Never Go Back

Well, a few weeks back we started a series called Jesus Not Religion.

Jesus Not Religion.

Um, if you came here in the early days of our church, this is our 20th year together.

We're celebrating 20 years together as a church this year.

The very first banner on our building was party on Sunday.

And so we did a series kind of in honor of that to go back to our roots a little bit, called Party.

And then the second banner that was ever on the front of our building said Jesus not religion.

Jesus not religion.

And that made some people upset.

Our early days as a church, we were really good at a few things.

Being very loud in here, like it was loud.

Some of you maybe came in those days and earplugs were required, so we were good at that.

We've kind of figured out how to hit the right, you know, we've dialed it in a little bit, but we're still we're loudish.

Um but we were also really good at making people mad with banners.

That was just something we had a knack for.

I don't know if that's a skill that's useful in life, but if that is one, we had that down.

It's amazing to me how how upsetting that phrase Jesus, not religion, though, was to people.

Because that's kind of a basic theme in the New Testament.

That Jesus did not come to build a new religion.

That's not what he came to do.

Jesus didn't come to just upgrade the current religion that existed, give it a few updates, you know, do some fine-tuning, and then go his merry way.

Jesus came to change things in a revolutionary way.

And so Jesus, not religion, is actually a pretty major theme in the in the New Testament.

In fact, if you took the book of Galatians and you read Galatians, this letter that the Apostle Paul writes to one of the earliest churches that was ever started, and you said, Hey, I need you to come up with a phrase that can sort of encapsulate Galatians, I cannot think of a better one than Jesus, not religion.

And so we're going through the book of Galatians and we're talking about what this really means and what does it mean to embrace Jesus and build your life on Jesus and not let it become just a religion.

And it's very easy to do.

It's very, very easy to do.

And so the first two Sundays, we went through two entire chapters.

So, you know, chapter one on Sunday one, chapter two on Sunday two.

We're gonna continue at that kind of pace uh next week.

We're gonna continue at that pace.

But today I actually want to just have I want to have a conversation that's a little bit of a of a check-in and sort of a, hey, before I move on to chapter three, I really want to make sure we understand some key concepts, at least one key concept that's been communicated to us so far.

And I want to go all the way back to chapter one, Galatians one, verse six.

Paul wrote, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel.

Paul writes, I am astonished that you guys have figured out how to go off track so fast.

Paul had gone to this area, this region, it's kind of modern-day Turkey, and he had planted these churches, which are very small communities of people that live in the same town, the same village, the same city, and they're meeting together and they're worshiping Jesus and they're growing in their faith.

And he star he would start one of these, live with the people for a while, and then eventually he would make his way to another place to start another church.

And so things got off to a great start, but then he hears word of what's going on at this church that he had started, and he writes to them and he says, I am blown away, I am astonished that so quickly, so fast, you guys have gotten off track.

I don't know if you've ever had an experience in life where things go off track really fast.

Like maybe it surprises you how fast things can go wrong.

I've got one I'm gonna share, I'm gonna say this on the front end.

I got permission to share this story.

Mostly.

Um I got permission from uh from my son, and I got preemptive permission slash warning several months ago from his friends, because this story involves a few of my son's buddies.

And uh and look, it's hard when you're like a pastor's kid.

It's tough because your life kind of becomes material for the whole church.

And uh, you know, just that's that's the way it goes.

That's just the way it goes.

But uh, but I got permission for this.

Okay, here's the story.

So, my oldest son, I'm gonna say this on the front end, love him.

Amazing.

He is one of the hardest working men I have ever known, regardless of age.

I he's 16 years old.

He works harder than anyone can possibly imagine.

He leaves the house before any of us are awake so he can work out and train, and he does that twice a day, and he gets good grades.

He's a hard worker.

He blows me away.

I don't think I ever worked anywhere close to as hard as he worked when he was when I was that age, not even close.

And so, because he worked so hard, moments for rest and and whatnot are few and far between.

And when he has a special moment, we want to celebrate that as a family.

And one of those came a few months ago on his 16th birthday.

Birthday 16 is a is a big one, right?

And so we asked him, hey man, 16th birthday, what do you want to do?

And it just so happened that that that was the night of the national championship in basketball, and my son is obsessed with basketball, that's why he works so hard, trained so hard, he's got big goals there.

And so he's like, man, I want to get a bunch of my friends together, watch the championship game, and maybe like everyone can just stay all night.

Well, the problem is we have four kids in our house, and he's our oldest.

So adding another six or seven 16-year-old boys is a bit of a logistical problem.

And so Megan was like, I don't think we can do that.

How are we gonna do that with all the other kids here?

And I had an idea.

What I thought was a good idea, and it it actually was fine.

My thought was look, what if they spent the night at the church?

It was on a Monday night, it was spring break.

I was like, look, I'll stay, I'll stay over.

I'll stay at the church, I'll sleep on a couch in the office so that there's an adult here supervising.

And these, by the way, are all boys who have grown up here.

These are all boys.

I've known most of these boys since they were like three, okay?

And so I'm like, I know the guys, I trust them, let's just have them stay here.

Is anyone feeling nervous for my son right now at all?

I can I sense a tension in the room.

It's not that bad, but it is pretty funny.

So here's what happened.

We got together, we ate wings, we watched the national championship game.

