Plants or People | Ps Shane Willard | Life Church SC

ah so good to be here with you um likes following actual bible jonah chapter four i'm gonna get to there in just a second it's so good to be with my um life family here on the sunshine coast thank you ashley and allison and rick and nina just such great hosts and good friends and i'm so happy to be getting to know rick and nina a bit better as we journey a bit and they they all laugh at my jokes and they make the afternoon so much better you know we do it and uh it's it's just good and so um i would just echo something rick said that if you could do me a favor if you have zero intention of getting anything from our resource table god bless you i'll see you next time if you know before you leave you're gonna grab something if you could do that in the first 10 minutes that would be awesome and so so the so the order of things would be buy first and chat second that would be great um the reason is is because we we do have to go back to brisbane i have to start early tomorrow i've got to teach five hours tomorrow and um and so on a totally different topic that i've got to go memorize after this so it's a um it's a whole thing so if you could do that for me that would be awesome um the reason if you weren't here this morning is i i i do what i do um simply to help uh pastors build their churches and to help uh feed the poor and the afflicted that's literally those are the two reasons i exist so you can pick that up out there and help us now um so my job's tonight to open the bible i take that pretty seriously um any time anytime you do that you want to ask two questions one what happened two more importantly what's happening in me right now because of what happened so in a few minutes i'm going to read from the end of the book of jonah which is inappropriate because there's a whole book to catch up on and if you don't understand it it's like it would be it'd be weird so i'm going to we're going to do that but this morning we talked about being a well-based place instead of a fence-based place not going to re-preach it i think it is a critical generational message for the language we need to be where we're going to be going forward but i don't think we can get there if we don't handle the question tonight so this is a totally different question tonight this morning was are we going to be a well-based place or a fence space place tonight i want to answer i want to ask a different question that i think we have to ask this question before we get to the other question but the reason i did this at night was so i could invite people in the morning for it to be sort of both all right so um and i think this is illustrated really well in a story of jonah and in a jesus story we'll get to both of those um so jonah chapter four um but um i gotta set this up so here is the entire book of jonah in six minutes okay and then and then we'll get there so here's you're gonna pay very close attention it's the entire book of jonah and in six minutes there's a guy named jonah he's the son of amitai uh he was called by god to preach to nineveh and so we've got to talk about that for a second because it just reads right over that nineveh was the capital city of the assyrian empire these people were lunatics okay like whatever you're thinking if you've ever thought boy the world's as bad as it's ever gotten please reconsider that notion okay uh these people were absolute maniacs we're normally we're more familiar with the roman empire than the assyrian empire because jesus lived in the roman empire and in the roman empire you had one world government with one world leader who claimed to be god who had one world currency and they were manipulating the one world currency in order to oppress people who wouldn't proclaim caesar's lord all right so so that you had that kind of stuff going on and if you came against that they had a ritual that they did you in the roman empire if you came against them they nailed you to a tree until you suffocated right it was called crucifixion right so they would beat you mostly to death and then they would know you to a tree um in front of everybody until you suffocated to death as a clear picture do not mess with us okay that that's what they did now the assyrians they didn't do that the romans invented crucifixion the assyrians flayed people they did something called peeling or skinning or flying so if they if they thought you were messing with them they would tie you up in front of people in public and they would peel your skin off um just i don't want to be gross but i do want to be historically accurate okay just to give you a a picture of this there's a painter in the 1400s that painted a picture of this i i should show you a picture of this here's here is the uh um the flaying of a judge that was deemed corrupt and he was stealing from the empire and as you can see he's tied down and they always start at the legs because you wouldn't die all right so you could take that picture down because i don't want that to be the thing but i want you to get the picture of this is an awful awful place okay so they would they would peel you they would skin you alive there was one uh a syrian emperor named tiglath polizer now would you agree with me if your mother named you tig lath you would have issues right so tig left now i want to listen very carefully to these words tig glath mastered the art now according to stephen covey it takes 10 000 repetitions to master the art of anything okay so tig black police are mastered the art of peeling people's faces off what he would do is he would hold you they would have you tied down and they knew just where to cut and just how deep to cut as to not kill you but peel your face off as an example this is what happens when you mess with us there's one story from tig glass rain that um