Mr. Right

Transcript

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

I would like to start this morning with a very small confession. I know, it's always tough. Sometimes you've got to be honest though. If you have ever made me food, and I told you it was delicious, I wasn't lying, I wasn't lying. However, that was probably not the highest compliment that you thought it was. Because what I did not tell you, and what you may not know about me, is that my palate is extremely undiscerning. I will eat and enjoy just about anything, as long as it's not moving. And even then, maybe, I mean, who knows. Food snobbery is not in my future, ever. It will never be. I miss the difference between things that are fine and things that are fine. Okay, like real nice cuisine. If I go to a five-star restaurant, that tastes like a two-and-a-half star to me. And there's no, I can't figure that out. I don't know how, I don't know why. I've tried to become a food snob several different times in my past.

It won't work, I just can't taste the difference. I'm okay with that. But if I tell you that your food is delicious, you just need to know that's not always the biggest compliment I'm giving you. It's just, it's the best I can do, it's just not that great. Okay, so on a ten-point scale, it's like a three-and-a-half. But I can't taste if it's better, okay? Just telling you, that's my confession. Even in my limitations of eating, even in my limited palate, I still have limits. I can still, in other words, if something's not okay, I am aware. I can taste that. There was one time when my daughter, Cannon, Cannon is our baker. She's the baker in the family. She loves to bake, she loves to make food, she loves to do all this. And there was one time, and Cannon is a wonderful baker, her food is delicious. It's the best I got. Okay, sorry, it's the best I got. I really enjoy, I enjoy a lot of her food.

She makes blueberry bread, and I love that, okay? It's really good. But one day, she confused baking soda for baking powder, and it was downright inedible. I mean, it was terrible. And so, although I can eat and enjoy a lot of things, I could not eat and enjoy that, because when you're making something, when you're making something, you need the right ingredients in the right order. You need the right parts and the right steps, and it needs to happen kind of sequentially. You got to melt things at the right time, you got to combine them at the right time, etc., etc., etc. At South Burleson, we speak often about the spiritual journey. We talk about it very often, and it is helpful to say, if you've never heard me say that before, the spiritual journey is just what we are all on. I'm on a spiritual journey, you're on a spiritual journey. We're all kind of becoming on this way to becoming more like Christ.

Now, we can fight against that, we can cooperate with that. Like, it's not to say, like, everybody's a Christian, everybody's got... That's not what I mean. I just mean that everybody that you come in contact with, your co-workers, your spouses, your friends, your children, all of them are on a spiritual journey in that, the Holy Spirit of God is reaching out to them. The Holy Spirit of God is pricking their conscience, is painting pictures of them, is teaching them, is helping them grow. That's happening all around you. That's happening to you. That's happening to those that you love. You are all on a spiritual journey. We all are all on a spiritual journey. However, this journey is not haphazard. This is not a jumbled mess of a journey, although it sometimes feels that way, right? If somebody would say, hey, plot, maybe plot your spiritual journey. I mean, it's going to look like, you know, Israel through the wilderness,

you know, it's going to be 40 years of wandering. It's not... It doesn't feel like some straight line, some clean thing. However, however, in the spiritual journey, there are parts, there is an order to it, right? There is a sequence to it. And to see this, to understand kind of what this is and how it fits together, we need to frame up where we've been the last two weeks. Two weeks ago, we've been moving... Well, we've been moving through this whole series called, Write Together, and it's reading Romans 9, 10, and 11 together. A lot of times when you read them, kind of when you just like pick a verse here or there out of it, then people kind of take that one verse and define God by that one thing and they form their little camp and then, you know, they're right and they're wrong and they, you know, they're taking different parts of Romans 9 through 11 and they're accenting different things.

And two weeks ago, we learned that salvation, this is Romans 9, 1 through 29, so most of Romans chapter 9, salvation is God's choice, right? That as... In terms of our spiritual journey, God is in an unrivaled way directing your spiritual journey, okay? God is in control of that period. All right. Last week, and this is at the end of Romans 9, into Romans 10, 13, we saw that people must choose salvation, okay? People must choose salvation. They must believe in their heart, they confess with their mouth that Jesus is the Lord and they'll be saved. And so we saw last week, we saw that we make choice, we choose our spiritual journey. Now, that might sound like two things that can't be true. However, they are both true. God is 100% directing your spiritual journey and you are 100% making choices that are affecting and kind of in effect creating your spiritual journey.

