The Hardest Truth In the Bible // Ty Gibson

good morning everybody i'm just curious are you the kind of person who likes to be told the truth even if it's painful i mean i'll talk to the guys if your girlfriend is not actually in love with you and is waiting for a better option to come along would you rather she just tell you straight up she's not in love with you and there is no hope that you will ever marry her or would you rather to quote the song be told lies lie sweet little lies over and over again until you are finally crushed in an inescapable moment are you the kind of person who is willing to face the truth even if it's uncomfortable i want you just to sit with that for a moment ask yourself that question and use this moment also as an opportunity to escape from this horse barn right now because we are about to unpack from scripture what i'm going to refer to as the hardest truth in the bible and by hard i mean it's hard on us hard on me hard on you the bible is a book that takes the gloves off oftentimes the bible is not the kind of script that wants to embed us in our lives but to deliver us from our lives in fact the apostle paul in one place essentially says that all of us this is romans chapter three if you like like to take a look later on that all of us are on the most essential fundamental level i mean we have a lot of things as individual humans that we do not have in common things that makes me different from you and you different from me right we're different in a lot but paul says that there's there's at least one sense in which all of us at a at a fundamental level at an essential level he says all of us are one thing for sure collectively universally all of us he says are liars paul says that we are liars and we are continually in the process of lying to ourselves about ourselves and lying to others about ourselves by which he might if he were employing more contemporary vernacular of our day he might say that we manufacture personas and we project images we hope people will believe about us and we hope we ourselves will believe now jesus comes along and he says that the only way for a human being to be truly free is by means of the truth this is john chapter 8 the whole chapter as that particular idea is developed but verse 32 in particular you may have heard quoted before or read it yourself where jesus says that the truth will set you free now in paul's context he says that we're all liars by which he means we are liars regarding ourselves not regarding mundane everyday subjects like our tax returns he's not dealing with the white lies of common every day life in the mundane subjects that have little or no impact he's saying that we're liars with regards to ourselves and jesus when he says that only the truth will set you free he means very specifically the truth about god in contrast to ourselves and so there is a psychological truth a psychological law always in play with human beings and that is to the degree that we see god clearly we see ourselves by contrast as clearly in other words the more my mind comes to grasp the absolute perfection and beauty of god's selfless love by contrast i see myself myself as as out of harmony with the perfection and beauty of that love some people say it this way i've read this before where somebody says you know the closer we come to jesus the more sinful we will appear in our own eyes have you heard that idea and that and that's how it works it's a psychological law and it's not just uh true on the theological level in our relationship with god this is true as well in all of our relationships we've all had the experience of of entering into social contact with somebody that we at least perceive as better than ourselves somebody in a higher economic bracket than ourselves and we feel a little self-conscious about the fact that we're in a lower socio-economic bracket somebody who's more intelligent more articulate than ourselves and suddenly in that social company we feel like being quiet because we're afraid we might say something dumb quote unquote we all know what it's like to be in the presence of mere human beings that we perceive as better than ourselves can you imagine being in the presence of almighty god there would be an immediate self-consciousness of everything that is out of sync with who he is that we would find impossible to manage or to navigate psychologically and so god is always in the process of a revelatory a revelatory process with us that is what i'm going to call incremental he wants us to know exactly who he is with no dimming veil between and he wants us to know exactly who we are by contrast but he knows that we would implode emotionally if we in one nanosecond knew the truth about ourselves and so in grace his revelation is incremental it's progressive now in the world of psychotherapy you're familiar at least if you ever listen to me preach you will be familiar with carl young in a christian and theological context in the in the world of psychotherapy he was a contemporary of freud and he was the one individual within the world of the developing science of psychotherapy who who went the christian direction he maintained his christian roots and orientation to some significant degree he actually pulled away for a while when he was under freud's tutelage who was an avowed atheist but he circled around as he matured and as freud and young had their famous falling out as friends freud actually had set his sights aunt young as the one who would take over his legacy and they had a falling out and hyung began to circle around to his christian identity until he came to his last interview and basically was asked