about a small rural farming community think uh pittsworth okay or dalby or someplace like that and supposedly a small rural farmer uh was going to start a revolt against the assyrian empire so take that pleaser took his army into the small rural farming community found the farmer and he executed all he had six children he executed all of them in front of him and then he had his wife raped to death immediately following that he put his eyes out so that the last thing he would have ever seen was the rape and murder of his entire family he then chopped his ears off chopped his nose off and left him alive as an example this is what happens when you mess with us so when the scripture says god called jonah to preach to nineveh it's loaded jonah jonah reasonably says no no no i'm partial to keeping my skin you see so jonah runs and and and i don't i got to say i don't blame him and he gets on a he gets on a boat in tarshish and heads towards joppa and then there's a storm and this is where the story gets pretty confronting because it just so happens that the bodhi gets on the pagan sailors care about human life more than god's prophet right so he's like oh just throw me overboard they're not gonna throw you overboard why not because you're a human being bro and we care about you more than we do our merchandise which is our prophet so it's actually a pretty confronting thing that sometimes the pagans have a higher view of human life than god's people and that's what's going on in in this story and so they do everything they could do to save jonah they can he ends up being thrown overboard in the middle of the mediterranean sea which means he's actually gonna he's gonna drown but just so happens there's a fish that shows up and the fish shows up and and he swallows jonah to keep him from drowning now when i was seven my sunday school teacher told me that you better do what god says or god might swallow you as if the fish was god's judgment but in the story the fish is not god's judgment the fish is god's salvation because if you're going to drown and a fish just happens to be there that's called god saving your sorry behind from the thing you probably deserve when you were doing the exact opposite things you're supposed to be doing so jonah ends up in the belly of this fish which lisa this question what happened in the belly of the fish well no one knows because jonah was the only one there so the only record we have of it is what jonas says he did and according to jonah he prayed ten perfect prayers from the book of psalms which okay so he prays these ten perfect prayers with no obscenities or anything like that and so and then god god tells the fish throw up which is good news except for the fact that he's in the middle of the ocean and the fish throws up in the middle of the ocean he's going to drown anyway but just so happens the fish throws up next to dry land and it just so happens that the dry land is right next to the road that it goes to you guessed it none of them so jonah ends up sort of acquiescing a bit he goes all right i'll go preach to nineveh he shows up to nineveh and he preaches the worst sermon maybe ever um in in english it takes eight words to say and hebrews only five words it's a five word sermon here was his whole sermon 40 days from now you're going to be destroyed see you later right uh terrible sermon actually the problem is is that it backfires and it works and it says that everybody from the greatest to the least repented including the animals and this is where you get let in on some pretty challenging things it's at this point that jonah tells on himself and you work out that he said no to going to nineveh not because he was scared of being skinned he said no to go into nineveh because he was scared it would work because in his wine the ninevites were the evil people and he wanted god to destroy people he thought was evil he wanted god to destroy them because they are not like us and so for jonah god became a giant projection of a big version of him jonah became so convinced that god was like him that obviously god dislikes the people he dislikes and if he dislikes the ninevites then god must dislike the ninevite in in that sense god becomes a giant projection of a giant version of us we see this all the time i've been i've been in church my whole life have you ever heard somebody say oh god wasn't in that song tonight god wasn't in the song just say what you mean i don't like the song listen if if you if you don't like the song that's respectable that's no trouble but when we see god as a giant projection of us and obviously if i don't like it god doesn't like it and if i like it god what jonah has to learn is that god is not nearly as interested in getting his enemies as he is and god is not nearly interested in getting jonah as his enemies are god loves people just because they're people and jonah lets it out too he's like i knew it i knew you were going to be a compassionate gracious slow to anger abounding in love and forgiveness god i knew it i hate that about you see jonah wanted mercy for himself but justice for everybody else that doesn't work jonah uses this weird line in there it says he says i knew it i knew you were a compassionate gracious low to anger bounding in love forgiveness god i knew you were a god who repents from evil and in hebrew it says exactly that god repented evil which released all kinds of questions like is god allowed to repent from evil and if god's repenting of evil that means he's capable of evil and if he's not capable of evil why is he repenting of evil is god responding to his own altar call what's going on there anyway so there's this sort of strange thing so jonah still is holding out hope that god's going to destroy these people so he goes out and sits at a place east of the city and he waits for god to destroy