Insecurity: The Lie: Good Works Brings Security with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Well, I want to welcome you in.

If you are new with us, my name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at Meta.

And today is such an exciting day for a couple of reasons.

The obvious one is it's baptism Sunday.

We've got 63 people signed up to get baptized today.

That is evidence that God is moving among us.

And you're gonna hear this a couple of times before we get to baptism.

But there's a chance you showed up today not ready to get baptized, but the Holy Spirit moves on your heart.

It's evident that that's the right next step for you.

And if that happens to you today, even though you didn't come prepared, we came prepared for you.

And so we have clothes for you and a towel for you, and today could still be your day.

Now, it's also an exciting day because we're two weeks away from the launch of our second location in Helotus.

Yeah.

And it is technically the last Sunday for those who are on the Helotus launch team because next week they're gonna be out there doing training, kind of like a dress rehearsal.

They're gonna actually watch the service together out there.

And then on the 20th, they will get ready.

So that means that Pastor Noel and Pastor Tony, who have done such an incredible job helping to build this thing on the West Side.

Also, Janina Burrow, Randy Bonias, two of our newest staff members who are headed out to Helotus, along with about 70 adults on a launch team and their kids who are going out to do whatever it takes to get Jesus to more and more people.

And so we celebrate you guys, all that you've done here at Petranko and all that you're going to do in Helotus.

You guys give it up for our Helotus launch team and our leaders.

Today we are wrapping up our series.

If you've been here, you know we have been talking about insecurity.

This is an emotion we are all very familiar with.

We know the power that it holds in our lives.

We have learned every week that the reason insecurity is so powerful and so detrimental to our lives is because psychologists have known for years that there are two things that humans will search for our entire life.

We will search for significance and security.

You will look for those things either until you find them or until your dying breath.

We've known this for a long time.

Abraham Maslow was a famous psychologist.

He created the human hierarchy of needs.

It's all often called Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

And you'll see that security sits one step below or one step above the foundational needs.

The foundational needs are like air and food and water and shelter.

So once you have the things needed to survive, the next thing that you need to live a life that matters, to live a life on purpose and with purpose, is you need security.

And you will search for that security and the world will offer you all kinds of paths for you to walk down with the promise that at the end of them you will find the real, abiding, lasting, true security that you're looking for.

And what we're doing in this series is we are exposing the lies that the world tells us will bring us security when in fact they will only cycle us into greater insecurity.

Today, the lie is good works bring security.

Good works bring security.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you.

We're so excited for what you're getting ready to do today across our services.

I thank you for every person who signed up and came here today to get baptized, for the statement that it makes about their relationship with you, for them going public and letting people know that they are now living to follow you, to find out all that you have for them in this life.

God, I thank you for the countless people who have put their faith in you over the years at MetaCurch.

I ask that if anyone's here and has not taken that next step, Holy Spirit, that you would grip their hearts and get them in the water today.

I pray that we would have open hearts and open minds.

Holy Spirit, we know that you're here and your desire is to speak to us.

And so we give you this time and we pray it all in Jesus' name.

And if you're ready to get going, say amen.

Amen.

In week one, the lie that we exposed was that religion brings security.

What we did was we talked through the three dominant religious worldviews, and we showed that every single religion not only lacks security to offer you, but that religious systems intentionally create insecurity.

That week we were talking broadly about all of the world religions.

Today we are focusing internally on our faith.

This is an intra-faith conversation about the movement that Jesus started, commonly known as Christianity.

Jesus started this new movement to be something brand new.

It was not, and this is, we nailed this down in week one.

If you missed it, go check it out on YouTube.

Christianity was not created to simply be another religion.

It broke the religious template, which is the same across all religions.

All religions have sacred men with sacred texts in a sacred space.

That is the template that allows religions to have control, to have a clearly defined hierarchy, to make sure that they can keep an eye on the people.

But Jesus did something completely differently.

