Lead and Follow on the Journey

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Thank you, Dan. If you would, you can turn your Bibles, turn your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 4. 1 Corinthians chapter 4 is where we're going to be starting in verse 14. To really get a sense of kind of where we are today, where we're going to be today in 1 Corinthians 4, we need to understand a little bit about marriage. There is an aid old dance in marriage where your wife asks your opinion about how she looks in a particular outfit. Alright, yep, only the men are laughing. How you answer that question largely determines the rest of your day. Okay? And men are taught, whether by experience or by another man, they are taught to answer carefully, thoughtfully, vaguely, vague as possible, brothers still trip wires abound. Okay, it's just, it's bad. So, Christy and I, oh, she's not here, she's serving in the preschool, but Christy and I have an agreement.

And I'm so glad that we had this agreement. I'm sure it has saved a number of days and saved us from many fights. When she asks me how something looks on her, an outfit, I always tell her exactly what I think. I know, I know. That sounds like a terrible idea. I get it. But what I did was with my wife. My wife is, you know, she's not always given to the same trappings as most women. And so I kind of know that about her and kind of navigate this a little bit. But I had this conversation and I said, I said, listen, hon, I want to tell you what I think about it so that when I tell you that it looks good, you believe me.

Right. It sounds great. That that is something that I can attest it has worked at least for the last 10 or 15 years of my marriage Where where I will tell her when she asked me how something looks? Even even when I know she likes it even when I know she thinks it's cute if she asked me how it looks I'm gonna say She goes okay, and I don't say anything more about it. I don't like harp on it I don't I don't go on about it like I don't need to rub it in mind you But I've said it, she heard it, she believes me, she's going to adjust and move on. I'm not going to talk to her about it the rest of the day, I'm not going to do anything about it. But I do want her to believe me when I tell her, that looks good on you. And the only way I can really do that is if I have this kind of this thing set out with honesty, right? We all need these kinds of relationships where

They tell us, people tell us when we look bad in an outfit or people tell us when we have stuff in our teeth. Okay. People tell us when we have bad breath. People tell us when we have body odor. Okay. These are things that good close friends tell you. Okay. They might not tell you in a way that you like, but they tell you because you need people like that. that. My wife tells me when I unknowingly offend someone, which happens at least once a week, I will say something, it will make somebody upset, and I will not read it. I won't see it. And my wife goes, look, hey, you should apologize. Oh, okay. So we need people in our lives who give us honesty. Whether they give it to us in a way we like or not, we need those people. They gently remind us of what is true, especially when we cannot see it. The New Testament has a word for this, and that word is admonish. Admonish. To admonish. If you're going to admonish someone, you're going to

warn them of danger. You're going to help them see something that they cannot see. You're going to say, hey, something's coming and you are not aware of it. It's going to happen. You should adjust your behavior accordingly. That's admonishment. We all need people who admonish us. People that check our blind side that warn us precisely because they love us. If all you do is go around telling people about their blind spots, that just makes you a jerk. Okay, you can say you're admonishing all day long, but you have to do it out of love, right? So when you admonish somebody, you admonish them precisely because you love them. This is what we find. This is the move, the attitude that we find in 1 Corinthians 4 versus 14 and following. Admonition, right? Admonishment, a warning that something's wrong. And this actually, this whole idea of admonishment plays a huge role on our journey, both as we receive admonishment and as we give admonishment.