At 11 o'clock, I said, guys, I'm I'm old.

Like it's time for I can't go past this.

I'm gonna go crash in the office, I'm gonna be in this in this room, I'm on a couch.

Here's the rules.

I was like, do not leave the building.

You are here, you will be here until tomorrow, right?

Do not leave the building.

Don't do anything dumb.

Right?

Like that should be clear.

Don't do anything dumb.

Don't break anything.

Like, come on, you know what I mean?

And these guys, you have to understand, they know the church so well.

They they help out all the time.

These are guys who are helping us set up chairs and tables, like they know they know where things are stored, they know where everything is.

And they were like, we got you.

So I go to bed, fall asleep fast, right?

45 minutes later, I'm woken up, not by my son, but by another boy.

He's like, Mr.

Miggs here, we've got a problem.

And I was like, What?

He's like, Well, I I hit a wall.

I hit a wall, and there's like, there's a huge hole in this wall.

And I was like, what are you talking about?

Like, I'm like, again, I just got woken up, and so I go to see the wall, and this is this is what happened.

This is the wall, I'll show you the picture of it.

Right?

I was like, what did you hit the wall with?

Like, and I could tell that like the answer I got, what it was one of those not a lie, but not the truth.

You know what I mean?

Like, like, hit the wall is a very general term.

You know what I mean?

And and I could tell, like, I wasn't gonna get the answer.

Thankfully, I'm looking at this, I'm like, man, that is a that is a job to fix that.

But it's Monday, and we've got all the way until Sunday, we will.

I was like, you know what?

We'll handle it in the morning.

I was like, we'll handle it in the morning.

I'm gonna go back to bed.

Is it is everyone okay?

Is everyone fine?

They're like, yes.

I was like, you guys get the, yep, we're good.

So I went to bed, woke up the next morning, and I got a video sent to me by our facility director, because we have cameras everywhere, right?

And I want to show you guys the video that got sent to me that morning.

All right?

So here we go.

Here's the video that I got sent to me.

Keep in mind this is at 11:45.

We've got some uh some teenagers on golf carts.

I will say my son wasn't the driver, but uh he was in the vehicle that you're about to see, and boom.

There we go.

That is footage of the first and last sleepover at his hands church.

No, I mean, I remember talking to the kid that hit it, I was like, what were you doing?

Like, you just went right at the wall, man.

Like now, here's the thing that was interesting.

I saw this, and um I wasn't even mad.

I I was I was mad at myself, really, because what I had not told the the young guys was hey, don't go in the back of the building and get the golf carts out that we use for parking.

And here's why I didn't tell them that.

It never occurred to me that they would even think to do that.

I felt like when I said, don't do anything dumb, that clearly falls under the umbrella of dumb.

Right?

I sat them down that morning before they all left.

In fact, the the young boy who uh who hit the wall, he said I said, Do you have do you have a ride?

He said, I'm no, I'm driving.

I said, Are you sure?

Like, are you are we certain that this is okay?

I said, guys, this you have to understand a few things.

I said, number one, this will be in a message one day.

I told him that that morning.

I was like, I will use this one day.

It's too good not to.

I just don't know when.

So today is that day.

Um this was months and months ago, back in back in April.

Uh I said, this is why your parents get so nervous when you guys leave the house.

Because when you get together, your collective IQ just plummets.

Like it just goes, you guys are all smart, and yet together you are so stupid.

Like, this is just why we as parents get so nervous.

But here's what I actually told him.

I said, I'm blown away, though, by how quickly this happened.

This was not 3 a.m.

after hours of doing all the normal stuff, and this building is full of fun stuff to do.

Like after everything they could have done at 3 a.m.

they got a little loopy, and then golf carts were were found, and then, you know, it all no, this was like immediately.

I went to bed, and within minutes, this happened.

Didn't even take an hour.

I was actually impressed with how quickly a golf cart crashed into a wall under my watch after telling my wife, it'll be fine.

I got it.

Shout out to uh Warren and our facilities team for being able to fix that and patch that up.

I did find out later that that the boys were like panicked and that they were like, I think we can fix this before they wake up.

Like they were actually for a minute, and uh and one of the boys who I know really well was like, no, no, this is not, this is beyond us.

And they're like, No, no, no, I think we can do it.

They were actually going and trying to find paint colors in the back, and they were gonna try to patch it and paint it that night.

And this kid was like, guys, this is clearly beyond our capabilities here.

And so they they just they let it go.

But it was it was all right.

And at the end of the day, that is uh, to my knowledge, that is the what we got?

A debit card was found in the bathroom.

Oh, okay.

Well, Michelle Murphy, your debit card was found, and uh we'll get that.

Thank you for that.

I appreciate it.

All right, and if if it's not claimed, I'm gonna no, I'm just joking.

Buy a bunch of tickets to Canvas.

No, it'll be really, really good.

So I've got your card, Michelle.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah, all right.

I thought you were gonna offer to help pay for the wall, but I was like, no, we already got it covered, you know.

That got fixed a long time ago, but thank you.

All right.

So, you know, that's the worst thing.

That group of boys is awesome.

To my knowledge, that's the worst thing that they've ever done, and I think they're gonna be okay.

But uh we did have someone on the parking team the next week that was like, I think something's wrong with one of the golf carts.

