Devoted | Week 4

Hello and welcome to the Grove Church podcast. I'm Charlie Lofton, the lead pastor

there. And we are so glad that you are joining us. Whether you are

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live in our services on Sunday nine and 1030 or our streaming

service at 1030. Either way, we would love to be able to get to know

you. And regardless of why you are here listening to this

sermon today, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, good

morning. Hey, if you are new, I'm Charlie, the lead pastor

here, and really glad you are all worshiping with us today. And as Jason mentioned

a few minutes ago, we are finishing up a series today called Devoted. We've been

kind of working our way through this phrase, and what Jesus said is the greatest

commandment, which is to love the Lord your God, with your heart, your soul, your

mind and your strength. And we've been taking each of those in turn.

And we're wrapping up today by talking about strength. And we just kind of

been talking about, like, if the greatest commandment is to love God, kind

of, what are all the ways that we do that? What does that really mean?

What does it mean to love him with your heart, with your soul, with your

mind? And now today was strength. And if you were here

a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about soul, it was also the

Sunday when it was zero. If you remember that, if you don't remember that Sunday,

you remember when it was zero. And I was actually very pleasantly

surprised and impressed with how many of us were willing to kind of get out

and be here on that Sunday. And we joked about,

long standing joke that it was a double point Sunday, like, you got two

points for coming instead of the normal one. And it kind of made that joke

really to kind of talk about this idea that some of us have felt or

maybe even still feel that I come to church because I have to, to kind

of earn a God point. But really why we're here.

And we talked about that real need for

soul connection. And that really is what draws us

in a deeper way than just some sense of obligation.

I circle back to that because I want to ask the question again, maybe

a little bit differently do you have

to be here? Do you have to be here? Not

that God's keeping a spreadsheet of points.

Do you have to be here? Is it right to be here? Would

it be wrong to not be? Does it matter

to God? Does anything really

matter to God? Do you have to

do anything? If God says it, if

he commands it, what is our

response to that? And I asked this

question that way because I think the

older I get and I feel older every

day. I was at a daddy daughter dance last night with

our twelve year old, Leila, and there's nothing that makes me feel

older. And it's not being around twelve year olds, it's being around

the parents of other twelve year olds. Like, hey, there's all people that

looks normal for them to have a twelve year old, and then there's me, right?

So the older I get, the more I become

convinced that this issue may

be the number one theological issue that

we have to grapple with if we are going to

stay devoted in a committed relationship with God

for the rest of our lives. How do I take these

two truths that I do not believe, contradict,

but complement each other, which is God

loves you through Jesus Christ,

unconditionally, not based on what you do. And

because of what Jesus did for you, you are free.

And the Bible is full of a lot of

commandments, not suggestions,

commandments.

What do I do with these two things? Because I speak to

a lot of different groups of people, and as some of you may know, I

would just came back in the middle of December. About ten of

us went to Thailand and to speak to a group of

missionaries who were there kind of on a retreat, on a conference

from another country in Southeast Asia. And I'm telling you, when you're talking to

this group of people, you're talking to a group of people who are more

committed and dedicated than probably anyone we know in real life, and

they are willing to sacrifice so much to do what they believe is the

right thing. And I've talked to so many people that have that sort of

mindset that are doing these really incredible things for God. And you can just

sense. I can just sense when I'm talking to them, there's a part of them

that is struggling. And they're doing all of this in part

because I have to show God and myself and

the world that I can be good enough. So I'm going to do the

biggest thing, the most important thing, and they struggle with

this battle. I can't really accept that God loves me

unconditionally I've got to be good

enough. And I see other people who wrestle with

this, and they've concluded already,

I'll never be good enough. And they are

sad, depressed, defeated, and

slowly just kind of drift away. And there

are other people to be like that are just kind of like, bro, what are

you even talking about? Did you hear the first part?

Free. I'm free, brother.

Do you all know what free means? Free means I get to do whatever I

want, and it doesn't matter.

And that just drifts you off a different way.

What does it mean in a healthy,

balanced way to understand

what obedience is with the freedom that

we have with Christ. And Paul says it in a really awesome way where he

says, you are free, but don't use that freedom as an

opportunity to do whatever you want. And us navigating

that, I think, is a critical, personal,

theological struggle, balance issue that we need to

grapple with if we are going to remain devoted.

And I love the way that Jesus says it. Love the Lord your God with

your heart, soul, mind and strength. It begins with love. I need to

love him. That is the core motivation of all of this.