Okay, let's read 1 Corinthians 4, 14 through 15, and it's going to be up here if you are not following along in scripture. It says, I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. There's a couple things here that I want to point out. First is that there is a big difference, a pointed difference between shaming someone and admonishing someone. When you shame someone, you try to make them feel bad. Shaming someone is manipulating them so that they will feel a certain way. Admonishing someone is not trying to make somebody feel something. Admonishing somebody is trying to make them see something. When you admonish someone, You warn them of something that is coming. So if somebody's doing something wrong,

there is a difference between shaming them and say, you should feel bad and admonishing them and say, hey, this is going to hurt. What's coming will hurt you. That's admonishment. That's a warning and it's different than shaming. In 1 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians is a letter from the apostle Paul to the Corinthian church. And the apostle Paul here to this church loves and feels responsible for the well-being of this church. He considers himself a parent, a father, he says, but you have countless guides in Christ, we're 15, but you do not have many fathers. I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. So he considers himself a parent. And really, this is what parents do. Parents, spiritual parents, admonish their children. And we can see it in just normal parents and kids too, You know, with my own children, I warned them, hey, don't do that. Don't play in the street.

Don't touch the stove. It's going to hurt. I didn't need to make them feel anything. I just needed to warn them, right? I needed to help them see that it was going to happen. That parents watch for things that we are unaware of. In this church, there have been people who are spiritual parents. I know in this church's history, Dr. or Pastor Dick Chappelle. There are many stories about how Pastor Dick Chappelle was a great father to many, many people. He baptized them. He would walk them through kind of like some Bible study. Brother Ken Shirley was also a great father to many, many people in this church for a really long time. Mrs. K. Murdock was also a woman who showed the way to many, many women here at South Burleson. Many of you have had spiritual parents. You've had Sunday school teachers, you've had pastors, maybe you've had a deacon. Maybe it's just actually your parent, your actual biological parent acts as also a spiritual

parent to you. spiritual parents do is they call you out of this normal life and They call you into new areas Into learning things where you begin to see your own blind spots you begin to understand where you can't always anticipate what's coming Sometimes spiritual parents have to pick you up after you have been blindsided You didn't see it coming it wrecked you and they're gonna help you pick up the pieces and say okay Let's walk through that. What happened? How did that work? What decisions did you make? This is what spiritual parents do they And more than that more than just talking you through things spiritual parents show you what it means to follow Jesus on this Journey called the Christian life

Over the last seven weeks, this is what we've been studying. We've been studying this journey looking for ways to make progress on this journey, looking to understand where we are on the journey, how we're supposed to take a next step, where we're supposed to go, where we need to go. And what we've been doing is using a camping metaphor for this, we've begun with personal items. So the personal items, we talked about a passport and a compass, right? So these are things that help us know that we're on the trail and then go the right direction. the right direction. We've been talking about group items, a rope, a backpack, and a map, things that help us collectively together. The last couple weeks we've been talking about items for other people. We talked about firewood and we also talked about binoculars. Last week we shared binoculars with those that are hurting. Today our item is shoes. Shoes. Now,

I will admit if you are going camping and you're packing a bunch of things, You're not going to pack shoes for other people. Okay, that's weird. Okay, somebody says like, hey, why do you have another pair of shoes? Well, just in case we see somebody on the trail that needs shoes, you know, that's a weird thing to pack. However, however, in 1 Corinthians 4 and many other places in the Bible, The only shoes that we walk in are the ones that others give us. The only shoes we walk in are the ones that others give us. So if we are going to determine how we're supposed to do something, if we're going to determine how we are going to act in this Christian life, We're not going to just make it up on our own. Okay, so I'll say it this way. No one, no one in Christian history, not the disciples, not the most independent Christian that has ever lived. No one has figured out their faith from nothing.

Nobody. Zero. No one. Everybody has taken steps only with the aid of Christian community. Everyone, every disciple was fed before they learned to feed themselves. Every disciple was loved before they learned how to show love to other people. Everybody, everybody that walks with Jesus has been shown how to walk with Jesus. For you, whether it was a pastor, a leader, teacher, mentor, parent, Sunday school teacher doesn't matter. You were shown before you could show. You were taught before you could teach. Somebody has their fingerprints on your spiritual journey. Somebody. Somebody does.