Part of what cemented this church movement as something entirely unique was the idea that we didn't have to work our way to God, that God came down and did the work for us.

Relationship with him is a gift that is entirely free to us because it's a gift, and a gift, by definition, is something that is free.

A gift is not something that you earn, it's not something you've deserved, it is something that is free to you.

And with a gift, all you have to do is accept it.

Here's how scripture talks about that.

In Ephesians 2, verses 8 and 9, Paul writes, For you are saved by grace, that's a free gift, through faith.

Ephesians 2:8

That's simple belief in Jesus.

And this is not from yourself, it's God's gift.

Now, if you're still confused, not from works.

Say that with me, not from works, so that no one can boast.

So that's about as clear as you can get.

Class dismissed, let's get to the baptisms, right?

Like, we should be done at that point.

This is so clear.

We are saved by grace and unearned faith.

We are saved through faith, trusting that Jesus is who he says he is and that he's done what he says that he has done.

And then we are saved.

We are given eternal life, which is a gift that no one and nothing can ever take away from you.

Paul, who wrote this letter in the Christian scriptures, is like if that isn't clear enough, I'm gonna add a little addendum here.

We call it verse 9.

He's like, for those of you who are gonna come back in and try to reinterpret this, let me just say clearly, not by works.

That was so important for Paul to say, because every religion that's ever existed is about working your way into relationship with God.

Paul's going, if we add works back into this, we are destroying the foundation of what makes this thing so unique.

And at the same time, in the early church, there's often this push to go back to the old religious way of starting and pursuing God through works.

And so the question is why do we do this?

Why is this compulsion still in us today?

Why have the majority of Christian world views smuggled works back into salvation?

I believe there's one primary answer, and that primary answer is control.

We all have control issues, some of us have them worse than others, right?

Like, for example, you know, your spouse has worse control issues than you.

And both of you think that somehow, right?

We like control.

There are so many things outside of our control that we try to grasp control anywhere that we can find it.

The way that life tends to work is if you want something, you have to go and earn it.

And this has caused some real problems in many Christians' experience of Jesus, and here's why.

Because what Jesus offered was brand new.

An offer like nothing else we could ever experience.

Not only do we not deserve relationship with God, not only have we not earned relationship with God, but all we like sheep have gone astray.

All have fallen short of the glorious standard of God, which means our sin separates us from God.

And so if anyone should have to earn their way back to, it's us, broken and flawed people, and yet God Himself stepped out of eternity and down into our world and took on flesh and bones and came into our brokenness and lived the perfect life that we could not live, only to then trade his perfect life for our sinful lives.

And he said, If you want my sacrifice on your account, all I want is your faith.

You do not have to work at all.

And it's so hard for so many of us to really believe that and really grasp it because everything around us signals to us if you want something, you have to earn it.

Even in the first church that we read about in scripture, pretty much as soon as the church movement started, people began to rail against this idea that God could offer a relationship to us that was completely free.

And yet, that's exactly what the apostles, sent by Jesus, continued to preach.

And it created tension.

Around the fourth and fifth century, the Catholic Church, which was the dominant church at that time, began to institutionalize in their dogma faith plus works.

And that is still the belief in Catholicism to this day, that it takes faith, but it also requires works.

Now, we read Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, and scripture could not be more clear, but our human desire for control has caused us to not only teach on works, but to make it cemented into our beliefs.

In the 16th century, there was a huge split in the church.

It's called the Protestant Reformation.

If you're wondering, we would be considered Protestants here at Metachurch.

The Protestant Reformation happened at the same time that the printing press was invented, and that's not an accident.

For the first time, everyday people got copies of the Bible and could read things like Ephesians 2, verses 8 and 9, and go, we have attached works to this when over and over and over again scripture speaks against that.

Ephesians 2:8

That starts a reformation where they start saying things like, we believe that we are saved by faith alone, through grace alone.

Period.

End of story.

The Protestant movement starts and steps away from Catholicism.