I'm not trying to earn anything. I'm not trying to be good enough.

I want to love God well. And one of the

ways that we love God well is with our strength, which

means I love God by doing

what he says. I love God by doing what he says.

If God says something, one of the ways

that I respond to him with love is to do

it. When someone you love asks you to do

something, it is an act of love to do it. The relationship

with God is different because he is not just a friend.

He is God. He is a Lord. He is a king. He is a

heavenly father. And so he's not simply

asking, he's commanding. And so it has a certain weight to it. And that is

how we show love to someone who has authority over

us, by responding to what they say. But it is an act of love. And

I think it is important for us, no matter where you grew up,

whatever your background was, whatever it is, you came, wherever you came from,

this idea that somehow we are here today to earn

something, everything that matters

in our relationship with God was paid for by

Jesus Christ and given to you freely through

him. And now, having

received that and been made free, I

respond to him with love. And

so I want us to be able to build a life, a

lasting spiritual life with Jesus Christ,

built on that idea that to love God with

my strength, it is a love response to do what he

commands us to do. And there's a verse where Jesus is

speaking. He exemplifies that pretty well in John

1421. And if you are the verse

memorizing kind or on your Bible app or

whatever you like to favorite, highlight certain verses, I encourage you just kind of

make put, however it is you do put this

one on your list, because I think it is an incredibly powerful, important

verse. John 1421.

Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves

me. The one who loves me will be loved by my father,

and I, too, will love them and show myself

to them. So what he's describing

here is really kind of the process of this relationship.

And again, if you come at this with this negative, sort

of unbalanced mindset of I have to earn

God's love, then you're going to see something different than what's being said here.

God's love has been given to you freely through Jesus Christ. What does a

relationship with God look like? What does an

ongoing, deepening relationship look like?

I respond to the love that God has given me through Jesus Christ,

through obedience. And when I do that,

God is pleased with me, and the love

grows, and I get to know him, and he gets to know

me. There's a deepening of relationship. There is a reciprocal

thing that happens here that happens in all of relationships.

Love is met by more love

relationally. And

so one of the significant things that I do

to show God and to build this depth and love

relationship with him is through obedience. I'm

going to do the things that he says.

And again, putting aside all of the bad

theological baggage that can come from feeling like we've got to

earn something or we'll never be good, to put all that aside, this is just

the way a relationship works,

especially a relationship with God.

And so, again, we're going to have to put all of this together. And so

I want us to just kind of spend some time just kind of breaking some

of this down. Like, if we love God, if one of the

primary ways that we can love God is through obedience, what

does that really mean? And we'll just start here that I want to love God

by doing what he says. And part of that

is I have to love him by following his

code. He has a code, a moral code,

that he says, this is the way you should live.

The Bible is full of commandments, some of which we just kind of

take. We have no objections to.

Don't murder, don't steal, those sorts of things. Don't lie. We

object to it, but not, we know it's wrong, we just do it anyway. Right.

But some of these we're not going to argue

over, right? And then there's some that we like

less. But the Bible is full of commands about the way

that you should be living your life. And some of the biggest

ones that we tend to struggle with have to do with the things that we

talk about very often here at the church.

What is a proper sexual, moral,

relational ethic and what do we do with our money?

The Bible is full of commands on those things that are deeply

personal and have to do with

the deepest parts of our life and not just simply what we do,

but really getting out of the core of what some of our heart

struggles are. And God has laid out a lot

of these commands. And I'm sure you have come across at least one. You don't

have to admit this in church because you're in church now, but I'm sure you've

come across at least one that you look at. I don't like it. I don't

like it. I'm not in thumbs down.

And how you respond to that, how you

respond to a command that you don't particularly

like really depends very heavily

on what your perception of God is.

So I'm a dad. I mentioned that I got a twelve year old,

Leila, but I also have a 26 year old and a 23 year old

daughter. I have three daughters. So Leila is twelve, but she's not my first twelve

year old. So this is my third twelve year old. I'm kind of going through

all of this again. And now is the time where a particular

moral code that dad has is coming to the forefront because

some of her friends are starting to have boyfriends, they're starting to go

out. I roll. They're dating, they like

each other and all these things. And she is starting to notice

boys in ways that she wasn't noticing them, say, three years

ago. She's always noticed boys, but now we're noticing them differently.

