The Kingdom Way | Luke 6:39–40 with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor at MetaCurch, and I hope that today's message is inspiring and enlightening and really builds you up wherever you're at in life.

I want to welcome you in wherever you're joining us from.

If you're here in person at our Holotus venue, man, I'm so glad you joined us, our Patrenko venue, or if you're with us online, and I'm just glad that you are here and you're getting under the word.

If you're new with us, my name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

And I'm just so glad that you joined us.

We are in a journey through the gospel of Luke.

We're going slowly, we're going line by line.

Luke is one of four historical accounts of the life of Jesus that we have in our Bibles.

And right now, we are in this section where Jesus is preaching his most famous sermon.

We believe this is the sermon he took everywhere he went as he traveled during his three years of ministry, because Jesus was inviting everybody to start living as a part of the kingdom of God right here and right now.

And Jesus comes out of the gate, just to recap where we've been, he shocks everybody.

He says to start his sermon, uh, all the people that you think are the most fortunate, the most blessed, the happiest, those are the people who should likely be pitied here on earth.

And all of the people that you typically take pity on might just be the most blessed among you.

Jesus comes out and says, Blessed are the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and the hated, and woe to those who are rich and full and laughing and loved by everyone.

And Jesus is just trying to show you that the way the kingdom of God operates is like upside down compared to the kingdoms of this world that have formed us and have informed us.

After that section, Jesus goes, okay, if you want to know what this looks like, you're gonna have to love your enemies, not tolerate them, not ignore them, actively love them.

You're gonna have to bless those who persecute you, you're gonna have to pray for those who are against you.

Last week we saw that Jesus gives us these concrete steps.

He says, you have to stop being judgmental, you have to stop condemning others, you have to start forgiving people, even if they haven't really earned it, and you have to be generous in a world that is full of greed.

Now, all of these things that Jesus is telling us are the values of the kingdom of God, they just are completely against every intuition that we have.

And so we end up with like our instincts versus Jesus' instructions.

What is natural to us is just the opposite of everything Jesus is calling us into, and it creates this tension.

Where all of the ways that we've been taught how to live, all of the ways that we observe throughout our culture, all of the influences on our life, they have pushed us in one direction.

Jesus steps on the scene and goes, if you really want to live, and not just invest your whole life into kingdoms that will one day fade away, that will one day burn, if you want to invest your life into the kingdom of God, which by the way is what you were created to do, at MetaCurch, we believe that God created you on purpose and God created you with purpose.

And the reason that you can find all kinds of earthly success and not be satisfied is because you're living for the wrong kingdom.

You cannot find your created purpose inside the kingdoms of this world only when we start following Jesus and living to build the kingdom of God.

Some of you came up in church like I did, and the idea was we just kind of live in this world and we suffer in this world and we kind of close our eyes and we hold our Bibles very tight, and then someday we get to die and go to the kingdom of God.

And that's not what Jesus taught.

He said, You should live in that kingdom right now, you should invest in that kingdom right now, you should build that kingdom right now, you should grow that kingdom right now.

Amen.

Amen.

But here's what's hard.

Jesus is showing us the kingdom way.

We've called this section of Luke the kingdom way because that's all Jesus is doing.

He's going, here's how it works, here's how the kingdom of God works.

And like every single thing he asks of us, we just go, Oh my gosh.

That is so different than how I think about things.

That is so different than my natural inclination.

And so we come here to learn what God has to say and to see where God's story intersects with our story.

And so for us to experience any growth in our lives, we have to be brutally honest with ourselves when we come here as the body of Christ.

And if we are willing to be brutally honest with ourselves, then we will acknowledge that when we have our own instincts, our own intuitions, our gut feelings, when we have our natural instinct versus Jesus' very counterintuitive, countercultural instruction, when push comes to shove in our lives, we often choose what is natural to us.

Especially Christians in the West, especially Christians in America, we are so consumed by the kingdoms of this world.

We are taught from the time that we are young, just follow your gut, follow your heart, determine your own truth, make your own way.

And so we default to what is natural.

And here's the problem: our nature is broken.

Scripture tells us that this world is fallen, that it is stained by sin, that there is brokenness and sin all around us.

And listen, there is brokenness and sin inside of us.

And so what is natural to me is actually a corrupted version of who I was created to be.

What is natural to me is oftentimes moving me in complete opposition to where Jesus is calling me to go.

And we default to our nature.

And because of that, we do not actively follow Christ.

