[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m. if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, you can find us
[email protected] dot. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: 1.5 trees. That's how much junk mail people typically receive in the american household every year. 1.5 trees worth of junk mail. In fact, we receive enough junk mail in America every year to deforest the Rocky Mountain National park every four months.
And now that sounds like, okay, well, that's a lot of paper and we're throwing a lot away, but how does it hit the american wallet? I know you're thinking that maybe you're not. There's probably some of you that are thinking that, but it actually costs around $370 million annually to dispose of junk mail that needs to be recycled. It's a lot. But you know what that creates is accidentally throwing away something that wasn't junk because you're so used to throwing away junk mail. Anybody ever throwing away something important that you thought might have been junk mail, you may not even know it yet. Right? You're about to get the phone call that's going to let you know that you shouldn't have thrown it away. And companies have gotten really smart and they'll put things on an envelope that's junk mail, like really important, make sure you read it. And now I've gotten so used to that, that it's like if I see something that says really important, I'm like, that's probably not. Which is also very dangerous, you realize, well, there was a guy who received a. An imitation that he accidentally threw away. His name was Clifford Newton, and it happened in 2017.
Clifford Newton accidentally threw away an invitation to see the queen.
This guy's over in the UK, and he got an invitation, a service, a Maunde Monday service that they do every year to honor different men and women for their service. And so he threw it away. And he knew when they called him and said, why have you not RSVP'd to see the queen? Now in my mind too, though, an invitation to see the queen is just a letter in the mail. I mean, I'm expecting like a guy riding up in a chariot with like a bugle or something to invite me to see the queen. But he threw it away. He was able to call the church and he got a backup that the church had as another shout out to church secretaries for having our back. He made it to the service. Can you imagine throwing away an invitation, a letter to see the queen, the king. What about this one?
It is a letter, isn't it? From the king, from the king of kings, from the God who created the universe. In fact, within it are actual letters, epistles, that we, we refer to them as epistles. Sometimes there's also letters within letters. Within the book of revelation are seven letters to the churches in revelation. And they actually have a lot to do with your theme of resilience. And then the topic tonight, accountability in resilience. And sometimes we may treat them as important as we know that they are. We may disregard some of the things within them. But if those churches disregarded what Jesus had to say to them in those letters, it would be devastating both to the existence of the church there in that area, as well as the spread of the gospel. Each of those letters contain multiple facets. Some of the letters contain a rebuke, and some of them contain just encouragement, but that's very rare. Most of them start off with some encouragement and then go over into exhortation or accountability. And they are, they are letters that keep those churches accountable to what Jesus wants them to do. But one of the things I love about these letters is the way Jesus goes about them. I want to look at just one of them and don't worry, we're not going to get bed down into the apocalyptic figures and things like that. Brandon will do that for you. But we're going to look at revelation, chapter two and look aside some of those. This is actually one of the least apocalyptic sections in the book of revelation, chapter two, verses one through seven. And I want to notice how Jesus does this because it's a model for us.
Revelation two, verse one.
To the angel of the church in Ephesus, write the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary. It'd be great if the letter ended there, but it does not. Verse four. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore, from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent. Yet this you have. You hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches, to the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of God. You have to love the irony of this letter. The reason I say that is because Jesus is doing in this letter what he is calling the church at Ephesus to do. He is proud of them for standing for the truth. He is proud of them for their resilience, for enduring patiently. He's proud of that. But the motive from which it comes, or the motive of love for Christ, which should then carry over into how this is done, is something he wants them to return to. So he wants them to continue to do what they're doing, standing for the truth. But he wants them to return to that first love. And in writing this letter, Jesus is walking that balance. Jesus is exhorting them, he is keeping them accountable and telling them the things that they're doing wrong. But then he says he loves them.
Jesus does this from love.
Jesus walks that balance between the two. My topic, it's good for us to think about the balance between the two, because some people like this topic, and that's bad.
Those who like to administer accountability probably are not doing it the right way. Accountability is not a pleasant thing to do. It's not a pleasant thing to receive. It's not a pleasant thing to administer. I hate confrontation, which is why I chose to be a preacher.