And we've got boys that we like and we got all these people. And dad

has had a very hard rule. Twelve year olds don't date. You don't have a

boyfriend. We're not going to joke about it.

It's a hard line. And every time this comes up,

not only have all of the girls questioned, but

many of you will come up to me and you ask this question

specifically. Well, when then, when?

And then I say when it makes sense.

What does that mean? Tell me about these twelve year olds that are going out.

Where do they go? Twelve year old can't go anywhere. They don't

go anyplace. I remember having this conversation with Maley. She was describing

this relationship that was happening when she was twelve.

Like, yeah, they're going out. Where do they. What, dad? They don't go anywhere.

Well, I mean, do they sit together at lunch? No,

they would never do that. Then what does it mean? It means they like each

other. Then why don't we just leave it at

that? But Leila, she was pressing this was over. We talked about

this a couple of weeks ago. We're sitting over the 3000 piece puzzle working on.

We're having this deep philosophical conversation. She's like, dad, but

when, though? But when? Let me explain to you what dating

is. Dating is a process

that you go through to figure out who you're going to spend the rest of

your life with. And she goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, dad, whoa.

I'm not ready for

that's.

And I'm not telling you that you have to have that. That is not the

point of this. My point of this is not to tell you that

this should be a part of your code. The point of this is it is

part of our code in our family. And our girls have struggled with

it at the time and then even after thinking back

about it. But the reason where the buy

in really comes is what do they really believe about me?

Do they believe that I'm good? Do they believe that

I love them and that what I want is in their best

interest? Do they believe that?

And I think that they do. And so there have been some times where we've

laid some things out that we've asked them to do that they have not wanted

to do, but they have gone along because they believe those

things. Dad is good. He loves me

and he believes this is in my best interest.

But unlike me, God is always

good. God is always full of love. And he

is not just simply thinks this might be in your

best interest. He is the creator, designer of the

universe. And because he loves you and because he

is good and he is always acting in

your best interest, then you can know for sure that

the things that he is asking you to do are

good for you. Because sometimes I believe that we have

treated God's commands as

if we're on some sort of reality show. Anybody ever watched the show

wipe out? Like, you're just trying to navigate

some really difficult obstacle course. And if I can make it all the

way through, I win. And God's

putting up obstacles in front of you. Just to make it difficult for you,

just to see if you're strong enough, committed enough, good enough,

when really he is the creator, designer of the universe,

who was telling you, you want life,

believe this, follow this,

do this. Not because you

have to, because I have to.

This is what I want. This is what I want. This is what I want.

I want life. This is what I want life. I have to do it. Not

I have to do it. I have to do it because of who he is

and the life that I want to have. But it's a little

bit more than that. We're not going to spend a whole lot of time on

this next one, but it's a little bit more than that. That I want to

make sure that we understand not only his code, but also his mission.

He has given you a purpose, a directive in life, and it's

pretty broad in some areas. We

work, we have family, we have friends, we have

community. We worship together. There's a part of that that all is

encompassing in the mission that God has given us on this life.

But we do not live a directionless life. We live a life

with a very specific mission. Jesus said, you're the light of the world.

He also said that we are to go and make disciples of all nations.

He has called us to be carriers of hope and life to a world that

is desperate for it. And it is my hope and desire

that we would be known as a community that is doing this together,

that we are partnering together with one another to do what

we can to bring hope and life to our community and to our

world. It happens every Sunday. Happens every

Sunday. Someone new will walk in. Hopefully they are greeted well and loved well

by someone, and they have a great opportunity to meet some people if they're dropping

off their kids. And all the people, all the work that is done here behind

the scenes to make all of this happen and the worship and all

of that like it a great opportunity for us to one another and to

new people, to bring the hope of Jesus to people.

And we use our financial resources, we use our service.

You are using the influence that you have with people in your neighborhood,

at your work, in your school, to invite them. And

we all together, working together, are trying to bring hope

and life to the world, whether it be from

community care to our food pantry, to

just telling people about Jesus, by inviting them to worship, by loving

them, by meeting the needs around you. This is what we're doing.

You have a lot of freedom and a lot of the choices that you make

about how you live your life kind of what your job is and where you

live, but your mission, regardless is the same.

We've been called to bring carriers of life and light to a

world that needs it. And so if I'm going

to love God well, I'm going to love God by doing what he says, I'm

going to love him well by following his code.

I'm going to love God well by following his mission.

