed, we read this: "On that day, a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria." Stephen's death was the catalyst for the advancement of the gospel outside of Jerusalem. Remember, our faith is not a faith that we simply talk about. Our faith is a full contact sport. If by my life or death I can advance the gospel, I will. Stephen did it by his death.

  Closing: Active Agents of God's Redemptive Work

  Let me read you one quote as I close. It says, "Suffering becomes the ongoing evidence that creation awaits restoration. And believers, bearing God's image and indwelt by the Spirit, participate in that redemptive work. Rather than passive victims of evil, they become agents through whom God's original creative intention progressively reasserts itself against the disorder introduced by sin."

  Will you be a part of that? Because this is our purpose. And once we understand our purpose and totally embrace it, then we look at the world very differently. We can stop asking why the world is the way it is. Because that's really the wrong question. The right question is, what are we going to do about it? Because we are supposed to be the active and willing participants in God's redemptive work. Is this work dangerous? Yeah. Stephen found that out very clearly. Remember, Jesus died for us first. So it is not like God is asking us to throw away our lives cavalierly. Far from it. Stephen understood the stakes and was keenly aware of the moment. But he determined that his life was worthy of sacrificing for the gospel. He stood firm. Can we?

  Let me pray. Our gracious God and Father, we thank you for this time that we can be in your word. We are reminded, Lord, that it's you who preserved your word, lo, these 2,000 years for us, this generation of believers, to learn and glean from. I pray, Father, for whatever lessons that may have been brought out here, that those seeds would be scattered in the hearts of your people and that they would grow into folks that would stand firm for the advancement of the gospel. Our only desire, Lord God, is like Stephen. We ask humbly that you would use us as we serve, and that you would be glorified. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.

  South Run Baptist Church | 8712 Selger Drive, Springfield, VA 22153 | Sunday Worship at 11am Serving Springfield, Burke, West Springfield, Lorton, Alexandria, Fort Belvoir, and Franconia, Virginia. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify

Greed: Luke 12:13-21

What is enough? How do you know when you have enough? Is the answer: “Just a little more . . .”? If so, you’re not alone, but you’re also on a dangerous road. From the rich fool who built bigger barns to the algorithm that lives in our pocket, something has always been working to convince us that the next thing is the thing that will finally make us secure. But Jesus names a deeper truth: greed isn't really about money at all. It's about where we go for safety, and whether we trust our stuff or our Father to be the ground beneath our feet.

Greed

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest | May 31, 2026

Check out the weekly sermon here or on our SRBC podcast on Apple Podcast and Spotify. While you’re at it, check us out on Facebook and Instagram too.

This Sunday we’re exploring:

• How Greed is like the hungry wolf within, that is never satiated, never satisfied, and never content no matter how much it gobbles up

• The rich fool of Luke 12 and how building a bigger barn was a dangerous replacement for the work only God can do

• How the algorithm and our social media networks form us every day into people who can never quite be satisfied

• Greed as a trust problem: the quiet transfer of our security from God to the things in our closets or our bank accounts

• Why the offering plate is one of the most counter-cultural things we do — and how the practice of charity and generosity is an important way we take the offramp from greed back onto the narrow road that leads to abundant life

Like what you hear? We’d love to know.

At South Run, we read every message personally. Whether you have a question, want to share how God is moving in your life, or are thinking about visiting in person, this is the place to start. If you click the link below, Pastor Eric will personally reach out to you.

• Sermon Transcript

  The Hungry Wolf: Greed, Anxiety, and the God Who Has Enough — Sermon Transcript

  South Run Baptist Church | Springfield, VA

  Pastor Eric Gilchrest

  Luke 12:13–21; Matthew 6:24–34

  May 31, 2026

  This is a full sermon transcript from South Run Baptist Church in Springfield, Virginia. In this message, Pastor Eric Gilchrest preaches on greed from Luke 12:13–21 and Matthew 6:24–34. This sermon is part of the ongoing "The Jesus Way" series on the seven deadly sins and addresses how greed works as a hungry wolf that can never be satisfied, how our technology and online consumption feed our covetousness, and why the tithe is one of the most powerful weapons against the greed that sits in all of us.