I don't know why. No, I really do. I don't like it. I have to force myself to do it. But confrontation is not something that's pleasant for us. But your accountability builds. Resilience is great because the reason it builds resilience is when we begin to fall off to the other side. We need people who push us back, and we need people who don't buy our press, we need people who don't buy what we're selling, who can see through all of that and call us back to where we ought to be, but there's multiple facets of it. There is accountability that we receive from God in his word, and there's not only from him, but from one another. There is the administering of accountability because it matters just as much how we hold each other accountable as it does the fact that we do so within this. I want to hit on a couple different facets, but because it is also a hard topic and we kind of get through it and say, okay, fine, I'll accept accountability, and I'll do the hard thing of trying to hold each other accountable in this. But I want to offer you some good news at the end, because it really is not only the right thing for us to accept and administer accountability, but it is also a blessing and a manifestation of God's love and the love of the people around you who want what's best for you. Take a look at Hebrews twelve nine.
Hebrews twelve nine says, besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live for they disciplined us for a short time, as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his Holiness. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. My six year old, Evie, is a spitfire. She is the boss in her mind, but she is intense, but she's also very clever. She was sitting at the table one day, and I give her gummy vitamins because I love her. And I have a doctor friend, and he's like, it's just candy, but I give her gummy vitamins because that's what she'll eat. And so I'm trying, okay? It's a facade, but we'll see what happens. I give her the gummy vitamins, but she doesn't like them. I'm like, how do you not like gummy vitamins?
We have other medical problems. We have brain problems going on gummy vitamins, and she won't eat them. She's like, I don't like the taste. I say, you're going to eat them, okay? And so I put them on the table. I'm over in the living room doing some things, and I hear the trash can lid shut.
So I turn around, and she's getting in her seat, and then I hear this. Mmm, those are good vitamins.
And I was like, I know what you did, but she sold it. She didn't even have to do that. It would have been one thing to throw them away secretly and then get back up there. She didn't have to say anything, but she's a method actress, and she was just like, mmm, good vitamins. And I was like, you went really far. And then I asked her, I was like, did you just throw those in the trash? She just melted. She's like, it was an accident.
Which is also absurd that it was an accident.
It was a horrible excuse in the mind of a child. Maybe a good excuse. I read a tweet by a parent recently, said her child's excuse to her was, I did it on accident on purpose, which I feel like is exactly what was happening there. We're not a lot better with our excuses, are we? Maybe they're about bigger things than gummy vitamins, but we're pretty creative sometimes. As we were talking about VBS sometimes, you know, I wonder about the level of creativity we underestimate in ourselves, because I might have recruited somebody for VBS, and, like, I'm just not creative, but most of us are pretty creative when we need to be, especially when it comes to excusing why I ought to be able to do something that I don't want to do, or why I don't have to do something I really need to do, or why this doesn't really apply to me, or why it's not going to turn out for me the way that it did for this other person. Cause I'm more clever or I'm gonna be able to get away with this. We become infinitely creative when it comes to self deception. But what that means is we avoid accepting accountability from God, even when our conscience kind of dings in the background that we need to. Anybody else in here guilty of, you can't really do this anymore. But older style cars, when the seatbelt thing is dinging at you, but you used to could just push the button in the latch and it would go off. Anybody have a car that you could do that? Anybody? You would only know that if you've done it. That's why you're not raising your hands right.
If you had pulled this off. My dad always, he never puts a seatbelt on when he gets in the car with me. And he's like, the thing is yelling at me again. The thing is, you used to could do that. You can't do that in a lot of cars now, but you could get rid of the dinging.
The problem is, if you hit something without a seat belt, you're still going to die or be seriously injured. The same type of thing happens with the conscience. You have that dinging back there. And we do lots of things to kind of get rid of it rather than just accept the accountability and change. The problem is the consequences are still going to be there in the end rather than accept it. We oftentimes play games, one of which is the distraction game. We play the distraction game where we become workaholics, where we become alcoholics. We distract ourselves with fun or whatever it is we have to do, or we make the excuse of putting it off for later, but we distract ourselves from what we know we ought to do when we feel as though we've been held accountable by God for something. Or we might play the blame game. We'll blame other people. We blame situations for why we do something. We'll blame the government. Okay, we might be in the back of our minds. Well, the reason I cheat them on taxes is because they already took too much from me anyways.
We blame Satan. We blame temptation. We blame the nature of who we are. Everybody's human.
I understand the fact that we're human, but sometimes we use that a little much, don't we? We blame all kinds of people rather than accepting that responsibility. Or sometimes, rather than the distraction or the blame game, we may play the defense game. And that happens when accountability is administered to us by fellow christians. A lot of times, rather than accept that and be humble, we get angry. We may point out something that they did to distract and deflect from things that I've done, and so we kind of push it off. Gene Bertie ohm walked into a patrol office and admitted to robbing two Tennessee banks.