It's a little wonky.

And so, you know, we got it all taken care of.

But what blew me away, what impressed me, was how fast it got off track.

It's just like like when Paul writes to this church, you get the impression where he's like, I was just there, and things were going well, and you guys were following Jesus, and it was going awesome, and and now I'm finding out what's going on, and it's like you've you've abandoned things so quickly, so fast.

We have a lot of examples of this kind of thing happening, by the way, all through scripture.

How quickly things can go off track.

For example, in Exodus, Exodus chapter 32, Moses goes up to meet with God.

Exodus 32 · chapter mention

He goes up to receive what will become the Ten Commandments.

And he spends about 40 days on this mountaintop with God, and he leaves the people of Israel, who he's led out of Egypt.

Miracles have happened to free them from the Egyptians.

They've crossed the Red Sea miraculously, and they're on their way to the promised land, and they've seen God do things that are so amazing and incredible, you would think, man, if I was there, if I had seen God do all these things, I would never, ever abandon God in any sense of the word.

And yet, when Moses comes back down, here's what happens.

It says in verses 1 through 4, when the people saw how long it was taking Moses to come back down the mountain, and again, it's been 40 days, they gathered around Aaron, who's Moses' brother.

Come on, they said, make us some gods who can lead us.

We don't know what happened to this fellow Moses who brought us here from the land of Egypt.

So Aaron said, Take the gold rings from the ears of your wives and sons and daughters and bring them to me.

And all the people took the gold rings from their ears and they brought them to Aaron.

Then Aaron took the gold, melted it down, and molded it into the shape of a calf.

And when the people saw it, they exclaimed, O Israel, these are the gods who brought you out of the land of Egypt.

That was fast.

Four hundred years of slavery in Egypt.

God rescues them, delivers them from the Egyptians.

They didn't just leave Egypt, they left Egypt like victorious with wealth.

The Egyptians were defeated, and now they arrive at this mountain, and Moses is gone for 40 days.

And he tells them, I'm gonna be up on this mountain for a while.

I'm there to meet with God to find out what God wants us to do, hang here.

And in just over a month, they have created an idol, a false God, and they're worshiping it.

And Moses comes down the mountain and sees this.

If you've ever read the rest of Exodus 32, it gets real.

I mean, Moses comes down, he's like, What is all the shouting I hear, all this celebrating, and he sees what's going on.

And it, I mean, it is, it's like he grinds the calf down into like dust and he puts it in the water and he makes them all drink it.

Like it's an he's a he's an angry father, okay?

He's way more intense than I was that morning when I woke up.

I promise you that.

And you had to, if you're Moses, you're like, how did this happen?

I I was just here 40 days ago.

I told you I'd be gone.

I've been gone just over a month, and you're worshiping a false God that you create.

What is happening?

How did things go off track?

This fast.

You have a less intense story, a really sweet story, actually, in the book of John.

Jesus has died and been resurrected, and he's appeared to his followers a few times, but in John chapter 21, we have this really interesting story.

John 21 · chapter mention

It says, Later, Jesus appeared again to the disciples beside the Sea of Galilee, and this is how it happened.

Several of the disciples were there, Simon, Peter, Thomas, nicknamed the twin, Nathaniel from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, which is James and John, and two other disciples.

Simon Peter said, I'm going fishing.

We'll come too, they all said.

So they went out in the boat, but they caught nothing all night.

And at dawn Jesus was standing on the beach, but the disciples couldn't see who he was.

He called out, Fellows, have you caught any fish?

No, they replied.

Then he said, Throw your net to the right hand side of the boat, and you'll get some.

So they did, and they couldn't haul in the net because there were so many fish in it.

Then the disciple Jesus loved said to Peter, It's the Lord.

And when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on his tunic, for he had stripped for work, jumped into the water, and headed to the shore.

The others stayed with the boat and pulled the loaded net to the shore, for they were only about they were only about a hundred yards from shore.

And when they got there, they found breakfast waiting for them, fish cooking, over a charcoal fire, and some bread.

So this story is interesting on a couple of levels.

One, it's almost a recreation of the moment when Jesus first calls some of these men to be his disciples, specifically Peter.

If you know the story of Peter being called to be a disciple, he was a fisherman.

This isn't a hobby for Peter.

This is a job.

And so Peter and his friends have fished all night.

The first time that Jesus encounters them, not this time, the time that this kind of calls back to, and they don't catch anything.

And then Jesus sees them and he says, Hey, throw your nets over there, and they kind of go, you know what, we've been doing this all night, man.

They don't know Jesus yet, really, and no offense, but we know how to do our job.

And then they go ahead and do it, and there's more fish than they can even count, and they realize this is miraculous, and from that day on they follow Jesus.

And Jesus said, Drop your nets and follow me.

You're no longer fishermen, he said.

Now you are fishers of men.

But here we have an interesting story where Peter, who has failed Jesus, if you know the story, Peter's denied that he knows Jesus when Jesus is arrested.

Peter really falls short of the man he's supposed to be, because he's supposed to be kind of like the leader of the disciples.

But he betrays Jesus out of fear.

He denies that he even knows Jesus.

And here we have Peter, just a short time, just a very, very short time, after being Jesus' like right-hand guy, he's gone back to fishing.

Like he's gone back to his old job.

