Trust God with Your Reputation | More Wisdom, More Life | Pastor Jamie Hewitt

Hey everyone, and welcome to Christ Community Chapel and our weekend service.

My name is Jamie,

I'm a pastor here at the church, and it is my privilege to welcome you

not only to our weekend service, but the first week of what

we are calling our Summer of More.

And I mean looking around this room, this is amazing,

but we have so many amazing things planned for you guys as we are

doing some renovations in our sanctuary to make room for more people.

We are in the middle of our Proverbs

series, more wisdom for more life.

And tonight we're going to be talking about reputation,

which is something I think that probably hits all of us.

I think all of us, at some point, some moment in our life, we've asked

a question about who we are and how we can know

that we are good enough. And that's what we're going to be talking about.

And so if you want to join me, our church Bibles,

the passage is on page 514,

so it's easy for you to find, but we're going to be in Proverbs

Proverbs 22:1

22:1 and 2.

They see this.

A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches

and favor is better than silver or gold.

The rich and poor meet together; and the Lord

is the maker of them all and all.

I'm going to hold out my outline so you can follow along with where we're going.

The three points.

The first one is going to be the value of a name.

Then the second point is what makes a name good.

And then the third point is the cost of a good name.

So the value of a name, what makes a name good,

and the cost of a good name.

And so the value of a name.

Actually, just this week I ended up having a conversation

with my kids about the meanings of their name.

And I know you might be asking yourself this is suspect.

Pastor is preaching a message on having a good name, and he happens

to have a conversation with his kids that he references in his sermon.

But I promise you, it was completely honest.

We were watching the new animated movie David and my youngest daughter

turns to me after it and she says, daddy, did you name brother?

And my son's name is Jonathan.

She says, did you name brother after Jonathan, who was the friend of David?

I said, yeah, I did.

I named him after Jonathan because I love Jonathan, the friend of David.

And by naming our son that I wanted

some of who Jonathan is to be part of his character.

And so we had a conversation with my kids

about the meanings of all of their names, and they soaked it up.

They were locked in

because I think even as kids, they are interested in who they are.

And somehow in that conversation,

they had a clearer picture of who I dreamed that they might be.

You know, more important

even than the name that were given, I think, is the name that we earn.

And that's really what a reputation is.

A reputation is the name that we earn.

And I think it might even be more important

because when I named my son Jonathan, that was an aspirational name.

That is something I wanted for him.

But as he grows up into a man, he's going to have his own reputation

that he makes, and that's going to be more true of him.

And I think that's a little bit of what Shakespeare was alluding to when he said

a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.

So it doesn't matter what you say it is, it's what it really is that matters.

It's substance. And that's what a reputation is.

A reputation is who we really are.

And reputations are so significant.

They drive so much of our life not only at a large existential level,

but also just in the everyday facets of our life.

And so I'll share this brief way that you can also get to know

me a little bit better. I'm a part of Team Subaru.

Hey, I have a blue Subaru Forester, and my unique brand of Subaru Forester

happens to have a two by four roof

rack that I built myself because I'm incredibly cheap.

And so if you've ever been driving and have been cut off by a blue Subaru

Forester with two by fours on top of it, that was probably me.

It's going to be really hard

to convince you that there's another one of those out there.

So I chose to get that because I live in Northeast Ohio.

Like I would imagine a number of you guys do.

And we have this thing called winter.

And Subaru's have a reputation for being incredibly reliable vehicles,

but also being great in the snow, great driving

through mixed conditions and things like that.

And so that drove the choice of what I buy.

Reputations drive so many of our choices, almost all of them.

I would bet.

That's why one of the first things we look at when we buy something is the brand.

Because a brand says something about that product,

and if we're not sure about a product, what do we do?

We look to the reviews for that product and what our reviews,

if not the reputation of that product in the eyes of people who have bought it.

And so reputations drive so much of our lives.

They are so important.

And so it should not be a surprise when Proverbs says to you and I that

your reputation is so valuable

that it is the most important thing in your life.

That's what it means in verse one when it says, A good name is to be chosen

rather than great riches and favor is better than silver or gold,

because gold and silver and great riches are the most

valuable things that really we can imagine.

And this is saying that a good name, a reputation is more valuable than them.