The crazy thing about it is the guy that the FBI, the cops, they had nothing on the guy. Like, he could probably easily have gotten away with it. The reason he did it, though, is because he just could not walk around with it anymore. This was Bertie ohm's statement. He said it felt like a big cancer was just burning up inside of me. I just couldn't carry the weight around. Every time I saw a police officer, I knew he was looking for me. Whenever I heard a noise, I jumped. Every time I heard a car door open, I jump up and look out the window. David knew what it was like to experience that. In fact, I know that because David wrote about that feeling in psalm 32 three through four. He said, when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long for day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as by the heat of summer you ever had that feeling in the end? Knowing that. Knowing that no matter how much we may play distraction or blame or the defense game, rather than accept the truth, knowing that the consequences will still remain. Like trying to get rid of the seatbelt. Ding. And not having the belt on. And the fact that walking around with a conscience that is constantly bothering us, the fact that those things can go away, that we can stand right before God, and there's no greater feeling than laying down your head on a pillow with a clean conscience between you and God and other people. All of that makes God's administering of accountability and justice a manifestation of his goodness.
Not because he likes to sit around and watch the prick of the conscience hurt us and gets joy out of that, but because sometimes that may be the only way we will turn to him to do what is right, which, of course, is what is always best.
We don't want to always do that. However, sometimes the best we do is go midway, and I'm speaking to myself here as well. The best we may do is go midway to a photoshop type of accountability or change. What I mean is this. My twin boys, when they were about seven or eight, any of you ever had one of those little gemstone toy things? It's like a block of dirt that they sell to you for $12, and it has, like, a plastic gemstone or maybe plastic fossil bones in it, and you're supposed to excavate it. On my kitchen table, apparently, is where they were excavating it, and there is dirt everywhere. And they were like, oh. I was like, guys, what are you doing? I was like, oh, oh. And then there's dirt everywhere. I was like, what are we supposed to do? We can't. We don't want to do it outside. It's hot. I was like, okay, we'll put it in a pan. Like, get one of those roasting pans, put it in there, do that. They're like, oh, okay. So I come back later and they got a pan, but they got a round pizza pan filled with holes, ventilation holes.
And I was like, guys, what are you doing? We got a pan. We're doing it in the pan. And I pick up the pan, and there's, like, these perfect dirt holes all over the table, and they're like, oh, we didn't even think about the holes.
Sometimes we do the same thing. The pan is a facade because they ignored the purpose. Like, why am I. Why am I doing this? Why am I getting a pan? It's not just for the sake of having a pan there, but that the pan will catch the dirt. The pan was a facade. It had holes in it. We're pretty good at the facade of accountability. We're pretty good at saying, okay, when I know I'm around the people that are holding me accountable, I can show a different face.
And that appears as though I have changed. But there are holes in that plan, clearly, and because it ignores the purpose of the accountability. The purpose of accountability is not to give me one more place to wear a mask like I do in many other places. The purpose of that is to go inside and change the heart of a person that then outwardly expresses that in changed behavior towards God and towards other people. It is the heart level that we're after. Matthew Paris is an atheist and a writer. In 2008, traveled to Malawi where he was raised, and he came back and he wrote in the states an article that was a shocker to people who were reading it. He said traveling in Malawi refreshed a belief I've been trying to banish my whole life. He said it confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my worldview, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
What in the world did he see in Malawi that challenges his beliefs about God? Well, this is what Paris said. He didn't hear a theological argument. He didn't watch a class on apologetics. I'm not saying those things are not valuable. They absolutely are. He said. In Africa, christian evangelism makes a difference. I have witnessed the difference that christian evangelism makes, he said sharply distinct from secular NGO's. No training and education alone will not do in Africa, he said, Christianity changes people's hearts. The transformation is good, the rebirth is real.