The Western church and Western Christianity is dying because of a lack of what we call discernment.

Now, discernment, I'm gonna give you a definition, and those of you who are really taking your faith seriously, you're gonna write this down so that this sermon I spent the last three months on doesn't go out of your ears by the time that you get to Bill Miller's here after service, okay?

You're gonna take your faith seriously, you're gonna take notes so you can retain some information.

Discernment is the ability to see reality from God's perspective.

We use the word discernment, and here's how we talk about it.

We talk about discernment like it is a tool.

So we have our giant Christian toolkit, and every once in a while, when we have a big decision to make, we reach into our Christian toolkit and we pull out our discernment tool.

So it's like, man, I'm thinking about changing careers, I'm thinking about getting engaged, man, I'm thinking about making a big change in my health, man, I just got a bad diagnosis, man, my kids are out of hand.

Let me go reaching for discernment.

We talk about discernment ministries, and there are good discernment ministries.

And then there are discernment ministries that feel more like witchcraft, like you expect them to bust out a Ouija board and start talking to the spirits.

And it's like this thing that we start to believe only the superior level of Christian can attain.

Discernment is not a tool in your toolkit, it is a way of seeing the world all of the time.

Discernment is a part of spiritual growth, it is a part of spiritual maturity where you learn more and more and more to see the world the way that God sees it.

And the reason that this is tough is because to learn discernment, you have to take steps of faith.

And the reason that they're steps of faith is because Jesus is calling us towards actions and reactions that go against our gut.

They're counterintuitive, they're counter-cultural, they're not natural to us.

And for most people, most of the time, push comes to shove, we do what's natural.

We move on our instinct, and you can do that.

Everyone's doing that all of the time.

You can do that.

Congratulations, you're a dolphin, you're a gecko, you're a rooster, you're just an animal.

And listen, people who don't believe in God or anything transcendent, they teach you this.

They just say, Hey, look, you're an animal.

You're a mammal, your dog's a mammal, a cow's a mammal, a whale's a mammal, you're just an animal.

You're a little bit further evolved than some of the other animals.

And so then you ask the brilliant atheist scientist, well, how do we have like a consciousness?

And just in case you're not paying attention to the scientific community, do you know what their answer is to that?

We don't know.

There is not a scientist alive on earth, there has never been a scientist alive on earth who can tell you scientifically where a consciousness comes from.

I can.

And every scientific conclusion is leading people to the transcendent truth of God, and as soon as it gets close to God, they find a detour away from it.

Because the truth is, we are not like the rest of creation, we are not like the rest of the animals.

We were made in the image of our Almighty God, which is why we have a soul, which is why we have a conscience, which is why we have the freedom of our will.

And so if you live your entire life just going based off of your gut, going based off of your instinct, you're a dolphin.

You're just one of the animals.

You have erased one of the very things that makes you unique as a human being.

And we lack discernment because we just go on instinct, and our instinct in this broken world, stained with sin, is almost always drawing us away from Christ, away from God, away from our purpose, away from the life that would actually fulfill you.

And so it takes real steps.

And it starts just very blind, like we have to just trust God enough to go, I want to do this, and Jesus says to do this, and I'm just going to take a step.

And it takes a lot of those steps for you to start really seeing reality the way that God sees it.

And for most of us, we want to follow God, we want to follow Jesus, but we can't see reality the way that he sees it.

This sermon from Jesus, I just tell you every week, he's just screaming at us.

You don't understand reality, you don't know how life works, you don't know how to measure success, you don't know how to manage your relationships, you don't know how to steward your resources.

But Jesus does, and he will show you.

We struggle and we can't see it, and we can't see reality the way that God sees it, and that's a problem.

I'm gonna give you four words that God gave me while I was writing this sermon.

These four words I wrestled with for 30 minutes because it didn't make sense to me at first.

But I think this is so important.

I think at minimum you should write this down somewhere you're gonna see it a lot, and you might need to tattoo it on your face, okay?

This is what God gave me.

Just like this.

What God sees is.

What God sees is reality, is not determined by your perception.

I I deal with this a lot as a pastor because people come to their pastor when they want somebody to co-sign a bad idea.

So they come in and pretty quickly I figure out oh, they're not here for wisdom, they're not here for advice, they're not here for a passage to read, they're not here to get, you know, connected to a mentor in the church.

They are here because they want my stamp of approval on their foolishness.