them and and then the whole book of jonah ends with an odd object lesson around a plant now if you're a if you're a linear learner instead of a narrative learner you got a little bit lost there so if you're a linear learner this is for you bring that first slide up for me here's what we learned so far that when you run from god you run to the strangest places that anytime we non-consent to god's consent the consequences are never what we thought it would be when we run from god we run to the strangest places we've all had our moments of running from god we've all had our moments of non-consenting to god's consenting love we've all been handed over to the self-inflicted consequences of that non-consent we've all sort of experienced uh we we've also experienced this this and it never works out well i remember when i was uh when i was younger and i was a counselor and um i had this young lady come to see me she was uh probably 18 or 19 maybe she was in a toxic relationship with a boy that was just out of control her parents obviously did not approve of this boy nor should they have and she came to see me and she was very very very angry and what came out of her mouth was unbelievable she said i'm sick of it i'm sick of all of you i'm sick of my mom telling me what to do i'm sick of my dad telling me what to do i'm sick of you all telling me what to do i'm even sick of god telling me what to do i'm going to show all of you and i'm going to go get married and i sat there and i thought wait a minute so excuse me let me just understand this so your solution of being sick and tired of being told what to do is to enter into an institution designed to have someone else tell you what to do this is going to work out terribly and of course it did it was fell apart in two years we were there i i still know her today she's doing fine and the story ends well but in other words we all have our moment of non-consenting to wisdom and then getting the natural causes of that so when we run from god we run to the strangest places we also learn if you can bring this light up we also learn that god is generous with his grace but we also learn that god wants to get us back without paying us back that's a big thing what we find in this story is that god is always out in front of jonah recon hey essentially have you had enough of your own consequences because i'm still playing ball here hey if you had have you had enough i love the way the first the first church um the church in constantinople they made a brilliant observation about scripture and they said the entire bible could be read through the lens of the prodigal son and i think it's certain like you just pick any passage from judges any passage from kings any passage from any of that and you have something going on you either have people mutually consenting in a loving relationship with god or somebody non-consenting to that loving consent and ending up ruining their life in the pig pen or they're at the point where they're at the end of the consequences and they can't stand themselves anymore only to find out that the loving father wants to get us back without ever paying us back that in the prodigal son story this is consent hey come on back come on back i had no payment required i just want to eat with you and this is why words matter less than how we picture words functioning i can't say that enough there's a way to say something that's true that creates a not true imagination right let me give you an example i'm going to say something that's true but the picture it will create will be not true ready here it comes one day you will stand in front of jesus and he will be your judge jesus is your judge true or not yes it's true i told you it was true before i said it right so it's true true the problem is is the imagination it creates i've asked this all over the world when i say jesus is your judge what do you picture the number one answer by far is i picture a heavenly courtroom and jesus is like the judicial officer and he's listening to your life and he's declaring you guilty or not guilty here's the problem with that the hebrew word for judge is chauffeur which is not a judicial officer it's someone anointed by god to set you free and you already knew that because there's an entire book in the bible called the book of judges in the book of the judges are not judicial officers they're people anointed by god to set his people free and here's the problem we tell people hey jesus is your judge now come on in let's press in and get close to jesus ain't nobody want to be in court nobody that's mentally healthy wants to have a relationship with somebody that's keeping track of their life and going to bring up everything they did right no one was to do that but what if we said hey jesus is your judge and what that means is one day you'll stand in front of the one who is fully and fundamentally anointed by god to set you free from whatever's been holding you back now let's get close to that that's a fundamentally different imagination with the same words so words matter less than how we picture words functioning right sometimes we end up in arguments and we think we're fighting over the words but we're not fighting over the words we're fighting over the picture somebody created with those words all right so what we find is is that when we run from god we're in strangest places we also find that god is generous we also find that god wants to get us back without paying us back i would say one other thing next slide that great moves of god start with a genuine revelation of the love of god for us and them jonah had no trouble with god loving him his trouble was that god did not see the people he saw as evil as evil as jonah thought they were now let me let's be fair to jonah here these were the assyrians they were flaying people does jonah have a point