It should be chosen over them.

And I think that even deeper, more than just it being really valuable,

I think that riches and gold and silver represent the things that we work for.

Is anyone in this room has a job, knows that you have a job to get a paycheck,

and if the paycheck stops coming

in, then you find another place to work to give you one.

So when this says it's to be chosen over great riches, it's saying

that it's to be chosen over anything else in our life that we could work for.

And so this is asking us a question.

It's saying, what are we working for in our life?

What are we trying to build our life on?

And it's suggesting that the answer to that question should be a good name.

And that leads to the question then so what makes a name good?

And that is my second point.

And so another way of asking this question what makes a name good is saying

who or where do we turn to know

if our name or our life is good?

Because remember, a reputation.

A name is who we are.

Who do we turn to to look back at us and say, well done, good.

And I think that there are a couple of places

we can turn and get a little bit mixed up on this, and I want to start there.

The first is we can turn to other people, we can look to them.

And I think that this is exhausting because it's a life of performance.

It is a life of trying to curate your image so you look just the right way.

It's adapting and reacting to other people based upon their opinions,

and it is turning over the wheel to them

and wherever they lead you, you follow.

And I admit, this

is going to be a bit of a weird segue, but that reminded me of my honeymoon.

And on my honeymoon, my wife and I,

we got to spend some time riding jet skis, and what I would tell you,

I learned 16 years ago, is that I hate

riding on the back of a jet ski,

because when you're riding on the back of a jet ski and not driving it,

you are constantly reacting to the person who's driving.

You are shifting your weight as they make a turn.

You're trying to anticipate even where they are turning,

and you know that if you don't get it right,

you are likely to get thrown off of this thing and into the lake.

I think that chasing the approval and favor

the reputation of other people is a lot like that.

You are constantly living your life, looking at what they want,

trying to react to it, trying to anticipate it, and know that one

small false move can lead to losing everything.

I think chasing a good name in the reputation of other people,

it doesn't work.

And so maybe some of us will say, yeah, I learned that lesson.

I stopped caring what other people think a long time ago.

I just do what I think is right.

And here's what I tell you.

Trying to find your name and your reputation in yourself.

I don't think that that works.

Either, because I think that you're still performing.

You are just performing for yourself.

You have become the judge.

I think anybody who spent any time alone with their own thoughts knows just how

harsh a critic that we can be of ourselves when we are honest.

Most of us know that we don't measure up to our own standards.

Most of us wish that we were somebody different than we are.

Psychologists will say that the two most important desires

in a person's life are to be known and to be loved.

Now that leads to one of our deepest fears,

because we sense that if somebody really knew me,

if they knew everything, if they knew every thought that I've had, every desire

that I've had and they could never love me.

And the problem with being your own judge is that no one knows you quite like you.

And so as we move from chasing our approval in others

to trying to find it in ourself, we trade an exhausting voice

of performance for a crushing voice of trying to be our own judge.

Neither of those work.

So we're left to wonder where do we turn?

Proverbs 22 does not leave us hanging.

It points us in the right direction.

And so the second verse says this the rich and the poor meet together.

The Lord is the maker of them all.

So all of us, wherever you are at, rich, poor, it does not matter your status.

We all stand in the same place longing for a good name.

And where does it direct us to turn?

It's not to others, it's not to ourselves.

It's to the God who made us, the one who made us and knows us best.

If that is where we should turn.

It's not that we should never care about what other people think of us.

And it's not that we should never reflect on what we think about ourselves.

But neither of those two things are stable enough to build a life on.

Neither of those two are able to be the foundation that we crave and need.

Only the Lord who made us is able to be that.

And so I want to talk about building a life for a little bit.

I have renovated approximately.

I don't know, 1.7 homes in my life.

I'm in the midst of it.

If you can't tell, that's the fraction there.

My kids have lived on subfloor for the majority of their lives,

and I have learned a thing or two about building.

My wife has

learned a lot of patience along the way, but I've learned a couple of things.

And so I think most homes are built at three layers.

You have the finishing of a home, and that's the stuff

on the surface that you can see. It's the paint on the walls.

It's the choice of whether you have carpet or hardwood floor.

It's the light fixtures, it's all the stuff you see.

