Apocalypse Now: Part 10- Walk This Way

Welcome to the River City Church podcast and a message by our

lead pastor, Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message

would inspire and encourage you, build your faith and point you

to the life changing love of Jesus.

May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow Him today.

Before we dive in and we're going to unpack the text through

sections of it and we'll end with some what I hope will be

very clear application for you, we're going to start with saying

our confession together. This is our moment of truth

telling as a community where we acknowledge the reality of where

we are right now, both in terms of the struggles, but also in

terms of how God feels about us. And some mornings you might wake

up and think, I don't know. I don't know if God loves me.

I don't know if he even likes me.

I'm not sure I even like me this morning.

And so it's important that whether we're feeling that or

whether we're like, man, there's no wonder.

Jesus. Is a fan of me wherever you're

at on the spectrum today of those things.

It's important that we say these things together because they

acknowledge the truth about who we are and about who God is.

So if this is your first time visiting to River City, you're

so welcome here. We're so glad that you would

join with us to worship and to learn more about Jesus and

walking in his ways. I will say the first line and we

say the second line together. So if it's the first time here,

welcome into liturgical practice.

Confession is this. We are badly broken.

We are deeply loved. That's right.

Some people saying it was some force this morning.

I like it. How do we become who we are?

You may not have spent a lot of time reflecting on who am I?

And sometimes you might get asked that question.

You get into a new setting as. Oh, who are you?

And you might give your name, and you might give your family

setting. You might talk about your job,

but there's some things going on beneath the surface that are

much deeper than those realities.

No matter how covenant or how long term those other

relationships might be, do they really fully express who you are

and how did you become the person that you are right here,

right now? You have preferences and

longings. We all have.

Opinions, and lots of them. And some of us say them more

than others, right? We we've had these things that

come out from us, but how do we get here?

There's a few things that clearly factor in.

One of them is in the realm of your family of origin, the

environment that you grew up in as a little person.

And there's there's a couple, Pete and Jerry's Gazero, who've

done a lot of work around the health of a person in the

emotional realm and relational realm.

And one of the things that peace Gazzaro says is that, you know,

we've started to follow Jesus. Aren't we all completely

different now? And and yet Thanksgiving is

still a bust up every year. What is going on?

He says Jesus is in your heart, but grandpa is in your bones.

There's a knowledge and a way of being that we carry with us

unconsciously. We're not paying attention to

it, but it's like the wizard behind the curtain pulling all

of the switches and controlling things.

And that's why sometimes you say things and you go, huh, why did

I just say that that way? Or you feel really angry about

something, but on reflection you're like.

There's no big deal. What is going on there?

The problem is, for most of us, we're far too busy.

Hurry, hurry. Important.

Lives to live, to ever slow down and pay attention to those

things along with family of origin where you came from,

questions around group participation, who you associate

with. Most of us like to think that we

gravitate towards and associate with people who already think in

the brilliant ways that we think and behave in the very high

moral ways that we already behave.

We like to gather with our tribe or as Pastor Jason said, our

mop. And sometimes it is a mop.

Sometimes it's not a kind and gentle place to be.

It is fiery and fractured. It turns out, statistically,

that our beliefs are actually biased by association.

Meaning you might come into a group because of one point of

affinity, but lots of other things you didn't agree with

will suddenly start to change as you associate with a group.

Social constructs form us deeply in ways we might not even be

paying attention to. That might come out when you

suddenly find yourself in support of a particular policy

or position that a decade before you were violently opposed to.

But now it's obvious, right? Clearly this is the right way

and that was the wrong way. And how did you get there along

with your family of origin and your your groups that you

associate with? There's these things that we

could call cultural liturgies. We just said a liturgy when we

said our confession. It was a structure, a form that

we entered into the High Anglican Church, Orthodox

Church, Roman Catholic Church. They have a lot more written

liturgy, right? The said prayers that everybody

says together and everybody who's been in those circles long

enough knows them by heart. They're embedded in them.

But we also have these cultural liturgies.