So when the 15-year-old is trying to explain to me why his parents are idiots and how I need to be on his side and I need to have a little talk with mom and dad, I just go, I totally understand that that is your perception right now, but I don't care about your perception.

I love you, I don't care about your perception, I care about what God sees because what God sees is.

I can't tell you how many people have come in and their sole purpose, I think they want help with their marriage, they don't.

They want me to co-sign their divorce.

And the problem is they have no biblical grounds for divorce.

There are some biblical grounds for divorce, they're very few and far between.

They just don't really like their spouse anymore.

And they're going, well, I really feel and I've prayed a lot about it, and I really think, and that is their perception, and I don't care.

I love them, I don't care about their perception, what God sees is, and God has shown us what he sees in marriage.

And so I'm going, look, what you have to understand is when God sees you, he still sees a covenant.

And so that's the end.

Reality is not determined by consensus.

For a long time, like most of human history, it was the consensus that you could own other human beings in a slave master relationship.

Well, guess what?

The consensus doesn't make it so, which is why it took the movement of Jesus Christ to eventually abolish slavery as we helped the world see how God sees.

Reality isn't determined by those who hold power.

I don't care what the emperor says, I don't care what the dictator says, I don't care what the president says, I don't care what the judiciary says, I don't, I don't care what the lawmaker says, I don't care what the law says.

If the law goes against what God says, what God sees, that's what it is.

And so Jesus is preaching the sermon, and he goes, You want to know what it is?

Blessed are the poor.

Well, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

And it doesn't need to make sense because it's not about my perception or the way I see things.

This is the way that God sees it, and so that's what it is.

You know what I want to do to my enemies?

I'm not gonna tell me because you'd stop going to church here.

And Jesus says, if you want to live an actual blessed life, if you want to thrive, then you will love your enemies, you will pray for your enemies, you will bless those who curse you, and you don't have to agree with that, it doesn't have to make sense to your gut, it can go against your intuition.

God sees it that way, so that's what it is.

And if what God sees is, and we can't see reality the way that God sees it because we lack discernment, then we don't know what reality is.

And if we don't know what reality is, we don't know how to move in this world, we don't know how to organize our lives, we don't know what success looks like, we don't know how to manage a marriage, we don't know how to manage a dollar.

And a lack of discernment is killing us.

And the path to discernment is not sexy.

Everyone, everyone thinks discernment is this magical thing where if you can pray hour-long prayers and speak in tongues, you have discernment and someone else doesn't.

You know how discernment starts?

Christ is telling me to do something, I don't want to do it, I really don't want to do it, I do it anyway.

That's a step towards discernment.

The Holy Spirit's prompting me to do something.

For for four months, the Holy Spirit has been prompting me in Sunday service to go up to the stage and get on my face, and I'm unwilling to do it because I'm uncomfortable with it, and I go and I do it anyway, and that's a step towards discernment.

This person has hurt me, they have leveraged things against me, they have gossiped about me, they have run me through the mud, and I'm going to pray for them and uplift them and love them anyway.

That's a step towards discernment.

This is a struggle for us because we're broken and the world's broken and we're sinful and the world is sinful, and Jesus knows this is difficult for us.

And that ties us into our passage today, where in Luke chapter 6, two verses, verse 39 and 40, Jesus told them a parable.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

Can the blind guide the blind?

Kind of two characters here: blind leaders, blind followers.

I want to speak first about blind leaders.

When we talk about blindness, we are not talking about a physical disability, we're talking about a spiritual reality.

And so I want to give you another definition.

If discernment is the ability to see reality the way that God sees it, then blindness, in contrast to discernment, blindness is the inability to see reality from God's perspective.

We have discernment.

Discernment means I can see reality from God's perspective, and then we have blindness when Jesus talks about blindness.

This is an inability.

I cannot see reality from God's perspective.

Here's what that means: it means you can have a billion followers on TikTok and still be blind.

It means you can have all the money in the world and still be blind.

It means you can have all the worldly metrics of success and still be blind.

It means you can have a massive platform and be blind.

And this should be a warning, a shot across the bowel to every person who claims the title pastor and stands on platforms and preaches.

Because you can build a giant platform and you can have a big old church with lots of seats and lots of people in those seats and still be blind.

You can build a big church just telling people exactly what they already want to hear.

The New Testament warns about this.

False teachers will come into the church, wolves in sheep's clothing, and they will just tickle your ears.

You know what that means?

It means I tell you what already makes sense to you.

