Beyond The Message: We Need to Talk About the Skipped Verses

Welcome to Beyond the Message, a midweek space where we continue the conversation from Sunday's sermon, unpacking context, exploring your questions, and growing as we listen, learn, and follow Jesus together.

Well, welcome back to the Beyond the Message podcast.

My name is Grant Harris, and I have Pastor Aidan Wivell joining me today.

Aidan preached here at Windsor on Sunday, and this podcast is our opportunity to go a little bit further than what we did on Sunday to unpack some of the themes around that and to discuss, I guess, what was on the preacher's heart around that.

We continue to unpack the Gospel of Luke last Sunday, and Aidan delivered a message called Ode Nothing, Given Everything.

You covered two parables from Luke chapter 17, verses 7 to 10 and 11 to 19.

Luke 17:7–10

Let me give a little bit of a summary from my perspective of what it was.

The first parable was called the parable of the unworthy servant.

And then the second one, actually, you gave a title to, a different title that was in most of our Bibles, The Grateful Samaritan.

I guess both of them, if we combine them, kind of confront our sense of entitlement and ultimately invites us to have a posture of gratitude in our hearts for what Christ has done for us.

And so that's where your title ends up.

God owes us nothing, yet in Christ He has given us everything.

I liked how you described and unpacked that sense of duty, which sounds like a negative when we think about duty in our discipleship journey.

You talked about all the ordinary things of life being part of our discipleship and how that contributes to us serving Christ in, I guess, the ordinary moments of our lives, which is quite confronting and challenging for us to think about.

And you challenged us to think about, I guess, our gratitude to God in the midst of a world where we can sometimes feel a little bit entitled, probably, like we are owed stuff, and our world constantly tells us that if we work hard, we will get stuff.

Whereas God says, I've given you everything in Christ, and how does your gratitude fit into that?

So two kind of confronting parables, which continues a line of confronting parables that we've been looking in.

Aiden, what was on your heart as you thought about this message in your preparation?

I guess ultimately, what did you feel like you really wanted to communicate?

Um, yeah.

Uh I was traveling while I was preparing, so it was one of those reading the verses, looking at the section, and there were kind of three distinct blocks of the passage in Luke, and I was reading them on the plane, trying to work out where to cover what to do.

Uh it was all great and all teachable, uh, but I guess uh I as I sort of put it together, it just felt like too much.

And I I had the first section, which we'll maybe talk about in a little bit, I think verses one to six of the chapter that were instructions around sin and repentance and and life in community.

And I actually wrote like a good chunk of a sermon on it, and then had to do that hard thing of like uh cut that out, dump it in another word document, uh, keep it in case I need it.

Yeah, but actually I got to focus on these two, which was the um unworthy servant.

And the second one actually is is a healing account, it's not a parable, I may have described it like that, but um, it's actually uh an actual account of a healing.

Um so then focus on those two, and that kind of seemed to circle around that owed nothing, grateful for everything, mindset that connected those two, and then yeah, that posture of like gratitude for all that God's given us in uh pushing against entitlement, um, and the the duty aspect as well was the main thing for me.

I almost I really was tempted to call it call of duty for for those who like gaming and card and that reference had to fight everything in me not to call it call of duty.

Um but that idea of like the everyday faithfulness and the fact that we owe like it's not it's not so generous of me to give God time.

I owe that to him, he's given me everything.

He's my life is his.

So if I volunteer time or give money or take the lesser route or identify with the vulnerable, it's it's not like something that I'm being so generous to God, it's actually what I owe him.

Uh and I wanted to highlight that because it does sound kind of negative or transactional, yeah.

Um, but to push against that.

But the fun the funny part is we talk about the everyday faithfulness and the ordinary moments, and it's easy to say, uh, but then when you do it when you're living in your own washing the dishes or doing stuff, it doesn't feel as kind of inspiring.