that they're evil yes which leads me to all kinds of questions like is there anybody in our world that we think god hates because we deem them as evil and where have we crossed the line between the idea and the person like i get it i get it sally in accounting is annoying and just say it that way you're annoying but evil the enemy of god what jonah's learning in this story is boy god just loves people just because they're people so jonah ends up sitting at a place east of the city hoping god destroys this whole city you're caught up with the story here's jonah chapter four and let's ask two questions what happened and more importantly what's happening in us right now because of it this is jonah chapter four i think it's verse five there it is jonah went out and sat down at a place east of the city mary made himself a shelter and sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen in other words i can't wait for god to destroy these people then the lord god provided a vine and it made a grow up over jonah to give him shade for his head and to ease his discomfort and jonah was very happy about the vine if you're taking notes that's the key phrase jonah was very happy about the vine but it dawned the next day a worm came and uh was chewed the vine withered up and the sun rose and god provided the scorching east wind and and the sun blazed on jonah's head so he grew faint he wanted to die and he said it'd be better for me to die than to live this you know he's turned suicidal like he's he's not a stable man like i understand this like but god said to jonah this is a rhetorical question if you ever have someone a question they're not really picking up the vibe in the room you know god said to jonah do you have a right to be angry about the vine like you had nothing to do with it why are you angry about something you had nothing to do with right jonah jonah doesn't pick up what god's putting down so so jonas says but the lord jonas god said do you have any right to be angry about mine but but and jonah said i do i'm angry enough to die you go back you went really fast there right but but but the lord said you've been angry about this keep going now you've been you've been concerned about this vine that you did not tend it or make it grow it's spraying up overnight diet overnight but nineveh has more 120 000 people who cannot tell their right hand from the left and many cattle as well should i not be concerned about that great city that's how the book of jonah ends there's no more verses after that which is frankly a terrible way to end a book unless that book is a sermon and he's leaving us with a question you care about your plant i care about people why just because they're people now this leaves us with a few questions and observations i want us to find ourselves in the story next slide let's say it this way we can run from god but we cannot outrun him god seems to be always out in front of us reconsenting with his grace i'll say this again that god wants to get us back without paying us back but but the main thing i want to focus on right now and this is so critical to being a well-based place and not a fence-based place next slide is this what we find in this story is that it is possible to surrender to god's moral will for our personal life and still be disconnected with what god is up to in everybody else particularly people we see as evil like this is what happened in the story jonah fully consented sort of to god's personal moral will for his personal life but even in that consent to god's and surrender to god's personal will for his personal moral life he still was completely and utterly disconnected from what god was up to in other people particularly people jonah didn't like like here's a man that was just rescued from drowning by a fish and he still wanted god to destroy people not like him this is a guy that does not get it absolutely does not get it and the whole thing ends with god giving jonah some object lesson around a plant now this reminds me of a story in jesus's life so jesus in mark chapter 11 i think he's coming out of jericho with his disciples and some followers now let me be clear before i read this the only people in the story are followers of jesus there's no roman pagans in this story there's no witch doctors or warlords or it's jesus and people following jesus and what are followers of jesus people intending to see the world to see god and to apply scripture how jesus saw the world god and applied scripture these are people who are fully surrendered to god's moral will for them and they don't get it this is mark chapter i think it's 11. next slide here comes it says that jesus was leaving jericho and there was a blind man named bartimaeus the son of timmius sitting along the roadside begging don't worry i know it it says so it says once jesus was leaving jericho with his disciples and some followers and there was a blind man named bartimaeus sitting yes and they came to jericho as jesus and his disciples mark 10 sorry as jesus disciples together with a large crowd we're leaving the city and a blind man named bartimaeus that's the son of timmius was sitting along the roadside begging now i want you i gotta remember this day i'm not saying this is true i'm just saying this is what they thought in jesus's world if somebody was blind they were the lowest class of the lowest class because they believed somebody in that family had done something to offend god and god had afflicted them with blindness they had not worked it out that sometimes bad things happened to good people even jesus disciples were like who sinned that this guy ended up like this this was a concept so this guy isn't just blind he's an outcast and he's seen as less human than them right so there's this blind man sitting by the roadside begging and he says jesus son of david when