Fan or Follower, Part 3

Good afternoon, everyone. It is a pleasure to be back over here. You know, we had...

We're under something called the Termit and Air Inversion in the valley right now, which basically means that it's foggy and nasty and gross. But then as soon as you get high enough up, it's beautiful. So little did we know that it was a beautiful day. We couldn't see it. We were completely and totally socked in by fog. And once we got up, you know, most of the way up the mountain today, it's like, oh no, the sun really is out. This is fantastic. So we had a nice drive over once we got out of that. Well, last time we were here, we examined the idea that there exists a continuum upon which we find ourselves as Christians. On one end of that continuum, we have what we term the Fan. And on the other end of that continuum, we have what we term the Follower. And the Fan, the Fan is someone who is hesitant to make the commitment to the way of life that they have been called to lead. But they are willing to stand on the sidelines and to cheer.

Willing to stand on the sidelines and cheer. And on the other end of that, we have the Follower, which is someone who truly lives the way of life that they have been called to lead and that they believe in. One who follows the instructions of their teacher. We also looked at the idea that despite wherever we find ourselves on that continuum, that God expects that we grow. He expects we'll move the ball forward. And whether we get that ball on the 60-yard line or whether we get that ball on the 10-yard line, God expects positive yardage at the end of our lives. And so when we broke it down last time we were here, the actions that give us gains that we needed to leave or that give us the gains that we need is leaving our past where it belongs. In our past. Not allowing ourselves to be encumbered by that old man and going forth instead boldly as a new creation in Christ. We get positive gains by being real with ourselves and unmasking. Not being hypocritical and saying one thing but doing another. We sometimes in the vernacular say we put our money where our mouth is. We really mean what we say and we do what we mean. Lastly, we discuss the importance of being unified with God. That unity is important and that it comes down to how well we know Him and how we demonstrate our love for Him through the obedience of His law. But it also comes down to how well He knows us and ultimately the condition of our relationship. As we saw at the end of the parable of the wise versions, we saw that, you know, they knocked on the door at the very end at zero hour and Christ told them very plainly, I don't know you. I don't know you. The relationship wasn't there. They hadn't prepared properly. They hadn't done what they were supposed to be doing and were unprepared when it was time. On the other side of that coin, we saw an example in Matthew 7 where people had relied upon their actions alone to get them into the kingdom. They told Christ, we cast out demons in your name. We prophesied in your name. We did many mighty works in your name.

But that relationship was lacking. And ultimately, the same thing that was said to the virgins was said to these people, I never knew you. I never knew you. God desires a relationship with His people to be known and to know them. And originally, Israel was intended to be those people. They were supposed to be the people that God had chosen and they desired that relationship. God desired that relationship. But ultimately, that's not what happened. He was to be their God. They were to be His people. But Israel played the harlot every opportunity that they had. They were going after foreign gods, foreign women. God wasn't good enough for them. They wanted to see other people.

The book of Jeremiah describes God's thoughts on this. Let's go ahead and start there for today.

Let's go over to Jeremiah 3. Jeremiah 3.

And we'll pick up the passage in verse 1.

Jeremiah 3 verse 1. We'll get a look at what God's thoughts are on Israel's constant back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. In fact, under my Bible, the heading says, Israel is shameless. Pretty plain there. But it says, they say, if a man divorces his wife and she goes from him, becomes another man's, may he return to her again. Would not that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the harlot with many lovers. And notice what God says here, yet return to me. Yet return to me. Verse 2. Lift up your eyes to the desolate heights and see you. Where have you not lain with men? By the road you've sat by them, like an Arabian in the wilderness, and you polluted the land with your harlot trees and your wickedness. Therefore, the showers have been withheld. You know, there have been curses that have come from this. There have been no latter rain. You've had a harlot's forehead and you refuse to be ashamed. Will you not from this time cry to me? My father, you are the guide of my youth. Will he remain angry forever? Will he keep it to the end? Behold, you have spoken and done evil things as you were able. Verse 6. We see a call to repentance. The Lord said to me also in the days of Josiah the king, have you seen what backsliding Israel has done? She's gone up on every high mountain and under every green tree and there played the harlot. And I said, after she had done all of these things, returned to me, but she did not return. Then we see that Judah also went along and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. Then I saw that for all the causes for which backsliding Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away and given her a certificate of divorce, yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but went and played the harlot also. So it came to pass, verse 9, through her casual harlot that she defiled the land and committed adultery with stones and trees. And yet for all of this, her treacherous sister Judah has not turned to me with her whole heart, but in pretense, kind of feigned like she was going to turn. Then the Lord said to me, backsliding Israel has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah. And we see what God... In fact, at this point, you know, God likened this faithfulness of Israel to that of a repeatedly unfaithful wife. This isn't a single indiscretion. This isn't a one-time thing. This is repeated and purposeful unfaithfulness. In fact, it says, upon every high mountain and under every green tree, the places of worship where Israel was finding these foreign gods. He repeatedly refers to Israel and Judah as harlots throughout this entire set. And this is a theme throughout the entire book of Hosea. The entire book of Hosea kind of bases around this concept. And yet we see in verses 11 through 13 the incredible faithfulness and love that God shows for his people and that God has for his people. Verse 11, the Lord said to me, backsliding Israel has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah. Go and proclaim these words toward the north and say, return backsliding Israel, says the Lord. I will not cause my anger to fall on you, for I am merciful, says the Lord. I will not remain angry forever, only acknowledge your iniquity. Fess up, acknowledge your iniquity, that you've transgressed against the Lord your God and have scattered your charms to alien deities under every green tree, and you've not obeyed my voice, says the Lord. In other words, you were not faithful. You didn't love me.