by the journalist do you believe in god because you know they could smell it in his psychotherapy and so they wanted an outright confession or denial do you believe in god and he said no i don't believe in god i know god and i know that god exists so young is constantly operating within a christian perspective to some degree more or less and one of the things that he developed in his psychotherapy was that there is no coming to consciousness without pain now that's pretty self-evident we don't even need him to tell us that by which of course he doesn't mean physical pain although there's always a physical component to all emotional processing he means that there is no coming to consciousness without emotional pain and the consciousness that he's speaking of here of course is self-awareness you can't become self-aware without emotional discomfort your only alternative is to tell yourself lies sweet little lies over and over again now i would like to explore with you in our time together today what i am as i said articulating as the hardest truth of the bible and i challenge you to find anything more challenging in scripture than what we're about to discover but i believe that it is hard on us to our benefit i want to emphasize that i'm about to tell us some hard things and i'm going to allow scripture to be the conduit through which those hard things come to our minds so i can say hey i didn't say any of that the bible did but here's the thing i believe that scripture that let's just say god when god is hard on us he is hard on us to our benefit for our good so let's begin unpacking what i'm calling the hardest truth of scripture in first john chapter 4 and verse 20. please notice what scripture says here john the apostle if someone says i love god let's just pause right there i mean is that the kind of thing you would say that's the kind of thing i would say i would say i say that you've probably heard me say that would you say something like that just not give me a nod with your mask on out there all of you social distancers who for the audience out there in the world just so they know that we're obeying the protocols would you agree with yourself when you hear yourself saying i love god i have to be honest i i love god and i believe that i love god but but here's what john wants us to understand here's what god wants us to understand if i say i love god but i hate my brother okay here's the startling intersection between the vertical and the horizontal the vertical being i love god hi god you're amazing you're beautiful i worship you i pray to you i give money to your cause i'm all into you god i love you that's the vertical but then john flattens it out to create what we might call a vertical horizon and he essentially says if someone says i love god but he hates his brother paul just says i mean john just says straight up he's not pulling any he says you're a liar you're just straight up lying it's not true no matter what religious rigamarole you go through no matter what rituals you engage in no matter how consistently you go to church pay to the cause of god some amount of your income pray prayers sing songs feel emotional in that worship experience john is saying if i say i love god but i hate my brother he's a liar and we begin to wiggle right there we're like oh let's do some exegesis um what does hate mean who's my brother and that's exactly what we're doing we're wiggling we're trying to navigate we're trying to do theology as an escape hatch from what is more than we can bear if you pan out in scripture you discover let's do some exegesis that your brother is literally every other member of the human race the answer to the biblical question am i my brother's keeper is yeah you are actually and who is my brother the pharisees ask to which jesus says let me tell you a story and he tells the story of the good samaritan you know that story probably a story that he told to jews who hated samaritans jesus told a story to jews in which the person the people group they hate most was the hero of the story the hero of the story was from their perspective the offscaring of the earth that's who the hero was in jesus story and then jesus asked the question who do you think was brother to this person in need well jesus gave the obvious answer without even answering the implication is the person who goes out of his way to relieve the suffering the predicament of others that's the person who is being true brother and jesus makes it very clear that this brotherhood thing transcends ethnic national and all prejudicial concepts of who's in and who's out jesus makes it very clear and john is simply john is simply a protege of jesus he's an apprentice of jesus he's a disciple of jesus he was under the tutelage of jesus for three and a half years he's just echoing what he learned from jesus and he says if you say you love god and you don't love your brother i.e any other human being on the planet you're a liar for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen how can he love god whom he has not seen and then he says in verse 21 and this commandment we have from him by which he means means jesus he's saying i hung out with jesus for three and a half years and this is what i got out of it that he who loves god must love his brother also but what about this hate thing at this point you or i may be saying i'll use myself as an example i read the word hate and i think oh that's kind of a negative emotional state that's what that is that's that's like having hot negative ugly emotional feelings towards someone well in the biblical scope of things the bible doesn't use the word love or hate to primarily