Both of those are true. You making choices in real time with real consequences, that doesn't knock God off the throne. And God being on the throne and being in control of everything doesn't somehow make you a robot. Because you and I experience real choices in real time, correct? Like you put those clothes on today because you thought, I look good in Texas Rangers Blue, Daniel, is your thought this morning. Like I'm going to kill it in Texas Rangers Blue. But all of you thought that, right? All of you thought, oh, this, this, this, this effort's going to be great. Or most of you did. Some of you probably didn't think about it. If you want to know more about those things, then please, I encourage you listen to the last two weeks worth of sermon. But since both are true, since both God is in control of it and we are making choices in real time, how does that work?

How do we cooperate with that? How do we embrace that and make progress on our spiritual journey? How do we begin on that, right? What's that look like? And so what we're going to do today is we're going to keep reading in Romans, chapter 10, and really we're only covering four verses today. That's it. Whole sermon, four verses. I mean, we're getting out of here. No promises. Okay, so 14, 15, 16, and 17 of Romans 10, right? We're going to be covering all of that. I want to read it all together, okay? And it's just going to go through here. We're just going to read all four verses. You can bust open your Bible to check my work if you want. But I'm just going to read it here. And what you're going to see, we're going to get four questions. We're going to get four parts. Speaking of seeing, can you guys see if you cannot? Let's get a little bit more light so that people can see their Bibles.

Fantastic. Okay, here we go. Oh, and so we're going to get four questions. And those four questions are going to help us understand kind of parts and order, right? Parts and sequence. So we're going to kind of see the spiritual journey in these questions. And then we're going to add a fifth one at the end just to keep you guessing. Okay, here we go. Romans 10, 14 through 17. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news? But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us? So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. Okay, I will tell you that these verses are foundational.

And much has been written on these verses. These verses have been kind of looked at a couple of different ways. But what I believe is that these verses help us understand what it is that we're on, this spiritual journey. It kind of breaks down the spiritual journey for us, puts us in order, sequence. And it is so foundational that I've actually designed a little bit of a graphic for you. And we're going to pass those out on Drew and Daniel. We're going to pass those out to you.

The reason I want to pass this out is we're going to have slides up here that are going to say it to you. It's just a little half sheet. This is for you to frame in a shadow box when you get home. And listen, if you want to frame it. Normally, I don't design things and hand them out on a sermon. And the reason that I'm doing that is because of the foundational nature of this thing. This is something that I believe is a tool that can help you kind of figure out where you are. And it's something that it's kind of a revamped version of what we've been teaching in our gospel course. So it's been a little updated. So even if you've kind of gone through gospel course semi recently, it's been even updated since then. Part of the reason I didn't give them out earlier is because you're all going to struggle to listen to the next like 10 sentences I say because you're going to be staring at that thing.

I promise we're going to be walking through all of it. And so if you want to be patient, you know, man, if you want to skip to the end, I get it. If you read the back of the novel first, then fine. I'm not going to fight you too hard. But we do. The reason that I wanted to give you this is so that you could visualize it a little bit more clearly. Okay. So this is this is kind of the spiritual journey and and what what it's going to do is it's going to help us. We're going to kind of move through these questions. It's going to give us these parts. So let's let's start with verse 14. The first part of verse 14. Romans 10 14 a if you will how then will they call on him in whom they have not believed. Okay. So we got two parts there. People people need you need to catch this people need to believe before they respond. Okay before they call on him they need to believe first and it might sound super obvious but but both parts need to be present together and you need to believe before you respond because there are times whenever people respond when they do not believe.

Okay, this is a this is a spiritual consumerism right where you are you are unthinkingly just kind of doing the motion of whatever you should be doing. I stand because I should stand I I mouth words because I should mouth words. This is this is just you being a religious consumer and checking off a box. This is you responding without believing. Okay, this is going through the motions. There are many for example in Jesus's own ministry. There are many people that were responding to his miracles to his healing to his teaching but in the end they didn't believe in him. They just wanted to go see this really strange and wonderful thing. They didn't believe that Jesus was the Messiah. They just they were just responding. They were just coming out.

