Avoid These

Well, we're on the eve of a new year.

And this is a time in which a lot of people will look at their lives and examine kind of where they are and then make some maybe resolutions, maybe that's too strong a word, just some uh kind of points of emphasis for the new year.

I I got to a point a few years ago, I'm you know old enough now where I've lived New Year's enough times that I've kind of said, you know, I'm I don't need to keep making New Year's resolutions.

For me, I should drink more water.

That's easy.

We all should, you know, that would be healthy.

And then my other thing is no more Mr.

Nice Guy.

That's kind of my uh my resolve.

That's a joke, by the way.

Um and uh you guys are like, what?

Um now what happens for a lot of us though is we'll come to kind of the eve of a new year, and what we'll do is we'll say, next year, here are some things that I would like to be true.

Some of us they'll be in the physical arena, we'll say, I'm going to work out more, I'm going to get in better shape, I'm going to eat healthier for the coming year.

And those are good goals for the new year.

Some of us will make goals around our own success.

We'll have a vision or an idea of saying, if I could get into this school, or if I can excel at this sport, or if I can master this instrument, if I can reach a new financial plateau, if we can set aside some money in the coming year, that would be kind of something that we think would enhance our lives.

Still, others of us would say what we really want is to have some kind of an improvement to the quality of our lives.

And so we may make goals around relationships.

Maybe for us we say I want to work less and be home more.

Or I want to take great trips and create great memories with my family, my friends, or maybe your goal centers around wanting to change a relationship, to move a relationship from a friendship to a romance, or improving the quality of a romance, or something like that.

But but we have a lot of goals.

In fact, I saw that the USA Today cited one study this last week that said that this year, people's desire for kind of what they want for the new year is not as much around all of those things as it is just to be a better person.

I thought that was interesting, just saying that people uh today are saying what I want is to contribute to the world more rather than just to improve my own quality of life.

Now, the Bible speaks to quality of life.

To be certain, the Bible has uh these grand themes that it addresses about eternity, about salvation, about purpose in life, about all of these things that matter immensely, but it also gives some very practical, tangible wisdom for day-to-day living about how to make your life, my life, better.

And so, what I'd like to do today, being on the eve of a new year, is I would like to look at a few verses in Proverbs, you heard them read, and talk about what we can do, what we can avoid that will help our life be better.

But but before we do this, I want to just say this, and that is it's really easy when you come to something like Proverbs to hear it and walk away saying, Well, these are all the things I should do.

And here's the the danger for us today, and that is what you'll hear is something that you'll assume is a bit like a TED talk with a Bible verse put on it.

And then there's a lot of teaching today in the church that that's really what it is.

There are self-improvement talks with a Bible verse saying, you can be the best version of you.

And here's some Bible verses.

Now go and improve yourself.

But if that's where we end up today, then we've missed the grander themes of the Bible because the grander theme of the Bible is not go be a better version of you, it's what Jesus Christ has done on your behalf and letting that motivate and change the way that you live.

So here's how we'll address this today.

I'm going to first go into the very very narrow, specific wisdom that Proverbs gives us in a couple of verses about things we can avoid.

And then I'm going to broaden back out to the grander themes of the Bible.

And so if you check out about three-quarters of the way through, you'll hear a TED talk with Bible verses.

But if you stay to the end, you'll hear the bigger themes of all that's involved in how we can arrange our lives.

So here's what we see in Proverbs.

The first thing I'm going to say in Proverbs chapter 1, verse 22, is that we're told to avoid simplicity.

Proverbs 1:22

Here's what it says.

How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?

And the word simple here is a word that can be translated naive.

In fact, the Hebrew word that underlies our English word can be translated young, naive, open-minded, open-minded to a fault, easily duped or led astray.

And it's used 14 times in the book of Proverbs.

And here's what this word is really connoting.

It's connoting somebody who believes the best about people or circumstances when believing the best is unwarranted or unwise.

Well, let me say that again.

A person who's simple believes the best about people or circumstances when believing the best is unwarranted or unwise.

Now, that doesn't maybe sound like much of an important definition.