describe your emotional feelings to love is to act in the best interest of the other from a biblical standpoint this cotton candy sweet hollywood kissy kissy huggy huggy love that we have put in the place of love let me just parenthetical statement here the devil is in the business of hijacking vocabulary just so you know he takes words that belong to the kingdom of god and then he gives them a false or skewed or weird or wack meaning so that when you hear that word it triggers a definition that puts you off the trail of truth so when you hear the word love don't hear warm fuzzy cotton candy sweet sentiments that's not what the bible means when it says the word love now according to the bible there's an emotional component to love because it is a psychological law that my emotions will follow the trajectory of my actions that is to say if i act toward you with deeds of deference and respect i will tend to feel respect for you my emotions tend to follow the trajectory of my actions don't wait for yourself to feel right do what's right i mean when marriages are falling apart and i do marriage counseling i say we can we can have one session and solve the whole problem or we can have 10 sessions the guy always says let's do one the woman always i think we want we need ten and the first session i simply say let me guess you're gonna tell me that one of you doesn't love the other one or both of you don't love one another anymore it's always the case i don't really have feelings for him anymore i don't really feel love for her anymore to which my prescription is okay and i actually write a prescription okay here's what you're gonna do and i prescribe doing things actions of respect and difference actions of humor actions of romance actions of sexuality actions actions and i say you just do these kinds of things consistently for a month and then come back and if we need to i'll have a second session eight times out of ten unless there's been infidelity or abuse eight times out of ten they come back and say wow i just really like him now i really like her now because emotions follow the trajectory of actions if you act towards someone the way you want to feel you will begin to feel toward them the way you act but this isn't a marriage seminar so what's happening here is we need to understand that when scripture speaks of hate hate falls into categories like to disdain to dismiss to devalue right to disregard it's not necessarily an emotional state don't read the text and say oh i don't hate anybody therefore i must love god because i feel fine toward everybody as long as they don't come near me or require anything of me or move into my neighborhood or knock on my door i feel great well these are attitudinal postures and actions and that's what the bible means when it talks about hate to hate someone is to overlook them as less significant than yourself that's what it looks like to hate someone and i know what you're thinking because i'm thinking the same thing but some people are just irritating yes they are wow you i wish i could tell you about no i won't i won't tell you about this particular person who is so irritating that i reflexively steer clear of them i see that person coming i'm like man i got something to do don't i think up something quick boom i'm out of here but she's so obnoxious he's so irritating that person dot dot whatever you want to put there now the first thing we need to understand about this acute sense of how bad anybody is again from hyung everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves that's actually a a a kind of way of saying that's a kind way of saying you know it takes one to no one that's that's what the kids say on the playground that when you point the finger at anybody three fingers are pointing back at you your judgment of others and what irritates you in others is oftentimes a reflection of unresolved issues of the same nature in yourself and that's why you're you're so good at sniffing it out in others because you smell like it yourself and you know that when you see it because on a subconscious level you've lied to yourself so skillfully by blaming them that you don't have to face it in yourself now jesus when he came to this world he said the most startling things that had ever fallen from human lips and that includes the most startling things that have ever fallen from the lips of the prophets the hebrew prophets before him now the hebrew prophets had said some pretty remarkable things they they they said love your neighbor as yourself i mean what a standard eh love your neighbor is yourself that is the height to which the prophetic vision reached in the old testament jesus came along in that prophetic tradition and he reasoned through love your neighbor as yourself to its logical conclusion you have heard that it was said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy he's quoting two things here now watch this very carefully just so you have the historical context he's quoting the prophets who said this part is the origin of you shall love your neighbor the holy spirit through moses you shall love your neighbor now the pharisees and scribes came along and they did their exegesis in order to create a theological escape hatch and they jesus is now quoting from just popular theology of the time he's saying you have heard that it was said that moses part and then your religious teachers came on along and they expounded on that and they reasoned well if we're to love our neighbor that means we're allowed to hate those who aren't our neighbors namely our enemies the moabites the hittites the samaritans i mean we're not supposed to love them are