If that is something you're like, wow, that sounds really

interesting, Johnny. And I would really like to read

more about that. There's an amazing author named

James KA Smith. He wrote a more readable book

called You Are What You Love and then some really big books like

Desiring the Kingdom that go like Nerdy Deep.

So if Nerdy Deep is your thing, get the big ones.

But he explains some cultural liturgies.

Did you know that the mall is a formative place?

Did you know that the mall is a form of worship?

We enter into these high ceiling glass spaces that pump out

certain aromas, Think incense right that gather us into this

space. Where we go, this is a place of

wonder. I will find many wonderful

things here that will bring me satisfaction and joy.

Maybe things to eat, maybe things to wear.

But the Mall is a cultural liturgy that is forming you into

the idea that you are what you own.

What about the rally? What about the political rally

where we go and exercise our free speech, right?

And we get to tell it like we see it, and that's fine.

But the cultural liturgy of the rally is forming you into a

person that believes and lives as though you are what you

control, which is why we end up demonizing other people that

don't believe and see like us because we want to control.

That's the end that we're reaching for.

What about the game? I see some jerseys out here,

right? Am I aware?

I don't want to look, please don't tell me, but am I aware

that my football team was one up on Manchester City as I was

stepping up to preach? Yeah, I knew that because my

phone told me that truth may have gone.

I didn't have high expectations. But when we are steeped in the

culture of the game and our team and our tribe, we start to

believe this story that you are your record, your record, and it

doesn't stay in the mall or the rally or the game.

It comes home with you and everywhere you go, and you

happen to turn up everywhere that you are.

Along with these three larger formative things, our habits,

our communities, our desires, and our rhythms all factor into

who we are today and who we're becoming.

To change is the normal of the human experience, and we're all

changing and growing in One Direction or another.

But how often do we examine? To what end?

Where am I heading? If you were to look at a line of

my life and change and transformation, what am I

becoming? You want to ask a dangerous,

risky question? Ask someone close to you.

Am I more kind and gentle and humble than I used to be?

Just find out. But how do we even know what

target we're aiming for? Who should we become and what is

the good life, and how do we get there?

So we live in a world of competing ideals.

So you might be simultaneously carrying the idea of radical

generosity, but you grew up in a household, as I might be telling

on myself here, why financial security was the baseline of

knowing that you were doing well.

But also, there's all of these guitar pedals that I want in my

life, and there's pleasures to pursue.

And I have these ideals that Duke it out inside of me to

generously give away everything, but also to hold on to

everything so that we're secure, but also to buy a few things

because, you know, some days are hard and sweet.

Guitar tone makes me feel better, right?

You fill in your blank because we live with hearts that have

competing wants. I want a healthy body and I want

cheeseburgers. And too much of either one of

those denies the other. Which one's going to win?

Stay tuned. And then we live in communities

of competing behaviors. Listen for those of us that live

and work. Hi, my name's Johnny.

I'm a volunteer member of the teaching team.

Let's get that out of the way. Now, my wife and I are directors

of member care at a missions organization here in New

Braunfels. That means the majority of our

days now are spent within the community of faith, whether it's

doing volunteer stuff here or if it's in our day job taking care

of missionaries around the world.

But I did used to work in the marketplace in an IT job.

And I know that the office party isn't a lot like my small group

on a Sunday night. There are competing behaviours

into which we find ourselves with pressures to conform to the

group. Who should we be?

What does it mean to have a good, a blessed life, as Jesus

would say? And how are we going to get

there? In essence, how do we grow as

followers of Jesus, specifically into the maturity the pastor

Jason talked about, right? This is the goal of the those

who serve in servant leadership inside the church.

The apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd and teacher

is given to equip the Saints for the work of ministry and to the

end that we grow up into the fullness of Christ.

We're not meant to stay babies in Jesus.

Childlike in our faith, yes, but mature.

So how do we change? How do we get there?

Today we're going to look at some aspects of Christian

spiritual formation. I want to be specific with that

Christian spiritual formation because every single person on

the planet is being spiritually formed.

We are spiritual beings, body, mind, soul, strength.

We are spiritual beings and all people are such, but not all

people are being formed into the image of Jesus.