There are people that will respond even when they don't believe and there are ways to get people to respond when they don't believe. This is manipulation right? This is when when Christians when churches try for responses without belief. What you do is you you end up over time and I believe we see this now you and we've seen it historically you create a generation of people that believe that they serve and love Jesus. But really it they're just addicted to a feeling. They just like the way they feel whenever they go to a church service, but they have no idea what it is to love and serve the risen Savior. And it's because churches or other Christians taught them to they taught them how to respond, but they didn't talk about belief. Do you see the difference? You need belief then response. It needs to go in that order. And so the spiritual journey then requires us to believe then respond.

So this is this is everybody's spiritual journey and you see in that blue part. And we have it up here that blue part. You can hardly see it here, but you can definitely see on there that inside the blue circle. It says spiritual awareness. Okay, and so what you have on this part. You have people that are that are growing in their spiritual awareness. And so if you remember back a couple of weeks ago, Dan Hay showed us kind of this continuum with like negative 10 all the way to 10 and the crosses in between. And what he was trying to help us understand was that people move along a continuum. They it's not like it's not like somebody's like raging against God and all of a sudden, you know, they hear the gospel for the very first time and they're like, I got to be a Christian now. Bam, I'm all the way to you know, I'm a Christian that happens. It's just rare way more often people come to the Lord slowly negative 9 negative 4 negative 2 negative 1 and then they have this moment where they believe and then after they believe there's this time where they're growing.

Okay, this in circular form is kind of a negative 10 to the cross. Okay, it's negative 10 to 0 negative 10 to the halfway point. Okay, and we're just using labels and set of numbers. Okay, so it's negative 10 would be a skeptic right somebody who is just not they're just not interested. Not everybody wants to understand life. Not not everybody is bothered by the gap between you know, the ideal and the reality. Not everybody's ready. Everybody wants to know that okay.

Explorers though would be somebody who would be on their way to believing. Okay, explorers genuinely are curious to know more about Jesus. Maybe they're thinking about going to church service. Maybe they're reading the Bible for the first time or the 50th time. They may have hang ups right about church organized religion or Christians or they've been burned before. I mean there's things they've got packed in there right there. They're not just kind of like blank and naive. They're working it out though. They're wrestling through that. And they don't know if they believe but they do know that in some mysterious way their spiritual awareness is growing. Okay.

These are these are explorers and then believers is somebody who believes and then responds right. Somebody who they're not they're on their way to believing. I mean there's things they're still learning obviously, but they believe and they respond and this is and this is important true belief then. We see this in the verse. How will they call on him on whom they have not believed. We see the true belief comes to the foreground in a response that if you do believe then you will call on him. Then you will publicly do things say things. We saw this in the previous you know in verses 9 and 10.

Where the Bible says excuse me. The Bible says you got to believe in your heart and confess with your mouth right. These are these are these are actions that kind of well up. Okay. This is this is James 2 faith comes out in action. Let me just give you an illustration. If you say if you you say look I believe that it is safe to ride shotgun when my teenager is driving. Okay, if you believe that okay, that's great. You can say you believe that all day. But how do you prove it? You prove it by riding shotgun and not you know hitting the dash or you know like you know push them to break the imaginary break in front of you. You you that's what you do. You trust you trust the person next to you driving that you may not believe that it's okay. I'm not saying you have to believe that about the teenager. But if you do believe that then the way that you prove that is you sit shotgun and you enjoy the ride.

You understand we're talking about faith coming out in action. And this is why after our service we have a time for response because we believe that with as we gather and we sing and we hear the word preached and we we believe in our core that the Lord is moving through all of that to speak to you to help you grow to help you make decisions and is pushing you toward an action not just a thought. Okay, that's why we have response time afterward. It's also why baptism makes sense or where baptism makes sense right where you can say I believe I believe I believe but then what does Jesus tell us to do say hey you believe you want to follow me be baptized first thing you do. I've actually had people that have said listen I want to follow Jesus but I'm kind of nervous about being baptized in front of people. And I say well and I said this very sweetly but I'll just say it quickly here.