You didn't do it right. We didn't have a solid relationship. And this is a theme that wound itself through ancient Israel. It's a constant theme. From the moment they left Egypt, the Israelites complained. They did the exact opposite of what God instructed them to do.

They longed for Egypt. They desired to go back to the life of bondage that God had brought them out of. They rebelled against God's anointed repeatedly and exhibited their lack in faith to God time and time again. And much of the book of Exodus and Numbers—and we're going through that right now in a chronological reading, so it's been very, very pertinent to wake up each morning and read about how Israel had made yet another mistake—but much of the Old Testament reads like a parent telling his children no and the children just doing it anyway. And for those of you with kids, you know, you mentioned that, hey, don't touch the stove. It's hot. And inevitably you'll have one that has to just test it out. You know, you'll have one kid typically. You say, well, okay, let's find out if it is or not. Oh, yeah, it is. It is, in fact, time. You know, we have an opportunity to serve in a lot of different congregations, so we spend a lot of time in our car. And with three kids in our little minivan, there are moments when it gets to the point where you just feel like pulling the car over and letting everybody know, look, we're done. We're done. No more talking. No more touching. Everybody just keep your hands at your sides. Keep your mouth shut until we get there because we're done. And Numbers 14 kind of records the event when God first reaches this point with Israel. He finally kind of pulls the car over at the edge of the wilderness of Sinai and says, look, we're done. This is enough of this. Let's go over to Numbers 14. We're going to pick it up in verse 26. Numbers 14 verse 26. Numbers 14, 26. And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, How long shall I bear with this evil congregation who complain against me?

I've heard the complaints which the children of Israel make against me.

Say to them, As I live, says the Lord, just as you have spoken in my hearing, so I will do to you. The carcasses of you who have complained against me shall fall in this wilderness, all of you who were numbered according to your entire number from twenty years old and above.

Verse 30. Except for Caleb, the son of Jafuna, and Joshua, the son of Nun, you shall by no means enter the land which I swore I would make you dwell in. But your little ones, whom you said would be victims, I will bring in, and they shall know the land which you have despised.

But as for you, your carcasses shall fall in the wilderness, and your sons shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years and bear the brunt of your infidelity until your carcasses are consumed in the wilderness, according to the number of the days in which you spied out the land forty days. For each day you shall bear your guilt one year, namely forty years, and you shall know my rejection. I, the Lord, have spoken this, and I will surely do so to all this evil congregation who are gathered together against me. In this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die.

God reached the point in the relationship with Israel where he recognized the current generation was unable to be worked with. They were so far beyond salvage. They were so far beyond getting it and understanding what he was trying to do with them that it was it was the solution was to allow them to die off and work with the next generation of Israelites. Those of Joshua and Caleb's generation. Think about that for just a second. God allowed the congregation of Israel that he just brought out of Egypt to essentially wander for 40 years until the last of that generation was gone to where he finally had individuals he could work with. Those who were faithful to him, who were willing to listen, who were willing to do it right and establish a relationship with him.

Those who loved him with all of their heart, their soul, and their might. Those who were faithful to him. Or you could say, those who knew him. Those who knew him. And over and over again in Scripture, we see God described as a father to his children. We see him described as a bridegroom, as the husband of the bride, as a friend, as a brother. You know, I don't see any references to God as a cousin. I don't see any references to God as a friend of a friend's friend. Whenever we see Christ or God the Father mentioned in Scripture with relation to their people, it is a close relationship.