But when you come to the New Testament, we're told in 1 Corinthians 13 that love always believes.

Now, 1 Corinthians 13 is the chapter that teaches us about love.

And what it basically does is it says, love is kind, love is patient, love is not easily offended or angered.

Love bears all things.

And it has all kinds of descriptions, and then it says, love always believes.

And one of the places we can get in trouble when it comes to understanding the Bible and applying it to our lives is when we too quickly look for a simple answer.

And what I mean by that is what we'll do is we'll sometimes come to our Bible and say, I want a very clear, direct thing that speaks to every situation.

But usually when we read our Bibles, what we find is that the Bible will say things that appear contradictory.

So in Proverbs, it says, How long will you simple people love your simple ways?

How long will you believe the best about every circumstance, every situation, and not take evidence into account?

And then at the same time it'll tell us that love believes everything.

So which is it?

Well, the answer is we have to use wisdom and discern the situation we're living in.

It is true that love believes the best about people and in believing the best about people brings the best out of people.

But it's also true that sometimes wisdom will say, I cannot continue to believe the best because all of the evidence shows me something different.

And when we come to that point, what we do is we move from simplicity to saying, now I'm going to have some form of discernment.

You know, there's a phrase that's used in our culture sometimes for somebody who is simple.

And it means, uh, or the phrase that we use sometimes is the phrase Pollyanna.

Have you heard that?

Talking about somebody who's a Pollyanna.

I was thinking of that and I was trying to remember where that came from, and I thought I knew, but I Googled it to make sure.

Do you know where that comes from?

There was a novel written in 1913 where the main character was Pollyanna, and she was an orphan, and she went from one bad situation to another, to another, to another, but she kept a positive attitude, so positive that in the end things worked out.

Now, what I find fascinating is the original story there is Pollyanna is a positive character because she believed and good things happened.

But now in our culture it's come to mean somebody who believes something when they don't have any good reason to believe anything.

And that's what it means to be simple.

Now, few of us think of ourselves as being simple.

In fact, I would guess if we went around this room and said, on a scale of one to ten, one being really wise and shrewd, ten being simple and naive, how many of us would give ourselves ten?

My guess is almost nobody here would go, oh yeah, I'm so easily duped, you know, I just that is me.

Most of us would say, no, I'm pretty shrewd.

But we know that people are easily duped and that people are simple.

And here's how we know timeshares.

Um, all right, I'm I'm kidding.

If you have a timeshare, you've probably figured out the system, game the system, and I'm the simple one.

But but but but here's uh a situation that happened to my wife and I years ago.

We were traveling, we were in Arizona, and we were going to Sedona, which is a beautiful place.

And when we're on our way to Sedona, we didn't have a hotel arranged.

Uh we were just driving up for the day and going to get a hotel and stay and hike and do some things.

And I saw a sign on the side of the road that said, uh, Sedona, place to stay, free, stop here.

So I said, All right, you know what, uh, we're we're up for an adventure.

So we pulled over and they were selling, uh, or not selling, they were giving away a free night if you sat through their presentation.

You've probably seen this or maybe you've done this, where you sit through 90 minutes and as a result, you get a free night or two at this place.

And we said, you know what?

Hey, 90 minutes of our time, free hotel room, we're in.

So we went and we got to this this resort kind of place in Sedona.

And we pulled in and it was an old campground, and as the story kind of unfolded, they had bought the campground, but the building restrictions kept them from building any buildings on this campground.

So now we're we're here and you know we kind of hear this.

And then they take us to the bungalow that we have, and it's a trailer on wheels in this kind of campground trailer park that's the timeshare.

Now, the next day, when we go to the 90-minute presentation, we get to the presentation, the guy starts to talk and he says, you know what, because of where we're located, we're actually the highest-rated timeshare in our company you can get.

So you can trade your rooms here that you buy cheap because it's a trailer, and you'll get the best rooms all over the world.

Now, you can call me a skeptic or whatever you want, but we didn't buy.

But you know, a lot of people did.