Jesus called him to be a fisher of men, to be a leader.

And Peter was doing that, and then and then there's this moment and he fails, and Peter has gone backward, and he's now back to being a fisherman in his mind.

And so what does Jesus do?

He's good enough and he loves Peter enough to go, okay, I'll I'll recreate the first time I called him and confirm to him that my calling is still on your life.

Peter, you are not a fisherman anymore.

That's not that's who you were, not who you are.

But it didn't take long for Peter to go back to that.

It didn't take long for the church in Galatia to go back.

And what they went back to, by the way, was not wild living or anything like that.

They went back to religion.

They went back to rules and to the law and to trying to justify themselves before God and before others by how good of a job they were doing at following the rules, which which blows Paul away.

That's why in Galatians chapter 2, verse 16, he says it so clearly.

Galatians 2:16

We know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law.

And we believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we've obeyed the law.

For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.

No one will ever, ever be made right with God by obeying the law.

You cannot be good enough for God, so to speak.

Because he's perfect.

Heaven is perfect.

How do you earn perfection?

You have to be perfect.

Doesn't work.

Now it's interesting because in all of these stories, there's a common link.

And the common link is familiarity.

It is easy, it is easy, very easy, to find ourselves, even if we've encountered something new and something life-changing, to sort of settle back into what is familiar.

So take the people in the desert.

Like, why would they think to even do that?

Like, why, after a little bit of time with without Moses, would they even think, let's let's make some gods so we can worship them?

Well, it's because they've been trained, conditioned, raised to have a God they can see.

Like God is is everywhere, but but our God does not need a statue.

He doesn't need some type of image here on this earth for us to worship him.

In fact, the the people were forbidden to do that.

In fact, they don't know this yet, but like Moses is coming down with the list of the Ten Commandments, and they're already like 0 for two before he even gets there.

You know, the first two are like, don't do this, don't do that.

Oops.

And they could say, we didn't know, like we hadn't heard that yet, so I guess they had that excuse.

But but why would they go back to that?

It's because it was familiar to them.

They've been raised in Egypt, they've grown up their whole lives in Egypt where where gods are visible, there's statues, and and they're in this new place and they're in the wilderness and they don't know where to go, and they've had Moses, and even though they knew Moses wasn't God, it sure seems like he's got a connection to God.

He's doing all these miracles, and when he was there, when they had something visible, they had faith.

But now that he's not there, they're restless and they're nervous, and they're like, we need something we can see.

So they sink back into old, familiar ways.

This is what they had been programmed, culturally programmed to do.

Worship a God you can see, they can't handle an invisible God, they gotta make one.

It seems crazy to us, but it was normal to them.

Take Peter.

Why did he go back to fishing?

Why did he abandon his calling to be a disciple, to be a leader of men, a fisher of men?

Why did he abandon that?

So fast, it's because in a moment of weakness, feeling like a failure, in his insecurity, he went back to what was familiar.

What was familiar to him was to be apparently a really bad fisherman.

Because we never actually see Peter catch fish.

Unless Jesus helps him.

In fact, that's like the only the only time we ever see Peter in the Bible catch a fish is when Jesus miraculously uh helps him to do that.

It happens a couple different times.

But he goes back to what he knows.

He goes back to what is normal to him.

It's familiar.

As Paul leaves the followers in Galatia, why do they so quickly go back to following the law and demanding that everyone had to follow the Jewish law and all the dietary laws and circumcision and all these things that went with that?

Why did they go back to that so quickly?

It's because that is what was familiar to them.

I mean, at the end of the day, we might believe in our hearts that we want the new thing, but man is something familiar, nice, and comforting.

I mean, like, I'd love to see this just out of curiosity because we've got some different types of personalities in the room, but how many of you guys, when you go to a new restaurant, are you like, or let's not say a new restaurant, when you go to a restaurant you've been to before, how many of you order something you've never ever had before?

You're like, ooh, I'm gonna try something new.

How many of you are like, same thing I always get?

Tried and true, right?

There's more hands up now.

I'm like that.

My favorite sushi restaurant, I've talked about it before.

My favorite sushi restaurant is uh Yoon.

It's on exit 14.

I do not get paid money to plug Yun.

I just really, really like the sushi.

Um, I shouldn't actually talk to him about that.

That's interesting.

I've never thought about that.

We could have like sponsored corporate messages.

Today's message is brought to you by, you know, I couldn't see Jesus being upset by that at all.

Uh it's like the modern version of turning the tables over.

Uh no, no, you and I just really love their sushi.

But I'll say this.

I've recommended it to a lot of people.

I've only ever ordered two rolls there my entire.

I've been there 30 times in my life.

I've ordered the same two rolls every single time.

So I've actually only had two things on their menu.

But it's great.

Why would I change?

There's something about what we know, there's something about what's familiar.

It's like that, it's like nostalgia.

Like, you know when something comes out that's a throwback to when you were younger?

How powerful that is.

Like the power of nostalgia.

Oh my goodness, guys.

Like like if you grew up in the 70s and you were young when Star Wars first came out, a few years back they had this this new like trilogy of movies, and they they got like a lot of people excited with nostalgia.

They were like, We're good, we're bringing it back to the old days, and those movies, if I don't, uh they're awful.