It's a familial relationship. It's not an acquaintance. It's not a casual friendship.

God doesn't want casual relationships. He wants a close and an intimate, committed relationship with his people. He wants to be our one and only, not our one of many. In short, he wants to know his people. He wants to know his people. The word know in Hebrew is the word yada, and it means to know completely or to understand fully. And it's used in a lot of different capacities throughout Psalms, often for what we would assume it to be with knowing. There's one other there's one other use of this particular word. It's in Genesis 4.1, and we won't turn there, but it says that Adam knew his wife and bore a son. It's a kind of intimate knowledge that occurs within a marriage relationship. That's the kind of fervency with which God desires to know us as his children, as the bride of his son, and likewise that we should desire to know him. Let's go over to Psalm 73 really quickly. We'll take a look at King David's thoughts on the subject. Psalm 73. We'll go to verse 25. Psalm 73 and verse 25.

We'll go ahead and pick it up through verse 28.

Psalm 73 verse 25. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

For indeed, those who are far from you shall perish. You've destroyed all of those who desert you in har... or for harlotry, but it's good for me to draw near to God. I put my trust in the Lord God that I may declare all of your works. If you were to just read the first part of this passage and take the word God out of it, it would sound like the lyrics to a love song. Read it again.

Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides you.

My flesh and my heart fail, but you are the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

It's like the lyrics to a love song. He goes on to say that it's good for us to draw near to God because God is our refuge. He goes on to also say that those who are far from you, who are distant from you, shall perish. So we see from the words of the psalmist that being near to God is an absolute necessity. So how do we get there? How do we get there? The conclusion of our last sermon we had on this topic, part two, was dealing with the idea that we had to know God. That we had to know God and God had to know us. How do we get there? How do we get to that point where we draw near to God, working towards establishing a relationship that will be intimate and will be lasting? How do we draw closer to God? Well, it turns out the book of James has quite a bit to say about this concept. Let's go over to the book of James. We'll spend a bit of time in James today.

You might put the little ribbon in your Bible in there. I'll be coming back to it periodically.

So the book of James... there's kind of a formula of sorts. I'm kind of math and science-y. I like formulas. It's kind of a formula. There's no x's or any plus signs or anything, so it's great. Everybody loves formulas with no x's and plus signs. But it's kind of a formula of sorts. It's outlined in this passage that gives us a basic look at how we draw near to God. James 4...

and we'll go ahead and pick up the account in verse 7. I'm sitting here yack and not flipping pages like I need to be. So James 4 verse 7... if I can get this page separated. Here we go. It says, Therefore submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Verse 8, draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

Clench your hands, you sinners, purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will lift you up. The author of James emphasizes our need for submission to God, which really has been the whole entire overall focus of this series of messages.

The idea that we have to go all in, that we have to give everything that we've got, our very life, over to God, that we're willing to put that self to death and instead live our life for a different purpose. But what we see here is that submitting to God isn't even enough. We've got to also go on and resist the devil. The word used for resist here is anthestemi, which basically means to stand up and fight. It means to almost physically resist. So it's a very physical description of spiritually fighting off the devil's attempt at kind of derailing us. Unless we forget, Satan wants absolutely no part of us getting closer to God. Absolutely no part. He will do absolutely everything in his power to keep us from getting there. We know in 1 Peter 5.8 we won't turn there again, but it tells us that he walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

The word devour means to literally gulp down or to swallow whole. No prisoners. Satan's playing for keeps. Every person he can keep away from God is a win. If we go on in James 4, we see that in order to draw near to God after verse 7 and 8, in order to draw near to God to kind of cleave unto him, as we saw the last time, we have to initiate. We have to initiate. It's not on him, it's on us.

Once we've been called, it's up to us to keep that relationship going.

We have to recognize that if we can't feel God's presence in our life, if we feel that God is distant, it's not on him, it's on us. It's a result of our spiritual condition, and it's our responsibility to draw near to him. And the beautiful part of that is, according to James, if we do, God will draw near to us. He then gives us four very specific things that are necessary for us to draw near to God in order to establish a closer relationship with him. The first of those was mentioned in verse 8.

Clench your hands, you sinners. The second thing he mentioned was purify your hearts, you double-minded. The third thing was to lament, mourn and weep. The other word for lament there is afflict. And then lastly, to humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord. So at the time that we have remaining today, I'd like to take a look at these concepts in a little bit more depth.