So to talk about Christian spiritual formation has to be

formation in the way of Jesus and towards his likeness.

We're going to see Paul address the malformation of the old way

of life and he's going to give us a clear picture of formation

in the way of Jesus. And then there's a few case

studies. Who loves a good case study in

the room? I got like.

My peeps, 2 of you great, we're going to be reading James Smith

and the rest of you do whatever you want to do it's fine so

we're going to come back to our text and begin working through

I'm teaching from the NASB. That's what we settled on as our

teaching text specifically because.

It's a little more clunky. The message read so well today

love that translation for this passage but to teach and to get

into some of the dynamics of their original language, we like

a a text that's a little bit more technical little.

Harder for us makes us realize, hmm, this wasn't written in my

language today and so we're in Ephesians 417 through 32.

Pray for me that we get there. We can do we can do this.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,

including preaching 1/2 a page of Bible right here we go verses

17 through 19. Paul says so I say this.

And affirm in the Lord that you are to no longer walk, just as

the Gentiles also walk in the futility of their minds.

It's just boys there for a moment.

So Paul gets actually pretty strong in the Greek here.

I'm affirming something in the Lord.

This is a truth for all people, that you are to no longer walk

just as the Gentiles. Who's he writing to?

All your gentiles? They're still gentiles in a

ethnic sense. But he says you're not to walk,

just as the Gentiles walk in the futility of their minds.

If you have. Read through the Old Testament.

Maybe there's something's going to pop up in reflecting on the

book of Ecclesiastes where the Wisdom teacher talks about

things being meaningless and vanity and are chasing after the

wind. The futility of the way of

thinking in the old life. Meant though what people

believed would bring about their ultimate satisfaction and

welfare of others never works out.

They were chasing something that was a waste of time, he goes on.

If you think that wasn't harsh, being darkened in their

understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the

ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their

heart, is a winning speech, isn't it?

Right here? You're like, everybody's with

you, we're good now, he says, Look, your way of thinking led

to emptiness and brokenness. And not only that, your

understanding was in the dark. As enlightened as you thought

you were before knowing Jesus, you lived in darkness.

You couldn't even see that your way ended in ruin and you were

excluded from the life of God. Now just think back if you've

been with. Us over the weeks to some of the

things that. Paul has prayed for the church

at Ephesus and the surrounding churches where this letter went.

He. Prayed that the eyes of their

hearts would be enlightened because it's dark in here

without God and we need God to move on our behalf to turn the

lights on. And he prayed that they would be

rooted and grounded in love. And when something is rooted and

grounded well, there is life in it, there is SAP in it, it is

flexible, it grows well. But here we have.

Hearts that have become hardened because they've been cut off

from the God life. Stemming from ignorance,

stemming from a hard heart, they just kept trudging down the path

of death and more death and brokenness, and it's kept them

cut off to the extent verse 19 that they having become callous.

Have given themselves up to indecent behaviour for the

practice of every kind of impurity.

With greediness, there is a callous compulsion that begins

to set in. The more that people give

themselves to a certain practice and way of being, the more they

want to do that thing. And so Paul uses this term of of

greediness, right? They've given themselves up to

something and they just want more and more and more of it.

This is the cycle of addiction. It is observable in your life

and in the lives of many people who have found themselves caught

up in chasing substance or chasing shopping or sex or

whatever. The thing is that you think I

just got to have that to feel OK right now.

If I could just have that, I could deal with this other

problem. But all of these things that

aren't God come with an increased.

Cost for a diminished return. The first hit is oh so good, but

after that you are owned, you are enslaved and your behaviours

will change in the pursuit of the thing that your heart

desires. Ben Witherington the third

quotes a guy named Hona in one of his commentaries, where he

says every surrender to temptation encrusts the heart

and narrows the range of its future choice.

It encrusts the heart, so it's harder for truth and life and

light to penetrate through. You might be thinking of the

story of Pharaoh as he resisted God's call to repentance and to

let his people go. And throughout that story,

Pharaoh's heart gets harder and harder and harder.