And really I'm going to save this kind of, this one for last. It's kind

of a bigger idea here that I want to make sure that we all

understand that really what this means is I love God by

doing what he says, not just his code, his mission, but really everything. This is

everything that may feel a little overwhelming at

first, but really everything that we do

in one way or another should try to

reflect the love that we have

for God. And there's a verse that gets pulled out context, and I'm going to

do the same thing. I'm going to pull that out of context. We're just going

to kind of look at it and we're going to talk about the way that

people try to misunderstand it and misuse it, and then we're going to put it

back in its context and try to understand it.

One corinthians ten, verse 31.

So whatever you eat or drink or whatever you

do, do it all for the glory

of God. So whatever you do, eating, drinking,

whatever, anything that you do, do it for the glory of God.

There's a couple of different ways that people will try to use this verse. Some

people will be like, man, that sounds like freedom to me. Whatever it

is I do, I'm doing it for God. Glory, God. This is for your

glory, right? I'm going to eat and drink

and just do whatever I want as long as I

say it's for God's glory. Or you can go the other way and

it can just feel like a really weird, pressuring verse. You get up this morning

and you start brushing your teeth and it's like, am I brushing my teeth for

the glory of God today? God, I just pray that you'll be glorified by the

cleanliness of my teeth and good dental care

and you can feel paralyzed.

I thought I just brushed my teeth, did my hair today, but

I forgot to do it for the glory of God. And then you can feel

like, because some of the things I'm just doing, I'm just living

life, I'm failing because I didn't, quote, do it for the glory of God.

But the context of this is actually a very specific one.

He's talking to them about this issue that is unique to them.

It is not unique to mark. If you've ever heard Mark tell stories about being

in India, it is something that he has firsthand experienced these sorts of

things, where they were having meals in

people's homes that were not believers and the food

that they were using was part of a religious sacrifice

to an idol. And now they are serving the food that has been

sacrificed and dedicated to a false God. Is it

okay to eat that? This is a

real question. It's a deep question.

What do you do? And Paul

fails to give them a direct answer to that.

You're going to choose one or the other. Whichever one you choose, whatever

it is you choose to do, you make sure that you are doing

it with a heart that says, I want God to be

glorified. I want to honor

God and love God with the decision that I

make. Because the reality is the

Bible. Life is full of things.

Moral questions about what is the right thing to do in this

situation, full of situations that the Bible

does not answer for you. Let's just go back to dating.

What does it mean to honor God in your dating life?

If you look to the Bible and look for

advice on how to date, you're going to be really

disappointed because it's going to tell you that your dad picks out your

spouse, and then that's it, and then nothing else

matters, which, depending on how old you are and how old your kids

are, starts to look pretty good.

Worse ideas, because here's the

thing that we believe. It's been part of the grow from the very beginning.

Everything that the Bible says is true, but not everything that's

true is in the Bible. And so

we don't know. There's certain things that just kind of have a bit

of uncertainty to them, where people draw different lines in different places

about what is appropriate to watch or not watch,

or how should I manage my screen

time or my screen time for my kids, or these sorts of things.

And the Bible gives us some principles about life,

but doesn't specifically address these issues.

What do we do? Do we have freedom to just kind of do

whatever we want? And this is the question that the corinthians are asking that Paul

is answering. It's like, yes, you have freedom, but

really you need to think about

what brings the most honor to

God in this circumstance for you.

Again, let's not take this too far. There are some

things where God has made it very clear. This is right, this

is wrong. But then there's some things where it just seems a little

vague. And I'll use an example. It is a very popular example

to use if you were here last week, I made a joke. It

wasn't really a joke. I guess I said it in a funny way, but it's

true. I don't like coffee. It doesn't

taste good. And somebody over here told me that I need to add sugar to

it. And it was a great little moment. And just bitter. I

don't like it. I don't like it. No matter how hard people try,

no matter what concoction you make, I still don't like it. I could have also

said at that time, I could have also said I feel the same way about

beer or wine or really any alcoholic drink.

I didn't bring it up then because it would have been overwhelmingly distracting. Not that

me bringing up coffee wasn't also distracting because some of you got really mad at

me. I apologize.

I can say singing. I take a drink of beer, that bitterness,

it just gets me. I don't like it. And I'll try this wine, though. It's

really sweet. And you and I have very different definitions of the

word sweet. It's not sweet. It is bitter.