We're going to look specifically at those four things we can do to strengthen that relationship with God in order to move us farther along that continuum. Again, wherever we are, whether we're way back here at FAN, whether we're up here close to follower, looking at moving forward on that continuum. So the title for today's message of third and final in this series is, FAN or Follower, Strengthening the Relationship. Strengthening the Relationship.

There's an old adage. We'll start with cleanse your hands. There's an old adage, man, I'm going to guess that many of you have heard this before in some capacity. I know I have. So it's most likely when we've decided to open our mouth and insert foot in conversation. That's typically when it happens. And in fact, I imagine you even know it well enough to finish the following sentence. If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging. Exactly. So a few of you mouthing it. That saying is actually attributed to a British politician named Dennis Healy. And it's actually referred to. It's the first law of holes. That's what it's called, the first law of holes. And it basically means that when we find ourselves in an untenable position, in other words, we get ourselves into a spot where it's no win, we can't be in that position for good. It's crucial that we recognize that and that we change tack. The worst thing we can do in that situation is keep digging the hole. You know, it's best at that point in time, man, it's a good time for us to close our mouths. Usually, once we're in that position, we're like, well, you might want to stop digging. It's a good time. It's a good sign to stop talking. But it's also the first thing that we need to do when we draw closer to God, because a life of sin is an untenable position. A life of sin is an untenable position. And the first step for us is to stop digging ourselves further into that hole. We have to cleanse our hands of that sin.

And God was clear in the Old Testament. In fact, as we've been going through this chronological reading, you know, the message that keeps coming out throughout the entirety of the Book of Leviticus is that holy things have no part with the unholy. Holy things have no part with the unholy. And so we just, we, again, we just got through this chronological Bible reading. We're doing this reading program right now, a bunch of us, and we just got through Leviticus. We're into Numbers now. And the one thing that just kept coming up over and over and over throughout Leviticus was the idea of keeping Israel clean from unclean things, keeping the unclean out of the camp, ensuring cleanliness after leprosy outbreaks, after all kinds of other things, before sacrifice, the multiple washings on atonement, you know, ensuring that cleanliness was there. Now, the high priest in particular was to remain clean so much so. This was kind of an interesting thing we came across that they weren't even allowed to take care of their own parents should their parents die. Now, that prohibition wasn't for the rest of the priests. The rest of the priests could take care of immediate family if need be. The high priests, not even their own parents, were to come unclean for their own family. So while these laws were smart, we recognized from a disease standpoint this is brilliant. I mean, really, it kept Israel not eating unclean meats, you know, staying out of disease-ridden situations. It also had a separate message, which was a reminder that you are to be kept separate. You're not to blend. You're to be kept separate. Holy things are set apart. The Sabbath is holy time. It's time that has been set apart not by us, but by God. And as such, it has no part with things that are unholy. That's why we don't do our regular activities on the Sabbath. Things that are common, things that are ordinary. We don't do that. The Sabbath is holy. God has set it apart. We see in 1 Corinthians 7 that our young people, our young people, are holy. They're set apart by God. They don't do the same things all of their other friends do. They don't blend in because they're set apart. They don't mix with the world. They are holy. And at that time, uncleanliness separated them from God's presence.

Just as continued sin separates us from God today. Let's go over to Isaiah 59.

Isaiah 59. And we'll pick it up in verse 1.

Isaiah 59 verse 1.

It says, Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, nor is ear heavy that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he will not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood, your fingers with iniquity, your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered perversity. And we don't need to go on. There's a big long list of the things that they've done.

But it's not that God didn't have the strength to save. It's not that he couldn't hear them because his ear was dimmed or heavy. Our sin has separated us from him. It's caused kind of a chasm or a rift, if you can think of it, between God and between us. And Christ's sacrifice bridged that gap, but continued sin drives a wedge between us and God. And in order to draw near to God, we have to draw near to him, and we can't do that while we're living a life of sin.

You know, we've got to try to put as much of the sin out of our lives as possible. We've got to stop digging the hole. We have to cleanse our hands in order to draw near to God. The second thing that James mentioned was to purify your hearts. Purify your hearts. And I would imagine that everyone in this room at one time or another has been to a dentist at one point in time or another. And you've probably at some point in time had a cavity. Some of you that don't...

work, seriously, but I would venture a guess that most of you have had a cavity at some point in time. And we know cavities come from a bacterial corrosion of tooth enamel, and that bacteria thrives in a really high sugar environment, which, you know, our diets today are a pretty high sugar environment. If we don't do a great job of keeping up on cleaning practices, we get cavities.