You might be thinking about your own heart and seasons where you

just didn't want anything to do with God and no matter who

prayed for you, no matter who talked to you were just like,

Nah, I'm good. I found my scene.

I found my crowd. Makes me feel good, helps me

forget the hurts. I'm just going that way.

Our heart gets encrusted. And then I just thought it was

fascinating. It narrows the range of our

future choice. See, we lie to ourselves that

we're truly free, when in fact, apart from Christ, we're

increasingly subject to sin. We're actually less of our

unique self, and we are more closed off to others.

When the world promises you that if you just all throw off the

shackles of old religion, be liberated and free in your

thinking, come on, be a thoroughly post secular

postmodern, wherever we've gotten to person, define your

own destiny. Actually, most of those people

living that way look awfully similar, don't they?

Most of them are caught up in the same patterns and the same

struggles and the same brokenness and there's no joy

and there's no life and it's just getting harder.

The greediness of sin deforms us.

And so then Paul brings us to a new paradigm.

He says, but you verse 20. But you did not learn Christ in

this way, if indeed you've heard of him and have been taught in

him, just as truth is in Jesus. You did not learn Christ this

way, not learn about Christ, not learn the teachings of Christ,

not learn the acceptable social statements of Christ people in a

religious setting. You did not learn Christ the

person himself this way. This is not what it looked like.

Dark and futile and closed off. If indeed he says you have heard

him. Have you heard Jesus?

Have you heard Jesus? Have you heard him speak your

name? Have you heard him call you to

Him? I suspect there are some in this

room who are hungry this morning who are desperately wondering,

would he call me? Yes, indeed.

He's calling you right now to him, and your choice is either

the life you've been living or the life in allegiance to him

who laid down his life for you. That's what's set before you.

And so I pray that what you would hear in the rest of this

message is a compelling vision towards the truly good and

beautiful life that would summon you from darkness and into light

as you yield to him. It is the person of Christ who

is the new paradigm. This is the apocalypse that Paul

has been teaching and writing and preaching.

Jesus is the life. Jesus is the light of the world

who shines into our darkness. Have you heard him?

If indeed you've heard him and have been taught in him, just as

truth is in Jesus. See, Jesus is the new center and

the paradigm. The person of Christ calls us to

allegiance. The teachings of Christ are the

instruction that we need to learn how to live when our

children are born. They don't know that those cute

little smiling faces in the wall with face plates around them are

dangerous to stick their fingers and metal objects into.

They don't know. They have to be instructed in

this. So if you as a parent got mad at

them the first time they did that, it's not fair on the

child, right? Because they don't know they

need instruction. You as followers in the way of

Jesus need instruction to know how you live now, not in order

to be adopted, but because you have been adopted and there's

new house rules. And so we learned the House

rules through the teachings of Christ.

And he says the truth is in Jesus.

So as well as allegiance and instruction, I think this points

to the way of Jesus and our alignment.

You might acknowledge that Jesus is the Lord of all creation, and

you might know all of the instruction that he brings.

But will you align yourself, your own life, your own

practices and ways to be in accordance with Him?

The truth is in Him. So he's the measure.

There is no other measure. Jesus is the measure and we

align ourselves to Him or not. And you have the free choice as

to which you will do. But you cannot take that which

is not the way of Jesus and try and slap a Jesus sticker on it

just because you've, you know, said a prayer sometime you can't

do that. You can't baptize your behavior

into Jesus, but you can be baptized into him and align your

life with him. And so Paul tells us like here's

a new paradigm. The old way was dark and futile,

but the new way is life in him. And so we get this idea of

counter formation in the way of Jesus verse 22.

That in reference to your former way of life, you are to rid

yourselves of the old self which is being corrupted in accordance

with the lusts of deceit. And that you are to be renewed

in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, which in

the likeness of God, has been created in righteousness and

holiness of the truth. The reason that I would dearly

love if we someday did a like 77 weeks series through Ephesians

is because there's like multiple messages just in those verses

right there, but. For your sake, my sake, and

everyone's sake, we're just going to be brief and a high

level overview of this quick grammar note for you when it

says to rid yourself and to put off and to be renewed.