And here's what what my point is we may not think that we're simple or naive, but there are times where many of us believe the best about people or situations when it's unwarranted or it's unwise.

And sometimes people spiritualize it.

What they do is they say, Well, God told me.

And what they want to do is they want to avoid the hard work of discernment, of prayer, of Bible reading, of Bible study, of seeking godly counsel and bringing together all of that information with experience and saying, What's the best decision?

And they just want to say, Well, God told me.

Have you ever met somebody who did the whole, well, I met somebody and you know, ten minutes later God told me they were the one for me to marry?

I doubt it.

I'm not saying God doesn't sometimes speak in dramatic ways, but what I'm saying is sometimes what that is, is it's a shortcut to discernment.

And sometimes people will make huge decisions about their lives, moving and taking a new job, or going into business with somebody, and they'll say, Well, God told me, and what they're really doing is they're being simple, they're avoiding the hard work of discernment, and instead they're simply saying, I just want the shortcut, and I don't want the information that's counter to what I want to believe.

Because I want my result, I want my outcome, and I'm willing to overlook evidence to get to my outcome.

Now, in the book of Proverbs, the answer to this is to have prudence or discernment.

Here's what we see in Proverbs chapter 8, verse 5.

Proverbs 8:5

We're told this.

It says, You who are simple, gain prudence.

You who are foolish, set your hearts on it.

So the answer, Proverbs says, is to get prudence, or sometimes you could see that as discernment.

And what that's talking about is looking at the reality of what is in front of you, looking at facts.

Not just simply saying, I believe the best, I choose to go on, but believing what is is obvious, but filtering it through the word of God so that you get God's perspective on the situations in your life.

That you don't just simply say, I'm just going to go and do whatever it is that I want to do.

Now, there's one place in Proverbs where this moves from being a general kind of principle to something very specific.

And let me just read this to you, because this is probably the place where many of us may feel like we're not simple, not naive.

But it's interesting that this is what Proverbs singles out.

Proverbs verse 7 of chapter 7 and following.

I saw among the simple, there's the word, I saw among the naive.

I noticed the young man, a youth who had no sense.

He was going down the street near the corner, her corner, walking along in the direction of her house.

At twilight, as the day was fading, as the dark of the night set in.

Then out came a woman to meet him.

She was dressed like a prostitute with crafty intent.

She is unruly and defiant.

Her feet never stay at home.

Now in the street, now in the squares, at every corner she lurks.

She took hold of him and kissed him, and with brazen face said, Today I fulfilled my vows.

I have food from my fellowship offering at home.

So I came out to meet you.

I looked for you and have found you.

I've covered my bed with cloths of linen from Egypt.

I've perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.

Come, let's drink deeply of love till morning.

Let's enjoy ourselves with love.

Now, what's she doing?

The seductress here, and it could go either way in gender.

But what she's doing is she's coming and saying, Look, we've done our worship.

Now let's go make love.

And here's why Proverbs calls this simple.

Is because when we sexually step outside of God's bounds, talking about sex inside the bounds of marriage, what we're doing is we're basically saying, I don't want to believe that there's consequences.

I don't want to hear God's perspective on it.

I want to do what I want to do, the way I want to do it, with and whom I want to do it.

So I'm just going to believe that all is good.

And here's what we read just a little later.

Verse 22.

All at once he followed her like an ox going to the slaughter, like a deer stepping into a noose till an arrow pierces his liver, like a bird darting into a snare.

Little knowing that it will cost him his life.

Now, you may think that that's overly dramatic, that Proverbs is overly dramatic at this point, but here's what he's basically saying.

He's saying, don't be naive, don't be simple.

Sex has an incredible power in your life to take you away from God and to cause you to make foolish choices.

Sometimes what people will do is they'll date and they'll start to sleep together, and they think that they're expressing love to one another, but what they're really doing is blinding themselves to what will be a bad marriage.

And so what Proverbs is doing here is it's saying, don't be simple, don't be naive about this, but about anything.

Don't just simply believe the best about people and situations, but have prudence, have wisdom about your life.

So that's one thing that we're told to avoid.