And another way to say it is, you got your shoes from somebody else. You got your shoes from somebody else. Going back to 1 Corinthians 4, 14 and 15, it says, I don't write to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as children. I want to warn you as a parent in love and respect. And this is similar to the sentiment in 1 Thessalonians 2, 7, it says, but we were gentle among you like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. All this parental admonishing, this whole idea that we wear other people's shoes, it brings force to the next verse. And I didn't want to leave with this verse. I really wanted you to understand what was happening so that when we read this next verse, you can understand it in a different way. 1 Corinthians 4, 16, it says, It says I urge you then the imitators of Me I urge you then be imitators of me on The surface if we just read this verse out of context right if we just are just kind of looking at it

It's just it really is gonna just feel like Somebody saying or the Apostle Paul telling the church or telling us do what I say be obedient Just do what I ask you to do. But it's actually saying a lot more than that. It's saying a lot more to them, to the Corinthian church and to us. It's saying this, it's saying the way that I have gently admonished you as a parent, the way that I have been, the way that I've cared for your welfare, the way that I have nurtured you as a nursing mother, You should admonish and nurse and care for other people in the exact same way. In other words, it's not just saying be obedient. It's saying the same way that I admonished and loved and brought you up. The same way I helped you mature. That's the exact same way that I want you to help other people. I want you to imitate me. There is a process then, right, what we see in scripture and we see it all over.

There's a process of leading and being led. There's a process of leading and being led. To go with the metaphor a little bit, there's a process of giving your shoes and taking other people's shoes. So sometimes, and I'll just talk about it personally, sometimes I can look at my life then I can understand that I'm walking in other people's shoes. There is a church in Northwest Arkansas called Fellowship Bible Church of Northwest Arkansas. I don't talk about them a lot. Like, we're not, you know, I don't want to be like a satellite of them or anything like that. It's not what it's about. But much of my desire, much of my vision, much of my ability to lead, And much of that I owe to the people of that church. They have an internship program that profoundly impacted me. Where I was, I don't know what my conception of church or leadership was before that, but

I know what it is after that. Because it has profoundly impacted me. I know I mean I have this it's a sense that I am I am walking in the shoes that that church gave me I'm walking in the shoes of Just being a teenager at I was just at a legacy First Baptist Church in Lafayette, Louisiana and The preacher there was named Perry Sanders. I am walking in Perry Sanders shoes, man I am the pastor the baptized me was named named Tom Cole. In fact, I just saw a picture of him Tim Perkins was kind enough to show me a picture. It reminded me of the fact that Tim Tom Cole was the pastor who baptized me. And he impacted me. I'm walking in all those people's shoes. If you begin to go back in your own life and think whose shoes am I walking in? Whose fingerprints are all over my spiritual journey? You'll begin to make sense of even why you do or don't do some of the things that you do in your spiritual journey. For example, if you

had somebody who had a profound impact on you and they said, hey, you can be a Christian, but you don't really need to go to church all the time. In fact, going to church, maybe like a once a year thing, that's probably what you thought was normal. Because that's what you were shown. We usually imitate those people. Sometimes, sometimes we're walking in other people's shoes, but sometimes others are walking in our shoes. sometimes we have given shoes away. Daniel Oster, a dig in our church, has told me many times that the things that I've done or said or the way we interacted had a profound impact on him when he was just kind of starting out. It was 10 years ago now, gosh, 10 years, anyway.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn't trying to impact Daniel Oster. Like I wasn't, I didn't have it on my planner, like really, oh, I'm gonna say this and it's really gonna just be awesome, okay. I was just trying to be real with him. I was just trying to open my life to him. I was just trying to invite him into what I was already doing, right. I didn't have like all of these really cool things to this utility belt with all these really cool gadgets. It was just being real. In this way, in this way, in our church, and really in the Christian faith, we are all woven together in this huge tapestry that goes back millennia. There are others who have gone before us and there are others who will go on ahead of us. We see this in 2 Timothy 2, 2 Timothy 2, 1 through 2, it says, You then, my child, notice the parent language here, you then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, in trust to faithful men who will be able to teach it to others also. So you see this, right? You see there's shoes that you're walking in, Timothy, right? What you heard from me, right? The things I taught you, I showed you, what you're supposed to do with those things is to put them in other people's lives. You're supposed to entrust it to other people so that those people can entrust it to other people also. This is the plan. We're all part of this together. And here's the thing, we can't just recognize that this is happening. We can't just say, yeah, this is the way that the normal Christian life works. No, we must give ourselves to the process of leading and being led as part of our journey. We must give ourselves both to leading and being led as part of our journey. If we don't, our journey is lopsided.