  Where We Are in The Jesus Way Series: The Broad Road and the Seven Deadly Sins

  If you haven't been here, if you're kind of forgetting — there's this road that Jesus talks about that leads to life, abundant life, good life, eternal life. And then there's this road that leads to death or destruction. It leads to like a half-life in this life. And it frankly leads to eternal death. And so he opens up for us this way of thinking about how we operate in this world. And I keep pivoting back and forth between the two. And one Sunday, I'll talk about things that are encouraging. And so a couple weeks ago, we were talking to the seniors, and we were talking about, you know, what does it take to live a good life? And when you get to the end of it all, how can you look back and know that was a life well lived. And then the week before that, we had been talking about the broad way, the way that leads to destruction. And for that specific day, we were talking about anger. But we've also talked about vanity, right? And today we're talking about greed. We are back on that broad road. It's one that leads to destruction.

  And I hope over the course of all of these — these are the seven deadly sins that we're walking through — my hope is that over the course of all of these, you come to realize that as Jesus and scriptures are teaching us how to live a life, whether it's the Ten Commandments or the laws or the, quote, rules that the Bible gives us, they're not actually meant to squelch life. They're not meant to tsk, tsk, don't do this bad thing, you know, and question our morality or something like this. They're there to protect us. They are the guardrails on living a good life. And if you follow these rules, it actually increases your chance of living the life that you were meant to live and that how you're supposed to operate in this world. And it's the design that God has for your life.

  And so as we talk about greed this morning, there are two ways you can think about it. It's a preacher getting up here yelling at you, don't be a greedy human being. But that's not the kind of preacher I am. Instead, I want to come at this as God has a better way for you. There's a better way of living a life than a greedy one. And this better way leads to fullness of life. And God wants that for you. I want that for you.

  How Technology and Amazon Feed the Greed Inside All of Us

  And then with all of this, I am trying to remind us of the ways in which our technology influences us. And I think there's a misconception out there — or maybe it's not even a misconception, maybe it's just like a blindness — that whatever we're doing online, whatever we're seeing on our computer screens, or maybe it's TV screens, or right on the phones in our pockets, that it's actually not really doing much to us at all. But the truth couldn't be more opposite.

  When we talk about these two roads, it's easy to think of a road in real life, right? We've got roads all around us, and you can think about the ways in which we walk through the, quote, real world. And you can be a greedy person or a not greedy person in the real world. But the truth is this, and we need to come alive to this — what you're doing on your devices, when you spend time online, and each of us is spending more and more and more time online, it is shaping us. It is changing us. To go back to earlier sermons, it's making us more vain people, as your social media is driving you to want more likes from that post that you put online. Or anger — your social media is generating lots and lots of rage. This is how they get you to come back. It's one of the greatest tricks that they pull on you: if I can make them angry again, if I can make you think, oh, those bad people over there, you're going to come back to my device, to the app that I've created for you. And what they're doing is they're hacking us. They're hacking the deadly sins that plague all of us. And they know this quite well, and they do it anyway.

  And so this morning, as we talk about greed, I would encourage you to think: how does my internet consumption change my desires? How greedy or not I am, like what I want in this world, what I think will bring happiness in this world. I've got Amazon up here as an example of a product that pumps greed in and through us. And why? Well, because you can get on Amazon — you can buy anything on Amazon now, it's both a miracle and an awful kind of miracle, whatever that might be called — and you can think, I want a new shirt, and you can find it, and you can click buy now, and within 24 hours, or pretty soon they'll have the drones coming and dropping at your door within a few minutes, and you can literally go from a thought or a desire to the actual product being in your hands within minutes. And boy, that's seductive, right? Boy, that's seductive. Why? Because you might think, yeah, if I just buy that shirt, well, then I'll be happy. Like, it'll fill this void. But man, if you've done that enough, then you know what? That shirt's not going to fill that void, is it? And so this is what we're talking about this morning. The ways in which greed and these pieces of who we are — they actually are an infection, and God wishes to heal us of these infections.