These are infinitives, not imperatives.

The difference would be the imperative puts all the onus on

you. You got to you got to do this.

You've got to figure. This out, get it done right now.

It's a command when it's an imperative, but an infinitive

speaks more to what has and is happening.

Friends, we are not alone in the work of formation, in the way of

Jesus, OK, And what? Paul shows us is this.

Picture of taking off the old humanity like a ragged nasty

coat and putting on the new humanity, putting off the old

Adam who said I want to be God myself and ends up living in

complete separation to putting on the new Adam Jesus so that we

are clothed in righteousness and in him and the pat the pattern

of this counter formation is put off and be renewed and put on

and so we can get that idea like the put off All right, so I

stopped doing certain things. I walk out of certain

situations. I don't align with old ways and

I start to try to align in other ways.

But what's this middle bit to be renewed in the spirit of your

minds? Paul is talking about the

reintegration of spirit and cognition.

See, the old way, when we were just all your Gentiles, before

we were baptized into Christ, was darkened in our

understanding and futile in our thinking.

And so we actually desperately need renewal in our ways of

thinking about things. You can't just assume that your

old way of thinking neatly locks into ways here.

An example of that in the world would be I grew up in the

British political system. It is not a one for one to the

US political system. So where I thought I knew

boundaries and how they operate and how to think about things

did not import into my experience of political life

within the US. Your ways of thinking in the old

life need to be examined and for.

That you need to be aware of them and you need the.

Holy Spirit to be at work renewing that this.

Is the just to read that paraphrase from Eugene Peterson

in the Message again, he says take on an entirely new way of

life, a God fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and

working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his

character in you. God is reproducing.

Who He is loving, compassionate, forgiving, just, holy,

righteous, merciful in you. This is what it is to be

baptized into the Christ life. And so there is a radical

change. There should be a radical

change. That begins to take place in our

lives as we put off the old ways and we go through this renewal

where we allow God by His Spirit to work with us to refresh our

ways of thinking and we begin to put on those new ways of living

that seems so foreign and weird to us before.

Like, have you ever tried out, OK, in our cultural moment,

fasting has become like the ultimate diet plan or something,

right? But people have been fasting as

a way to know God and to commune with God and to press in in

prayer forever. We think we're so cool with our

like, well, this is your body type and blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah. Fasting is not a diet trend.

Fasting is a spiritual practice that can break bonds.

Fasting is a spiritual practice that can make us more available

to hear God speak to us today. But if you talk to somebody who

is outside of Jesus about this. They're going to be like, you

are crazy. Would you like a cheeseburger or

a doughnut or any of your weaknesses?

I happen to have brought them to work today just for you.

I may have some things I need to process here.

So what then does Paul do? Having laid out this counter

formation in the way of Jesus that the the purpose of it is

that we would be made new in the likeness of God.

Does that not bring you back to the garden, Adam and Eve and God

breathing life. And these are my image bearers

in the world. And that image has been

devastated by sin. And in Christ that devastation

is being undone so that even today, before the end of the

age, before the New Jerusalem comes down and we are standing

in this new city going. Wow.

I couldn't even conceive of this today.

You can live as people of the Kingdom, bringing about radical

change in your neighborhood and your workplace.

It's a reality. It's not something we're waiting

for out there. It's something we're pursuing

today that we would be image bearers.

And he begins to give us some case studies.

Case studies in spiritual formation.

He says, Therefore, reading yourselves A falsehood, speak

truth, each one of you with his neighbor.

Is that in caps up there? Yes.

Thank you. When the NASB puts things in

caps it means it's a quote from the Old Testament.

Paul is making a. Quote right here.

Speak truth, each one of you with his neighbor, because we

are parts of one another. So Paul quotes from the book of

Zechariah. It's in the Old Testament, it's

in the minor Prophets section if you wanted to find it.

But verse 8, I'm actually at chapter 8.

I'm actually going to read from 16 through 17 says these are the

things which you shall do. Lord is speaking to his people.

Speak the truth to one another. Judge with truth and judgment

for peace at your gates, and let none of you devise evil in your

heart against another. And do not love perjury.