What Paris witnessed is that education, training, it was good. They're giving that. However, when you do that without changing the heart of a person, you make smarter criminals than you do a changed person for society and for others. Moving from blue collar to white collar crime is not a progressive step forward. You have to change a person's decision. Rather than saying, I don't want, I'm not going to stop stealing, but in my heart I'm still a thief. To a person who in their heart chooses to make and give to other people, that person has been truly transformed. David does not say, God, create me a new path to walk, create new actions for my hands. He doesn't say any of that. He says, create in me a new what? A clean heart, o God, and renew a right spirit within me. Because what David knows is that a clean heart will manifest itself in a different set of actions. For him, the purpose of accountability is to pray to God that I let who I am and what my goals and motivations are be transformed, not just a mask, but that whoever it is that I allow to keep me accountable, or when I read God's word, to be accountable. That I pray for honesty, for strength against self deception, and to allow unmitigated access where it needs to be had in order that my masks don't really work. Because the goal isn't to move from self deception to the deception of the people trying to help me. It is to get rid of the self deception by employing the people who are trying to help me. And God's word that's trying to help work on my heart. Anybody watch the show flip or flop?
It's like a HGTV show, nobody else. It was a flop, wasn't it? No, it wasn't.
Okay, we've got one viewer, at least in here the show is okay. A couple of viewers. Okay. Do I have six? Do I have six? No.
So flip or flop was one of those shows. We got some on the balcony where they. They buy houses and they try to see if they can flip it. It was a husband and wife team at one point. I don't think they're even together anymore. But there was an interesting thing that happened off set of that show, and it was where a viewer named Reed called in, or, excuse me, did not call it, sent an email in because he was like, I don't want to call in and be this creepy person. So he found the production company's email and emailed them because he was binge watching a show, and he's a registered nurse, and noticed a lump on Tarek, the husband in the show, lump on the neck. He's like, I don't think that's right. And so he emails them and says, look, he's got a lump there. I think he needs to have his thyroid checked. I'm a concerned citizen. I'm a registered nurse. Tarek knew something was going on because they're having trouble swallowing, and they followed up on that email, and he did indeed have thyroid cancer, his bread to his lymph nodes, and was able to have surgery, able to have the iodine procedure in order to get rid of that and continued to live his life. But you have this person who is just, I mean, way on the outside, but sees something going on and says, I gotta do something about that. And although there were inconveniences in trying to find out who to talk to and knowing whether they would even listen. He was willing to go through that in order to help somebody that needed that. Do we as christians feel the need to make every effort in order to help one another? When we see the deadly parts of our spiritual lives, we do that with physical things, but oftentimes spiritual things, we tend to put on hold. And I get it. As we said at the beginning, confrontation is a risky business, and most of us avoid it at all costs. In fact, our culture doesn't make that any easier because we live in a culture that is radically individualistic and morally relativistic, which means that moral correction is really not even a thing if you adopt both of those at the same time. Because as an individual, I ought to be able to carve my own path. And morally, if it's all relative anyways, then there's no real sense in which you call me back to a moral standard that I have gotten off of because it is defined for myself.
In doing so, that means that most of us are sometimes afraid when we talk to people outside of the church or even within the church. Cause it has kind of crept in that you're not really supposed to correct other people. In fact, that's one of the only big no nos, is that you don't tell people that they have no nos.
I'm sorry, I'm saying no nos that I have little children. And we talk about eating the no no fruit that Adam and Eve did. We've graduated the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But in doing so, know this. The people you will love and respect the most at the end of your life, looking back, are not going to be the people who told you what you wanted to hear all the time. They're going to be the people who told you what you needed to hear, even when you didn't want to hear it, with a mix of courage and compassion, because they loved you more than they loved the idea of the comfortability of avoiding that confrontation.
Jesus. Nobody loved us more than Jesus. We know that it's manifested on the cross and what he was willing to do. But also the fact of his death means he did not agree with the sin that put him there, and yet he walked the balance of both of those. God commands us to hold each other accountable, and we're doomed without that accountability. Proverbs 27 six says, faithful are the wounds of a friend. James 516 says, confess your faults one to another, and pray for one another that you might be healed. Then proverbs 20 717 the famous passage, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Here's the thing. Have you ever tried to sharpen a knife or a blade and just could not do it? Some of you probably know how to do it. You're like blacksmiths out in your shop with the grinder and everything. I've never been able to properly sharpen a knife. I've gotten a whetstone and I've tried and I'm like, if I just sit here and scrape it on this rock for a long time, it's going to be sharp. Nope, it's not going to be sharp. In fact, you may end up with a dull knife if you don't know what you're doing. That's why people pay other people to sharpen their knives. I've even gotten one of those knife sharpeners that has, like the v, whatever that stuff is, and I try to sharpen and it doesn't work. I cut myself.