If you listen, if you're if you're sitting in seats at Holidays and Strenko, you don't have this problem because you walk out of here feeling like you got punched in the face all of the time.

If you're watching this online right now and you sit in services all the time, and the pastor only tells you things that already make sense to your gut, they're blind.

They're not helping you to elevate your vision and see things the way that God sees them.

If you just walk away, every sermon you walk away going, I knew I was right about that.

Change churches.

You should walk out.

The only reason I can preach to you like this is because I'm preparing like this.

I'm preparing and then just going, oh no.

I'm preparing and having to call people and apologize to them.

I'm preparing and going, oh my gosh, the conviction I'm under, if I can get my people at Meta to feel one one hundredth of this, change will come to our church.

Discernment is uncomfortable.

Discernment is being able to see the way God sees, and blindness is an inability to do that, and blindness is killing us, and there are blind leaders all around us.

If you think about it in Jesus' day, this applied to all the religious leaders in Israel, the Pharisees and Sadducees and the scribes and the priests.

We know they were blind leaders.

They could not see reality the way that God sees it, they had lost the plot, they did not see the heart of God, they no longer saw the mission of God, they were in pain.

And because they were in pain as a country, all they wanted was for God to get them out of their suffering.

The reason we know the religious leaders in Jesus' day were blind guides is because the God that they worshiped stepped into their world, stood nose to nose with them, and they could not see him.

Blind leaders.

We have more knowledge and more information than any humans who have ever lived in all of human history, and we have less discernment than maybe any generation of Christians.

It isn't about resources.

Here in the West, we are the wealthiest, most affluent people who have ever walked the face of the earth, and we have less discernment than maybe any generation of Christians.

It isn't about having enough voices because we have more Christian influencers, more Christian podcasters, more famous pastors preaching sermons on YouTube than we've ever had before.

And we're a generation with less discernment than maybe any generation that's come before us.

We are so inundated with resource, inundated with information, inundated with voices that we cannot see past this world.

And we cannot see reality the way that God sees it.

The reason that this message matters to you today is this one key truth.

Everyone is being discipled.

No one is exempt from this.

Everyone is being formed and informed by someone or something.

And so the question is, who are you being led by?

And can they see?

Are they blind guides?

Or can they see reality the way that God sees reality?

It's interesting when I was putting this sermon together and I was trying to work on these definitions for you guys, because 50 years ago I would have just said a disciple is someone being formed and informed by someone.

Now I have to say, or something.

Because some of you, the number one.

Leader in your life does not have flesh and bones, the thing that is leading you more than anything else on earth is the algorithm.

That's what's forming you.

You don't even see it, man.

You dress just like the people you follow, you try to vacation just like them, you spend your money just like them, you start thinking just like them, your worldview is shaped by them, you're informed by them.

It's how you think, you're formed by them, it's who you are becoming.

And some of you are like, no, no, no, no.

I'm being discipled.

You know who's discipling me?

Pastor Clayton.

Pastor Clayton's just because I come to Sunday service once every you know three weeks or whatever, my one hour of screaming and sweating at you cannot compete with your five hours a day scrolling social media.

That's what's leading you.

Some of you, you have people in your life, you have friends, you have mentors, you have people in your career field, you have parents, you have siblings.

Everyone is being discipled by someone.

The person or the thing that's leading you, can it see?

And if we're honest, and if we're not honest, we're just wasting our time, and I hate wasting time.

If we're honest, most of us are being led by blind guides most of the time.

Things that are just feeding our natural instinct that are leading us further away from God.

Now, Jesus told them a parable.

Can the blind guide the blind?

He didn't just talk about blind leaders, he talked about blind followers.

Now, here's where we have to be careful.

I tell you all the time, we must slow down in scripture.

We just go fast and we make assumptions.

So if I'm going fast, here's my assumption.

Blind leaders, blind followers.

The blind leaders are obviously the Pharisees, the blind followers are obviously those who rejected Jesus.

They're unbelievers, move on in the text.

I want you to look at verse 39.

He told them a parable.

If you go slow, the Holy Spirit will bring the right questions to your mind?

Here's your first question.

Who's them?

Is Jesus talking to the Pharisees?

Is Jesus talking to the religious leaders?

Is Jesus talking to unbelievers who rejected him?

Everything in context.

For those of you who were here in our first few weeks, we made this very clear.

If we go to the beginning of the sermon, the beginning of the sermon is verse 20, same chapter, verse 20.