he heard that it was jesus now there he said jesus son of david have mercy on me and many rebuked him hang on a second who's rebuking the blind man followers of jesus so here's what's happening fully devoted followers of jesus are rebuking the most vulnerable of their culture in their own pursuit of jesus in other words it's possible to fully surrender to god's moral will for your life and still be disconnected with god's love for people not like us that's what's happening in this story followers of jesus are stepping over the beggar in their own pursuit of jesus and failed to see the irony in this shut up blind man don't you see we're following jesus like unbelievable and many rebuked him and told him to be quiet and he shouted all the more son of david have mercy on me jesus stopped and said no no no call him to be fair to the followers of jesus once jesus reminded them that he was about the blind man they changed their tune really quickly they turn and say cheer up blind man turns out he wants to talk to you so sometimes it just needs a little subtle reminder what's happening in the jonah story is the same thing that's happening in this story and it's something that we have to at least question ourselves on and that is this one have i fully surrendered to god's moral will for me and i hope the answer to that is yes but beyond that have i surrendered to god's moral will for me but lost sight of god's love for people that aren't like me the other the them the enemy in jonah's case it was the assyrians in the blind man's case it was the blind man if we kept reading you'll find that the next encounter has to do with a guy named zacchaeus and zacchaeus is an outcast because he's a roman sympathizing tax collector so in the jonah story you have torturers and tormentors of the earth being deemed wicked and joan is having to learn he loves them in the jesus story his followers are learning that the god revealed in christ cares about the blind man as much as he does the sighted man and he cares about the one that you deem as the worst the roman tax collector all of these stories have to do with people who are fundamentally connected with christ still having to learn that god loves people not like us which which leads me to all kinds of observations and questions next slide let's say it this way are we overlooking the beggar in our own pursuit of jesus is there anything in us like just go home tonight and take a gander at the end of matthew 25 and ask yourself the question how important is it to followers of jesus to make sure we do not overlook the most vulnerable in our societies right it is central to being a jesus person to prioritize the most vulnerable this is why you have gotten sick to your stomach when you have seen christians on the internet proclaiming their freedom in christ at the expense of the most vulnerable in our culture and failed to see the irony in this people using jesus to excuse not doing things that are obvious that are obvious to help the most vulnerable now look there are medical legitimate medical reasons to not wear a mask and that is one thing but if you're proclaiming i belong to jesus not the government that sounds like listen now that sounds like hell but i belong hey listen here now i belong to jesus not the government i don't care what they say what you mean to tell me you mean to tell me that the government has to tell christians to do simple things to prefer the most vulnerable what we should be the ones leading the charge saying what can we do to protect the most vulnerable even more [Applause] i live in very close proximity to a man that's had a heart transplant and i can't put a thin piece of cloth on my face to protect him and they had to the government has to mandate this really man let me be clear i hate wearing masks like if you love it there's something wrong with you i get it and the question isn't is it right or wrong to wear a mask that's not the question that's a cheap question the question is is as followers of jesus what place and priority do we give the most vulnerable in our cultures i i'm embarrassed frankly that they had to tell us to do it and i'm extra embarrassed when in the name of jen look if you're watching this would you let me ask for forgiveness for every follower of jesus who in the name of jesus i want to acknowledge they have probably surrendered to jesus's moral will for their personal life but would you forgive us for completely ignoring how jesus taught us to see the most vulnerable in our culture [Applause] i mean i can't believe i can't believe they had to make rules around this and then i can't believe the people who are supposed to be leading the charge end up being the ones resisting it in the dumbest way possible by using revelation versus like what oh i had a christian write me the other day and they said shane australia is a military state now no it's not me and maria's like go there and notice the big difference man let's say it this way next slide um are we pursuing god's will for us while ignoring his will for the rest of the world particularly the plight of the most vulnerable like are you serious see this story is so challenging because in the jesus story and in the jonah story you had legitimate authentic intentional fully devoted followers of god who were still disconnected let's say it this way one other way next slide let's say it this way next slide um are maybe pursuing jesus and loving our world is the same thing like jesus said it this way love the lord your god with all your hearts on my end and the second is like it love your neighbor as yourself um just uh 10 seconds for the bible nerds ready because sometimes people expect bible nerd them for me so here we go ready ten seconds for the bible nerds okay love the lord your god and love your neighbor as yourself in greek there is four classes