I'm hopeless.
The moral of the story is, if you're dying, don't call me. I cannot help you.
You will not survive. I will make it worse. Anyways, if you bang two pieces of iron together, if you just scrape two pieces of iron together, you're not going to sharpen them. You may end up actually doling them if you indiscriminately try to just beat those pieces together in the same way. Yes, iron sharpens iron, and so one man sharpens another. But if we thoughtlessly and without tact, beat each other over the head with it, or if we don't approach each other in the wisest way possible with that mix of courage and compassion, we are not going to end up sharpening each other because our godliness is not going to rub off on each other. We're just going to rub each other the wrong way. That's how it's going to work. Equally as important as administering accountability is how it's done. I want to look at two people who did it really well. Look at the Book of Acts, chapter 18, acts, 1824, it says. Now a jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus. Though he knew only the baptism of John, he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him and explained to him the way of God more accurately. And when he wished to cross to Achaia. The brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him when he arrived. He greatly helped those who, through Grace had believed, for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the scriptures that Jesus was the Christ.
I love the way that they administer accountability to apollos here.
They follow the Matthew 18 method. And I had a friend who did that to me.
It was. I was preacher, he was youth minister. And we were at this event where there were. My wife was actually out of town. We were at a church event and we were out at a restaurant and different people were going home. And there was this other young lady, a few years younger than me. She needed a ride home. Somebody had already left. And I was like, okay, well, I'll just take you while I'm going. And before I got in the car, my friend took me. He said, hey, man, I need to talk to you for a second. And we went over to the side and he said, you cannot take her home. Your wife is out of town. It's just you. It's just her. I'm not saying you're trying to do anything or anything weird is going to happen, but it doesn't look good. It doesn't look good for you to get in the car alone with her and take her home.
Just you and her.
And part of me was like, who do you think you are talking. No.
Part of me at first was defensive, like, I know what I'm doing here. I'm not going to do anything. I'm going to take her home and it's going to be fine. But the other part of me was. You know what? You're right. Do you know why he did that? Because he despised me. He hated me. He wanted. No, he loved me. He loved me. That's why he was willing to do it. It was awkward. We haven't talked to this day. No, we haven't. But it was awkward and it was a little risky business, the confrontation. He risked that I would get mad that we work together.
You don't want to cause strife between people who have to work together every day. But he was willing to do it because he loved me. He saw a situation happening and he didn't do it out of pride, like trying to tell me how wise he was and call me down, but he did it because he loved me. But he did take me aside.
He did do it very covertly. Hey, man, I want to talk to you for a second. He didn't embarrass me in front of people. That wasn't his goal. Sometimes the goal of our accountability matters, or it always matters. Sometimes the goal is off. Sometimes the goal is simply to embarrass. It's not really just to call people out. It's a social media accounts here, right? The goal wasn't just to embarrass or tear me down. It was to build me up and help me.
Aquila and Priscilla do the same thing here. They teach apollos.
They teach him the way more accurately, rather than standing there, they could have just stood there in front of everyone and call him out and tear him down and drag him through the mud. But it doesn't appear that's the way they operated Jesus words in Matthew 18. You're familiar with the way he talks about going to the person individually, then taking someone with you. If it doesn't work, then bringing it for the church. And I know that that passage has primarily to do with when a brother sins against you. Okay. However, I also think those general principles are good for every level of confrontation that we have, including administering accountability.
It's important how we do it. What can you do to help it to go better?
Pray.
If you're going to approach somebody and you're going to administer accountability to them, pray.
Pray for them. Pray with them. It is important that you talk to them, not doing it publicly, and you see something, say something type principle, but go to the person. Why is that important? First. Well, one of the reasons it's important is because you get to clarify. You ever seen a situation that was actually completely different than what it looked like on the surface? That's why it's important to talk to people, because you may give an individual the chance to clarify things for themselves, and things may not be exactly the way that I perceive them to be. Second, you give the person the dignity to respond to those things without having to try to save face in front of other people, which makes it less likely that they will receive it well, too, if they feel they have to save face in front of other people. But third, it also makes it less likely they feel ganged up on. So it is important, Jesus wisdom, if Jesus says to do it, that should be enough for us. But you also can see Jesus wisdom in that part of the process.