You want to actually follow Jesus but the first thing Jesus said was to be baptized. So if you don't want to be baptized then I don't know if you want to follow Jesus. Like I said I said it much more pastorally than that promise but it is kind of it is kind of on its face it's where it begins. You want to actually follow Jesus and do what he told you to do which is first thing is be baptized so faith comes out in action. When you believe you call on him you respond on a spiritual journey.

People need to believe and then respond. Let's look at the next two questions together. The latter part of verse 14 Romans 10 latter part of 14 it says and how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard and how are they to hear without someone preaching. OK. How are they believe in him of whom they have never heard and how are they to hear without someone preaching. There's a couple of things that are kind of present in this verse. The first is that people are created to hear truth before they believe. And that again that might sound super obvious but it is to say that we are hardwired as human beings to hear things that are different or new.

To understand them to roll it around in our minds and the things that are true and we have just a way. I don't really know. I don't really know how this happens but we have a way. We have a filter where when somebody tells you something even if you don't like it it sticks with you. It sticks with you. They tell you something. They tell you sometimes somebody I'm sure has told me something exceedingly difficult to hear like you know Drew you're being a jerk at this moment in time. And in that moment maybe I don't want to hear that. Maybe I don't want to know that I'm being a jerk. But when they tell me and it's true it sticks. I could say whatever I want about them but the truth finds a way. And for you what for me for all of us maybe more fundamentally putting it more more basically people grow with the instruction of new things. So if you want to grow as a cook what do you do. You look for new recipes. Why.

Why don't you just keep making grilled cheese your whole life. Recipes new recipes are going to require you to do things differently. It's the it's the introduction of a new thing different ingredient different combination of flavors. It's going to make you think differently. It's going to push you to grow. You're created to work that way. And if you're going to grow then you if you're going to grow spiritually you must hear truth and preaching here. So how are they to hear without someone preaching preaching is simply declaring something truth in this case. It's declaring something openly. In fact the same word for preaching here in verse 14 is also used in verse 8 but it's not translated preaching in verse 8. So this is Romans 10 verse 8. It's it's translated as proclaim declare say it out loud. And so when it says without someone preaching it's not that Romans 10 14 is not imagining me on a stage with a microphone.

Does that make sense to you. I am preaching right now. Don't be confused. But this isn't the only way this happens. In fact this is a pretty small sliver of the way this is supposed to happen. How they hear without somebody preaching. We could translate that. We could make that a different sentence by just saying how will people hear truth unless somebody says it to them. And it should be kind of an obvious question. How are people going to hear truth unless somebody's saying it out loud. Unless somebody's offering that information for free. It could be in a conversation. It could be in a church service. It could be over lunch. It could be a lot of different ways. It could be in a YouTube video. How will people hear the truth unless somebody is saying it. I believe that many people misunderstand this entire endeavor of preaching. And evangelism. Where the mentality is look look I don't want to push my religion on other people. Right.

I don't want it to seem like I know a lot more than other people. Like they're wrong and I'm right. But listen. You have no problem introducing new information in a lot of other areas. Like my wife. When my wife finds a deal. In any way shape or form. She has to tell people about it. She has to. If she finds a store we found this store Crazy Hot Deals. It's a great little store. It's like fire sale. There's a bunch of really cheap stuff for really cheap. But sometimes you can find a deal. And if my wife finds a deal she's excited about it. Like she wants to tell people about it. She's got no qualms with it. And most of us wouldn't either. When we find something that we're excited about. When we see something new and we think people should know about it. We're okay with declaring that to them. But a lot of times we don't know how to talk to people by saying hey did you know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

Like that doesn't seem to fit in a lot of our conversations. So let me just give you a couple of different ways to think about it. Because the reality is people are only going to grow. People are only going to change whenever they hear truth. Explorers need to hear the gospel in other words. And so that's why here is right next to the explorers. Because they need to hear it. On your spiritual journey we need to talk about Jesus.