  Before we begin, let's start with prayer. Heavenly Father, we come before you, and we give you thanks for Jesus Christ, our Lord, our Savior, the one who goes before us, who leads us down that narrow road, who has shown us how to live a life, who is teaching us how to live a life, and who has died for us and for our sins, to whom we give thanks and honor. But more than that, we give allegiance, and we say, Jesus, you are our God, and you say so, so we will follow you. We trust you. We trust you for life. We trust you for eternal life and for the forgiveness of our sins. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

  Dante's Inferno and the Hungry Wolf: What a 700-Year-Old Poem Says About Greed

  When I was in college, my sophomore year, I was at a place called Asbury College, and I was taking a class called Western Literature. And it is a class in which you read through the major pieces of literature in the Western canon. This is actually the class that I first met my wife in. Dr. Strait was the professor, and Dr. Strait was one of my favorite professors of all time. He, in fact, attended our wedding — a brilliant man. And one of the pieces that he had us read was called Dante's Inferno. Perhaps you've heard of it.

  Just a few weeks ago, I decided, you know what? It's been about 20 years. I'm going to pick up Dante's Inferno again, and I'm going to try to read through this. And I have, and I've been enjoying it thoroughly. One of the reasons I wanted to read through it again was because he actually really digs into these deadly sins that we're talking about. And I was fascinated. This was written like 700 years ago. What might this man have to say to me, living in 2026, about any of these topics? And it turns out quite a lot.

  So he begins the Inferno. The opening passages — like if you go home and do one thing here, this is a worthwhile read. He's a man in the middle of his life, which already started to ring a little too true. And he finds himself lost in a woods. And he's struggling to know what to do. And he's kind of darkened. And if you ask me, it sounds like he's in a midlife crisis. And he's wandering in this wood when he comes along three beasts.

  He meets a leopard, and many think the leopard represents lust. And he's able to avoid this beast, and he kind of gets around it, only to meet a second beast. This one is a lion. And the lion is representative of anger and even violence. We've talked about this already. He manages to evade that. And these are not the two things that send him down into hell, into the inferno. It's the third one. He comes across la lupa — a wolf. And the wolf is described this way. It's bony. It is gaunt. You can see it's very hungry and sickly looking, and it's going to devour anything in its path. And Dante comes upon the wolf and cannot get around it, cannot outmaneuver it, cannot trick it. And so this wolf eventually leads him down into the inferno, where he is then guided by Virgil — if you've ever read it — through hell. And then back on the other side, has to get out of hell, up into purgatory, and eventually into heaven. But as he's heading into hell, he is driven there by the wolf.

  The wolf almost certainly represents what we're talking about today, which is greed. You see, the wolf will devour, and it will devour, and it will devour, but it will never be satiated. It will never feel contentment. It will never experience a fullness. And so that wolf just wants more, and it wants more, and it wants more. But there is no such thing as enough.

  This is what greed is. Greed is you looking at your 401k and saying, just a little bit more and then I'll feel good about my future. Or looking at your bank account and saying, just a few thousand dollars more and then we can do this. Or just a little bit more. Or it's maybe your salary and you're thinking to yourself, you know what would be great is a pay raise — if I could just, if I were making this, then, right? It's all of these ways in which we say, if I just had that one more thing. You're walking through the mall, if I had that suit, you know, I'd feel really good about myself and the trajectory of my life. And then the hungry wolf that sits inside of all of us is never satisfied with these, right? And there's always something more to consume. And this is precisely what greed is. It's the wolf in all of us. And Jesus is showing us this, and he's saying, don't try to feed that. It is a never-ending cycle, and it doesn't lead to life. It actually leads to a lesser life, a half-life, and eventually just destruction altogether, because that wolf will devour you.