So don't love telling lies about people.

For all these. Things are what I hate, declares

the Lord. Paul just kind of slips this

little. Quote in and breezes on by.

There weren't footnotes in the original text, right?

They just weren't there. Paul just knew the scriptures

like we know a national anthem. It's just in there.

Someone starts it. You're like, I got to finish it.

It's got to happen, right? The scriptures are embedded.

And Paul, he's been formed by them and then reformed in the

way of Jesus. She talks on this one.

We're going to look at them a little more in a moment.

But verse 26, be angry and yet do not sin.

Do not let the sun go down on your anger and do not give the

devil an opportunity. And there is a an illusion at

minimum to Psalm 4, verse four that says tremble, trembling

from anger. You ever been so mad that you're

shook? Yeah, right.

Adrenaline surging. You're like, I got to do

something about this now, right? To tremble and do not sin.

Meditate in your heart upon your bed and be still.

I got to tell you, like, contemplative prayer is really

hard when you're trembling with rage.

It's just a difficult game, all right.

But actually, the instruction of the Scriptures isn't to deny

your anger. But it's to do something

different with it from what the world does.

Be angry and yet don't sin, don't let the sun go down on

your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.

The one who steals Third case study The one who steals must

low no longer steal. OK, cool, I used to do it, don't

do it now great, but rather But wait, there's more.

He must labor, producing with his own hands what is good, so

that he will have something to share with the one who has need.

OK, and then let no unwholesome word come out of your mouth, but

if there is any good word for edification according to the

need at the moment, say that so that it will give grace to those

who hear. So Paul actually begins to

unpack this idea of put off and be renewed and put on.

He doesn't just run around saying, stop doing that, stop

doing that, don't do that. Instead, he invites the people

into a new way of living. And I think we've got a slide

where we're going to go through some of these things again.

But the old way of lying, whether it's for your gain or

whether it's to slander somebody else, is replaced by speaking

the truth. Why?

Well, what Paul? Says is speak the truth, each

one of you with his neighbor, because we are parts of one

another. And in the reference in

Zechariah, it talks about establishing peace at the gates,

right? And I think what Paul is saying,

because remember the, the, the main metaphor we're working with

is all y'all is the body together.

And what lying does is decimates relationship and undoes trust.

It fractures us relationally one from another.

I don't know about you, but when I go on to any of the anything

online now, my first question tends to be, is this true?

I got to Fact Check the fact checkers because I just don't

know anymore. And then I'm like, I forget the

Internet. I'm just carry on.

I got enough to do here alone. What's going on elsewhere,

right? We're so used.

To lying being a kind of baseline operation relationally,

impulses don't do that instead. Speak the truth.

Why? For connection, because the Holy

Spirit has done this profound work of knitting us together.

We are members one of another. And so if my hand lies about my

foot, that's no good for me, right?

My hand is like, hey, foot's fine, but foot's actually like

swollen and hurt. I need treatment.

I don't need you to lie if hand hits somebody and says.

Foot did it. It's no good.

So we get rid of the old way because we name it and we see

it. But then we put on the new way

because connection is a Kingdom thing.

The old way of unrighteous anger or dysfunctional anger.

Look, anger is like gasoline and it can power a Mustang and it

can burn a house down. Gasoline should be handled

correctly. Or for my British people in the

House of which all my Australian people petrol, right?

Just translate for you. I need subtitles.

Sometimes people, unrighteous anger is the old way and what

Paul instructs is instead resolve your conflict.

Resolve it every day with the Psalm in mind.

Go and tremble in your anger before God first, and then when

that heat has been dealt. With.

Resolve your conflict on the daily so that the devil can't

get a foothold. The reason is protection to

guard the community. Stealing, right?

He says don't steal anymore. Instead do good work.

That's the new way Is good work work?

Work is not a curse. The curse is that work got real

hard, but work is actually part of our image bearing.

So do good work. Why?

So that you may provide. If you used to steal for your

own gain. Not only do you get called to

stop stealing, you get called to labor with excellence so that

you can share with other people. It's a complete transformation.