of conditional clauses okay so there are there are four classes of conditional clauses and there are way conjunctions are used when jesus said that sentence the conjunction and there is in something called first attributed position what that means is is that the first condition and the second condition are the same thing right so this is how it would read love the lord your god with all your heart soul mind and straight and love your neighbor as yourself but in greek it would be like saying loving god and loving people are exactly the same thing in other words you can't say you love god and not have a priority for the most vulnerable and not love your neighbor there's a great book about this it is an incredible read you ought to read it it's an entire book dedicated to this one theme it's called first john okay and at first john his point is is that what difference does it make if you're free in christ and right doctrinally if all that doesn't motivate you to treat the most vulnerable better what difference does that make which leads me back to jonah let's ask a few questions about this next slide so how does the book of jonah end here's how the book of jonah ends jonah is sitting in his own comfort hoping god destroys people he deems wicked what is the only only description of jonah being happy he's sitting underneath a plant in his own temporary pleasure that is so strange how many opportunities in the book of jonah does jonah have to be happy a lot here's a few and god called jonah and jonah was very happy to be called by god and jonah disobeyed god and lived to tell about it he was so happy to do that no no and jonah picked a random ship and it just so happened the ship he picked were filled with merchants that cared about people more than prophets he was so happy to be in a boat full of nice people no and jonah gets thrown overboard anyway and instead of drowning a fish saves his sorry behind from what he probably deserved and jonah was very happy about the fish and jonah was in the belly of the fish being saved from drowning for three days he was so happy to be there no and then god tells the fish to throw up but jonah was very happy to fish through up because it was disgusting in the fish's belly and the fish throws up not in open ocean but next to the dry land where he can just walk up and walk where he's supposed to walk and jonah was so happy he didn't have to swim far and jonah swin and jonah preaches the worst sermon ever to a group of people who flay people who speak against them and not only was he not flayed it worked and it created a modern day revival for the time and jonah was so happy to be used by god and keep his skin no no jonah's got all these opportunities to be happy but when is he actually happy he's only happy when he's sitting in his own pleasure hoping god destroys other people which leads to this next life let's say it this way god says you care about a plant i care about people you are happy when your plant lives and angry when it dies i'm happy when people live and i'm angry when people die let's say this way jonah next slide jonah how you feel about your plant is how i feel about people it's a brilliant object lesson that god gives jonah it's it's the plant it's people here's the thing right we all woke up today in australia like everybody in this room is either a permanent resident of australia or a citizen or you're breaking the wall heck right now we can't even travel out of queensland and here's the thing right australia is a nation full of plants heaps of plants my understanding is if you go to nimbin there's a lot of plants but i don't know anything about any of that that's not my it's not my world australia is a nation with motor cars paved road stores that pre-package food for us clean water and our taps machines that do washing other machines that do drying world-class healthcare right down the road and it's largely free or at least affordable no one in this room right now is terrified of going bankrupt if you get sick why because this is australia it's one of the top five greatest nations on the earth i hear australians complain about australia where are you going to go where exactly are you going to go right and i realized there's some unfair reporting this week i've had three separate friends who did not talk to each other ring me from america asking if they needed to raise money to get me out of here the reason is is some american news showed the picture of the army helping check people at the border and they reported it as martial law and they they pictured me hunkered down in a house with the right right this nation is full of plants and i love it and so should you here's what makes plants so difficult there's nothing wrong with them who gave jonah his plant god did nothing wrong with the plant the problem with the plant is not that it's wrong it's temporary and jonah started prioritizing temporary things over permanent things plants are temporary people are permanent god bless the people i love plant i love i love hey like i love the internet it's better like friday night entertainment now is netflix friday night entertainment used to be public flaying of people right netflix is better i mean is there are there things on netflix that aren't good yeah but you just don't you don't have to click on it like friday night entertainment used to be hey tie the village betrayer up and disembowel them let's see what happens like that like listen i'm a big fan of the internet it makes it better i am i have an app on my phone called ko ko is awesome it it allows me to watch live american sport in full hd on my phone it's one of the most amazing things you can't believe it but but but here's the thing about ko ko doesn't work without a data signal and the data signals can be temporary uh one of the things i've done is i've always given