If we don't, we're walking with one shoe. We need both. We need to understand that we are leading people. whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not. People are watching and imitating you. But we also are being led. Our shoes aren't just meant for us. This means that we find parents and that we become parents. It means that we find and follow leaders, and it means that we become leaders. I wanna take each part separately. First, following leaders or wearing other people's shoes, however you wanna say it. Let's return to 1 Corinthians 4 in verse 17. So he has just said, be imitators of me. And then he says in verse 17, that is why, so that's why, because I want you to imitate me, that's why I sent you Timothy. That's why I sent you a leader, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord to remind you of my ways in Christ as I teach them everywhere in every church.

Leaders are given to us. Leaders are given to us. Paul sends Timothy to this Corinthian church, much in the same way that the Lord sends us leaders. That is without our permission, typically. No, like I understand churches can and should elect leaders. We're gonna be electing deacons in a week and a half. But the Lord is the one who directs all of that. The Lord is the one who directs all of those leaders. Many times, the leaders that we get are not the leaders that we asked for, okay? Now, even when we thought we were getting the leader that we asked for, we're still not getting the leader that we asked for. We got the leader that we got. And sometimes there's a lot of frustration, there's some disappointment, there's differences of vision. But one thing a leader should do

is demonstrate godliness. Leaders should demonstrate godliness. This is actually not the only time that Paul sends Timothy to a church. He does it again in Philippians to the church at Philippi. Philippians 2, 19, 20, it says, "'I hope to send Timothy to you, "'for I have no one like him "'who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare.'" Timothy is a great leader because he is genuinely concerned for the welfare of the church. He's not a great leader because he can give a good speech. He's not a great leader because he's really awesome at strategic planning. That's not what makes him a great leader. What makes him a great leader, the reason he's being sent to Philippi and the reason he's also sent to the church in Corinth is because he has genuine concern for people's welfare. And this is what a parent in the faith should do. They should exemplify genuine concern for the welfare of others.

That's why in 1st Timothy 3, there's this big long list, versus 1 through 13, it gives qualifications for elders and for deacons. We call them pastors and deacons here at South Burleson. And the qualifications they give have nothing to do with strategic planning, have nothing to do with organization, have nothing to do with vision casting, nothing. All they have to do with, they have to be able to teach, But the rest of them all have to do with the heart. They all have to be gentle. They all have to be trustworthy. They all have to be patient. They all have to be long suffering. These leaders that we have should, should exemplify godliness. They should exemplify godliness. We need to follow those leaders. Following those leaders helps us grow. Sometimes even when we disagree, especially when we disagree. Sometimes we have a lot of trouble in our own walk because we are parentless.

In this church's history in particular, but it is definitely not particular to this church's history, there are many pastors who have come in for a few years then left. And without casting aspersions, without casting any judgment on that at all, we can admit, we can admit the effect of getting a new pastor every three years is not good. Overall, that effect is bad. What is beneficial is when a church has the same core of leadership over a long period of time. I've been doing this kind of work for over 22 years. And it has been said to me more times than I can count by men with gray hair than mine that have said, in your fifth year pastoring a church, it is completely different than your first two. In your 10th year, it's completely different than your five and six. In your 20th year, you feel like you just started pastoring. You'll just be new frontiers, new heights,

but the way it works itself out is you are pastoring among people that trust you, that you care for, that you've spent years, sometimes decades, caring for. And that is a good, good thing. I know that I've only been here since January, 2020, In the grand scheme of things, a year and 10 months is not that long. I get it. And I know it's just words, I know, but I'll say it anyway. I hope they bury me in the backyard. I have no intention of leaving.