Look at what it says.

Then Jesus looking up at who?

Someday I'm gonna ask a question, and you guys are gonna be louder than the Methodists.

I pray for this.

Then looking up at who?

His disciples.

Now there is a massive crowd, likely thousands gathered.

But Jesus preaches to his disciples.

In turn, he's preaching through them.

He wants the crowd to hear, but his audience intentionally are his disciples.

Not Pharisees, not Sadducees, not priests, not unbelievers, disciples.

When Jesus talks about blind followers, he's talking about his own people.

He is not asking his disciples if they are blind, he's telling them that they are.

And we don't like this.

We're like, I can see just fine.

Well, that's your problem is that we are arrogant and we are self-sufficient Westerners and we do not want to be led.

We do not want to surrender and humble ourselves and go, I can't see.

I cannot see reality the way that God sees it.

If I could, I would not be caught in these patterns, caught in these sins, caught in these cycles, continuing to move further from God.

The first step to discipleship is admitting that you need Jesus as your leader.

You go, well, Pastor, what about amazing grace?

You know the song.

I once was lost, but now I'm found.

Was blind, but now I see.

To that I say, yes and amen.

If you're a believer in Jesus, what that means necessarily is you finally saw your sin.

You saw that it separates you from God, you saw the work of Jesus Christ enough to put your faith in Him and start a relationship with God.

Amen.

But amazing grace is a song, not scripture, and we cannot push a song beyond what scripture allows.

At the moment that you come to faith in Jesus Christ, you are justified.

That means you are declared righteous in the courts of heaven.

From now on, when God sees you, he does not see your sin because you are covered by his son.

And then you've got 60 more years to live.

And you have to decide now that you have put your faith in Jesus, now that you've believed in Jesus, if you are really going to follow him.

Because following Jesus is going to require you to go against almost every natural inclination that you have built by the kingdoms of this world.

And so that is called sanctification.

It's becoming more like Christ progressively over time by steps of faith.

All of this to say, at the moment that you come into a relationship with Jesus, you are not given 2020 spiritual vision.

You are not.

You're given something better.

You're given a relationship with the one person who can see reality perfectly.

And if you were given perfect spiritual vision all on your own, you know exactly what you would do.

You would try to live this life on your own.

Instead, we are forced hand in hand to become dependent on Christ.

You don't get perfect vision at the moment of faith.

This is why Jesus took three years to disciple the apostles.

This is why our New Testament is just letter after letter after letter written specifically to believers to correct them, to reroute them, to instruct them, to warn them, because they don't have it yet.

You are reborn and you are basically blind.

You've lived all of your years for the kingdoms of this world, and now you're having to fight every instinct in faith to follow Jesus.

And here's the beautiful thing: when you're willing to take that first hard step and that second impossible step and that third step of faith, you multiply that by months and years, and eventually you do start to walk like Jesus walks, and talk like Jesus talks, and think like Jesus thinks.

And check it out, see like Jesus sees.

I've shared this before, I just think it's the coolest thing.

There's a word picture associated with the word disciple.

And the word picture in the ancient world, where men typically wore long robes and everyone wore sandals, and all of the roads were dirt roads, the picture is I walk so close to my leader that I proudly wear the dust off of his sandals on the hem of my robe.

Everywhere he goes, I go.

Everywhere he leads, I lead.

He cannot juke me, he cannot get away from me.

I'm gonna wear his dust proudly on my sneakers.

So let me ask is the dust of Christ anywhere on you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, are you just clinging to him and going, wherever you go, I'm going.

Doesn't matter how strange or uncomfortable or scary or how much suffering might be on the other side of it, where you just backpack.

I'm just backpacking you, bro.

I have a dog, it's this big.

I have this dog.

I wanted a dog this big, and Katie wanted a dog this big, and we have a dog this big.

And we call him our Velcro dog because he just follows room to room, around the house, around the yard, down the street, and he will walk, literally, he's this big.

He will walk so close to my feet that I like chin check him.

And I've talked to him, like, bro, give me some space, you know.

This isn't good.

And he's like, I don't care, bro.

Where you go, I'm just right, I am on your heels.

A disciple is like that.

A disciple of Jesus, you you kind of just know by looking.

It's like, man, there's just like Jesus all over you.

And we need this.

We all need this.

Who are you following?

Can they see reality the way that God sees it?

Who are the people in your life who are further ahead of you in their faith?