It goes from greed to generosity.

And then lastly, he says, don't let any unwholesome word come

out of your mouth. The death talk that we used to

participate in needs to stop. And instead we are to be people

who speak life a good word for edification according to the

need at the moment so that it will give grace to those who

hear. The reason is that we are

summoned as a community to be a people who bless and not curse,

who speak life in the way of Jesus to each other and out into

the world. So I want to just say that I,

I'm, I'm with this initiative for shine, shine the light.

When people knock on your door, they come to get hot dog from

you. That's not the opportunity to

tell them how awful Halloween is and how terrible the dark things

in their yards are. Y'all listen?

So, so I don't know. It's like my kid gets scared by

some of the stuff that's there when I walk into school.

I'm just going to tell you that like, I'm not cool with it, but

I'm also not pounding on the door yelling at people about it.

I'm praying, praying Lord let a dog steal that creepy doll.

That's my prayer life people. So if your creepy dog I was

missing, thank the dog. Praise the Lord finally says,

don't grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you were sealed for the day

of redemption. All bitterness, wrath, anger,

clamour and slander must be removed from you, along with all

malice. Be kind to one another,

compassionate, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ

also has forgiven you. We are called to be a people

because those 4 examples, the case studies that He gives don't

cover the full gamut of the ways that we break each other right

as we we got so many ways. What he says is essentially

attuned to the Spirit. Don't grieve the Spirit of God,

which tells us something really important.

I don't know where your theology sits here, but if I can grieve

you, then there is personhood involved.

The Holy Spirit is not some kind of ethereal force.

The Holy Spirit is a person, the third person of the Trinity, and

you can grieve him. That sounds bad, right?

Grieving the Holy Spirit sounds bad.

Why do these things grieve him? Because they disturb and destroy

the unity of the body. The Holy Spirit is at work

bringing unity, not uniformity. I really like the way that was

put. Pastor Jason, thank you.

Unity. Together we are a body of

Christ. And we can.

Grieve the Spirit who has sealed us for the day of.

Redemption again, some questions might sit theologically.

You might be like, well I'm sealed and it's 1 and done.

But seals can be broken. Paul is never lackadaisical with

his language. He chooses his words

specifically. You are sealed with the Holy

Spirit. You're marked as an authentic

one. Don't grieve the Spirit and

break the seal. People walk in the way of Jesus

and that's the summons where you walk in the Antichrist or the

Christ life. Will you walk?

Where your mouth is a a mode of destruction or a mode of

blessing, will you walk in a way that your hands take and steal

and gain for you, or give and bless and pour out in generosity

and faith, spiritual formation. And this is a quote from John

Mark Homus Practicing the way book is the process of being

formed into people of love in Christ.

The process takes time of being formed.

You're not there yet into people of love.

Love is the chief metric of maturity in Christ.

He is the center and the focus and the goal.

So I want to apply this and I'll be as brief as I can because I

see that clock. I see you clock.

If you are not yet an apprentice of Jesus, let me just ask you

how you feel your life is currently going, the practices

and beliefs and foundations upon which you have built.

Are they giving you what they said they would?

And is what they said what you actually want?

If not, Jesus is calling. He said that anybody who would

come to him can receive life, eternal life, and he said that

he is the only way to the Father.

So if you've heard people say that Christianity is an

exclusive religion and try to tear it down because of that, I

just say, well, listen, Christianity is exclusive.

Jesus is it we we hold up no other standard or banner.

It's Jesus and Jesus alone, but Jesus leads to a transformed

life of love in a way that nothing else on this planet and

in our history ever has. So how about you accept the

exclusivity of Jesus today and yield yourself to him to become

an apprentice of His way. The call is really Will you put

off the old way and bow yourself to Him and trust him in his

loving goodness that He laid down his life to pay for your

sin and to bring you new life. Now for those of you who follow

Jesus to call this the ongoing work of spiritual formation,

which is just as much of a call to yield yourselves to quickly.