Dentistry is pretty incredible, though. You can go to the dentist, they can make your face all numb, they can drill a big old hole in your tooth, and they can fill that cavity. But the cavity isn't the problem. The cavity is the symptom to the problem. The cavity is a symptom. It's not the problem itself. If we don't address the problem of why we got the cavity in the first place... in other words, we reduce greatly the amount of sugar in our diet, or we floss more frequently, or we brush regularly... if we don't do that, the next time that we go to the dentist, they're just going to find more cavities. Because you never got to the root of the problem. You only fixed the symptom. And when you don't get to the root of the problem, you have more symptoms that pop up again and again and again. Cleansing the hands of sin isn't enough. It requires a change of heart.

Requires a change of heart. And that was the problem that God had with ancient Israel. Let's go over to Deuteronomy 5. Deuteronomy 5.

God through Moses laments the Israelites' level of commitment.

Deuteronomy 5, 27. We'll pick it up after Moses reminds the Israelites of the events after the Ten Commandments were given. Deuteronomy 5, verse 27.

This is where Israel tells Moses, yeah, we don't really... if we hear God's voice again, we'll die. So why don't you go ahead, you go near, and you hear all the things the Lord or God must say, and then you tell us everything that he says to do it. And we'll hear it, and we'll do it.

Good old Israel. But the Lord heard the voice of your words when you spoke to me, and the Lord said to me, I've heard the voice of the words of this people which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken. Oh, that they had such a heart in them that they would fear me and always keep my commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever.

Oh, that they would have such a heart in them, that they would fear God, that they would keep his commandments. And we know Israel as a whole didn't have the Holy Spirit available to him. A select few were blessed with it. You know, we had prophets, some of the king's elders, but the general populace didn't get that gift at that time. Let's go to Jeremiah 32. Jeremiah 32.

We see the solution.

Jeremiah 32. We'll just pick it up in verse 40. Jeremiah 32, 40.

And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from doing them good, but I will put my fear in their hearts, so that they will not depart from me. And once the first fruits of the new covenant were blessed with a gift of the Holy Spirit in Acts, this all changed.

But it doesn't mean that we can't, you know, that we avoid completely slipping back into old habits. Even with the Holy Spirit present in our lives, as James and the people he was writing to had, we are in need of purification of our hearts to live our life with a single focus, looking towards God rather than being double-minded. Matthew 6, 24 discusses the idea of being double-minded. Matthew 6, 24.

Matthew 6, verse 24, says, No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. And mammon, essentially, was avarice. It was this, you know, pursuit of... it was a kind of a idol of greed, really, is what mammon was. But you could replace mammon with just about anything today. You really could. You could replace mammon with just about everything. Anything that eats into the majority of our time. For some, it's social media. For others, maybe it's their job, the old workaholic. Maybe it's addictions, family, friends, hobbies. You know, the list goes on. Anything you elevate on a platform and focus on, more than you focus on God, becomes an idol. And you begin to serve it, and you can't serve both. Christ told his disciples in Luke 14 that unless they love their family less than they love him, they couldn't be his disciple. They had to have a singular focus.

And if you think of it in this way, if Christ himself laid down the concept of loving everyone in your family less by comparison than you love him, where do you suppose social media ranks?

Where do you suppose your job ranks? Your hobbies? Not very high. Not very high.

And really, the context of this passage in James addresses just that. And this is the same issue that Israel struggled with. It was the idea of spiritual adultery. Let's go back to James 4, and we'll pick up the context of the passage in verse 4. So, just a little earlier than where we started before. James 4, verse 4. James 4, verse 4, says, adulterers and adultresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God. Being a friend of the world means you are contrary to God. There's no other way it can work.

Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, the Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously, but he gives more grace. Therefore, he says, God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Friendship with the world is enmity towards God. And in this particular passage, it's defined as spiritual adultery, going outside of God to something else, which is the world and all of what the world entails.

And we're very familiar with that. We've seen we've lived this world. You know, we've been around it.

But this is a connected phrase to what we read at the very beginning. This is a connected phrase that because of these things that we just read in 4 through 6, the conclusion then is in verse 7. It says, submit therefore. It's a connected phrase. Because of these things, submit yourself, resist the devil, draw near to God. And this was really the essence of the definition of a fan, as we've defined it so far. They've got it up here. They've got it up here. They knew what needed to be done. They had a head knowledge, but they didn't want to make the commitment to actually walk it.