And Monday morning or yesterday, I was coming to church and stopped to pick up some stuff on the supermarket on the way there, uh, and Rio was sick and had a diaper explosion, a nappy explosion, and I'm in the back uh of the car in the boot at Woolworths and Sunny Nook changing his nappy while people go and do their shopping, like trying to rush to get.

And I'm like, these are the ordinary moments of life where your faithfulness is kind of like where God is with you in the ordinary, and I'm like, okay, this is very ordinary.

Grateful that you have a son.

Yes, exactly.

What can I think that you can change?

Totally.

Yeah, so perspective and gratitude, easy to say, but harder to do it in those moments.

Yeah, yeah.

What I love about what you said is that the job of a pastor isn't arrive at work, go home at night.

You were talking about, I'm thinking about this when I'm flying, I'm thinking about this when I'm yeah, you know, traveling and the wrestle that we have when we are looking at scripture, not just for pastors, it really should be for anyone, the wrestle of what applies to me and how do I work that out.

You did highlight one thing that several people have asked us about.

Um, we've missed sections.

We're doing a section, well, a series through the Gospel of Luke, but there are little sections that we are missing out as we go through.

We're not doing it verse by verse.

You in this message missed out chapter 17, verses 1 through 6, which has some travel uh challenging things in them.

Why are we doing that?

Why are we missing bits out?

Why did you miss that bit out?

Yeah, uh is it for me?

Like I said, it was it was just like I couldn't cover all of it, and I've tried to do that in the past and because I wanted to cover the verses, uh, and then just each section, you can't go into as much detail as you want to.

Uh, and it felt like I'd preached three different sermons.

So yeah, it was it's a quite late in the piece I decided to not include it, and that was just so I could focus more on the other parts.

Um yeah, nothing wrong with those verses, obviously, and that could be a sermon in itself.

You're not missing things because they're too hard.

Nah, I don't think so.

Um yeah, not in that case.

Uh it is tempting sometimes.

I I think just for time, for yeah, the I mean, in even in preaching class and what we're taught, I they sort of said that like if you're doing exegetical, don't let the section get too long.

You know, like you want to keep it to like 10-15 verses, maybe, because it's really hard once you go 20, 30 verses to go to that level of detail.

You're not gonna look at the Greek word for everything in each verse.

So just a matter of how many verses in the time.

There wasn't like a for this time, there wasn't like a real sense, like for our community, it needs to be the unworthy servant.

Now I d I can't say that I had that specifically.

Yeah, it would just if if it sort of felt stronger and it linked well with the the final component as well.

But um something we've all had to do, and the week before, I think you actually mentioned there were some verses that you weren't able to cover.

Yeah.

What led you to do that in that session?

Well, interesting.

Uh firstly, a word that you mentioned in there that might be new to some people, exegetical.

Um, as preachers, we kind of are familiar with that term.

When we are exegeting scripture, it's a word that basically means we're trying to get out of scripture what it says to us.

So exegetical preaching is kind of looking at a bunch of verses and saying, what's it saying to us?

Um and so when we're going through a book like this, it's called kind of exegeting, we're exegeting it, we're trying to see what's it saying to us and how's that working?

Um, so you know, anyone can do exegesis when they're kind of not just preachers, anyone can do that when you're looking at scripture and trying to understand it.

That's what exegesis is, a word that's a little bit of Christian ease, uh, particularly in our preaching world.

Um and yeah, secondly, you're right.

I mean, I missed out uh uh a line uh well a couple of verses actually a couple of weeks ago, and people had said to me, Did you avoid that because it was too hard?

I'll read it to you.

It was Luke chapter 16, verse 18.

Luke 16:18

It says, Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

So a couple of people said, Well, that's just straight up.

Why did you miss that?

And for me, it was because in the wider chapter 16, Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees and about their hearts, and there's that little section in my Bible, it has a little title Additional Teachings, which it's not because it just continues on.

But Jesus is speaking specifically to the Pharisees, the keepers of the law, around why effectively unpacking that, they'd made it easy to divorce people, but Jesus is challenging them around their covenant commitments to one another.