And that sounds great, but over time, that gravitational pull towards control snuck back in.

There are broadly two camps in the Protestant world.

Just so you know, we sit outside of both of those.

We're on our own little island here at Metachurch.

Shouldn't be too surprising.

Look around.

We're the weirdest church that you've ever been to, right?

Like something special is happening here.

And these two camps, Calvinists and Arminians, uh, they both smuggled works back into their system.

The Calvinists say that you were saved by faith alone.

But over time, you prove that you were saved through your good works.

And if you don't have enough good works or if you have too many bad works, then we believe you were never truly saved in the first place.

Now you might think that you were convicted by the Holy Spirit and that you believe that Jesus is your only hope for now and eternity, and you believe that he is who he says he is, and he's done what he says that he's done, but they're measuring your works, and if your works don't measure up according to their arbitrary system, you were never saved in the first place.

That's the Calvinists.

On the other side, you have the Armenians, and on the Armenians, they say that you are saved by faith through grace alone.

But if you don't do enough good works or if you do too many bad works, you can actually lose that salvation.

So you really had it, but you lost it on one system, you never had it in the first place on the other system, and it all comes down to works.

Do you see what's happening?

It's so hard for us to believe that free actually means free.

It's so hard for us to believe we don't have to earn it.

It's so hard for us to read something like when Jesus says that those who are mine are in my Father's hand, and nothing and no one can ever take you out of my Father's hand, that nothing could ever separate you from the love of Christ, that I'm giving you the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is a promise of your inheritance until the day of redemption.

Promise after promise after promise that once you are in relationship with God, God has got you.

He is your heavenly father, he is a good father, he's a perfect father who does not disown his children.

I gotta preach faster on baptisms.

I'm off I'm off script.

Let's get back on.

So look, we're flattening out these ideas, Calvinists, Armenians, many good friends of mine, right?

I'm flattening it out a lot, but the point remains they have smuggled works back into their systems.

And the outcome is just like on Catholicism, you end up looking to your works to try and find security.

And as we have seen all series long, the only thing that you can offer yourself is deep and abiding insecurity.

Here's how the prophet Isaiah described the human condition.

He said, All of us have become like something unclean.

All our righteous acts are like a polluted garment.

All of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities carry us like the wind.

Isaiah is looking at humans compared to a holy, righteous, perfect God.

And making the point that is obvious if you know yourself like I know myself, which is I by myself will simply never measure up.

I just know it.

On my best day, I am a shipwrecked sinner in need of a savior.

And if I have to look to my own works, and I'm always wondering if I'm doing enough good or if I've done too much bad, I will live with constant insecurity about the most fundamental question that we have of what comes after this life.

What is my hope actually in?

What do I look for?

That's a warning, right?

You look to yourself for work.

I had two coffees this morning.

Y'all are just gonna have to deal with it.

All right.

So let's go to the New Testament, because this was happening all the time.

The early church, the early church was always trying to sneak works back in, and the apostles who wrote the New Testament, they were always calling it out.

Always.

This happened all the time.

One of the clearest examples happens in a letter that Paul wrote to the church that he had started in a town called Galatia.

He wrote it to the Galatians.

In Galatians chapter 3, verse 1, he says this You foolish Galatians, who has cast a spell on you?

Galatians 3:1

Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

Paul is getting ready to really uh explain what this spell is that they have started trying to earn their eternal life.

He starts by calling them foolish Galatians.

Now, to be called a fool, it's a very tough critique.

And in certain contexts, it is a really, really tough, direct term.

The way that Paul is using it in context is almost like a father would to their child.

Like when I was growing up, I did a lot of you know wild things, and then my parents would say to me, Have you lost your mind?

Right?

This is kind of the idea.

Paul is like, have y'all lost your minds?

Have you forgotten who you are?

Like, how could you have possibly fallen for this?

In fact, it is so incredible to think that the Galatians would turn away from this free gift that Jesus had given them that Paul sarcastically asks, You foolish Galatians, who has cast a spell on you?