No. I can make you something. I can make you something. And they'll make me

something that is akin to some sort of fruit punch. And I'll take it. And

I'll take a drink and, like, fruit punch

and. Can I just have the fruit punch, please? Right.

I don't like it. And even in me just

kind of telling you this story about my certain adventures I've had with

alcohol and telling you that there are people who are trying to get me to

want to drink alcohol has made a few of you uncomfortable.

Pastor, getting up there, talking about, very freely about

alcohol. I thought we're supposed to be weird about this. And we've chosen as

a church, we're not going to be weird about it. We have a very clear,

yet vague

idea about what alcohol is. Here's our policy.

Always has been, alcohol is fine until it isn't.

What does that mean, bro? You know what it means. Everybody knows what it means.

I don't have to explain that. I could. You know what it means. It's fine

till it's not. And a lot of us have made a lot of different

choices around it. And honestly, we make different choices based on different

circumstances. Pastored a church in St. Louis,

Missouri for a few years.

I don't know if you've ever spent a lot of time with midwestern Catholics,

but they have a different perspective

about alcohol than they do in the church that we came in before in

Cabot, Arkansas, it's a dry county. If you

don't know what that is, look it up.

And so there were a lot of places where I got offered a lot of

beer and a lot of alcohol in places where

they, hey, come to their house here and they would just hand it to

me, what is the right thing to do there?

What is the right way to honor and love God in that situation is different

than the way that I honor and love God in Cabot, Arkansas, is different than

the way that we do it here. Whether I choose to eat or choose

to drink, yes or no,

isn't the question. The question is

in the decision that I make, am I making this decision

to bring honor and glory to God, or am I just doing what I

want to do, what feels good to me?

And if we are going to love God with all of our

strength, then we're going to have just a different

reasoning process by which we decide how

we're going to live again. There are certain things where God has

made himself very clear. He's got a code,

and I want to honor and love him by living that out.

He has given me a mission, and I want to spend my

life figuring out what my particular role and his big picture

mission is, and I want to do that. But

in reality, if I'm going to love

God with all of my strength,

then even in the places where I seem to have freedom,

I want to do it in a way that brings honor to this

relationship. I want to show God that I love

him. Even in areas where there's a little ambiguity,

a little bit of freedom, I'm not going to be somebody who's

like, I'm going to tighten up all the

rules and be as strict on myself as I can

to show God in the world that I'm serious.

But I'm also not going to be like, man, you get to do whatever you

want. It doesn't even matter.

Whatever I choose, in whatever situation,

no matter how vague or complex or uncertain,

with God, I'm going to attempt to do the

thing that I believe brings the most honor and glory to him. Why? Because I

love him. Because he has given me everything through

his son, Jesus Christ. He has given it to me for

free, and he has set me free from a life that was

overwhelmed and burdened by sin. And now I have

life and freedom in him,

and I don't have to. I

have to. I have to respond. I have to show him.

I want to show him. I need to show him. Maybe

we'll say that I don't have to obey. I

need to. I need to for me.

And I need to as a love response to the one who has

loved me so much. So if he

says, this is what I'm supposed to do, I'm going to try to do it.

If he says don't do that, I'm going to try not to do it. If

he says, this is my mission, I'm going to try to live it. And I

find myself in weird situations, I'm going to give it the

thoughtfulness it deserves, to figure out what is best

to honor him. And

I'm not going to allow my brain to crush me

when I fail that somehow I've lost something with

God. And I'm not going to think that I'm better than anybody else because

I succeeded. But with

humility and trust and a heart desire

to love him,

I'm going to love him with all of my strength. Let me

pray.

God, that feels easy to explain and hard

to live. It's not as just hard for those truths to kind

of sink in. God, we're not great with

freedom, but we're not great with rules

either. And we

battle. And so, God, I do

pray that we would just get to the heart of it,

that our lives need to be love

responses to you.

That if you ask, we'll do it not because

we have to, but because we get to. And that

God, through that response, that God, that we would experience your love in deeper and

deeper ways, that we would get to know you in deeper and deeper ways, that

we would be known in deeper ways.

And that God, we could experience real

life with you by

submitting our freedom to the life that you have called

us to God, I pray that we could

be people who do it with joy. And

as always, we are so thankful for your son, Jesus Christ, who makes

this possible. And it's in his name we pray. Amen.

Thanks again for joining us on our sermon podcast and you can learn more about

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you found this particular podcast. So again, this is Charlie,

the lead pastor at the Grove, and thank you so much for joining us.