Who are the people it's like they're further ahead in their marriage, they're further ahead in their walk, and you're just like, you're on them, you're clinging to them, you're going, show me.

I want to see what it looks like, I want to see what a good marriage looks like.

I don't know, I want to see what a godly marriage looks like, I want to see what godly parenting looks like.

Let me tell you something.

Monday night, Katie and I sat for hours with a godly couple who's just ahead of us, and their kids are older than us.

And we're we're in all these transitional periods in our parenting, and we're just going, show us.

We're just asking a million questions, and we're just listening and leaning in because they are somebody that's ahead of us and they are godly, and they can see a little bit more of how God sees things when it comes to parenting.

We're just leaning into this and just going, disciple us, man.

And wherever you go, bro, I'm just there, I'm gonna watch you, I'm gonna observe you, and I'm gonna ask a million questions.

This is what discipleship looks like.

And like the only thing we're doing that to lives in our back pockets.

Disciple me.

Show me how to live.

Show me what success looks like, show me how to spend my money, show me what I should look like.

This is our rabbi.

The dust of the algorithm is all over the hem of our robe.

Here's what Jesus says.

Let's finish out verse 39.

He told them a parable, can the blind guide the blind?

Won't they both fall into a pit?

Let me take you to the ancient Near East.

All of the roads are dirt, and most of them are elevated.

Here's why.

Because dirt roads can get washed out very easily, potholes very easily.

And so they would just go to the side of the road, they would dig down, and then they would patch the holes.

And so there were massive pits all along these elevated roads.

Everyone understood this when Jesus said it.

If you're walking an ancient Near East road and you close your eyes, the countdown has begun for you to literally fall into a pit.

We have to slow down because if we're going fast and we're making assumptions, I go, okay.

Blind leaders, Pharisees, blind followers, unbelievers, pit, pit of hell.

Now we're committed to honesty here.

We just try to say what the word says.

If you go your entire life and you never put your faith in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, someday you will be separated eternally from God and all that is good, and we call that hell.

And if you don't have a relationship with Jesus Christ, you should fix that like today.

You should get that right today.

But Jesus isn't just talking to Pharisees and unbelievers, he's talking to his own disciples.

And even for those who are sealed by the blood of Christ will never experience the pit of hell.

You better believe that while you're here on earth, if you follow blind guides, you will fall into the pit of despair, a pit of emotional ruin, a pit of relationships, a parenting pit, a pit of addiction, a financial pit, over and over, you will fall into these issues.

And here's what's so heartbreaking: you can lack discernment and still have worldly success, the devil will make sure of that.

The devil will go, yeah, yeah, no, no, let me give you money and let me give you sex and let me give you attention and let me give you followers and see if it will pacify you enough where you'll never look to Jesus.

And you can get all of those things and still fall into the pit of despair.

Some of the most successful, wealthy, most well-loved people in the entire world put a gun in their mouth and take their lives because the kingdoms of this world cannot satisfy them.

The pit is coming.

And on the way to every pit, it's just like one blind step at a time.

It is grabbing the hem, not of the garment of Christ, but of blind guides and just following.

And following.

And the pit is coming.

And here's what you need to know.

Some of you are in the pit right now, your marriage is on the brink of collapse, and it shouldn't be.

You love each other, you're both stubborn, you need some help, you need to be like Christ, and your marriage can be healed.

Some of you are in the financial pit, you can get out of it.

You're gonna have to humble yourself, sell a bunch of crap, get on a budget.

Like you can get out of it.

And here's why.

Because every pit you end up in, if you will just lift your eyes, Jesus is on the edge of that pit.

Like, come on, grab the hand of someone who can freaking see something and let's get down the road.

Let me get some dust on you, bro.

Follow me.

Grab tight.

Everywhere I go, you go, and I don't care if it's uncomfortable.

Jesus already told us, you want to follow me?

Deny yourself.

And we're like, well, that's not really what my gut is telling me.

Deny yourself.

Well, I don't know.

Carry your cross, suffer, be willing to suffer.

And you're like, that's kind of, you know, it's like then be a dolphin, you know.

Just live on your instincts and fall short of God's created purpose for your life.

Or trust the God of the universe and walk into your purpose.

Let's get to our last verse.

Verse 40 says this a disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.

This is a proverb.

This is wisdom.

And like any good proverb, it is both an unbelievable encouragement or a dire, dangerous warning.

It just depends on who you're following.

If you are following blind guides, this is a giant flashing red light trying to get your attention.