  Luke 12:13–21: The Rich Fool and the Question of What You've Actually Prepared

  Let's take a look at our passage for today. This is Luke 12:13 to 21. In Luke 12, there's a few things happening. I really would like you to turn there with me. If you don't have your own Bible with you, there's one right in front of you. I would encourage you to open it up. We're in the Gospels. This is Jesus teaching, and he is showing us both the good way, but in this case, he's showing us the way of greed and this broad way that he's encouraging us not to go down.

  It starts in verse 13. We'll start in 13, Luke 12. "There was someone in the crowd who said to him, teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. But he said to him, man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?"

  A couple things right off the bat. There's a guy coming — I can imagine someone, maybe one of you, coming to me and saying, hey pastor, tell my brother that he needs to split all of the possessions with me — and me saying, that's not my job. I'm not a judge, right? I'm not an arbitrator. But you did get one thing right. You called him teacher, rabbi. This is who he is, right? And so he takes this moment. He's like, I can't make this call for you. I'm no judge, but I am a teacher, and so I'm going to play my role here. I'm going to teach you something. The thing that you really need to be worried about anyway, because the inheritance is great and all. But as we talked about a couple weeks ago, you can gain the whole world and lose your soul. And this is what this man is about to do.

  And so Jesus goes on and he says to them, "Take care and be on your guard against all covetousness. For one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." The word covetousness here in some of your translations is going to read greed, and it is precisely the word we're talking about this morning. Pleonexia is the Greek here — greed. Be on guard against all greed. And then he makes it very clear: your life is not about your possessions.

  We have a saying in our family that is something along the lines of people over possessions. What matters most, right? If one of our kids breaks the toy of another child, yes, we try to make it right. But we try to also explain that people are more important than possessions. Greed will tell you the opposite. It will tell you that those possessions are really, really important to you, and you should be aggrieved and you should make sure you get that thing back. But people are always more important than possessions. And it turns out that one's life, as Jesus says, does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. And what I take him to be saying here is that the road to the fullness of life, to abundant life, is not about all the toys you acquire in this life. That is not the way. It may be fun to ride those jet skis. It may be fun to have all the newest and latest gadgets, but that is not the road to an abundant life.

  And in fact, he warns us that the greedy life is one that is quite the opposite. And as I started, it is that ravenous wolf that will never be fully satisfied. But he goes on here, and so he starts to tell a parable in verse 16.

  "He told them a parable saying, the land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, what should I do? I have nowhere to store my crops. And he said, I know, I will do this. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones. And there I will store all my grain and my goods."

  Now let's be honest. Let's try to take the side of this man for a minute. If you come into a significant amount of wealth, what would you do? How would you behave in this circumstance? If you found yourself suddenly living in the ancient world in first-century Galilee, and you're a rich man, and you have a bunch of crops, and there's a bumper crop year — well, you've got to find some place to store those, right? It's the prudent thing to do. And it seems like he's doing the right thing according to much of our logic today. Much of the logic I would even espouse.

  And I'll be honest, this sermon has been hard for me to pull together because there's this real fine line that sits between prudence on one hand — saving and being thoughtful about your future and making sure there's enough food in the barns for the years to come, which is certainly a good, godly thing — and then on the other side of the ledger is the sin we're talking about, which is greed, which is hoarding. And there might be people out there that actually need this food in that circumstance. And Jesus is clearly aiming at the sin side of all of this. And I don't want to take away the wisdom and the prudence side, but I do want us to get a little uncomfortable this morning and to ask ourselves, where are we hoarding when we could be giving? What is the status of our hearts as we build — whether it's our 401ks, our bank accounts, or our closets, or whatever it might be — what is the status of our hearts?