And I think that that can be thought of as our reputation to others.

It's what people see in our life when they look at us.

But you go beneath the surface a little bit

and you have the framing of the house.

You have the two by fours in the wall, you have the joists in the floor.

See, I know what I'm talking about.

You have subfloor, you have electrical,

plumbing and things like that.

It's below the surface.

It's harder to see and it holds it all up.

And that's like the way that we see ourselves.

That's our relationship and our reputation with ourselves.

But beneath all of that is the most important level.

And that's the foundation of a home.

It's what it's built on, and that is our reputation and our relationship with God.

It's what God would say about us if asked whether our life is good or not.

And so it's not that paying attention to the finishing is wrong or bad.

It's not that caring about the structural integrity

of the framing of a house is bad, but I would say that

if the foundation is cracked and broken, if it is busted and sinking

and maybe was never built correctly in the first place,

no amount of nails in the framing and no number of coats of paint

on the wall can stop the cracks from coming back again and again.

As the house is sinking, they're just going to show back up.

And I would even say that to worry about the color of paint

on the walls in a sinking house is just insanity.

And yet I think that that's what a lot of us, myself

very much included, have a tendency to do.

That's what it's like trying to find a name in other people instead of God.

But if we turn to him,

I think that we can have the kind of life that we are made for.

So that leads to a question what makes God look at people

like you and I and say, good.

And so my third point, the cost of a good name.

You know that question what makes God look at somebody and say, well done.

What makes God look at somebody and say that their life is good?

I think is one of the most important questions

that a person can ask themselves.

And we are going to look at a conversation that Jesus has

with a crowd of people when somebody asks him a similar question.

And so in John six, if you want to look it up later,

Jesus has just fed the 5000.

He has gone over to the other side of the lake.

The crowd that was with him there, they have followed him around

and somebody asks Jesus this question.

They say, what must we be doing to be doing the work of God?

What must we be doing to be doing the work of God?

I think another way of saying that is, what do we need to be doing to have favor

with God?

What kind of life do we need to be living in order for God

to look at us and say, well done, this is good.

And I think that Jesus response is noteworthy

as much for what he doesn't say as what he does.

And so first, what he doesn't say.

Jesus doesn't give a long list of instructions and rules and regulations

for how you and I can earn a good name with God.

He doesn't say, do this, do this, do this,

don't do this, never do that, always do this.

And don't even think about doing that.

That's that's not what he says in a beautifully simple way.

Jesus says one sentence.

He says, this is the work of God that you would believe

in, the one he sent the work of God for you.

And I is to believe in the one he sent.

The only thing that would cause God to look as someone like you and I and say,

well done, is that we would believe in the one he sent.

And so I think that there are two costs that we can draw

out, two costs of a good name that we can see,

one of them is paid by God, and the other is paid by us.

The one that is paid by God is Jesus life.

The cost of a good name is Jesus life because he is the one that was sent.

He is the one who was sent to live

a perfect life that we failed to live and can never hope to live.

He is the one who is sent to give his life

on a cross, to die the death that we deserved.

He's the one who came back and invites us to follow him into new life.

See, the hope of the gospel is not a reputation improvement plan.

The hope of the gospel is a reputation exchange.

It's that God would look at people like you and I

and he would say, I will take your sinful reputation

and give it to another, and I will give his perfect reputation to you.

And I want to look at a verse in second Corinthians 521.

It's going to come up on the screen and I want to read it with you.

It says, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin,

so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This says, for our sake or for our good, he made him to be sin who knew no sin.

So though Jesus was perfect, he took all of our broken reputation on himself.

And then it says

that in him we might become the righteousness of God, and we become

that as his perfect reputation and righteousness

is counted towards us,

the cost of a good name

in the eyes of God is the life of Jesus poured out for us.

But how can we take hold of that?

That's my second cost.

It's the one that's paid for by us.

The cost is belief.

Jesus says you believe in the one that he sent.

It's trust.

And I think that trust and belief,

they always show up through choice.

You and I, we will choose the thing

that we put our trust into over everything else.

And so Jesus is saying that we should believe in the one whom he sent.

We should put our trust in the one whom he sent,

and we should choose the one whom he sent above all others.

And this is where we come back to the Proverbs verse.