we and jesus says okay this is the popular line of thought in his day jesus says okay you're familiar with this framing of the whole thing and then he says this but i say to you love your enemies bless those who curse you and do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use and persecute you so the standard that the prophets had erected love your neighbor as yourself what did jesus just do he just said hey by the way if you think that through it looks like this love your enemies and then jesus says a bunch of things that are in the category of doing he doesn't say love your enemies close your eyes in a secluded place and feel warm fuzzy feelings toward them that's not what he means he says love your enemies and he completely bypasses how you might feel about them and he says do good do good to those who hate you pray for those who spitefully use and abuse you bless them do things he's talking about and then he says this here's the kicker that or so that in order that you might be you might be children of your father in heaven jesus is essentially confronting us with the hard truth that i am only god's child as i love those god loves in my doing in my actions or we might say it like this when you think of god think of god in this light it is in the nature of love you'll know this if you're married and have children it is in the nature of love that the lover will take everything personal that is done to the beloved yes or no those of you who are married i guess those of you who are having a good marriage is this true or not even theoretically if you're struggling in your marriage you know this is the ideal and you know this is true don't you yes you take personal everything that is done to for or against the ones you love so think of god in that light every person walking the planet whoever they are to you in relation to you in relation to god is god's beloved god literally loves everyone on the planet with the full throttle passion of his love you've never met anybody of whom god would say i love you more than i love them you don't know this person you've never met this person this person does not exist so when you think of god think of god in that light god takes everything done to everyone personal god takes everything done to everyone and anyone personal well why wouldn't he you take everything personal that is done to your son your daughter your nephew your niece your auntie your uncle your nana your papa you take everything personal that is done to those you love can we not reason forward and realize that if god is love and he loves everyone that he takes personal all the words that are spoken about anybody god takes personal all the attitudes that are projected toward anyone god takes personal all the political vitriol did anybody watch the democratic national convention and then the republican national convention there's one thing we know for sure and this isn't a partisan statement this isn't a political statement well it's a political statement it's not a partisan statement what we saw is that they all have one thing in common in these parties they all have one vital thing in common they hate each other and in that vital sense on a deeper level they're all the same group so you might look and say well there's there's the republicans and there's there's the conservatives and and there's a vast difference between them while on the surface there is a vast difference between them but i'm going to suggest to you to rearrange the pieces in your mental furniture politically just merge these two as of the same spirit and the real contrast is with the kingdom of god the contrast isn't so great this direction as it is this direction so why would we not deduce from the biblical declarations that we've just read that if individual people can be conduits of hate why wouldn't we expect to witness something we might refer to as group hate group hate that shows up in the form of bunching people grouping people together in my estimation as if they're a homogenous group and they're not some of those beautiful wonderful kind people i know are republicans some of those beautiful kind people i know are democrats we are missing the point the moment we start grouping people together as categories that we hate it's not homogeneous everybody's in the process of working out whatever they're working out in their thinking and we should be operating on the assumption that the way i feel toward anybody is going to be taken personal toward god the way i act my attitude toward anybody so there's something called group hey now soren kicker guard he really got to the heart of this when he says once you label me you negate me it's a form of intellectual laziness to just write whole groups of people off because of a label that you can affix to them it's a form of intellectual laziness may i challenge you to hold your tongue may i challenge me to hold my tongue long enough to genuinely lean into and listen to what anybody might have to say on a subject and to take on board whatever makes sense within your current present level of development and to reject whatever doesn't make sense to you and still have pizza dinner with them so once you label me he says you negate me listen here's the sociology of group hate and you and i need to decide especially leading up to november 3rd we need to decide whether we want to be a part of this i personally am choosing by god's grace not to be a part of this i'm urging you as a follower of jesus do not be a part of this this is what this is the sociology of group hate collective self-interest produces collective hate which then in turn produces ultimately or at least potentially