That's language you don't typically see in scripture.

But the Galatians live surrounded by a pagan culture.

And so Paul is asking, who has cast a spell on you?

This was a pagan practice of trying to hypnotize or try to give a curse on someone through deep eye contact.

All right?

So some of my fellow white folks in the room may not know this, but this is kind of like el ojo.

You got you know what I'm saying?

I've lived in San Antonio a minute now, right?

El ojo.

It's kind of the same idea, all right?

Trying to put this curse on you.

Yeah, y'all, we've got some impressed people right now.

I feel it.

I feel it.

Puto San Antonio right here.

I'm trying, okay?

Here's what he does, though.

Here's what he does.

You foolish Galatians, who has cast a spell on you before whose eyes Jesus Christ was portrayed as crucified?

This is a play on words.

What Paul is asking is who has put their eyes on you that made you take your eyes off Christ?

Who has put something on you that has made you look for security in something other than the one thing that can actually offer it to you?

We have seen all series long that as long as you are looking down, you will never find true security.

As long as you are looking to yourself, you will never find true security.

As long as you are looking to your own skills, your own good works, your own finances, your own possessions, your own earthly relationships, as long as you are looking to the world to give you true, lasting, abiding security, it will fall short and it will leave you even more insecure than you started.

Paul goes on and says, I only want to learn this from you.

Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by believing what you heard?

Two choices: works or belief?

Did you earn your salvation or did Jesus earn your salvation on the cross?

Can you forgive your own sins, or did the blood of Christ wash away your sin debt?

Did you climb the ladder to God or did God humble himself and come down to you?

Remember what the Protestants have done.

They say, yes, you receive eternal life through a simple act of faith, and then you work.

And if your works are sufficient, which by the way, nobody can give you any measurement, there's no actual scales to weigh.

It's just a system designed to keep you insecure.

If your works are sufficient, then maybe you maintain your eternal life.

But if your works are not up to snuff in any season, then you have to question with insecurity whether you were ever really saved in the first place, or maybe whether God has taken away your salvation.

Both deeply unbiblical ideas.

In verse 3, Paul says again, Are you so foolish that after beginning by the Spirit, you are now finishing by the flesh.

After starting with faith, you are now finishing by works.

The word of God says, just so you know, that's foolish.

It's silly.

And yet, it is something I have spent a good chunk of my life doing.

Those of us who grew up in church, many of us grew up in very legalistic systems where we were constantly pushed to try and modify our behavior to be in right standing with God.

Scripture says that's foolish.

Many of us here at MetaCurch grew up Catholic, where it's a part of the dogma that it's not just faith alone, it is faith, plus your works, and scripture rejects that.

And so we must be on guard.

And so many of you have raised a hand to put your faith in Jesus this year.

And guess what?

You get eternal life, and a lot of things change, and some things take time.

And so you're still stuck in a little bit of that sin pattern, and pretty soon you convince yourself that you probably didn't really get saved because your works aren't quite in line.

Instead of leaning into security of who you now are in Christ and the gift that he has given you, and the community that loves you, and beginning to keep your eyes on him as you walk and allow God to transform you over time.

You see, it's only in security that we can truly thrive.

You can only thrive in security that comes from Jesus Christ.

The antidote to insecurity is finally learning how to live in security of your relationship with Jesus.

That he has bought you at a price, that he has redeemed you with his blood, that he has given you a new name, that he has helped you be born again, that he has brought you into the family of God, that he's given you eternal life, that he will provide for all of your needs.

The best way for you to stay stuck in your sin patterns is to look down at your sin patterns.

This is what works based religion does.

It causes you to look to you, and you are jacked up.

I am jacked up.

I need to lift my eyes to the one who knows who I really am.

To the one who supplies all that I need.

To the one who demonstrated my value by giving his wife to me.

To the one who offers me security in this life and the life to come by walking out of his own tomb.

Here's what Paul says a few verses later.