Um, so he's just using an extreme example with the Pharisees saying, Well, you can't make you can't stick to the law here and then make this easy for yourself because it suits you.

Where's your commitment to the bigger purpose and ultimately to the law or or God's purposes, God's kingdom?

So on the face of it, you could read that verse and say, Well, that's clear cup, we just apply that to our lives.

But again, it's the exegesis part of that is saying, Who's he writing it to and why is he saying that?

And that was to Pharisees, keepers of the law, questioning them about their commitment when they alter some of the the hard things to live up to.

So again, for me, it was like, man, I mean, I could speak about that all day.

Um, that's a challenge in itself, but I decided in the context of that message that yeah, we'll just kind of the bigger purpose was achieved through the parables that we talked about.

Yeah.

So yeah.

It's interesting as we read scripture, I guess getting our our heads around what what that means to look at the bigger message of scripture.

Yeah.

One of the things that is really strong in this particular passage is around gratitude.

And on Sunday, for those that weren't there, we followed the message with some songs.

Yes.

We had communion and you encouraged us to think about our relationship with God and how gratitude does come into our lives.

In a world that is focused around us and a world that tells us that if like I said earlier, if we just work hard, we get stuff, and so our life is about getting stuff.

How do we develop a posture of gratitude in the ordinary?

I mean, maybe how did you develop that posture of ordinary while you're changing Rio Snappy in the back of a car and stunning at Woolworths car park?

How do we actually breathe that into our lives?

Um yeah, uh a great question that takes a good time to think about the answer for in Woolworths.

It was more like uh with Rhea, it was more it was like in my mind because I'd preached on it, and I'm like, okay, this is an example of an everyday moment.

Um I I think you can like gratitude is talked about a lot now.

Like in Christian circles, in secular circles, I feel like gratitude is one of those things that is really celebrated for the benefits that it has.

It doesn't necessarily transfer into everybody's mindset, but at least the idea of having a gratitude journal is actually something that you could walk into wickles and it will be there.

You know, that idea of being thankful is actually quite popular in culture, even though we're we're in a culture that does push us to consume and to buy more and to want more and to covet and um envy other people's stuff.

There's there's kind of like recognition that gratitude is a good thing.

So I I think that's great.

Uh one person who inspires me with this is my dad.

My dad has like this little gym downstairs at his house.

It's it's a very humble setup, but he's he's kind of carved out this space and he's got a little row machine down there and his little home gym.

And on the wall, he's he uses a stencil to put up two words, and it's um gratitude and contentment, which aren't kind of words that you'd normally associate with like your gym environment because you you want to be like chasing after the goals and like getting the gains, and uh but I just love that my dad has like this little humble gym, um, and um he has those words gratitude and contentment, and um, so I mean, for me, that's like an example of someone who's close to me who I see that in his life.

Um, so that helps me to kind of I guess try to model what I see in his life.

So the principle from there would be like if you're around people who are always like envying the next thing or wanting the next thing, you're gonna probably be like that as well because you're surrounded by people who are always on to the next.

Whereas if you're surrounded by people who are like, regardless of what they have, it doesn't matter whether they're wealthy or or poor, but their posture is one of gratitude for the things they have, contentment, celebrating the good things.

I think that's contagious.

So you're with people who are, isn't it such a great day?

Oh, isn't this just a beautiful title?

And like I think of people who I know who are like that and it just rubs off on you.

Whereas you can be with people who are always focusing on negative or what what the lack is, and that that can creep into you as well.

So maybe who you surround yourself with that's not where I was thinking I was gonna go with that answer, but yeah, my example of of dad um has inspired me.

Did you want to add to that?

Well, firstly, love what you said about his dad.

I mean, I don't call him dad, I call him Richard.

Yeah, good job, Richard.

That's uh I love that.

I love I didn't know that about him.

I think that's really a great model for us to follow.