But like they the reason they got a lot of ticket sales is because it was nostalgia, like we're bringing back the old characters, we're bringing back all that, and they sold so many tickets because everyone's, yes, it's gonna be like it was originally.

It's gonna be like the old, the old times.

How many of us were 90s kids?

80s and 90s, I just want to see 80s and 90s kids, all right?

How many of you owned a Nintendo 64?

All right, listen.

I just found out like a month ago, this is a very specific callback to some of you guys.

Do you guys remember the game, The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time?

That was like, for my generation, that was like that was everything.

That was, they're like remaking that.

And I'm a grown man.

Like, do I have time at this stage of my life to play a video game?

I will make time.

I will make time, you know?

I I use my kids as the excuse.

I'm like, no, no, they need to ex- Honey, they need to experience this.

And I need to be there with them, and I need to hold the controller while they experience.

They need to watch me experience this again, right?

There's just something.

Like, I saw that and I was like, the child inside of me was like, oh, it's like 1997 all over again.

Like, there's something about the old, the familiar that's really powerful.

And we're suckers for it.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing.

But on a spiritual level, it's really challenging.

Because what Jesus is calling us to do is something brand new.

Even though it's 2,000 years old, in the scheme of history, it is still brand new.

To live by faith.

To be a child of God.

Paul's gonna say it this way in Galatians 2.21.

He says, I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless.

For if keeping the law, if being religious, could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.

What Paul is saying here is Jesus came to change things.

He didn't come to get followers, he already had followers.

He didn't come to just have believers, he already had believers.

He didn't come to make more followers, make more believers, make a new religion.

He already had that.

That was already there.

He came to give us grace, to give us mercy, and through faith in him, for us to become children of God.

That's the new thing.

It's still the new thing, and it is hard for people to live that way.

I know because I've been a pastor for 20 years, and I've watched so many people be a champion of Jesus and at the same time slide back into letting their lives be defined by all the old stuff.

Now, some of us, religion is an easy thing to talk about.

Some of you grew up and you grew up in a hyper-religious environment, right?

Where it was very like rules and you got to do this and this and this, and that's why when you came here for the first time, if you saw me wearing a hat, you're like, I kind of have a problem with that.

You know what I mean?

And and even I kind of had a problem, I had to like wrestle with can I wear a hat on a Sunday?

Like I've talked to you guys about that.

One of the biggest spiritual battles I've ever fought in my entire life, can I wear a hat?

That's so silly.

But I, if you would have been in my mind like a year ago, like I wear hats all the time, I love hats, I like hats, I hate my hair, my hair's falling out, makes it me hate it more, so might as well, can I wear a hat?

And it was like I couldn't do it, but then I would look on stage and like Herb wears a hat every Sunday, and I've never even looked at him and thought, take that off, Herb.

You know, I've never even, I've never seen Herb's head.

I've never seen it before.

And neither have any of you.

Matt has worn a beanie forever.

I think he was born in one.

And I've never looked at Matt and said, get that off.

You're leading worship.

But then the idea, like the first time I put a hat on my head on this stage, I was like shaking.

Like, I hope this is okay.

Like it was so dumb.

But I grew up in a more religious environment, and it was like, this is not, is this okay?

And I like biblically, I have a very strong biblical justification for why it's okay, and I can theologically work that out.

And basically the theology is who cares?

Uh but like seriously, that's a that's a legitimate biblical argument because it doesn't matter.

But I wrestled with it.

Why?

Religion.

Some of you grew up in a hyper-religious environment, and you could put a label on it, you know, it was Catholicism, you grew up as a Baptist.

I'm not knocking any church, I'm not saying that because we every single one, even being in non-den non-denominational church can become religious.

I know, because occasionally as a church, we change things and people get mad.

Like, like that's a you you move, you move a table in a church.

Everyone's like, what?

You don't love Jesus, do you?

You move that table.

I know it's going to be.

Like, seriously, we've had, I'm joking, kind of, but like, man, man, it's just, some of us, it's religion.

And so this whole Jesus not religion idea, it's very easy.

Like, yeah, I don't want to sink back into defining myself by the rules and all that.

But some of us, let's be honest, religion isn't the thing we were programmed by our culture to be.

So if it's not religion, what is what is your not?

Like, Jesus not what?

What has our culture programmed you to believe and how to think that you have to be careful never to slip back into?

In fact, years ago, I got to talk to this really amazing seminary professor, he was from South Africa, and he said something, and I literally, it's like a rude moment in my life, because he said something so awesome.

I was like, stop, like I shushed him.

He was talking about stop.

Say that again.

And I pulled out my phone so I could take a note of it.

I was like, I'm so sorry, that was rude.

I just I need to, and here's what he said.

He said, if we don't learn to recognize and rise above our cultural programming, we will interpret scripture and our relationship with God by extension in terms of our culture.

I was very into and he said it in a cool South African accent, and I shushed him and I wrote that down.

Um, like we are trained by our culture to think a certain way, to view things a certain way.

And when the gospel really takes root, we're supposed to be freed from that and we live differently, but man, is it easy to sink back into that?

And so, what does that mean for us?

Because for us, it's not always going to be religion.

Some of us are like, yeah, I don't struggle with that.

Some of you guys were way ahead of me on the hat game.

Well done.

Well, what about this?

What about being a customer?