He says, All who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, because it's written, everyone who does not do everything written in the book of the law is cursed.

To try and secure a relationship with God through your works is to move yourself out from the blessed life that God desires for you.

A life lived on purpose and with purpose.

And we don't have to do that.

And here's why.

In verse 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse by becoming a curse for us.

Because it is written, cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.

The reason we don't have to live under the curse of works-based salvation is because Jesus took that curse upon himself.

He died in our place, he paid our sin debt.

You cannot work your way to God, but you can put your faith in the one who did the work for us.

And so what does that mean for how we live?

Since we don't come to God through our works, does that mean that we can just exercise our faith and then live in sin and debauchery and however we want?

The New Testament wrestles with this time and again.

Number one, as God's children, he will reward us in eternity for how we steward the life that he has given us.

That's what a good father does, he rewards good behavior.

A good father also does not disown his children.

Your works are not to change your position as a child of God.

It is not to take away your eternal life.

It is to take advantage of this new life and build up treasures in heaven.

Second, when you live daily with your eyes on Christ, aware of what he did to redeem you and save you and show you mercy, the last thing you will desire is to consistently rebel against him.

We're baptizing a bunch of people today, and when we baptize you, we put you under the water and we say, buried with Christ.

And that is a picture of you choosing to die to your old life, your old identity, and your old sin-stained worldview.

And then we raise you out of the water and we say, raised to walk a new life.

This new life is a life of true and lasting security, a life lived with your eyes off of yourself and on to Jesus.

Too many believers have had a spell cast on us by a world constantly trying to pull our attention and our energy and emotions onto things that bring insecurity.

But remember, you have been raised to walk with Christ, a life lived on purpose.

It is no accident that you're here on earth.

A life lived with purpose, discovering all that God put inside of you to make a difference and impact the world around you.

A life that understands true security that comes from Christ.

Just like our key text, all series long in Romans 8, where Paul said, For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I'm gonna pray to close the message and to give you a chance to respond to the word, and then we're gonna celebrate new life.

So I want you to know that some of you may have come today with no intention of getting baptized, but the Holy Spirit is going to draw you to make that decision, and I want you to be obedient.

We have everything you need, we have clothes and a towel, everything you need to make that decision.

As we close, would you pray with me?

Close your eyes and bow your head right where you are.

Nothing magic about that, just create some space for yourself and for the people who are around you.

And I wonder, as we get ready to head into baptisms, if there's anyone who's here today who has never had a moment in time where you have put your faith in Jesus.

If there's ever been a moment in your life where you humbled yourself and submitted to the fact that Jesus is your only hope for this life and the life to come.

A moment where you chose to believe that Jesus is who he says he is and he's done what he says that he's done.

You're gonna see many people go through the waters today because they have made that choice.

And I'm gonna give you the opportunity to do that as well.

And so if you're here and you're ready to put your faith in Jesus to find true security and the only one who can offer it to you, then with everyone's eyes closed, I want to ask you, right where you're sitting, to just raise your hand where I can see it, where I know who I'm talking to and who I'm praying with.

And by raising a hand, you're saying, today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Praise God.

For those who raise a hand, I want you to know that Jesus sees and accepts your faith, which means your sins, past, present, and even future, all of your sin has been forgiven.

You have been born again, adopted into the family of God, and you have been given a free gift of eternal life that no one and nothing can ever take away from you.

So for those who raised a hand, I want to help you acknowledge this moment through a really simple prayer.

And I'm gonna ask all the believers in the room to repeat this prayer with us 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, that you rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

Now let me pray over you.

Jesus, we thank you for what you continue to do, even on Baptism Sunday, with more lives coming to know you.

We thank you for those who are going public with their faith today.

Holy Spirit, for the movement here at MetaCurch.

I pray that it would continue, that it would increase, that more people would come, more people would come to know you.

We give you all of the glory, and we pray it all in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

Man, I love you guys and I hope you have a great rest of your day.