Here's a second.

We're told to avoid scoffing or mocking.

Here's where we see this, verse 22.

How long will mockers delight in mockery?

And mocking and scoffing, I'm using interchangeably here.

They're in the same root word in Hebrew, and they're used throughout Proverbs and the Psalms quite a bit to denote somebody who is cynical, somebody who is snarky, somebody who's sarcastic, somebody who is always putting other people down.

That's what it means to be a mocker, a scoffer.

In fact, the message translates this cynics.

How long will you love your cynicism?

And what this is is really referring to is somebody who won't enter into dialogue with other people, but instead uses every occasion, instead of to believe the best, to believe the worst.

And in believing the worst, looks at other people and basically talks them down or says, they aren't good like I'm good, like my friends are good.

Now we see an example of this almost every night on cable news.

If you watch cable news at all, what happens is you see people who will rant and snark about the other side and say, our side is right, that side is just has horrible views.

And there isn't a lot of real dialogue.

There's an attempt to kind of play to the base that's already established and to say, I'm going to score points with my base by trying to make you look bad, rather than let's have a substantive debate.

Here's where we see this again in Proverbs, Proverbs verse 29, chapter 29, verse 8.

Mockers stir up a city, but the wise turn away in anger.

It is a wise person who goes to court, if a wise person, not a wise person, if a wise person goes to court with a fool, the fool rages and scoffs.

There's that word scoff, and there is no peace.

What's that saying?

That when you go with somebody who's a scoffer into a serious issue, that they won't have a real debate, they won't seek truth, what they'll do is simply try to reinforce their view over and over again.

Now you may say, okay, that doesn't really apply to me.

I'm not on cable news.

But scoffing is a way of viewing the world.

It's a way of viewing people that basically says, I'm superior to them.

And what it does is it becomes a self-confirming bias because you see somebody who is always doing something that you don't like, so you talk about it until you become confirmed in your bias against them.

And what it does is it moves you to demonize people who are on the other side and to be ultimately guilty of groupthink, because what you do is you sit around with people who agree with your view and you tear down people who don't see the world like you see it.

Here's where we see this also Proverbs chapter, or I'm sorry, Psalms chapter 1, verse 1.

Psalms 1:1

It says this Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the company of mockers.

Mockers, scoffers, same word there that's used in Proverbs.

What's he saying?

When you sit with mockers, you won't be blessed, you won't be happy.

What you'll do instead is you'll poison the whole world because the whole world will seem like it's bad while you sit around mocking everybody else.

That's what he's talking about here.

Paul David Tripp writes about something that's similar to this.

He wasn't writing in reference to this, but he says this.

So much of our disappointment in relationships is not because we have an unrealistic view of others, but because we have an unrealistic view of ourselves.

When we are harsh, impatient, critical, irritated, judgmental, curt, or unkind with others, we are revealing more about what we think of ourselves than what we think about them.

And listen to this.

He says this when you think you are righteous, you expect others to be righteous as well.

So you basically become demanding, judgmental, and constantly disappointed.

Now, very few people who are scoffers, who are snarky, who are mockers see themselves as righteous.

They see those two things as being completely separated.

But let me just connect what those are.

To be righteous means that you see yourself and the people like you as always being in the right, as having the best possible view.

And so what happens when you see yourself as righteous, you can't help but be critical, to be easily disappointed, to be judgmental about other people, other groups, other perspectives in this world.

And that's what happens when we become scoffers.

I find that that one of the times when I'm most likely to be snarky, um, scoffing at people, is in extended family gatherings.

Um in fact, uh, let me be even more specific.

The times I'm most likely to be be snarky are at my wife's extended family gatherings.

And so I'll get together with kind of my my extended family, her extended family.

And what I find is sometimes it's hard for me not to want to make little comments that are just kind of incendiary.

Uh uh, you could say they're snark bombs, kind of a thing, where you're just kind of throwing something in there and letting it kind of explode around people.

Now, now sometimes I'll do that for my own entertainment, admittedly.

I'll walk into a room where I know there's people with uh you know strong political views on other sides, and I'll just say, hey, what do you think about this?