In order to believe if we're going to read these verses. How are they going to believe? How are they going to believe unless somebody is saying something out loud. In order to believe people need to hear you talking about Jesus Christ in everyday things. So look this isn't like a plan of salvation explained out or anything. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about that argument that you and your spouse had. Talk about how you prayed together. Or wish you had. Talk about it. Talk about that trial that you're going through. And how scripture informs that. What kind of hope you're taking from that. When somebody tells you, hey you have a great family. Or you're really good at your job. Or whatever. Then give God glory. Talk about your failures and how Jesus has been faithful. I realize I'm telling a lot of family stories at this point. But my father-in-law for his voicemail.

Just in case he gets some wrong number or something. His voicemail says, it starts with don't hang up. So like you're joking, I'm ready. Tell me. Sorry I did this. That's not how you hold phones. It says don't hang up. This could be the most important conversation or the most important piece of information you'll ever receive. And he gives him the plan of salvation on his voicemail. That is great. That's exciting. But it's just somebody being creative with talking about the Lord. Talking about scripture. I'm not telling you go change all your voicemails. I'm just telling you. That is someone trying to be creative. That Colossians 4-6 says let your speech be seasoned with salt. So that you may know how you ought to answer outsiders. Kenneth Harrington asked him if it was okay to tell a story. And he said yes. I'm going with it. No take backs. Kenneth Harrington puts a Bible on his desk every day. And it just sits there.

And he talks about the Lord. But he puts a Bible on his desk. And it sits there. And there's no neon sign. There's no disco ball. It's subtle. It invites discussion. It is non-coercive. So look, my encouragement is, and this is part one of the encouragement, find creative ways to talk about Jesus in all of your life. You talk about Jesus here with each other because you know, if I'm going to talk about a trial that I'm going through, I'm going to see Sean. And I'm going to say Sean, man, here's what's been going on. And I'm going to talk about it in terms of, you know, the Lord has been showing me this. I've been praying through this. I've been wrestling this. And here's some scripture I've been in. Okay. But if I'm talking with somebody who's not a part of the church, somebody's an outsider or something like that, my temptation is to change or to translate how I'm going to tell that person that thing. I don't need to do that.

I just need to tell that person just like I'm telling Sean. And you do too. I'm not saying assume everybody's a Christian. I'm just saying, don't worry about them not totally understanding what prayer is when you say I'm praying for something. And I said that was part one because part two is, look, it's not just a Bible on Kenneth's desk. It's not just that. It's also his life. Right. If Kenneth were a jerk that didn't talk to anybody, the Bible on his desk, I would actually encourage him to put that thing away. Okay. All right. There's a way in which your life shows what you're talking about. People are created to hear that truth and see the corresponding life with it. So the truth that you talk about must also be in you. If it's just talk, it's not going to work. You must also serve. And this is kind of the two parter. And so it's back on your diagram here on the spiritual journey. We need to serve and talk at the same time.

We need to serve and talk at the same time. And these are minister and leader. And they're doing the same thing. But they're growing in what I would just call people awareness. Okay. Sometimes you can you can you can grow in your spiritual life and that's good, but you don't you don't become aware of people that they have needs that they're lost in going to hell. Right. That they're hurting, that they want to talk to somebody about their marriage or they want to talk what's going on. Ministers then are they're growing in that people awareness. They're becoming more sensitive to needs. They're talking about Jesus and that is becoming more natural for them. They're kind of growing in that leaders then kind of, you know, as you become more people aware leaders then serve and talk to people about the Lord out of this really deep love. And like so when you see leader don't think like CEO think like biblical leadership like like sacrificing themselves to see people take steps on their spiritual journey right they give up days off to listen to serve to talk.

And I want you to notice kind of there's a wrap around here where as you grow in your people awareness as you continue to serve and talk then you're going to bump into people that are explorers people that are on their own path of spiritual awareness. The Lord is going to put those people in your life and you're going to see them because you're becoming more aware of people right. You're going to want to serve them talk with them. You're going to bump into them. And so according to to Romans 10 14 we've just made it through one verse. Don't worry we're only covering for today. We've gone from explorer believer minister leader and we've kind of gone from a spiritual curiosity all the way into this the sacrificial life for your loving people and you're serving and you're talking to them. So there's a there's a next step and so let's read the first part Romans 10 15 says and how are they to preach unless they are sent how are they to preach unless they are sent OK.