Like, if if we're all trained as Americans to be good at anything, we are good at being customers.

Right?

Like, how many of you say, I'm a really good customer?

Come on.

You're good, of course you are.

We're we're think about the phrase, this is ridiculous.

Think about that phrase for a moment.

And some of the situations in life that you've said, this is ridiculous.

And was what you were experiencing actually ridiculous?

Like one time the cable went out at my house, and I couldn't even I couldn't even diagram for you how cable works.

Like, you know, internet is what I'm trying to say.

I'm even using the wrong words.

I could, if you were saying, hey, what makes the internet work?

I'd be like wires.

You know what I mean?

But then it gets wireless at some point.

So there's a bunch of wires, and then eventually the wires stop, but it still works.

But it's just, it just is, okay?

It's like the sun comes up every morning and I have Wi-Fi.

That's the world I live in.

But I remember a few years ago our internet went down.

And I'm like, okay, you know, whatever, something's going on.

Give it 15 minutes.

You know, 30 minutes goes by.

An hour goes by.

An hour, people, without the internet.

And I have four children at home.

And now what am I supposed to do?

Raise them?

You know, like, no, like, what are we doing?

And they're like, where's the internet?

I'm like, I don't know.

And I'm sitting there and I'm getting on to like, I'm using my phone, not on Wi-Fi, so it's slower.

It's like it still works, but not really.

And so I'm having to look up outages, and I remember saying to myself, this is ridiculous.

And then it hit me like the internet is basically magic.

I can't even understand how complicated it must be to keep the internet going.

And in an hour without it, I'm like, this is preposterous.

This is ridiculous.

What are we doing?

What am I paying for?

What am I even paying for?

You know?

You sit in a line of traffic and it's going slower than you think it ought to go, and you're like, this is ridiculous.

You sit in a drive-thru and it's just not the speed of Chick-fil-A, and you're like, this is absolutely ridiculous.

You know what I mean?

Like anything less than that.

We are trained as Americans to be customers.

But man, if you if you think like a customer, good luck having a close relationship with God.

Because his customer service department, not great.

Not like his comfort level with hold times.

You know what I'm saying?

Like you call somebody and and you, if you're like me, I just want to talk to a human being.

Like that's how I'm a little old school, so I get the automated AI stuff, and I'm just like, I just try to confuse it.

You know, like if you say, it's like, please say what, and I just gibberish.

I'm like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I'll just do that.

Hoping that enough times it'll go, we will connect you to a customer service.

I just want to talk to a human being.

So then I can complain to that human being.

Like, that's that's because that's I'm an American.

But if you're on hold for 30 minutes as a customer, you're like, this is ridiculous.

Pray.

Ask God for what you need.

And then hold.

Let a decade go by.

Now, when he answers, oh wow.

Sometimes it's like, hey, I've been working on this answer for a decade.

And you needed this decade to be ready for the answer.

And if I would have given you what you asked for when you asked for it, terrible.

He knows better.

But he is very comfortable with really long hold times.

Like he's not in the customer service business.

He's in the service business.

He serves us, he loves us, but not customer service.

We're not customers of God, we're not customers of church.

We're not, we're not, but we're trained to be.

We're trained to be.

And we have to be about Jesus and not customer service.

Because if we think that way, if we slide back into that and we start to look at God, church, the whole experience of everything.

I'm not talking about this church, obviously, you know, five stars.

But like, you know, but if we start to look, if our mindset becomes, you know what, I don't really like that.

That doesn't really suit my preferences.

If we elevate, that's what customers do, is we elevate our preferences above everything else.

You know, I didn't like, those aren't my favorite people on the worship team today.

You know what I mean?

Like that happens.

Like, oh, I wish that person was singing.

You know, like like that, that's how we are trained to think.

But if we have that mentality, man, we'll miss the new thing.

That we are children of God, that we are forgiven, and we have mercy and grace, and we are made right with God because of faith.

And when we're in this place together, we are all brothers and sisters, and we love each other, and we support each other, and we have we're a family, and we're a family united under a father, and that father is God Himself.

We are the sons and the daughters of God.

We are not customers, we're children.

But if we slide back into that old way of thinking, all of a sudden we start picking apart all the people around us.

We start picking apart everything that we're a part of, and it ruins it for us.

You know, we think about some other things that we're trained to be in our culture.

Like we are trained to compare ourselves to other people and measure ourselves based on whether or not we have achieved more than them, have more than them, look better than them.

I mean, the the whole keeping up with the Joneses thing, that was a phrase before social media, and that only made it harder.

Like if you think that way and you've been programmed to, you've been programmed to look around you and compare yourself to other people to determine how well you're doing.

Like, if you do that, oh my goodness.

Misery.

I experienced this yesterday.

Like, literally, yesterday, we went to uh to Riverfest.

Uh, it was like an awesome thing at Edoa River Park, it was great.

We go there and we told each of our kids, hey, you know, they have booths, you can go and you can get one thing, and we gave them a you know, budget like 20 bucks, like that's nothing more than that.

And so my son, my youngest son, went and got this cool 3D printed dragon thing.

It was really cool.

Problem was, my older son went somewhere else, and he came back with something different that immediately upon seeing it, my youngest son was like, I want that instead.

Right?