And I'll watch them start to go, and then I'll walk out, and it's like, ah, that's kind of funny.

Um, yes, this is your pastor confessing.

And sometimes it's it's bigger than that, though.

Sometimes what I want is I want to say, you know what, I'm not the kind of person who gets hooked into political discourse over stuff like that.

I'm not the kind of person who.

And do you hear what it is?

It's my own superiority, which is really masking an inferiority at the end of the day.

And here's what I know about me.

To the degree that I'm living in the reality of grace, I don't feel as much of a need to deliver a snark bomb.

But but when I'm not living in the experience of grace myself, what happens is then I want to feel righteous.

I wouldn't use that word, and maybe you would never use that word, but I want to feel good about kind of who I am and how I do things, and that I do things better than they do things.

That I would never do, and then fill in the blank.

If I say it right here, it would be snarky, right?

And scoffing, so I'm gonna leave it alone.

If I don't do what they do, then I'm better.

And what I'm doing in those moments is I'm revealing that I'm trying to make something of myself.

And what Proverbs says is you won't be blessed, happy, you won't live well if you're always snarking at people because you'll miss the good in people, you'll miss the good in the world, and you'll always be about what isn't good.

I heard an author once talk about something similar.

He said he was on a plane flying to a city, and when he was on the plane, he saw a father come on with three children, and the children were just kind of unruly.

They were loud, they were all over the plane.

And he said, you know, he looked at the other passengers, they looked at him, kind of did the knowing eye roll, like, can you believe these people?

But he said, as the as the flight took off, it got worse and worse.

The kids were on the seats, down and, you know, moving all around, really loud, and the fellow passengers and he started making comments to each other.

And then he finally said, you know, I just couldn't take it anymore.

I thought somebody has to say something.

So I went up to the man, I just said, Sir, your kids are really annoying all of the other passengers.

Do you think you could do something to help them get control?

And he said, the man looked at him and said, I am so sorry.

He said, You're right.

I haven't paid any attention to him.

He said, You see, their mother just died and we're flying to the city to retrieve her body.

And his point was this: he said, usually when we sit in judgment, when we're critical, when we're caustic about other people, we don't actually know what's going on in their world.

What we do instead is we assume that we know, that we have everything figured out, and then we say, Oh, you know, that's why they did it that way.

But we rarely really know.

And so some of our scoffing, our mocking, our snarkiness, our sarcasm, our cynicism is rooted in our own desire to feel good about ourselves.

Like I'd never be the kind of person who would let my kids run amok on an airplane.

I'd never do that.

But we don't really always know.

So Proverbs tells us to avoid simplicity, it tells us to avoid snarkiness or scoffing, mocking, but it also tells us to avoid, I'm going to use the word hubris here.

And we see this in the end of verse 22, it says, and fools hate knowledge.

So I could have said foolishness, but here's why I use the word hubris.

In Hebrew, in Proverbs and in Psalms, there are three main words that are translated to our English word fool.

So when we get the word fool in English, it's generally a composite of these three ideas.

It's a composite of the word kisel, which is the most common word for fool, which means one who lacks judgment.

Sometimes it's the word evil, which means hardness or an unwillingness to listen.

And then sometimes it's the word nebal, which means one who disregards God, one who has no time, no, no tolerance for the things of God.

And here's what's being communicated and why these three words are important, because what it's saying is that a fool is somebody who is not willing to be challenged, not willing to be corrected, who's not willing to have somebody tell them what they need to hear.

That's what a fool is.

In other words, they're unteachable.

Now, there are probably other dimensions to being a fool, but this is one of the big ones.

In fact, Henry Cloud, in his book called Necessary Endings, he talks about when sometimes we need to end relationships.

And he says there are basically three kinds of people in Proverbs.

Now, there are many more, but he tries to reduce it.

He says, there's the wise, somebody who lets light in, somebody who takes instruction and applies it to their life.

By the way, we could say that a simple person is somebody who takes in light that they shouldn't take in.