People will not serve and talk unless they are sent. OK so let me just translate that if if we as a church said hey we're going to go we're going to go serve and talk but nobody's nobody's leading that charge. We don't have we don't have some people in our body who are just who are just you know like really serious about it and finding creative ways to kind of commission and send people. It's not going to happen. It's not it's going to be fits and spurts it's going to be happening kind of here there but it's not really going to catch it's not really going to happen in earnest.

We need to send people people need to be sent in fact all of Christianity is rooted in the one who was sent to us. OK in other words Christianity didn't happen unless Jesus is sent to us. So what did Jesus do sent to us what do you do he invested in spiritual journeys of people right. He invested in 12 guys and what did he do to them he sent them. The sent one sent them and then he said he said I'm not going to stick around I'm leaving but the Holy Spirit I'm going to send the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit then is going to continue to send you and to send more people and we are all here because those sent people kept sending people.

That's right Christianity is not some small remote Jewish sect that we forgot about a thousand years ago because sent people sent people in order spiritual journeys we need to understand that we need to both send and be sent and that Jesus does all this sending through churches. Jesus does all this sending through churches and this is the kind of the assumed fifth question the assumed fifth question is how will people excuse me how will they be sent without churches sending them how will they be sent without churches sending them now at this point somebody might take issue with me. You could make the argument well it doesn't have to be a church sending people and I'd say okay well if you happen to have a bunch of followers of Jesus that are coming together and they're under a common mission to train and send and and correspond with these people they're sending them out in Jesus's name and they're sending them to the to the people that are around them.

Sure yeah I guess that doesn't have to be a church but you would really have to try very hard to not be a church in that situation. In other words the the the organization the institution that that God put on this earth to send people out is the church. It's just like it's just like people saying listen we're going to cohabitate we're going to share finances we're going to share children we're going to live in the same house and we're going to grow old together but we don't want to be married. Well okay fine you're not married but you have to try really hard to not be married in that moment right you have to somehow like clarify for everybody who's looking at you that you aren't married in that moment.

And so yeah like it doesn't have to be a church. I would just counter like I don't think you could do all of that and not become a church. The Bible seems to indicate that and this is why this part is mission awareness or church awareness. I forgot which I put did I put church awareness and mission awareness mission good okay good I wanted to put mission but that's why this part is mission awareness. Because because when you when you when you see this part what developers and shepherds are doing you you understand why churches do what they do. And so on this leg of the journey this last this kind of this dark blue part we see people become developers developers are people that help build avenues of sending right. The churches to say it a different way churches need practical avenues to send people out toward things okay so so you see this in like school mentoring programs ESL classes door to door sharing there's many ways to kind of send people out right many ways to do that.

And so developers help build those ways out and we see this with in fact we see this in Acts chapter six with deacons and hopefully you know we're going to see that here with deacons this what deacons do right they build out those avenues for sending and then shepherds then they they kind of help lead the church toward sending. The church needs shepherds the church needs leaders to point forward and say we're going to send people we're going to invest in people's spiritual journeys and and and it's really hard for me to kind of it's really hard for me to put this into words how important this is. That that as a Christian not just even as a part of this church if you're part of this church awesome but even if you're not.

You need to we need to invest in all aspects of this spiritual journey you need to learn this that's why I've printed out and given it to you I mean I hope that you that you look at it that you study it up that you see where you are that you're honest about it I hope that that you see how other people are on the. On a similar journey or where they are in that process and how you can help it gives you a sketch of where people are so that you can meet them in their moment and not just pretend like they need to be where you are spiritually when you see this it helps you kind of connect these two ends. And these two ends are. Like how how are people going to respond to Jesus without churches investing in spiritual journeys how will people respond to Jesus without churches investing in without you investing in spiritual journeys and the answer is they won't they won't do it.

Would you pray with me Jesus you call us out. You call us into into something new you call us into a spiritual journey you you grow our spiritual awareness we respond we believe we see the people that are around us we grow in our awareness of them we meet them we love them help us to do that we see more of how our church operates. How we can be a part of that how we can help we can serve. Lord help us to understand where we are help us to understand how to take that next step or to ask for blessing on our our spiritual journey each one that is represented in here tonight I pray that you would help us to. To see it to take the next step to understand that you're calling us out to please stay in this we sing.