rule australia it's proper place i go out to pittsworth and gundawindi and chinchilla king of roy and ganda morgan i've been out to clifton and warwick and claremont and emerald and blackwater and bob here's the thing i was i was preaching in ganda and uh next day i had to preach in king roy and had a midday meeting in morgan and you know the road from ganda to murgan is the main road but you know on the main road do you know how many k's of that road actually has a phone signal none of it i thought this ride is going to go good because i had a big game on i was just going to listen to the game and get me to my next place and i got two minutes out of morgan the thing quit working i was very angry about my plant i'm so frustrated have you have you ever had your wi-fi go out at home why the wi-fi goes at home you realize just how disconnected you are from everybody in your house because nobody can relate without the wi-fi that's for sure and you panic and what do you do well most of us only have one move unplug it wait 10 seconds plug it back in hopefully that thing will start working and if it doesn't what happens you gotta call telstra oh no flip and telstra [Music] and think about just for a second think about how irritated you get when your wi-fi goes think about how irritated you get when your data signal drops think about how irritated you get if there was a few months back remember brisbane had like a like a southern statewide blackout because something hit the thing and we lost our power for oh gosh three hours and it was hot the air cons wouldn't work because it takes power see i love air con i love wi-fi i love data signals i love all of our plants but the graces is the grace to experience those plants without them taking precedent over the permanent things here's my question it's a simple question it's the question god's asking jonah here in the plant story is as irritated as you get when your wi-fi goes out do you have even remotely the same amount of irritation when there's injustice or the vulnerable or being mistreated or they're not being considered or like like like it's it's it's it's it's not good or bad it's temporary or permanent now good sermons aren't meant to be agreed with nor disagreed with they're meant to be wrestled with for application so let's ask a few questions next slide how do we think about our enemies and i don't mean that as a throwaway i mean like really first of all just calling them enemies are they really are they human or have we somehow scapegoated them as a them you know it's very easy to see god as a projection specific particularly politically you know like i'm a republican so god must be a republican if you're not republican you're not against me you're against god you know um really like god called god called jonah to love the assyrians the people who flay people sally in accounting is not that bad how do we think about our enemies are we still using them thinkers are we acting for temporary pursuit or for permanent progress are we living for the temporary not the wrong things that that's cheap it's the temporary things uh let's say next slide this one is there any place we've forgotten our fish like all of us have a story of non-consenting to god's consent only to find that god was present with us and the consequences that we deserved anyway and then all god wants us for us to be inspired to be kind to other people see jonah wanted mercy for himself and then justice for everybody else how i'm supposed to be called to something else i would ask one other thing in our minds have we ever are we using our liberty and christ to justify overlooking the most vulnerable and thereby missing the entire point of jesus stepping over the beggar in our own pursuit of jesus do we believe in other words or do we really care about the things jesus cares about and the people jesus cares about i realize you're gonna forget most everything i say by thursday so i want you to remember two thoughts from today i want you to wrestle with it for a very long time are we going to be a well-based place are we going to be a fence-based place but before we get there we got to decide what's the most important plants or people plants are people the way jesus saw the world the way jesus saw god and the way jesus supplied scripture is that liberty is best expressed and experienced when it's submitted to the higher ethic of love may we be the people who show may we lead the charge to show the whole world what it's like to love our communities to consider the most vulnerable i don't have it on a slide but just trust me it says it you can look it up later in titus chapter 3 paul is writing to titus about how christians should respond to government policy i want you to keep in mind the emperor was nero who was taking sticks and shoving it up people's rear ends and then setting them on fire as human candles so whatever oh man scomo's what nero okay nero and paul says to titus in titus chapter 3 may the communities of jesus christ spend all of their energy doing good in their communities in a way that is profitable for all and spend zero spend zero energy on controversial things or any quarrels about the law for they are unprofitable and useless that may we be known like what do those people stand for doing good in our communities preferring the vulnerable plant are people so may we dig deeper wells instead of build higher fences and may we always be brave enough to prefer the people over the plants i hope jesus got bigger for you today the cross worked better the resurrection is central scriptures got bigger not smaller i can't wait to see you again very soon grace and peace everybody

Channel: Life Church SC

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Id: TiH2152Z5a0

Length: 44min 38sec (2678 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 29 2021