Then there's the fool, which he says is a person who rejects all light and says, I don't want any information unless it's pleasing to me.

And then there's what he calls the evil person.

And the evil person, he says, is somebody who has bad intentions for somebody else.

And his thing is when you have a person who's wise, what you want to do is give them as much light as possible because they'll respond to information.

He says, for fools, what you want to do is give them consequences and give them boundaries because they won't respond just to more information, to another pep talk, to another little little conversation.

And then he says, when you deal with evil people, bring lawyers, guns, and money, because that's all that will help.

And here's what happens when we're foolish, and that is we end up in a place where what we're doing is we're saying, I only want to hear what I believe tells me good things about where I am and where I'm going.

There's a story in 1 Kings 12 about Rehoboam.

He's a king.

And when he becomes king, his father had been king, and the nation's been through a lot of civil war and different wars, and he feels like he needs to establish himself.

So he says, I'm going to raise taxes and I'm going to put laws down that establish my kingdom even more.

And his father's advisors, who he inherited, basically say to him, That's a bad idea.

If you do that, the people who come under your rule, they will rebel against you and your kingdom will be short-lived.

And what he does is he says, Well, I don't like your advice.

So he goes and he gets his friends that he grew up with, and he says, You come to the palace.

I want your advice.

And I don't think this is about age as much as it is about a perspective.

And his friends come to his palace and they basically say, You should totally tax the people.

You should show that you're in charge.

In fact, there's a fairly vulgar statement right in the middle that basically has him saying, You know what?

I'm going to show everyone that I am the boss of this place.

And I like your advice.

And so he taxes the people, he establishes his rule with great authority, and what happens is that the people rebel, and as they rebel, he loses his kingdom very quickly.

And I think the point, at least part of the point, there's more to this, but part of the point of this is that if we just simply listen to people who are like us and like us, we'll be led astray.

But sometimes we need to listen to people who are unlike us and don't like us in order to really get perspective.

Because that's what the unwise kind of person does, is they say, I only want people who are going to tell me what I want to hear, people who like me and people who are like me.

That was what Rehoboam did.

His peers, his friends, they were like him and they already liked him and didn't want to disappoint him, so they told him what he wanted to hear.

But somebody who's wise will be able to say, I need to be challenged, I need to be corrected, I need to hear what I don't see, and be willing to take it in.

Now I mentioned that if we stop right here, what you could do is you could say, okay, new year, I'm gonna go about my new year, and here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to try to add to my list of resolves, stated or unstated, that I won't be simple, I won't be naive, I'm gonna get discernment this year.

I'm going to be a person who's not as snarky, not as not as full of scoffing, I'm going to be somebody who's kinder and gentler.

And I'm going to be a person who takes in insight.

But here's what would probably happen.

And that is, like many of our resolves, you would maybe start the year, maybe make it two weeks, maybe two months, maybe, maybe a good chunk of the year.

But sooner or later, those kinds of resolves that are built on just saying I want to be a better person, fail.

And here's why they fail, because they're built on two things typically: fear or pride.

Fear that says, if I don't do this, my life won't go as well as it could, so therefore I'm going to do this because I want good things in my life.

Or pride.

I'm the kind of person who isn't snarky.

I'm the kind of person who would never drop a snark bomb on my in-laws like Kurt did.

You know, I'm the kind of person who's not naive.

I'm the kind of person who hears, and so it's built on fear and pride.

Now, I'm not suggesting that awareness of where we can improve and self-discipline to get better are not good things.

They are.

That's how we make improvements.

And some of us would do well to say, I'm going to try to improve my physical fitness, or I'm going to try to improve my financial wherewithal this year, or my relational world.

But what I'm saying is this, and that is the grander themes in the Bible take us to this idea that our heart doesn't just get constrained and change when we decide to change it, but it changes as God melts it, as we see who he is.

And here's what I mean.

In John chapter 1, verse 1, we're told that the word became flesh.

John 1:1

And when we read that in English, it sounds like just a nice idea, but word is the Greek word logos, and it means one who has wisdom.

And so what it's saying is the wisdom, the concepts that rule the universe became flesh.