  There are a few places in your scripture that tell us that the love of money is the root of all evil. And we talked about this this morning in the Sunday morning Bible study, and we said that it's not that money is the root of all evil, but the love of it is, which is what Jesus is getting after all the time. He's always asking you, what do you love? Where's your heart with this? We could have said the same thing — actually, he could have, or scriptures kind of do — about any of these deadly sins. If we're talking about lust, the love of sex is the root of all kinds of evil. And it's true, it is. Or the love of food is the root of all kinds of evil. It kind of is, right? And so if we love things in the wrong way, watch out. But the scripture is pretty clear that there's something different about money. That there's something about money and possessions. We want to hoard it and we want to glom onto it. We want to make sure we have it.

  Jesus keeps going here and starts to explain a little bit why. And so in verse 19 he says, this is now the rich man — he gets called a rich fool, by the way — "I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat and drink and be merry."

  Again, I feel bad for this guy a little bit. He just wants to retire, just like the rest of us, right? He just wants to know that there's enough food and there's enough money in his bank account for him to get to the end of his life. And now he can eat and drink and be merry and go to Cancun when he wants to and go to Europe when he wants to and he can do all the things and live this full life. And then Jesus comes along and delivers some bad news. And he says, "God said to him, fool, tonight your soul is required of you, and the things that you have prepared, whose will they be?"

  And it's that part that should probably stop us. What have you prepared? We don't know the rest of the story. This is just a parable here. Jesus doesn't fill out the parable. But I take the assumption to be that this man was so focused in his life on the hoarding of goods and the hoarding of food and the hoarding of money that he didn't actually prepare other parts of his life for the things that matter. And he chose possessions over people. And he didn't give to those who were in need. And he didn't think about the things of God. And so Jesus says he dies this night and the soul is required of him. And he says, "So is the one who lays up treasure for himself but is not rich toward God." He has not been rich toward God like he should be.

  Matthew 6:24–34: You Cannot Serve Both God and Money

  Jesus tells something similar if we look in Matthew 6:24 and following. Keep your finger on the Luke passage, because I'm going to want to show you something in a minute. If you look at Matthew 6, this is the Sermon on the Mount. It's a classic Jesus teaching here about money and how to think about it all. And he says, "No one can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. He cannot serve God and money." Some of your translations say God and mammon.

  What Jesus is getting at in this passage, and I think in the other one too, in the Luke one, is that in life we choose who we trust. And Jesus is always asking, who do you have faith in? Do you trust me, Jesus? Not me, Eric. But do you trust me, or do you trust you? And when you toss your lot into greed, you are saying, I trust me. I trust me to hoard the goods, to have enough, to get myself to the end of it all. That's who I'm trusting. And Jesus is saying, I need you to trust me. I need you to trust God. The God of all abundance has more than enough to give. We sang all about it this morning, by the way. Beautiful songs, great choices. It's all about gratitude, about the generosity of the Father, about his willingness to meet every single need that we might have.

  But to live those lives is kind of hard, because the one thing we want is security. We want to know that everything is going to be okay. And Jesus is telling us you can trust the Father. He is a good, good Father, as we sang this morning.

  The Same Teaching Follows Both Passages: Don't Be Anxious, Seek First the Kingdom

  There's one little piece, and I said I wanted to show it to you. So hopefully you've got your fingers in Matthew 6 and in Luke 12. You see, Matthew 6 is this nice kind of teaching about money — and we didn't even read the parts before, but this is where he's saying, don't lay up treasures on earth, lay up treasures in heaven, right? And then the Luke passage we've already read. Both of them are followed by the exact same words of Jesus. They're words you've probably read before or heard about, and I'm going to read you the Luke version, but if you want to look at the Matthew version, you can see that they're the same teaching.

  And so Jesus finishes these two teachings on money with a teaching on anxiety. And he says it this way. "Therefore, I tell you, don't be anxious. Don't be anxious about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will put on."

  And this is exactly what greed is trying to do. It's trying to make you anxious. It's what the advertisers are doing on your social media, whether it's your television, whether it's the billboard as you drive down the street. They're trying to make you anxious to say, I don't actually have enough, right? Oh, if I just had that one more thing, then, then I'd be good. And Jesus is telling you, do not be anxious. Don't believe the advertisers. They are paid to lie to you. He's saying, don't be greedy. Don't give in to pleonexia or covetousness. Instead, don't be worried about what you'll eat or your body, about what you'll put on.