collective violence group on group and you and i as followers of jesus we just need to decide do i want to be a part of do i want to be a part of that trajectory do i want to be a part of that social dynamic or or do i want to intelligently process whatever a friend or family member might want to share with me and then patiently kindly and sometimes with repentance for not being so patient and kind say hey so what's your perspective or better yet exercise enough self-control to know that uncle frank is so whack in his political views in your perspective that you just avoid the subject altogether rather than pounce upon him and demean him uncle frank doesn't need to be demeaned by you or by me uncle frank needs to be loved by you and me which then opens the ears to hear what by god's grace and providence you might have to say in a conversation that can occur in a context of mutual respect so you and i have to just ask do we want to be a part of this because this is what we're watching develop right before our eyes christianity in its present american form isn't christianity it's it's it's a colossal lie it's a croc this this this idea that christianity is defined in terms of economic and political advantage in power is as far from the truth of the sermon on the mount and the crucifixion of the god of the universe who said father forgive them for they know not what they do christianity as a power block christianity as a financial self-interest block is nothing like the christianity of christ the thing that we're witnessing right now is a form of pagan patriotism and if you are a follower of jesus if i'm a follower of jesus we need to be able to process that and say okay whatever my political leanings are and what my issues are that i'll vote in favor or against right primarily ultimately my allegiance my loyalties my affections belong to jesus and jesus tells me to love my enemies i am his disciple i am his protege i am his underling his understudy he is my rabbi i lean in and listen to what he jesus determines my kingdom view of what it looks like to be human carl young again gets at the heart of why it is that we're so often on a social level on a political level blind to where god is in all of it because if you haven't noticed both parties have laid claim to god god's with us no god's with us well you took the word god out well you and it's just back and forth and forth and young comes along and he psychoanalyzes the thing and says modern men don't see god i'll just say it this way modern men have difficulty locating god on the social landscape on the political landscape on the financial landscape modern men don't see god because they don't look low enough we're looking up to find god in the echelons of power and wealth turn your gaze downward to the oppressed and the poor to the struggling to the weak to the addicted to those who don't know whether they can pay their rent that's where jesus is hanging out if you want to find god stop looking high and start looking low stop looking to find god's political party you're not going to find god's political party he doesn't have one other than what jesus called the kingdom of god his kingdom he said is not of this world by which he meant it is not of this present order of things the way things operate is not the way god operates what is common and quote unquote normal to our way of interacting is not normal to the way god interacts i mean imagine if a political candidate on either side of the aisle were to say something like hey i'd like to begin my political speech tonight by calling attention to the policies and implementation of actions and policies that uh that my political opponent um did a really good job with i mean these are amazing things let me just i got a slideshow for you here to show you what a good job he's done check this out whoa i didn't see that coming but whoa that's amazing we would call that political suicide because literally everything is moving in politics through a filter and that filter is what's called political strategy there are literally i'm not making this up rooms full of very intelligent human beings not necessarily emotionally intelligent but intellectually intelligent number crunching individuals in rooms for all political parties i would say just both but there are other political parties there are groups of people in rooms who their whole job is just to watch everything going down and say okay that just happened how do we spend that against them and for us anything from a financial uptick or downturn anything for a coronavirus the question in these political strategy rooms isn't what is the best way to save as many lives as possible with as little wreckage as possible to the economy nobody's asking that question the question is how can we frame this issue to make the other side look like a heartless political machine with iron teeth that doesn't care about people and let's somehow give the impression that we do care no as a group as a collective there's not a whole lot of we care there's a whole lot of how do we retain or how do we get political ascendancy so you and i as followers of jesus if indeed you're a follower of jesus if you're not a follower of jesus thanks for joining us i hope that this isn't ruining your day but thanks for listening in as we have this in-house discussion it's not really a discussion it's a monologue but anyways i'm up here you down there so you have no choice but if you're a follower of jesus you have to consciously deliberately i believe kind of step back from all of that and say above and beyond and before everything else i'm a follower of jesus and i am captive to his will and