The head knowledge is there, but they didn't want to make the commitment to walk it. There's actually a very funny story told in the book, Not a Fan. This is where this sermon series was based on.

On page 35 and 36 in the book, there's a short little story here I'd like to read to you guys that's humorous. He's got a great writing style, but it really is indicative of kind of what we're talking about here. It says, at the church where I am a pastor, someone sent an email asking to be removed from church membership. And the stated reason for leaving read as follows, I don't like Kyle's sermons. That was the whole entire reason. In the box. That's all it said, and that begs for some kind of an explanation. So I decided to call the person. I checked the name of the person and got the phone number. I wanted to confirm that it wasn't my wife. That would have been awkward. I was driving in my car and I called him on my cell phone. Now, I would suggest that when making this type of call from your personal phone, first go to settings on your phone and then show my caller ID and go ahead and turn that to off. Do not attempt while driving. When he answered, I simply said, hey, this is Kyle Eitelman. I understand you're leaving the church because you don't like my sermons. There was a brief silence. I caught him off guard just as I'd planned. It was really awkward for a moment. And then he started talking, rambling, really trying to express kind of what he meant. Somewhere in the middle of his lengthy explanation, he said something. What he said was not meant to be encouraging, but his words caused me to breathe such a sigh of relief that tears came to my eyes. I pulled to the side of the road, grabbed a pen and wrote down what he said.

His exact words were, well, whenever I listen to one of the messages that you give, I feel like you're trying to interfere with my life.

He says, yeah, that's kind of my job description. But do you hear what he was saying? He's saying, I believe in Jesus. I'm a big fan, but don't ask me to follow. I don't mind coming to church on the weekends. I'll pray before meals. I'll even slap a Jesus fish on my bumper. But I don't want Jesus to interfere with my life. When Jesus defines the relationship he wants with us, he wants to make it clear that being a fan who believes without making any real commitment to follow isn't an option. We saw that with Nicodemus, you know, in one of the previous ones. He talked a lot about, you know, the commitment that Nicodemus needed to make, that belief in secret wasn't enough. But that's exactly what God is trying to do to us. God is trying to get us to come out of the world to give up the things in our life that are preventing us from having a closer relationship with him, to get to the core of the problem that causes the symptoms of our sin, whatever they may be. Everybody's different. But that's what God is doing in us. In order for us to draw nearer to God, to strengthen that relationship, we have to not only cleanse the hands, we have to purify the heart. One of the other things that James mentioned was to be afflicted or to be lamenting and mourning. And we see here in his letter a group of individuals who, much like the church in Laodicea, seemed pretty... kind of thought they were a little bit better off than they really were as he's writing this. And he writes this to the scattered tribes, but we see him exhort them in verse 9 of James 4. James 4 verse 9 says, Lament and mourn and weep.

Let your laughter be turned to mourning, your joy to gloom. So let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Gil's commentary says the following. It says, Be afflicted, mourn, and weep, not in a bare external way, not by afflicting the body with fastings and scourgings, renting of garments, clothing with sackcloth, putting ashes on the head, and other outward methods of humbling oneself. But afflicting of the soul is meant an inward mourning and weeping over the plagues of the heart, the impurity of nature, and the various sins of life. After a godly sword, and because contrary to a god of infinite love and grace, in an evangelical way, looking to Christ and being affected with the pardoning grace and love of God and Christ, let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness, meaning the carnal joy on account of their friendship with the world. Friendship with the world? Yeah, that's great! You get to do whatever you want.

That's not what we were called to do. They enjoyed the things of the world, and that's what James is getting them on. James is getting them on it. His scattered tribes that he wrote to were exhorted to essentially recognize the trouble that they found themselves in, to afflict themselves to the core, not just outwardly, not just in outward shows of, oh, I'm so miserable, I'm fasting, oh, look at me, like we hear, you know, talked about with the Pharisees during Christ's time.

But really recognizing the magnitude of their sins, mourning over those sins, lamenting the sins, weeping over the friendship that they have with the world, and recognizing the spiritual adultery, putting other things before God, idolatry as well. James desired that their laughter would turn to mourning, and that their joy would turn to a heaviness, kind of a fall of their countenance, that they would be convicted of their sins and repent, turn back to God, and draw near to him, so that he would draw near to them. And I don't know about you guys, but it's almost like that part of James' epistle was written to me. It's as though the very top of that might as well, might as well have had hey, Ben sitting on top of it.