Here's the whole point of the proverb.

You are never going to follow a blind guide and not end up in a pit.

And we're so arrogant.

We're like, look, I know they're not the best influence, and I know I probably shouldn't be doing this, and you know, she's a little ratchet, and he's a little wild, and he, but you know what?

Like, I'm gonna be good.

Like, I'm not gonna fall for all of that.

Yes, you will.

Blind guides end up in the pit, period.

The disciples are not above the teacher.

You are not going to set as your main influencers the get rich quick, get wealth and money at any cost, step over anybody, watch these YouTubes all day long, you just gotta out, hustle, outwork, money is everything.

You're not gonna follow a greedy narcissist and then somehow end up a generous empath.

It's not gonna happen.

If how you think about dating and marriage and women is completely like regulated by Andrew Tate and Myron Gaines, you're not going to end up this example of biblical valor.

You're going to end up a sad, childish, immature, misogynistic idiot.

You're not going to go above your teacher.

It is your direction, not your intentions, that determine your destination.

Andy Stanley preached that like 20 years ago.

It's still true today.

It's like, well, I intend to follow Christ, but you're walking away from him.

This is a dire warning.

It's also a great encouragement.

Let me show you two things.

It says a disciple's not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.

If you're following Jesus, once you're fully trained, that implies time.

This is sanctification.

This is becoming more like Jesus over time.

This is taking one hard step and another hard step and another hard step and growing in discernment.

And when you do that long enough, when you follow Jesus hard, when you just grab onto him and just go, wherever you go, bro, that's where I'm going.

Someday you'll be like him.

Walk like him, talk like him, think like him, and you will have discernment because you can see like him.

And here's what's amazing.

You know, if you're like really out of shape, the gym is the last place you want to go, because for about the next 18 months, the gym's gonna make you feel terrible until it doesn't.

And as you're following Jesus, it's like you're fighting every instinct, you're fighting your gut, you're fighting your intuition.

And then Jesus begins to change your nature.

And you become like the Apostle Paul, who wrote in Romans 12, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.

You know what he says after that?

If you translate it literally from the Greek, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.

Paul says, it's the only way of living that makes sense.

Be willing to literally die for Christ.

Paul was beaten, imprisoned, shipwrecked, starved.

It's like everything that could happen to a Christian happened to Paul, and he goes, Of course.

How else would I live?

This is the only way of living that makes any sense.

You know what that means?

It means Paul and discernment.

God had so changed his nature that even his nature now lined up with the things of God.

Let's talk about what this looks like practically.

God has given us many gifts, he gives us the gift of salvation, he gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit, and he gives us the gift of the church, the body of Christ.

And the body of Christ matters when it comes to you growing in discernment because you follow Jesus, but Jesus puts people in your life, in the body of Christ, who are ahead of you that you can latch to, and here's how you know someone's worth following.

They're worth following because they don't really want you to follow them, they just want to point you to Christ.

Let me show you one of the most interesting things Paul says.

He writes to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 11, and he says, This you, church in Corinth, imitate me as I imitate Christ.

This is the same Paul, because that almost sounds like arrogant.

It's like we almost just want Paul to go, guys, don't look at me.

Don't ever look at me.

Just you just look at Jesus.

And Paul's like, no, no, no, no.

I'm a little bit ahead of you in this thing.

So if you want to know how to do things practically here on earth, watch me.

This is the same Paul who, in like every letter he writes, is like, I am the chief of all sinners.

I do what I don't want to do, what I want to do, I struggle to do.

Woe is me, I'm living in the flesh, but I'm fighting to live in the spirit.

Here's part of how you find someone who can actually disciple you.

It is someone who is ahead of you and confident enough that you can imitate them, but they are also honest enough to go, but listen, bro, I'm on my journey too.

I'm maturing too.

There's some parts of my life God's working on me right now, and it's painful.

This is the buy-in.

It's like, look, man, I've got a good marriage.

Come watch my marriage.

But I'm still working on this.

You can watch me work on it, so you learn how to work on it, but just know.

All I'm trying to do is show you what Jesus has shown me.

All I'm trying to do is point you to Him.

All I'm trying to do is get you closer to His sandal so he can kick up some dust on you.

We need people ahead of us.

We need people that we can imitate practically in our lives.

God gives us that in the church.

You know what you need?

You need someone behind you.

One of the fastest ways to learn things and to apply things is to be responsible for handing it down to somebody else.

You need to be in Christian community.