In other words, God in Jesus Christ became the very embodiment of wisdom.

He became what it is that we need.

And what this means is that we're simple-minded, we're naive if we think that we can achieve wisdom without ever turning to the God of the universe.

That what we're doing is we're basically saying, you know what?

I'm going to be good in my life and I'm going to hope that one day it will all work out.

That God, however God is, wherever God is, whatever God is like, will look at my life and say, you did okay, rather than coming to the incarnate God, Jesus Christ, and savoring who he is so that he redirects my life.

If you come here often, you probably hear me pray on many occasions, Lord, help my words today to reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis.

Well, what happens when you and I begin to see Jesus as ultimate rather than our lives as ultimate, rather than let me make my life better and have Jesus help me, is we begin to reflect him in content and in tone and in emphasis.

We begin that process of change.

But it doesn't start by saying, I don't want to be simple.

It starts by saying I'm going to love what God loves.

Now, some of us will say, okay, you know, simple hasn't been my problem, but but I can be kind of snarky, kind of scoffy, mocking at people.

What we need to do is we need to see the one who was mocked on our behalf.

Because what Jesus did when he went to the cross was he destroyed any reason for me to ever feel superior to anybody else because he made us all even and all in need, and at the same time took away any inferiority.

Because I no longer have any reason to say I'm not loved.

Instead, I can say I'm loved by the God of the universe.

What he's done on my behalf has allowed me to live without any need to throw around a little bit of superiority.

And this is why I said earlier, I can tell how much in the reality of grace I'm living by how much I'm willing to be caustic in different situations in my life.

And some of us will hear this and say, you know, I do push away new information that I don't like.

I don't want anyone to tell me what I don't want to hear.

But you see, when you have become secure in Jesus Christ, then you can say, I can take whatever bad news you have to offer.

Because whatever you say about me that's unflattering, whatever's said about you that's unflattering, it's worse than we think.

That's what the doctrine of sin teaches us.

Is that if you say, hey, you didn't get this right, you missed on this, you you somehow are off.

Then I can say, yeah.

And it's worse than you even know.

But in that, I can also say, but I'm more loved because of what God has done in Jesus Christ.

And do you see what that does?

Is it opens me up, opens you up to be able to say, you can tell me what you have to tell me because I can receive your news because I am secure in what Jesus Christ has done on my behalf.

And what that'll do, if you and I get that, is it will change us so that we begin not to have to say, oh, I don't want to be snarky, I don't want to be simple, I don't want to be full of hubris, but instead, as God changes us, those things will melt away and we'll begin to embrace the better life that God has for us.

And when we do it as a community of people, what it means is that we won't think about things simply in our world.

This is part of why we're doing the series in January on agnosticism, racism, sexism, materialism, is we want to think deeply about those things.

It means that as a community, we won't have any sense of superiority to people who do things differently, but we'll be willing to learn and to hear and to consider what other people have to say.

Because we're secure in what God has done on our behalf.

So we're going to just take this moment to celebrate communion together.

And so our team's gonna come back in just a moment and lead us in a song.

And what I would love to invite you to do if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, is you can come to the front and the back, you can go to the balcony, and you can come to the prayer rails as well.

But when you come, just take the bread, dunk it in the wine, and just maybe today say, God, thank you that you, through Jesus Christ, have made it so that I don't need to keep asserting myself.

But you've done for me what I could never do.

And if you're here today and maybe you you you're saying, you know, I've I've always kind of thought that the way that I made my way with God was by just improving myself.

And maybe today is the day that you for the first time have said, you know what, I'm a person who doesn't do things perfectly, and I need a savior.

What the song will say that we're about to sing is that if we come to the altar, come to the place of surrender, he will always receive.

And so maybe it's just your day to say, God, I'm done trying to improve myself to gain acceptance, but instead I'm going to receive acceptance, and in that let you change my heart, and that'll change the trajectory of my life.

Father, we pray today that you would help each one of us here just to, as we enter a new year, enter it as people who are responding to your grace day by day and living differently because of it.

And we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.