  "For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens. They don't sow or reap. They don't have money. They don't have barns or storehouses, but God feeds them. And how much more valuable are you than the birds? And which of you, being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Or the lilies — imagine how they grow. They don't toil, they don't spin, they don't collect money. But I tell you, even Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these. And if God clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today and tomorrow is thrown in the oven, how much more is he going to take care of your needs? Oh, you of little" — and here's the word — "faith."

  He wants our faith. He wants our trust. And greed is coming at you saying the opposite. Trust no one. Trust yourself. Hoard. You can do this. And Jesus is saying, no. Trust. Have faith in the Father. Do not seek what you are to eat or drink or be worried, for all the nations of the world seek after these things. This is the broad way. And your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek what? His kingdom. And then all these other things, they get added. Seek first his kingdom.

  Our Technology Is Designed to Feed the Deadly Sins, Not Fight Them

  Our technologies, as I've been saying, they tell us a very different story. They are not designed to aid you and to help you in righteousness. They are not designed to lessen your anxieties. They are not designed to help you with your greed problem, or your lust problem, or your gluttony problem, or any of these problems. Instead, they're designed to actually feed them all. And so I would encourage us to be careful. Very careful about how we spend our time online and on our devices, because they are feeding things that they should not be feeding. And they often do so unwittingly. We're blinded to them. We just think it's part of the world, but it should not be, and it need not be.

  The Tithe as a Weapon Against Greed

  As far as greed, though — if there's one way that the church has consistently, over time, talked about combating greed in this life, it's the tithe. It's the tithe. And I know there's a lot of bad press out there about churches and tithing and the greediness and the rampant misuse of funds or whatever's out there. I don't know what you've experienced. But the true heart of what the tithe really is, and what it's supposed to be, is a weapon against the greed that sits in all of us.

  And the weapon goes like this. The earth is the Lord's and everything in it. It is all God's. He created everything you've ever seen out here, everything you've ever smelled, touched, tasted — it's all God's. It was all created by God. You can take none of it with you, and everything you've received in your life, even no matter how hard you've worked in this life, it is still all a gift from God. That is step one.

  Step two is the tithe itself, to say, you know what? I'm going to give some of this back to God as a way of voting with your pocketbook to say, I don't want to be a person who hoards. I don't want to be a person that is so self-reliant that I don't need God. But instead to say, God, this was yours anyway, so I'm giving it back to you. That is what a tithe is. And we put 10% on it typically, because that's what the word tithe means, a tenth. But the truth is this: some people should be way higher than that. And for some of you at different stages, it might be lower. But the goal of all of us should be to notch that up some over time. To trust more, and to trust more, and to trust more. And to be generous givers — and not just to the church, but out in the world. So that when someone comes to you and says, I need X, you say yes.

  Luke 12 Closing: Fear Not, Little Flock — Where Your Treasure Is, There Your Heart Is Also

  Jesus concludes this whole Luke passage in a way that I quite like, and it digs down one more layer deeper about our fears and our anxieties and how greed undermines all of this, and what Jesus wants for us. And he says, "Fear not, little flock. For it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, give to the needy, provide yourselves with money bags that don't grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that doesn't fail, where no thief approaches, no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart is also."

  Let's pray. God our Father in heaven, we thank you for your many good gifts. You are teaching us the way of life, a way of abundant living, a way in which you shower your gifts upon us. Lord, our request this morning is that you teach us to be people of faith and trust, that we might trust you with all that we are, all that we own, all that we have in this life, and that we seek first the kingdom of heaven, and that we store up our treasures there. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

  South Run Baptist Church | 8712 Selger Drive, Springfield, VA 22153 | Sunday Worship at 11am Serving Springfield, Burke, West Springfield, Lorton, Alexandria, Fort Belvoir, and Franconia, Virginia. Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify