Why Church? There Is a Way Out

I know Pastor E already introduced me, but to our first time guests.

My name is Tyrone.

I'm one of the pastors here.

My wife, Raquel, and I, we have the privilege of leading our Elk Grove campus.

Praise God.

We have two two boys.

Two boys that, ooh, I love them boys.

Tyrone the third.

We got a picture of my family.

That's my family right there.

Tyrone and Tyrese, my wife Raquel.

But they gave me the mic, so uh they announced, but I'm gonna announce again just in case you didn't hear it.

We are getting ready to celebrate five years of ministry and help grow, five years of everything that God has been doing.

And maybe if you weren't paying attention to the announcements, guess what?

You all are invited to come celebrate with us, amen.

We are one church, two locations.

And what that means, I I love our pastors, I love our team.

And we was like, how can we do this better together?

It's like, you know, we're gonna celebrate together, and so there won't be a 1230 service that day because everybody is invited to come celebrate with us, amen.

So I pray that if it's you know, if it's in your heart and your schedule that you come join us, and we can clap for that.

Thank you.

And the last thing, and and this is a great opportunity to let your friends, family know that hey, we have a midtown in Elk Grove, amen.

And so come check us out, come check us out.

Well, it's been a while since I've been here, and man, it feels good to be home.

I tease the pastors all the time, you know.

My wife, she she this was her church home when we met years ago when she was a teenager, and and they were like, man, like we want you guys to come here, but we had another church that we were at.

And I said, When we finally got here, y'all kicked us out.

And so, and so now we're here, and and I would love to share all of my story and all that.

I I don't have that kind of time today, or we will get in trouble.

But but I think I think it is fitting for me to just share a little bit about myself and and um I'm gonna do that.

I I'm one of nine kids, and uh I was raised by my grandparents.

Anybody was raised by their grandparents or any grandparents taking care of some kids?

Amen.

Praise God to you.

Um, yeah, I was raised by my grandparents.

My grandfather is my hero.

I love my grandfather.

He is he just turned 86 this year, and uh man, he he's an amazing man.

And and but my grandmother, my grandmother is no longer with us, but my grandmother, she was a special woman.

She was she was special.

My grandmother, she didn't play no games.

Um yeah, she didn't play no games.

And and I remember as I was thinking about this message, I was like, I want to share this.

It may sound a little random, because it was random when it happened.

I was probably like 10 or or 11 years old, and I'm just sitting here minding my own business, just kind of chilling.

And she said, You crazy.

And I'm looking like mama, I I'm not crazy.

She said, No, you're crazy.

And so I'm looking like and so she said, basically, anybody who likes hitting people or doesn't mind to get hit is a little crazy.

And looking back now, mama might have been right.

Because there is an anger side to me.

I have this aggressive side to me that uh that it is here.

And you know, people would ask me all the time, do you miss football?

And I'm like, Yeah, you know, I miss the money, I miss running in the ball, scoring touchdowns, I I miss, I miss the locker room, the locker room.

If you if you ever play sports the locker room, you know you know what I'm talking about.

But there was a part of football that I loved.

And that was, I love that you could hit somebody.

You could like, I mean, hit them right in their chest, and you didn't get in trouble.

People would cheer.

Like, like, and if you hit them hard enough, they might say, ooh.

Yeah, I like that feeling.

Yeah, I like when they did that kind of stuff.

So Mama might have been right, you know, a little crazy.

But but here's what I learned about football when it ended.

The game stopped, but every part that I had trained for for years didn't automatically disappear.

See, and just because something worked in one season of life, it doesn't mean that it belongs in the next season of life.

See, see, there were things that worked for me on the football field that weren't gonna work in my marriage.

That weren't gonna work being a father wasn't gonna work being a pastor, and definitely wasn't gonna help me become more like Jesus.

And that's part of what makes following Jesus real.

We've been in this series, why church?

See, when when Jesus saves us, what he makes us new.

So being made new doesn't mean every old habit, every old desire, every old reaction disappears overnight.

Sometimes that old way feels natural.

Sometimes that old man or that old woman wants to start talking again.

And sometimes what happens is that old way wants to respond and let you know, like, hey, you know how you used to respond.

You you know what you used to do, right?

But here's the good news.

Can you say good news?

Just because the old me starts to talk, it doesn't mean that it still gets to drive.

That's the connection for the series.

We've been talking about how God has made us alive, how God has made us one, and how God is building us together.

And a part of being built together means what we have to be people who live our lives who help others follow Jesus.

Amen.

Because after we've been made new, the old way can still pull on you, it can still draw you.

And that's what I want to talk about this morning.

The title of this message is There Is a Way Out.

There is a way out.

So if you have your Bibles, we're gonna be in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, and I'm gonna start reading at verse 12.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

Paul says, So if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall.

No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind.

And God is faithful, he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.

But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry.

Let us pray.

Father God, I thank you for this day.

I thank you for meeting us in this place, Lord.

Lord, use me, speak through me.

Allow this message to touch the hearts of your people.

Allow everyone to grab hold of what they need from your word today, Lord.

We ask all these things in your mighty name we pray.

Amen.

Before we get into the points, let me give you a little context of what's taking place at the beginning of chapter 10.

Paul takes the Corinthians all the way back to Israel's story.

See, these were people who had been experiencing God's power, God's presence, God's provision, and yet they were still fell into idolatry and sexual immorality and grumbling and disobedience.

And Paul was bringing this to them as a warning.

See, because experiencing God does not make you incapable of falling.

Amen.

And the Corinthians, they were facing some of the same struggles, which is why this warning came up.

Because they had come to know Jesus, but they were still being drawn into practice connected to idol worship.

Paul wanted them to understand just because something was normal in their old life, it didn't need to follow them in their life, but as they followed Jesus.

And that is true for us today.

So here's what I want us to hold on to.

When the old way starts calling, God is faithful to provide a way for us to remain faithful.

So here's point number one be careful, you can fall.

Paul says, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall.

Notice who Paul warns.

He doesn't say if you are struggling, be careful.

He says, if you think you are standing, be careful.

In other words, don't become so confident in yourself that you stop paying attention.

See, because there's a difference between confidence in Christ and overconfidence in yourself.

See, sometimes the most dangerous sentence we can say is, I would never do that.

I would never do that.

But the moment that we say that is the moment that we stop paying attention to the places where we are most vulnerable.

And to some of our young people, right?

I know we have some young adults in here.

Some of you, you know, started college or you're starting your careers and you're starting to make your own money and your own decisions.

But what I want you to understand is this just because you're old enough to make your own decisions doesn't mean that you are beyond needing wisdom.

Because right now, as you're making these decisions, you're making decisions about relationships and friendships and the kind of life that you want to build.

But you need to be careful and understand what you're building.

Because you don't want to build this life that looks so successful on the outside that it starts pulling you away from Jesus.

But this is true for all of us.

It doesn't matter how long that we're following Jesus, it doesn't matter how old we are.

Paul says, be careful.

He says, be careful.

Then he says, No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind.

In other words, what pulls me, it may not pull you.

For me, one of those places has been anger.

And how I respond when I feel somebody disrespect me.

But for you, it might be something completely different.

It could be maybe it's lust or sexual immorality.

Maybe it's pride, maybe it's bitterness, maybe it's control, maybe it's the need for approval.

Maybe it's something nobody else knows you're even fighting.

Well, Paul says temptation is common to humanity.

So you're not the first person in the battle, and you're not the only one fighting the battle right now.

Temptation can make you feel isolated.

It can make you believe that nobody understands.

The struggle is personal, but it was never meant to be fought alone.

So hear me when I say this.

Being tempted doesn't mean that you failed.

Being tempted, it doesn't mean that you failed because there's a difference between temptation and surrender.

See, temptation is the pull.

Surrender is when you allow what pulls you to tell you what happens next.

Back in the day, if somebody was to talk crazy to me, I wasn't gonna talk back.

I didn't go back and forth.

I just I hit back.

Can I be honest?

I'm just trying to be real.

I'm just being real.

That that was my response.

But just because that's what what I that I was used to, and that was my natural response before, it doesn't mean it gets to be my response now.

See, sometimes that's the hard part uh because when you feel justified, because because maybe somebody did wrong you.

Maybe they did cross the line.

But following Jesus changes the question.

The question can't only be, am I justified in how I feel?

The bigger question is, is my response obedient?

Is my response obedient?

Because I can be justified in how I feel and still be wrong in how I respond.

So Paul says, be careful.

He says, stay humble, he says, pay attention because none of us is above falling.

But thank God.

Paul, he doesn't leave us staring at ourselves.

See, the thing is, I know if this whole thing depended on my strength for me to be strong enough, I will be in trouble.

You see, if if my discipline depended on me just just taking care of it by myself, I'm going to fall.

So thank God that the the text doesn't say, but Tyrone is strong.

The text doesn't say, but you are strong.

The text says, but God is faithful.

Amen.

God is faithful.

And that's our second point.

The second point is God is faithful.

He provides a way to remain faithful.

Verse 12 says, Don't put too much confidence in yourself.

Verse 13 tells us where our confidence belongs.

Our confidence belongs in God.

Because our emotions can change.

My discipline, it can fluctuate.

But God remains faithful.

Paul says, When you are tempted, he will also provide a way so that you can endure it.

Now, sometimes this is misquoted, and God, you know, as God will never give me too much that I can handle.

Now, now, life can absolutely bring you into situations where you have to admit, God, I can't handle this by myself.

Lord, I need you, but that's not what Paul is talking about.

Paul is specifically he's talking about temptation.

He says, because God is faithful, temptation doesn't determine what you do next.

He doesn't abandon us in our temptation.

He provides a way for us to endure without surrendering to it.

I want us to think about an exit sign.

Many of us, we walked into this building this morning and we walked right past them, didn't even pay attention to the exit sign.

But let there be an emergency, and that exit sign be the most important thing in the room.

See, see, sometimes we we start praying and we say, Lord, I need you.

Lord, help me right now.

And God is saying, I've already showed you the door.

Sometimes the exit comes before you ever get in.

Sometimes the exit is don't go.

Sometimes the exit is don't call, don't text, don't open it, don't entertain it.

Sometimes the exit is don't go in.

But sometimes you're already in the middle of a situation, and the exit may be walk away.

It might be stop responding, it might be tell somebody, create some distance.

And sometimes the exit is a person.

I've experienced this recently.

I coached my son's football team.

And let me just say, coaching is not easy.

Because nobody warned me about you sports parents.

Yeah.

Did nobody tell me about that?

See, I never wanted to coach in the first place.

Before I had kids, I said, I will never coach.

And then when I said yes to it, nobody told me about y'all.

I didn't get that part.

No one gave me the memo.

But but I do it because I love my son.

And I love our boys.

We have a great group of kids on this team.

Shout out to our junior wildcast.

We just won yesterday.

But I know that God has given me this ability and giving me all this experience that I have an opportunity to pour into these kids.

And so I said yes to that.

I said yes to that.

Oh Jesus.

Recently, somebody crossed the line.

Yeah, somebody crossed the line.

And it wasn't so much what was said about me that bothered me.

You know, whatever.

But when something was said about my son, that hit a little different.

Because I'm gonna tell y'all a little something about me.

When it comes to my family, I'm protective.

When it comes to Raquel and them boys, something started to wake up.

That that old man, that old response.

See, see, I was ready to respond, but it wasn't Pastor Tyrone's response that was about to happen.

It wasn't the comp Tyrone, it was that old man.

That old man started to wake up, and I told you, we don't talk, we hear back.

That's what was about to happen.

But here's where I saw God's faithfulness.

God started putting exit signs all around me.

And one of those exit signs was one of the brothers, not my biological brother, but one of the brothers from the church.

He said, T, come on, man.

Let me walk with you.

Let's go, let's go.

And then another one can't say, Hey, hey, T, you got too much to lose, man.

Let's go.

So they didn't hype me up.

They didn't co-sign my flesh.

They understood why I was angry, but they did not allow my anger to become permission for me to be disobedient.

That's when I realized they were part of the way out.

See, see, that's when this passage, the word came back to me.

And then the Holy Spirit started to check me.

And God was reminding me, you don't have to respond the way you used to respond.

See, sometimes you don't need somebody to tell you that you're right.

You need somebody that who loves you enough to say, I know that you're angry right now, but you ain't gonna do that.

See, sometimes you don't need a new revelation, you need a faithful reminder of who you belong to.

Because I need more than just a church service, I need people in my life who will help me follow Jesus.

Now, my brothers, they weren't my savior, they're not my savior.

Jesus is my savior, but God used them to remind me what was true, and in that moment I saw God's faithfulness.

Now, I I still had to listen.

I said, I'm gonna be honest.

I wanted all the smoke.

I wanted all, I didn't want to listen to none of it.

I I wasn't trying to hear it.

I wanted all to smoke, I wanted to operate in this flesh.

Can I be real?

That's what I wanted to do.

Because I could have, I I could have ignored them.

I could have said, I hear you, but I'm gonna handle this my way.

But God provided the exit, and eventually I had to accept.

I had to accept that I wasn't going to get the conversation that I wanted.

See, sometimes the exit means accepting, you may not get an apology, you may not get an explanation, you may not get the last word.

Obedience means trusting God with what you can't resolve on your own.

And sometimes the hardest part about taking the exit is not that we don't know what God wants us to do, is that we have to trust Him enough to actually do it.

Now, maybe anger isn't your struggle, but what is God calling you away from that you keep finding a reason to go back to?

What does the exit look like for you?

Maybe it's deleting a number.

Maybe the exit is getting off the websites, maybe it's telling somebody something that you've been hiding.

Maybe it's walking away before pride makes the next decision.

I I want y'all to hear me.

The exit may look different, but the promise is still the same.

The promise is God is faithful.

God is faithful.

And remember, the way out doesn't always mean that God is gonna remove the situation.

See, Paul he says he provides a way out so that you may endure it.

Sometimes you still got to go to that job.

Sometimes you still have to navigate that difficult relationship.

I'm gonna pause just for a second.

Difficult doesn't mean abuse, difficult doesn't mean unsafe.

And so if anybody's dealing with that, you need to flee exit right now and get some help.

Because that's not what this is saying.

What it's saying is the ordinary pressures of life where God is gonna call you to remain faithful.

And sometimes the victory isn't everybody finally realizing that you were in a fight.

Sometimes the victory is I didn't go back, I didn't respond the way I used to, and I did not surrender to the temptation.

And it's only by God's grace that I'm still standing.

Because whether God gives you a way to walk away, or whether God gives you the strength to endure, the message says the promises, God is faithful.

But this is what I don't want you to miss.

It's not just about walking away, it's remembering who you belong to, who you belong to.

Here's point number three: remember who you belong to.

I'm gonna jump to verse 16.

It says, Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ?

And is it not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?

Because there is one loaf, we are many and are one body for all who share in the one loaf.

Jump down to verse 20.

No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God.

And I do not want you to be participants with demons.

You cannot drink the cup of the Lord in the cup of demons too.

You cannot have part in both the Lord's table and the table of demons.

So here Paul is talking about the Lord's table, referring to communion and remembering all that Jesus has done for us, his his broken body, his blood shed, all the way to the cross.

Paul is reminding the Corinthians, those who belong to Jesus are one body.

One body.

Now remember, some of the Corinthians they were still being drawn into idol worship.

So Paul, he's very clear about this warning.

He says, You can't try keep trying to sit at both tables.

That means you can't keep going back and forth, you can't play both sides of the fence, you can't have I have one foot in and one foot out.

Paul, see, see, Paul is addressing idolatry.

And I know when we think about that, we're thinking about bowing to statues, and that's exactly what he was talking about in that time.

But uh idolatry isn't a limited to statues, amen.

See, sometimes we can take something that is not as necessarily bad, but we give it a place in our lives that belongs to God.

So sometimes money can become an idol, sometimes suspect can become an idol, sometimes the need for respect can become an idol, sometimes relationships can become an idol.

But here is one thing we have to begin to recognize.

When something becomes so important to us that we are willing to disobey God to hold on to it, that's an idol.

Paul says, Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry.

He didn't say study it, he didn't say manage it, he didn't say negotiate with it, he said flee.

In other words, when God shows you the exit, take it.

Because obedience means trusting God with what you can't control.

And when I when I think about that type of obedience, I don't think about a person here, I think about Jesus.

See, in first Peter 2, it says, When Jesus was insulted, he didn't insult in return.

See, when he suffered, he he didn't threaten, he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly.

We have to understand Jesus had the power to defend himself, yet he chose the path of obedience all the way to the cross.

Peter says he himself bore our sins and his body on the tree, so that having died to sins, we might live for righteousness.

Our sins.

Amen.

And because of Jesus, we can begin to be forgiven.

We have been made new, and we can live differently.

Differently in the town.

As I've been sharing, maybe somebody here or online may be thinking, you know what, Pastor?

I missed the exit.

I already sent that text, I already responded the way I wanted to respond.

I did all of that.

I it went by me.

It went by me.

Well, can I share something with you?

Your failure doesn't have the final word.

Your failure doesn't have the final word because there is forgiveness in Jesus.

Amen.

There is grace in Jesus, and you can repent and turn back to Jesus if you've never placed your faith in Jesus.

This is the invitation for you.

Trust the one who died for you, who conquered the grave for you, who has made you new, amen.

The same Jesus who saved us, he also brings us into his family.

We all have been adopted into his family.

That means we are brothers and sisters, amen.

Now, as I was talking about those brothers that the Lord used earlier, God used them to remind me of who I belong to.

And that's what has made this series that we've been in so special.

Why church matters.

It's been a blessing to be in this series.

But Paul reminds us that we are one body.

We belong to each other.

See, God used somebody to help remind me to be faithful.

And God wants to use us to help somebody else be faithful.

Amen.

So so the goal isn't simply that we come to church.

The goal is to become the church.

Become the church, amen.

And so before I close, I mentioned I wanna I want to leave you with a question.

I want to leave you with this question.

What exit is God calling you to take?

What exit is God calling you to take?

And what is Jesus asking you to surrender?