And I often say to people, maybe don't have a home gym, it's like maybe you got a post-it note and you put some words on your bathroom mirror in the morning that kind of says gratitude and contentment, or you put your favorite scripture up there.

I always take the verse and I forget where it's from, I should probably know it, but it talks about prayer, but it says by prayer and and petition or by perseverance, there's lots of passages that talk about that.

I think it's something that we foster in our lives ultimately.

And I'm not saying it gets easier, and I've had to work through this a lot.

I was driving this morning on my way to work out in the country, I did drop something off, and there were some big new houses being built out coastal ways where I was.

And I have to look at my heart and say, nice houses, but I'm like, I'm so full of gratitude for what I have.

And it's nothing like that.

But I would say in my life, the comparison trap has been something I have to watch very carefully, certainly been a trap that I have fallen into in the past, and something that I have to be aware of.

Yeah.

And I think in our culture, that's such a big thing.

And I would say gratitude is something, yeah, definitely for us to think about to find ways to build it into our lives.

It's a spiritual discipline, a spiritual practice to keep building.

And, you know, my story, and I've probably shared it before, goes right back to watching the Fijian Rugby Sevens team when way before I was a pastor and they had Philippians 4.11 on their on their shirt.

And I just it was one of my first times of doing exegesis, to be honest.

I was probably mid-20s, and I was like, what does it actually mean when you look up that?

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

And it was my first time of reading a little bit wider and thinking, this is about contentment, which means it doesn't matter if they win or lose, they can be content.

Like I can do contentment because Christ strengthens me to do that.

And I'll never forget that because it was one of my early lessons around saying, okay, contentment is something to learn.

Paul describes it.

Yeah.

I have learnt the secret of that.

Um, it's a process, it's a learning, it's an application of my heart.

So I you can remember what the weather was like when I watched that.

It was early, it was a Hong Kong Sevens.

Um, I was watching it at my house in Wellington at that time, and it's just left an indelible mark.

No, thank you to Domichi uh's.

Thanks to them, and thanks for wearing wearing a verse on there.

Um you mentioned the comparison trap, and I was just thinking about that, and I just wanted I wondered, because like you we can we can compare ourselves, and naturally we we often compare ourselves to those who have more or have newer or better or um things that we want, and it's kind of encouraged, you know, comparison is a thief of joy, or we shouldn't compare ourselves to others.

Um but I first it's kind of human nature, and I I often I don't know if this is good, this is just asking, but like I my mindset is often I compare myself to those who have less, you know, say you go on an exposure trip or something like that.

Um so then that helps me to have gratitude because I'm like, yeah, even you say like about changing Rio Snappy, there's so many people who would love to have a a son who who haven't been able to for whatever reason.

Uh is that appropriate?

Like that that helps me to feel grateful.

But am I should I not be comparing myself to people like well that's a dead question?

Yeah.

I would say we need to work that out in our hearts.

I think the comparison trap both ways can be dangerous.

But I think the bigger principle is being grateful for what we have.

But of course, as I spoke about a few weeks ago, and this also comes out in the Gospel of Luke, stewardship of that becomes the issue then.

It's not saying, hey, I'm grateful that I have more than others.

Yeah.

It's like, okay, God, you've allowed me to be in that position.

What would you have me do with that?

True.

So I think there's a gratitude that comes into whatever station we're life in.

And and a couple of weeks ago, I emphasized it several times in my message to say wealth isn't in itself is not a problem.

It's in some ways you could argue it's neutral.

Um, it's what we do with it and what we do with what we have.

So being gratitude, being grateful for what we have, and then and then asking very quickly that that question, okay, God.

Yeah.

What would you have me steward this with?

That makes me think of you know that verse that you've uh uh come over as part of that, or you know, to whom much is given, much is expected.

So it's like if compared to others, I have these resources or Absolutely, you know, what is then expected of me because I have that.

Yeah, and I would say, because I'm a bit older than you, uh, I've wrestled with that.

I still wrestle with that.