Maybe you have that organically.

If you have organic Christian community, we want you to do that.

But so many of us don't.

We only do three things at MetaCurch.

We do Sunday service, we do the academy, and we do life teams.

And life teams are where we provide intentional Christian community where you can get someone ahead of you.

Someone's gonna come into that life team behind you.

Every Sunday, people are raising their hands, putting their faith in Jesus for the first time.

You need people ahead of you, you need people behind you.

You need someone who can go, I don't have it all figured out, but man, I've been walking this out in my parenting for a very long time.

Let me show you some things that Christ has shown me.

We need this, we need each other.

This is a gift that God has given us.

And so many Christians do not take advantage of the body of Christ.

We come and we sit in a service once or twice a month.

There are people right now who are thinking, Oh no, I'm being discipled.

Pastor Clayton's discipling me.

Hey, no, I'm not.

There's like 1,500, some odd people, who would say this is their church.

900 to a thousand of you show up on Sundays.

Let me let me ask you, let me remind you.

How many disciples did Jesus have?

How many men did he really pour his life into?

Three, twelve disciples.

I am discipling some people.

There are some people who are close enough to me, who I'm walking with, who they call me at midnight when things are going wrong.

I can't do that for a thousand people.

I can't do it for 20 people, neither can you.

This is why we have the body.

This is why we are constantly raising up leaders in this movement so that you can go and have someone where you can imitate, where you can see Christ lived out in their life, someone who'll be real, who point you to Christ.

You need someone in front of you, you need someone behind you.

If you're a believer, what we're asking you to do today is to just ask the Holy Spirit to inventory your life.

Ask him who's really leading me.

I know you know the right answer.

Jesus is leading me, I'm led by Jesus.

It's like, is he?

You read the Bible like once every three months.

You scroll TikTok three hours a day.

Your six minutes a month of Bible reading cannot compete with your screen time.

You pray almost never.

Your once-a-week prayers cannot compete with your daily gossip sessions with your friends who don't know God.

Who's really leading you?

If we if we can't address reality, then we can't move forward.

So, who's really leading you?

And are they blind guides?

What adjustments do you need to make to start being led by those who are ultimately led by Christ so you can take steps in being able to discern?

When you start seeing reality the way that God sees it, everything will change.

For some of you, you might be here at one of our venues, you might be with us online, and you don't know Jesus.

You've never taken the first step, which is surrendering, trying to live life on your own, and making the conscious decision to put your hope in Jesus, recognizing he's your only hope for this life, he's your only hope for what comes next.

All Jesus is offering, it's not a religious experience, it's a relationship, a real relationship with God.

And he says what that takes is faith, believing that Jesus is who he claimed to be, believing that Jesus has done what he claims to have done.

If you don't know Jesus, my guess is the Spirit of God's pressing in on your life right now because God loves you and he longs for a relationship with you, and he's just asking you to surrender, to put your faith in Jesus.

If you haven't done that, your only option is blind guides.

And blind guides always lead to a pit.

And so time is of the essence.

You are not promised tomorrow.

If that's you, I'm not asking if you were sprinkled as an infant.

I'm not asking if your grandparents brought you up in church.

I'm asking if you've had a moment in time where you have made a personal choice to put your faith in Jesus, and if you haven't, we need to make that right today.

As we close service across our venues, if you would pray with me, just bow your head, close your eyes, create a little bit of space for reflection.

Listen, I've made my case.

If you're here and you don't know Jesus, it's time to get that right.

If you are ready today for the very first time to put your faith in Jesus, with everyone's eyes closed, I'm gonna ask for just this moment of courage right now to just simply raise your hand up.

There's nothing magic about raising a hand, it's just a symbolic gesture that says, today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Man, I thank God for hands going up around the room.

I want you to know if you raise your hand, scripture says God sees and accepts your faith.

He knows, man.

He knows every sin, he knows where you've been, he knows all the skeletons in your closet, he knows all the people you've hurt, and he accepts your faith.

He forgives all of your sins, literally all of them, which means there's nothing separating you from your Heavenly Father and from eternity with Him.

Eternal life is a gift that God gives you at this moment of faith that no one and nothing can take away from you.

And so what I'm gonna do now is just help you acknowledge this moment through a simple prayer.

If you raised your hand, I'm gonna ask you to pray this with me, and I'm gonna ask all believers across venues to pray out loud as well.

Let's pray like this: Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

So glad you joined us for today's message.

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