I want to be here for the long haul. I want to be here for the people that get saved here. I want to be here for whenever they become deacons. I want to be here for whenever they are part of a new church plant team that we send out to go plant a church somewhere else. I want to see all of that happen. I want a front row seat for it. And I want to lead our church in that direction and I want all of you to have a front row seat for it. I mean, I want you to see it. I want to give that to you in the most godly way that I know when you don't have a parent in your walk,

it is crippling. Your journey is much tougher because you're walking without shoes. My encouragement, find leaders, put their shoes on. Ask them questions. Ask them how they do something. Involve yourself in their life in some capacity. Do that. We must give ourselves to following the leaders that the Lord has given us. And not as people to bow down to, not as people to never question, but people to imitate, realizing that these people, these leaders that God has given, they care for us and they want to set an example for us. I lose sleep because I sometimes worry that I'm not setting a good enough example for you. I want to do that. I know, I know I'm not perfect at it, but that is my desire. Jesus has given us other shoes to walk in, but we have to give ourselves to that process. And when we do, we grow, we grow. There's only half the equation, quickly becoming leaders,

which involves giving your shoes away, which is a little scary. It has been said that the reason that we put leaders on pedestals is so that we can have better aim when we throw things at them. Although there is an ounce of truth to that, many people shy away from leadership for many reasons. Maybe they feel disqualified personally. Maybe they fear complication. Maybe they fear the expectations of other people. Maybe they know they're not gonna do a good job, whatever they have in their head. Yet, this is what the Lord expects from all of us. All of us that make Disciples you can't make a disciple without leading somebody and I don't mean you need to like serve in church government to lead That's not the kind of leadership. I'm talking about I'm saying that whenever you are making disciples You have to understand that you will you will be watched you will be asked questions of and you you are

responsible for inviting somebody into your life and then showing them what it's like for you to follow Jesus however messy or or imperfect that is, that's your responsibility to another person in our church. Leading people means that you set pace. It means that you talk about this emotional, mental, physical connection that you have with Jesus. It means that you talk about these habits that you engage in that keep you focused on Jesus, right? I'm in, hopefully I'm not speaking at a turn, but I'm in a I'm in a life group with Hollis of Church, Hollis and Carol. I'm not in a life group with Carol, just Hollis. Hollis' wife is Carol. It is such an encouragement to me because Hollis tells me, like, hey, yeah, we've been, Carol and I read the Bible every evening, or every weekday evening. I don't remember exactly. But that's not ground-breaking. Reading the Bible with your spouse is not groundbreaking.

Okay, I'm not gonna go and, you know, like put a Facebook post about that. That's not revolutionary. It's not. It is an incredible encouragement to me though, because it lets me know that like, Hollis is just plugging away with Carol, reading Scripture, and that's beautiful. That's good. And the reason that's an encouragement is because one day I'm going to be Hollis's age in like five years. I'm going to be as old as Hollis, at least five, maybe more. I'm going to be as old as Hollis and man, I hope in the Lord, I am reading the Bible with my wife like that. I do, I hope that. Hollis in many ways is an encouragement to me because I want to imitate him. And hopefully, because I'm his pastor, I'm conducting my life in a way that is an encouragement to him where he wants to imitate me. It's not about putting people here and here. It's about understanding that we lead and are led, and we can give ourselves to that process,

and it's good. When we are leading, we are setting pace. And I know that in particular with our church, part of the pain that I kind of walked into whenever we walked in here in January 2020, part of the pain that I kind of uncovered was, hey, we don't have anybody to pass our faith onto. There's no kids, they're not coming. They're not gonna come. We're sunk. We know it, we need to do something different. That is a painful place to be. That's really difficult to know that you have spent a lifetime learning, walking with the Lord, you have all these kind of things in it, just ready to go, be able to, you could walk somebody through,