Because Proverbs talks a lot about choice,

it says that a great name is to be chosen rather than great riches.

And it says that favor is better than silver or gold.

We should choose it.

And sometimes we are asked to choose it over

other things that look good, like great riches and gold and silver.

And Jesus says, yeah, but I'm still worth more.

And sometimes we have to let go of good things are things

that seem good in order to take hold of the best thing,

and a story that I'll share really quickly.

I've got an awesome tree in my backyard that's great for climbing.

My kids found it almost immediately

when we bought our house and they started climbing it.

And when they were younger especially, they would climb up the tree.

And I don't know if you're a parent if you've experienced this as well,

but sometimes they would climb up and they would not be able to get back down.

And so they would be stuck and they would call out and they say,

daddy, will you come and help me get down from the tree?

And I'd walk out and I would have my arms up in the air.

And I say, I'm here.

You can jump down and I'll catch you.

And then there would be a silence and a pause, and they'd say, daddy,

I'm too scared.

I can't, I can't let go.

And I say, if you trust me, you'll let go.

You can trust me. I will catch you.

Sometimes, in order to show that we trust, we have to let go of something,

even if it seems like it's the thing that's keeping us safe.

And that's what Proverbs 22 is saying when it says that a good name

is to be chosen

rather than great riches, because Jesus is the greatest value of all.

And if we trust him with our lives, if we trust him with all of our reputations,

then we can build the kind of life we were made for.

And I want to walk you through how we can do that practically.

Those three layers foundation, framing, and finishing the way that God sees

us, the way that we see ourselves and the way that others see us.

I want to show you how we can step into trusting Jesus

with our reputation at each one of those, and what that leads to,

so how we can trust Jesus in our reputation with God.

It means that we can believe that he is enough, that he is the one

and the only one that can give us a good name.

And here's where that leads to.

It leads to a life where we know where we stand with God.

We don't have to wonder.

We can rest that Jesus has said it is finished and it is done

and paid for forever.

And then the way that we see ourselves, our reputation with ourselves,

the framing of our life, if we trust Jesus

in our reputation with ourselves, here's what that looks like.

It looks like stopping listening to the voices

that tell us who we are from others, stopping listening to the voices

that tell us who we are from ourself, and starting to listen to what God says

about us.

At the beginning of John, it'll say

that those who believe in him have the right to become children of God.

What God says about us is that we are his children.

If you are in Jesus, then God calls you son and God calls you daughter.

God calls you beloved.

And that can begin to write a new story of how you see yourself

and lastly, your reputation with others.

When you and I trust Jesus with our reputation of others,

I think that it brings freedom and it brings purpose to our life,

because we begin to want a reputation that points

not to ourself, but to God.

Even our reputation is set free from being egotistical in the gospel.

How amazing is that? Our life.

We want to point towards him.

Every time that we jump off the branch, we let go from that

and Jesus catches us is like a five star review

to Jesus goodness and faithfulness to catch us every time that we trust him

with our finances, with our marriage, with our singleness,

with the career that didn't go the way that we hoped

it would go, with a family

that is broken and we don't know how it's going to be put back together.

Every time that we trust him with the thing that feels like we can't get rid of,

we become a

review to the world of Jesus goodness.

And so Proverbs 22, it says to you and I that there's

nothing more important in our life than our name, but the only way

that we can know that we are good enough is in Jesus and in him.

We can have the kind of

life we are made for with ourselves, with others, and ultimately with God.

But it comes down to the choice what will we choose?

Will we choose to trust Jesus as the foundation of our life?

And I want to invite you to consider that.

And maybe if you've never, maybe you consider that for the first time.

Maybe if you've been walking with Jesus for a while,

you consider it for the thousandth.

Where in your life is he inviting you to take a leap and to trust him?

Here's what I can promise you.

He tells us that it is always worth it.

So if you would pray with me,

father, I thank you for your goodness.

To never leave us, to never forsake us.

God to be with us.

Every time any person has ever leapt to you,

calling out for you to rescue them, God, you have caught them every single time.

You alone are the way that we can have the name with you

that we long for in our lives.

Can I pray that wherever we are tonight we would have the courage to say, God,

I want to choose you for my life because you're worth it.

Amen.