I struggle finding regular time for study and prayer. I have a hard time finding regular study and prayer time, and it's not because there aren't enough hours in the day. There are plenty of hours in the day. It's that my priorities are out of balance. Life is out of balance. There's a Hopi Indian word for that, actually. It's called koyanaskatsi. There's a series of movies narrated by Philip Glass. We're not narrated, but he did the soundtracks on them.

It's just visual things of one, and one's koyanaskatsi. It's life out of balance, and so it shows just over and over and over images of, you know, our world and how it's out of balance. Really interesting. Well, Mylon may listen to this. I won't insult Philip Glass. Mylon Janis, which is a huge Philip Glass fan, so he had to sit down and watch him, and it's interesting.

It's an eclectic type of music, but it's good. So that's where I was at in my life. Physically, mentally, spiritually, everything was out of balance, and I was working, working just really hard trying to gain control over that area, and it requires me to be cognizant of the time that I have to do things, the time that I actually have to complete tasks, try to prevent distractions. You know, I get distracted by everything, and so trying to prevent distractions and making sure that I'm redeeming the time that I do have, because we don't know how much time we have. We really don't. You know, our last breath could come later today or tomorrow.

We don't know. We have to redeem that time. We have to make it worse the time that we have. You know, every day we wake up is a miracle, you know, in and of itself, every breath we draw. So, you know, as individuals who truly seek God and desire to follow Him, we have got to analyze our lives.

We've got to find these areas of our lives that are kwai'ana skatsi, that are kind of out of balance and fix them to be in line with what God desires of us. We can't be a committed follower of God if our life is completely out of control. Peter illustrated this principle well in 1 Corinthians. Let's go ahead and turn there. 1 Corinthians 9. And we'll go ahead and pick up the account in verse 25 of 1 Corinthians 9. 1 Corinthians 9 verse 25. It says, And everyone who competes for the prize is temperant or has self-control or is disciplined in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown.

He's talking about the marathon run, essentially. But we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus, not with uncertainty, thus I fight, not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body, and I bring it into subjection, lest when I preach to others, I myself should become disqualified. Paul recognized here that he really needed to ensure that he had his body and everything in his life under control. And when it comes down to us, the person in charge of us is us. We are the person in charge of ourselves. If we're not praying like we should, if we're not studying like we should, if we're not fasting, we're not meditating, if we're not living what we've been taught, that's on us.

And it falls upon us to fix it. It falls upon us to fix it. We're the only one that can. We're the only person in charge of ourselves. But we must afflict ourselves to the core. We have to identify the areas in our life that need correction, and we have to take action in those areas if we're going to draw near to God. The very last thing that James mentioned was humbling ourselves.

Humbling ourselves. And the word humble here in this particular passage is tapineo, which means to humiliate to a base or to bring one's self-lo. Humility is the antithesis to self. Humility is the antithesis to self. So what the final thing that James is telling those scattered tribes is that they've got to abase themselves before God. They've got to make themselves humble. Erase self from the equation. Remove their pride, remove their own personal desires, and instead submit themselves to the will of God in their life.

In other words, quit arguing, stop struggling, and surrender. And you know, the self is a pesky thing. It keeps popping up, and it keeps looking at what God has asked us to do, and it goes, I don't want to do that.

I want to do this. And if we give that self a little bit too much control, we find ourselves going our own way, contrary from the direction that God desires us to go. And back in the days before God had started dragging me kind of kicking and screaming back into the fold, self was king. For the most part, I did whatever I felt like doing. It didn't matter what my parents wanted me to do. It didn't matter what my friends wanted me to do. I didn't listen to advice. I didn't listen to wisdom. It was me. I was in control of my destiny. Here's the problem with that. I was a fool. And when there's a fool directing your steps, you have a problem. You have a big problem. I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea where I was going. I was living in the moment. There was no forethought, no real focus. And thankfully, God is merciful and was watching over me and kept me out of serious harm. He let me get beat up a little bit, but he spared my life. I'm thankful for that. I resisted every attempt to get me involved in my congregation, but God had other plans. They kept asking even as I turned it down at every turn.

I don't know if I've actually told you guys this here or not, but I remember I used to have folks ask me to do opening prayer, kind of like Eric was asked to do opening prayer today. I wasn't really interested. I didn't really want to do it. I had no interest whatsoever getting up in front of people and praying in front of people. And so I figured it out really quickly that you had to have a jacket in order to be asked to do opening prayer. So I got the formula figured out, right? So I would purposefully wear just a shirt and tie with no jacket. And then when they'd come up and go, oh, I don't have a jacket, oh, you know, thanks for thinking of me. Maybe next time. And of course, it wouldn't be next time because I didn't plan on wearing a jacket.