I still wrestle with, I mean, if I'm honest, I live a privileged life.

Um and I wrestle with what that privilege means and how I steward that.

I still wrestle with that.

And I hope I never stop wrestling with it, actually.

It keeps me close to God, that's for sure.

I'm grateful, no question about that, but I always quickly go to okay, so what's next with that?

So I think comparison can work both ways.

Um, but fundamentally, Luke, and I think that's what all these passages have kind of been leading through in recent weeks, is around saying, okay, he is he is who we focus on and we worship him.

And then what does that mean in our daily life?

Yeah.

Just kind of maybe rounding this out a little bit, the little section that you that you missed um talked a little bit about um rebuking.

Uh it says in verse uh three, if your brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them.

And it's it was an interesting discussion around the office yesterday with talking about uh that little section.

We aren't good at doing that.

Uh in New Zealand, and we're probably conflict averse, so English ancestry probably.

What does it mean?

What do you what do you think it means to hold each other to account, maybe?

I mean, this verse is you know, again, written to Jesus said to his disciples.

Um, so he's talking to his friends, that group of people around him.

Um what do you think that might look like?

Yeah, yeah, this is where I wrestled with with the sermon.

Yeah, yeah, I agree.

I I think we're not great at this.

There's the rebuking, and then when they repent, forgiving.

And I think we find both of those difficult.

Um, we talked about forgiveness on the podcast not too long ago.

Um yeah, re I I guess we we translated, I was talking about it with young adults this morning.

That kind of rebuking is kind of a strange word as well.

We don't often use like, hey, I'm gonna rebuke you, man.

It sounds like really condemned.

I don't know, it's just not a word that's in our vocabulary part.

Yeah, it sounds like super judgmental and condemning.

Um, I guess the word that like our young adults were talking about was like calling somebody out.

It's kind of like a kiwi phrase.

Maybe you might just like, yeah, we just actually I just need to call this out.

Um in the governance world, which I've just been on, a course around that, we call it holding somebody to account.

Holding accountability.

Accountability.

It's probably a good way to think about it, yeah.

Um I I I had this little line that obviously I took out, but it when it came to rebuking, if it excites you, that's an issue.

And if it scares you, that's not an excuse.

Uh I think we fall into one of those categories where For me, I'm conflict averse.

This is something that's very unappetizing.

I'm not it's not a command of Jesus that I'm like excited to go and practice.

Um but that's not an excuse not to do it.

Uh in love, if I see something that where I want to I have a relationship with someone, good relationship, and there's something that's holding them back from becoming who they can fully be in Christ.

Uh it's loving to share that appropriately.

Um but equally there are there are probably people I I imagine people say there are people who ex who get excited about this and who have kind of a spiritual gift of rebuking.

I don't know if that's a spiritual gift.

Um but those types of people I guess would would need to be more cautious around it because sure um it needs to be done in love.

But people like myself need to, I guess, have the courage and the the um you know, because it's actually I'm protecting myself by not engaging in that way.

Um yeah, we could talk about examples of it happening well or yeah, it's an interesting subject to think about, eh?

And I'll put it into maybe a more real situation in some ways.

We're good these days with the advent of technology of using something like email to rebuke people or to tell people off.

I mean, I'm a pastor, get I wasn't saying get my fair share of emails.

It's probably not true, but every now and then if somebody wants to say something, they'll normally say it by email.

Okay.

Maybe it's that wisdom to say, I'm just gonna put something in my draft folder if I want to tell somebody something.

I'm gonna put it in my draft folder for 24 hours and just see, is this loving?

Yes.

We want the best for people, and I think that's the accountability side of it.

And it would be fair in the church world, there are instances in leadership, and probably for people that work in leadership roles, where you do need to hold people to account.

You do need to hold them to a uh a standard, I guess.

And in the church world, we've had to do that here in the church.

The people whose lifestyle decisions probably don't reflect, you know, the the kingdom as they are seeking to live that out in leadership roles.