He compared what he had to his brother, and he deemed what he had as worse, and he lost his mind.

And so I had to take him aside, I had to do that dad thing, you know, like when your kids freak out in public and you're like, ah, there's so many people here, and what do I do?

And so I had to go find a place, and and we sat and I had a stern conversation with him, but also a gentle conversation, and then it kind of went from gentle, well, gentle, stern, gentle, stern, gentle, stern, like done, we're done.

It was like one of those.

And he just kept saying it's not fair.

And my answer to my kids when they say it's not fair is I don't care about fairness.

I don't care about fairness.

Nothing is fair.

Life is not fair.

Fair is the if you use fair as your measuring stick, then you will just live in misery.

Because it's it's not fair.

It's not fair that that person that lives down the street from you has more than you.

It's not fair that that this happened to someone else and it didn't happen to you.

If you live that way, it fair, that whole thing, it's not fair, that basically means I've compared myself to someone else and I've determined that I would rather have their life or what they have than what I have, and it's not fair.

And it's like, yeah, that's not that's not how we're gonna think.

We're not gonna compare ourselves because if you live that way, you have no gratitude for what you actually have.

I actually heard someone say once the problem we have with happiness is that we we compare ourselves to a very select few people, but if we compare ourselves with everyone, especially like everyone all time, we're like, I'm doing great.

You know, you can compare yourself to someone who lived 700 years ago, and you're like, no complaints, none whatsoever, you know.

But comparison.

If we live like that, if that's what we slip back into, if we we have Jesus, and now what do we compare?

We're all brothers and sisters, we are all equal in the eyes of God.

It doesn't matter what the world says, who cares?

That's gonna pass away.

What he says is what counts.

And he says that you are mine, you're my beloved, you're forgiven, you're my child, you're my son, you're my daughter.

That's what he says to each of us.

But if we slip back into what's familiar, okay, cool, God, I it's nice to know that you love me, but you know, I really need to focus more on everybody else right now.

Like that's it's easy to do that, and it destroys the joy that Jesus has won for us.

I mean, it can be anything.

We're trained to, we're trained as people.

It could be politics.

Like, oh my gosh, we are trained as Americans to be hyper-political.

And I'm I'm very much like that.

I've had seasons of my life where I've gotten so into politics that it's been like a pro like a problem.

Anyone, anyone else with me, like a recovering, whatever a political alcoholic would be?

Like, I'm one of those.

Politics anonymous, you know?

Oh man, when podcasts were became a thing, that like ruined my life for a few years.

I just I would just absorb hours and hours of of frankly um complaining about the world and be like, yeah, those people are the problem.

He's like, so much of that.

And look, I politics are important, 100%, yes, but they're not the answer.

Like they're not the answer.

They never have been the answer.

If they were the answer, Jesus would have run for office, right?

Paul would have been like, we gotta get elect.

Paul was a Roman citizen, he could have been elected to the Senate.

That was possible.

Paul never decided to try because he understood that politics, while extremely important, sure, it's still the world.

And the world will pass away.

And if we spend our lives sucked back into that, this I've seen this happen a lot.

People, it's Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, and then eventually Jesus, Jesus, and we turn our eyes to something else, and we're right back into that because it's what's normal to us, it's what we're comfortable with.

But it's not Jesus.

I'm not saying you can't be interested in it.

I'm saying that it can't be your obsession.

It can't be what you define yourself by, because that's not Jesus.

And we could list a million things, but the point is really simple.

And in worship team, make your way out because I see the time.

Paul is blown away that these people who have Jesus have settled into something less than Jesus.

But I am convicted on a pretty normal basis on how easily I do the same exact thing.

I have Jesus, I am loved by God.

I should just be in like the best mood all the time.

I should be so happy.

Because I I know like all the things I've done and do and think, and I know all my dumb mistakes, and yet God loves me and he calls me his son, and I've been adopted into his family, and I've been forgiven of everything I've done wrong, like everything I've done wrong.

I I should wake up every morning like in a great mood and just happy and excited to be alive and to be known by God and love others.

I should be just giving love to other people, especially in my family.

But when my eyes leave him and I get fixated on other things, on lesser things, and I start defining my life not by how much I'm loved by God, but by how much money's in my bank or isn't in my bank or used to be in my bank and is no longer in my bank and all those kind of things.

If I start defining my life by all the angst in the world and all the problems in the world, and that becomes my focus, and I I it's like Paul would look at us and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you doing?

That's the old stuff.

Don't go backwards.

It's Jesus, not religion, it's Jesus, not consumerism, it's Jesus not materialism, it's Jesus not success, Jesus not achievement, Jesus not politics, Jesus not anything less than Jesus.

If you have Jesus, don't settle for anything less than Jesus ever.

Because if you do, you'll just be miserable.

If we define ourselves by anything other than Him, just go ahead and there goes joy.

Just go ahead.

It may not happen immediately, but if you decide, you know what, yeah, the Jesus thing, great, but I my focus really needs to be on this.

This is what I'm gonna get my worth from, my value from, my identity from.

Okay.

But you're gonna get off track fast.

Fast.

We're gonna take the Lord's Supper together.

Paul said a few things related to this.

He talked about running the race.

You may have heard that language.

He uses this language not in Galatians, but in another one of his letters to a church.

He says, We run the race with endurance.