you know, what it is to follow the Lord and like a four week thing, and they would glean so much from you, but there's no one there. There's no one asking. There's no one who cares. That's a really tough place to be. So my encouragement, my encouragement is life groups. Life groups are groups of three to four people, same gender, they meet every other week, they meet for a couple hours. You're focusing on just, it's not a Bible study, you're focusing on direction, hearing from the Lord, confession, confess your sins to one another, and mission. You're praying for people to come to know the Lord. Life groups involve those three things, you do it every other week. Here's what makes life groups great. What makes life groups great is when you have people that are really different from one another and then you learn how they're different from you. You learn how they're walking with the Lord and that encourages you to walk with the Lord

better. So I'm in a life group with Hollis, like I already said, and Tim Perkins. Tim is a few years older than me and Hollis is a few years older than him. We aren't at the same life stage. We're not, we're not, none of us are, but we glean so much from one another. My encouragement is if you jump into a life group, you will find a way to lead and be led. You will find a way to be a parent and to have a parent, spiritually. We are going to have our life group banquet on November 17th. And it's, if you're involved in a life group, we do a banquet at the end of kind of every semester. One of the joys of that is just hearing all that the Lord has done through life groups. We, you know, there's about six of them now. Next semester, we're probably gonna have eight or nine. And it is a big encouragement to hear all that the Lord is doing. But really, when you hear that,

when you hear the all-lords do it, it can just be classified as people that are being led by other people and people that are leading other people. And all that the Lord does through that. My encouragement to you is give your shoes to somebody else who's learning how to walk. Somebody's going through something that you went through. Or somebody's about to go something that you have experience with.

Flip it, you're about to go through something that you've never experienced before, and it would be really great if you had people to talk to about it. It would be really great if you had other people knew it, who knew you, and we're praying for you. That's what life group's about. My encouragement is to sign up for that. You can do that at our welcome table, which is right whenever you walk in, there's a list with some names on it already. And if you would like to be, if you would like to be contacted about life groups, you can sign up for that and you will be contacted. It's not, you're not registering for it right then. You're just saying that you're interested and so you'll get a phone call from me about it. But that's my encouragement to you. Jump into a life group. Figure out how to show people what it is to follow Jesus and figure out how to learn from other people following Jesus.

Our church is better off work. You will grow from it. Let me pray. Jesus, we thank you for all the people that you have put in our life. People that we can glean from, people that we can learn from. Sometimes people that are younger than us. Sometimes people that, man, their lives look so different from ours. But you still have something to show us in the midst of that. You still want us to be led by people. You still want us to lead people. I pray that we would give ourselves to that process. Whether in life groups or not, that we would understand that we are setting pace, that we are being imitated,

and that as we do that, as we give ourselves to that process, that you promise that you will meet us there, you will grow us in that process. Even if we can't feel it, you promise to do that. And it's your name that we pray. Amen. During our time of invitation, I'm going to be sitting right up front if you want to receive prayer, if you want to talk to somebody about becoming a Christian, if you want to make a decision from the Lord. If you want to be baptized, you can come and talk to me about it. Let's stand and sing. Are you hurt by the weight of sin? Jesus is come, when you come to the end of yourself You thirst for a dream from the well Jesus is coming O come to the altar where the Father's arms are open wide Forgiveness was born with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. For regrets and mistakes, there's no reason Jesus is coming. Your sorrows betrayed them for joy, ashes a new life is born.

Jesus is coming, O come to the altar, The Father's arms are open wide. Forgiveness was bought with the precious blood. Jesus Christ, O come to the altar, The Father's arms are open wide, But heaven's soul was bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ No one to say, isn't he wonderful? Sing hallelujah, Christ is risen Bow down before for he God and new Christ is risen! The Savior is in Him! Christ is risen! Bow down before Christ is risen!