And there has been a number of times over the years where we've had to do that, other than to say I don't sleep well the night before when those things happen.

Um I'm a kiwi, risk-averse, all that kind of stuff.

Um, I don't like those situations, but I think that challenges us to think about.

But I love the last part because this is pretty full on a verse four.

Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying, I repent, you must forgive them.

Yeah, it's like forgiveness is hard as well, and yet there's the challenge.

The emphasis is on the forgiveness, right?

Like we could talk about rebuking a lot, but the seven times thing is around forgiveness.

It's like you and you'll probably discover as a dad when your kids get a little bit older, I'm sorry, dad.

Oh, I'm sorry again, dad.

They can say sorry a lot of times in one day.

And you have to forgive them.

Yeah, like every time it gets a little bit harder as we become adults.

Yeah, and think about I guess that's how God is with us and his patience with us, and we're like those children, you know, it's like, oh, sorry for that again.

Um and his forgiveness with us totally is is you know, was his mercies in you each morning.

Yeah.

Um, we I guess we've finished uh a number of weeks now where parables or teachings have been a little bit confrontational, perhaps.

This week is a different Sunday for us.

It's we're talking about the life care trust.

Yeah, so it's more of a well, this is what we're doing as a church in response to some of these things, particularly who's at our gate and stuff like that.

Overall, what would your advice be to somebody who feels, I guess, confronted by some of these things?

They think about them during the week because it's made a mark on them.

You know, we struggle sometimes to to put these things into practice.

What would your encouragement be to somebody who's probably feeling perhaps the weight of some of these teachings?

Yeah, uh, I think like I think that's good, and like we'd be happy as preachers if people are wrestling with these words because they are confronting and challenging, but not in a condemnation way or a I feel ashamed or not feel good enough.

Like if people are feeling like that, then you know, would encourage them that the grace comes first, that it's not a list of things that you need to take off for God to approve of you, think that comes first, go back to prodigal son two chapters ago and read that one again for you know God's grace that comes first, but then in terms of uh a next step, I would just say just do something, like it can be overwhelming.

There's lots of parables, lots of teachings, lots of challenges.

But um, yeah, I mentioned this last night at a course actually, but when we were in India um for I guess my exposure trip, I remember somebody saying that whenever they do something like that, they feel like changing everything in their lives, and you get back to where you live, and you actually end up changing nothing because you wanted to do too much.

And he said instead, just change one thing, like choose one thing and commit to it.

Yeah.

So um that would be my encouragement for people is is um just start with one thing.

Correct.

Um and put that into practice and then do it in community, talk about it with your life group if you've been challenged, go deeper with your life group, um, and keep wrestling with it.

Yeah, I think that's such good advice because you know, from week to week we can have these parables and as preachers, we kind of like to end with the what's the takeaway, what's the punch?

And you know, there can be a lot, and it's gonna be a lot for us personally as well.

And I think that's such good advice.

Take it slowly, keep reflecting, keep praying, keep kind of wrestling with what that is.

And I think you're so right.

What's what's one little thing?

And over the course of a lifetime, all of those ones add up, yeah, and they create ongoing spiritual growth for us, and the spirit kind of just gently leads us and guides us.

And I think that's so true.

That'd be my experience as now a 56-year-old.

I'm like, I'm not the same person that I was a decade ago because I just wrestle with stuff, and over the course of my life, I hope that the spirit's refining me.

Um, you know, I guess when I'm mature, so I can give back more, I can be involved in more people's lives and things like that.

So it's so great.

It's good that we've finished these last few weeks of these challenges.

There won't be a podcast next week because we have a Life Care Trust Sunday, and then we jump back into the Luke series.

So uh we'll have a little break, maybe a good chance for people to think about what we've been talking about.

Um thanks for all the resting.

There's been quite big questions today, and thanks for your replies to that.

We appreciate you, we appreciate uh the message that you gave us on Sunday, and thanks for joining us on the Beyond the Message.