his will first and foremost is that you love your enemies christianity as it was founded by christ and the apostles christianity was supposed to be an alternative community of self-giving love not a political coalition of self-interest the thing was supposed to be listen again the thing was supposed christianity was supposed to be not republican or or no that's the right republican or democrat or libertarian the thing was supposed to be what was it was supposed to be not this or this it was supposed to be all together different it was supposed to be this very much unlike all of this going on over here all of this power grabbing and self-interest is foreign to the character of god and if you and i are followers of jesus we may have to make a deliberate decision to say man the current of all of this political vitriol is so strong that i can hardly swim against it then get out of the river and hike get out of the river and follow a whole different trail to a beautiful free-flowing waterfall of grace and love and take a plunge in the beauty of god's covenantal system that goes out of its way to defer to forgive to give and to see everybody through the eyes of calvary's sacrifice so jesus finally after he had said what we quoted earlier in matthew chapter 5 says you know he issues a warning this is this is hard stuff here's how hard it is he says judge not what's his context here what did he just say in the sermon he said you know you've heard that it was said love your neighbor and hate your enemy i'm telling you love your enemy do good to your enemies that's his context he says don't judge because judge not that you be not judged now watch this for with the same judgment you judge others you will be judged and with the measure you use whatever your measuring stick is your standard of in and out you're good you're evil i'll roll with you i'm not going to even talk to you and with what measure you use it will be measured back to you now there's one of two ways you can interpret this text i am certain of the correct interpretation after years of looking at commentaries and looking at the broader biblical context but it on the face of it it sounds like god will treat you the way you treat others if you're ugly and mean toward people expect god to be ugly and mean toward you if you're unforgiving expect god to reflect your ugly image back to you if there's no mercy in your soul well god is going to follow your lead and be unmerciful as well what's actually happening here is that jesus is describing a psychological law he's saying the way you see and assess and measure other people is setting up the mental parameters beyond which you will not be able to see your perception will be blocked by the way you treat others god loves you and always will but if you do not love others you will gradually find it impossible in your point of need to believe that god loves you or as i read on a bathroom wall one time those who refuse to forgive burn the bridge over which they themselves must pass some day so essentially what's happening here is if you hate anybody in the world that hatred blocks your vision of god's love for you to some significant degree you when you sin when you fall when you make a mistake you're going to lean away from god because you're going to imagine that he is standing toward you with an attitude of judgment and condemnation because that's the only way you've treated anybody you've set up your own mental standard for the way you will imagine the character of god in the day of judgment so i want to ask you to engage in a simple well not so simple hard but simple mental experiment visualize the person or the group you like least in the world go ahead do it don't hang on to it too long i don't want to completely derail your day but just like a snapshot just see their face and let it go away see that group and let it go away who do you like least in the world and then and then and then in your imagination as you've just visualized the person of the group you like least in the world now in your imagine shift your gaze to calvary look at the cross and see almighty god bleeding suffering dying yes for you but for them and hear the prayer on his lips father forgive them they don't know what they're doing in that moment of realization allow yourself to believe that not only are you not only am i not fundamentally better than anybody on the planet but you and i and them are the object of god's perfect and complete and insatiable love believe that and if that can't cure us of our venomous tongues if that can't liberate us from our cocky attitudes if that view of calvary's love for every member of the human race can't free us from hatred then nothing else can father in heaven first of all i just want to personally say i'm sorry for my attitude and my actions towards those that i have looked down upon as if i'm somehow superior to them morally intellectually or in any way and i want to confess that i'm not better than anybody else and father i want to mean that deep in my soul and father i want to exalt in my estimation those i have tended to like least and i want to see them through the lens of calvary's love father god in jesus name help me to love like you love amen hey thanks so much for watching we hope that message was a blessing to you god's word is powerful it penetrates into our minds into our hearts brings about transformation in every 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Channel: Storyline Church

Views: 16,296

Rating: 4.8545456 out of 5

Keywords: storyline church, ty gibson

Id: Xo8GmIVThFE

Length: 50min 9sec (3009 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 29 2020