But he said, here's how we do it.

Here's how we run the race, here's how we finish the race.

By keeping our eyes on what?

Jesus.

When Peter was brave enough and had the faith enough to step out of the boat.

And walk on water with Jesus, which had to have been one of the most incredible experiences anyone has ever had.

He was fine so long as he was looking at who?

Jesus.

But when he took his eyes off Jesus and he started looking around him and he saw the waves and the storm around him, what happened?

He fell, he sank.

But who pulled him out?

Jesus.

And then I think they probably walked back to the boat together.

What Paul is essentially saying here, what I want to make sure we have before we move on to chapter three, because it gets pretty theological and deep, is we have Jesus.

You have Jesus.

Like you have him.

He's everything.

Like you need him.

Let your life be built on him and nothing else.

Never go back, never settle for less.

Don't go back to being anything less than a Jesus follower.

Don't let that be the first.

If someone ever asks you, tell me about yourself.

I'm a Jesus follower.

I'm loved by God.

I'm a child of God.

I've been forgiven for that's got to be like number one, two, three, four, top 20 on the list.

Everything else has to be so far below that, otherwise, we get off track fast.

It's about knowing Jesus, following Jesus, just obeying Jesus.

You know, being a customer, we're all trained to be that.

Being a customer will never make you good at obedience.

That's for sure.

Not at all.

In fact, being a customer, it makes us very emotional people.

We're very much driven by what feels right, what feels good.

If you live your life based on what feels right, good luck.

In fact, like even in simple things, take baptism for example.

Like, why do we get baptized?

Because Jesus asked us to.

And there's deep meaning behind it and all that, but like at the end of the day, it's kind of interesting, right?

One of the first things we're supposed to do as we follow Jesus is just get baptized.

Just get dunked in some water.

And I've known people who I love, like good friends, who've just wrestled with that for so long.

And it's like they're waiting for the time when it's just right.

And like, it's almost usually this equation of like, well, I want to make sure that I'm, I'd like to be sinning less before I get baptized.

You know what I mean?

I'd like to sort of get at least halfway there.

And then I'm, you know, like, no, no, no.

Like, this is an early step.

If you're a Jesus follower and you haven't been baptized yet, you're not gonna hear me say this very often.

Like, just get baptized.

Because Jesus asked you to.

Because it's about making him the foundation of your life, making following him the most important thing, and the second most important thing, and the third, and the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth.

So if Jesus said it, I gotta do it.

Because I define myself by him, I am saved by grace.

Not law.

I'm not saying you have to get baptized to follow the rules.

I'm saying you just, it's living life through him by following him and building your life on that.

It's about him, it's about Jesus.

And if there's any other aspect of your life that you have slipped back into a little bit, and you've let that, you've let that rank up in terms of its importance, then I think today is a day to reevaluate and just say, you know, is anything coming close to my obsession with Jesus Christ?

Is anything else beginning to define me as much as that?

Even good things.

Sometimes it's the good things that are actually the hardest.

Because it feels exciting to be successful and to have this and to have that.

Maybe you're on the up and up.

Maybe life right now is like this for you, and you're tempted to start defining yourself by what you've done recently and what you've achieved.

Don't even do that.

Ooh.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

And so with that in mind, let's let's take Lord's Supper together.

We'll start with the bread.

If you're new, we do this every Sunday.

Um, just like Jesus' followers have been doing for a really long time.

This bread represents the body of Jesus, and he gave his body for us as a sacrifice.

Not to start a new religion, not to give us another rule.

This isn't a new thing we have to do now to please God.

This is a reminder.

This is a moment to center ourselves on him and say that my life is defined.

Not by my ability to follow the law, to follow religion, to be of this, to be of that.

My life is defined by the fact that the God of the universe came to this earth, lived as one of us, died in my place to save me, to give me forgiveness and mercy and salvation.

And this is what defines me, Jesus Christ.

This is my everything.

And we thank Him for it.

And so pray with me.

Father God, we thank you for your Son, for the gift of your Son on this earth.

And Jesus, we thank you.

We thank you, Lord, that you died in our place for us.

A sacrifice that pays the price for all of our sin and allows us to escape this silly world that tries to have us be defined by religion or by uh whatever it might be, Lord.

Anything less than you, it's worthless because it will all pass away.

But you never will.

You are eternal and you are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And when we define our lives on you, Jesus, when we define ourselves by you and by your love for us and what you've done for us, nothing can take that away from us.

Nothing can make that diminish.

So help us, Lord, keep our eyes on you.

Help us keep focused on you.

And help us never drift back into those things that feel familiar.

Help us constantly be focused on the new thing that you're doing in us and through us.

Let's take the bread.

Now the juice.

Lord, we thank you for this cup.

This is your blood spilled for us.

Willingly.

This is a gift, Jesus.

This is your life poured out.

You gave your life for us, but Lord, you actually gave your life to us.

And through your Spirit, we now have you, Holy Spirit, active in us, making us into the people that we're meant to be day by day.

And Jesus, we couldn't have this without you.

So help us define ourselves by you.

Not by following the rules, not by law, not by church, not by anything, Lord, not by anything we've been programmed to define ourselves by or to be, but help us simply be your children, loved and forgiven, accepted, made whole, made holy by you.

We thank you, Lord.

Let's take the juice.