John Penrod, many of you know John, in the Salem congregation asked me once, and I told him, oh, I don't have a jacket. I thought, oh, I got out of it. Next thing I know, he came back with a jacket.

He borrowed one from a guy about my size, tossed it to me and said, you're up.

That was a bit of a surprise. You know, blunt tactics work. They do. They work. They work remarkably well. Let's go to Acts 26. Acts 26 verse 12. Acts 26 verse 12, we see Paul essentially reciting the account of his conversion on the road to Damascus. Acts 26 and verse 12.

Paul says, While thus occupied as I journeyed to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests, at midday, O king, along the road, I saw a light from heaven brighter than the sun shining around me and those who journeyed with me. And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads. So I said, Who are you, Lord? And he said, I'm Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Verse 16, But rise and stand on your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will yet reveal to you. I will deliver you from the Jewish people as well from the Gentiles to whom I now send you, to open their eyes in order to turn them from darkness, to lighten from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in me. Paul knew it, and I can attest to you, it is hard to kick against the goads. It is. Now, if you're not familiar with goads, when you're goading an animal along, you're trying essentially to get it to go in a direction it does not want to go. That's the whole idea behind a goat. And a goat at that point in time was just a big, long, sharpened stick with a point on the end of it. It got a little more fancy as time went on, but at its basis, it's a big, long toothpick, essentially. And for animals like sheep, you don't really need a goat. They kind of go along on their own with their master's voice, and you can kind of just, you know, do what you do with the shepherding and get them going.

But other animals that maybe don't go along more peaceably, you do need a goat. And when they don't go where you want to go, you get them with the goat. And they go, oh, okay, we'll go over here, we'll do this. And then if they get a little out of line on the other side, you get them on the other side with the goat, and you keep them going in a general direction. Goats come in handy when the animal is a bit rebellious. And if you go along peaceably, no problem, but if you kick against the goats, you're going to get a bit more of a reminder. You're going to get a little more of a reminder. You know, ironically, I found the more that I fought the farther down the road I ended up.

I finally stopped fighting. I made it a policy. I told myself, you know what? If somebody asked me to do something, I'm just going to say yes. I'm done fighting. If someone asks me to do something, I'll just say yes. Opening prayer? Yeah, okay, fine. Sermonant? Okay, why not? Sermon? Sure.

I finally just surrendered, and I literally told God in prayer, do with me what you will.

I'm done fighting. I'm done fighting. I still need the occasional reminder. Old habits do die hard, and thankfully, God is good enough to remind me of those reminders as well when I need them.

So why do I tell you that? Where am I going with this? Because we've all been called to be a part of God's Ecclesia. We're here because God has personally invited each one of us.

Individually, He has looked down from heaven, and He has said, you, I want you, your mind, and I'm going to buy you with the blood of my son, your mind. Brethren, don't struggle. Don't fight the gods. Realistically, whether we understand why or not. There have been times where I've just looked and I just went, really? Why? Why? But you know what? That's not the right question. God looked down on us and said, that one, I want that one, for whatever reason, unbeknownst to us. We have been personally selected by the creator of this universe to have a personal relationship with Him, and that is an incredible blessing. It's an incredible blessing. As we've seen in this series, that personal relationship comes with some strings attached. We're required to act on what we've been taught. We can't just think it's a good idea. We have to get out of the classroom and put it into practice in our daily lives. We must surrender our lives, put God first, walk in His ways, pray with a renewed focus, study with renewed zeal, take the hits that Satan dishes out, and keep charging forward. I use a lot of football analogies, like coach football, but play by play, clawing for every inch of ground, moving the ball forward until our very last dying breath. God doesn't desire fans. He wants committed followers. He wants people who will live this wonderful way of life that He's called us to live, to be lights to the world around us. You know, in this world, Satan is the God of this world at this time. It's a dark world. We're here to show people that God's way works, that you can make it, you can survive using God's way. And that isn't a calling that we can take lightly. You know, people are going to form their opinions of our great God by our actions, by our words, and by the life that we live.

That causes us to pause a little bit when we think about that and the ramifications of that.

Let's go over to 1 Corinthians 9 and we'll turn to our final Scripture for today. 1 Corinthians 9, and we'll read verse 24. 1 Corinthians 9 verse 24.

1 Corinthians 9, and we'll read verse 24. Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Brethren, run in such a way that you may obtain it.