Some things here. Firstly, name your practices,

your patterns and your passions. Practices, patterns and

passions. You need to become observant of

your ways of living. self-assessment is only as good

as yourself awareness. So if you're like well I don't

have any practices, patterns and passions that aren't aligned

with Jesus, you need some people around you who can help you see

where you are deviating. Get the help of trusted people.

If you don't know what your issues are, practices are your

habits and actions in the day-to-day.

For some people it's a little drink to settle the nerves or a

little office gossip to feel pseudo connected.

Tish Harrison Warren in her book Liturgy of the Ordinary, says

that God is forming us into a new people and the place of that

formation is the small moments of today.

That's as true as of our formation in the way of Jesus as

it is as our malformation. What are your practices and are

they leading you into a life of love and what are your patterns?

Your patterns are the repeated tracks that you make in life.

Maybe you have a history of relational conflict, or maybe

there's a history of different ways of numbing out.

Trading in one addiction for a more acceptable addiction is

still addiction. Still try and meet a need or

cover a wound in a way that Jesus hasn't called you to

practices and patterns build together, but underneath them

are passions, the want under the want.

It's the Y that drives our dysfunctions and often times if

we'll spend long enough allowing the Holy Spirit to illuminate

the places in us. The Psalms say look, show me any

crooked way in me right to ask Holy Spirit, would you show me

these ways that don't lead me into the life of Christ.

He'll begin to show them and you'll see the.

Practices. 1st and then you'll see some patterns, but

underneath it is a passion, a want that is trying to be

satisfied outside of Christ. You've got to name them.

And then you need to refresh your vision for the good life.

You will pursue what you desire. So if your passions are

misaligned, get or renew a right desire.

Prioritizing time in the Word, prioritizing time in more

contemplative prayer where we just want to be in the presence

of God. These are ways that we begin to

get a vision of the good life that aligns with the Kingdom.

Get in spaces that you can hear others tell of the goodness of

Jesus and church consumed discerningly.

This is a conviction area. What's the stuff that when you

watch it, lead you more into the loving Kingdom ways of God?

And what's the stuff that makes you want to go burn stuff down?

I want to say most of the time burning stuff down comes out of

an inflamed passion, not out of love and justice.

And then lastly, apprentice to Jesus by a partnership of grace

in community. It's a partnership of grace.

Dallas Willard have quoted this a lot and I'll just keep quoting

it. Grace is not opposed to effort.

It is opposed to earning. You don't earn your way into the

Kingdom but nor do you lie around eating bonbons and

waiting for the Holy Spirit to come and fan you with a gentle

breeze. Apprenticeship to Jesus is

apprenticeship to a servant hearted life and one where we

take on the gentle easy yoke of Jesus and we walk with him.

The Spirit starts and sustains the work of formation, so we

join him in the work of formation into likeness of

Jesus. So church, show up to the work,

make a commitment and make it your priority that we would be

formed by a process into a people of love in Christ.

And you cannot do it alone. No matter how hard you can

introvert, you cannot do this alone.

You need community because community is a space that will

reveal your misalignment. But community is also a space

that provides a place for healing and growth.

And as we read, community is actually a primary benefactor of

your formation in the way of Jesus.

Community is necessary for your apprenticeship in the way.

And so church, we have to commit to it because there's a lot of

other things that want our time and our attention.

But you actually have a choice. And in Christ you have the

freedom to make those priorities now and to live free from the

old ways, not no longer just as the Gentiles, but as Gentiles

transformed by the radical love and power of God.

Thank you for joining us today. River City Church is all about

experiencing and expressing God's love in our lives and

community, and we hope that you've been able to experience

that today. As grateful as I am that you've

spent this time listening in this morning, this podcast is no

substitute for full participation in a local church.

I love it when River City people listen to other pastors, but it

is those who show up week after week faithfully giving their

support and time and resources that make all of this possible.

If we can help you get connected to a local church, pray for you,

or support you in any way, click the link in the description and

let us know. If you'd like to financially

support the ministry of River City, click the give link on our

website in the description. Don't forget to subscribe and

don't forget to share this with your friends.

Thanks so much for listening. May the Lord bless and keep you

in all grace and peace.