You can pray for them, pray for your own heart, pray for their heart. You pray with them, especially if you feel as though this is going to be a tense situation. If you ever approach somebody and they haven't asked you to administer accountability and help keep you accountable, you are just being a Christian who sees something and think something ought to be said. You can pray with them, too. Say, hey, I want to talk to you about something, but can we pray first?
And of course, we'd be careful how we pray, right? We're going to pray, God, please help this person to stop being a dummy and accept what I have to say. You know, obviously we're praying for myself, for them, because we all love God and we want to do the right thing and listen. Listen to them say, this is what I'm seeing. Okay, am I off?
And I'm asking because you know that I love you? Ask active listening, asking clarifying questions. Watch nonverbals, right?
There's a lot of times where, you know, you want to smile and let them know you're not coming from a brow beating type of posture. But smiles are dangerous, aren't they, during confrontation? Because sometimes they, while you're listening to somebody, look like a smirk. And smirks can be dangerous. Rolling eyes, smirks, nonverbals. Nonverbals communicate like 70% of what we communicate. So it's important that we watch those, right? Because that's going to help the conversation go better. Along with that watching tone, watching volume. Sometimes people get defensive when we approach them and it's tempting to try to match their volume if they maybe get a little heated. But attack the issue, too, not the person.
Attack the issue, not the person. And how you talk about it. It is possible, contrary to what many in our culture want you to believe, it is possible to disagree with someone's viewpoint without hating that person.
It's possible to do that.
Take a break if you need to.
You may need to say, hey, look, this is getting a little heavy and I don't want either of us to say something we're going to regret in the future. So why don't we take a break and come back to this later? We'll pray. You pray. And can we revisit this because you don't want it to go further than it needs to stick with the Bible. If this is a biblical issue, let the Bible speak. It may end up being one of those things where they still don't respond well, but it's God's response to Samuel. They've not rejected you, they've rejected me. But you don't want to give them any reason to say, well, this is just you personally against me. Be humble but firm. That's possible. It is possible to be both humble and confident and firm at the same time. Don't you want your doctor to do that?
You want your doctor to be confident. But do you want your doctor to be humble? If somebody, a nurse nearby, points out, I don't think, I think you missed that. You want them to be both? Do you want your pilot to be confident? I think so. Do you want them to be humble? If the co pilot points out something, it's possible. We want that from nearly everyone in our life for them to be both confident but also humble. It is possible for those two to exist together and so come to them with the confidence of what God has to say and your love for them, but do so from a humble perspective. I have things going on as well. I'm not perfect. I'm coming to you because I love you.
I want to look at one more passage. We've got, like just a few minutes left. About 15 minutes. I'm kidding. I know better.
The bells are holding me accountable. First Timothy, chapter one, verse twelve.
Let's end on some good news here.
First Timothy, chapter one, verse twelve.
Paul writes, I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. Why is Crip. Why is Superman so enduring? They're remaking it again, guys. They're remaking it again. They would not cast me in the role I wrote in so many letters. And, no, I'm just kidding. I didn't write in anything. Why is he so enduring? Why do they continue to do it over and over? David Mamet's a playwright who actually says he thinks it's kryptonite that is the enduring part and alluring part of his story. The reason is because he said it's a reminder of his destroyed childhood home and the weakness that pulls him down to being an ordinary person. Without kryptonite, there's nothing very interesting about him. He's invincible. But then it's kryptonite that draws him back to where we are in our humanity. It's a symbol of brokenness and weakness, and we can identify with that, we don't come from Krypton, but we all have kryptonite. We all have weaknesses. We fail, we end up in ruts. In one of the comics, Kent, the father, says to his son, not Kent. Kent is his last name. Jonathan Kent says to his son, your greatest strength is not in your ability to fly or see through walls. It is in knowing the right thing to do.
A christian strength is not in our ability to live a perfect life because none of us have done that. Our strength is in our ability to know and to be able to do the right thing because of what Jesus has done.
There is no when we talk about receiving accountability and saying, okay, I have messed up and yes, I need to do better, the fact is we can.
I have taken that for granted in the past, that it's just a given that God give us second chances.
But the fact of God's accountability is not only that he loves us, but what it means is that we can change. We have a second chance. We get a third chance, that God does love us enough to give us that. Micah 718 says that God delights in mercy. I have to be forced to forgive other people. But God delights in showing mercy. He wants to forgive us. And we see that, of course, most prolifically in the person of Christ. But here's why this is really important. Do you know what the idealized self is? Psychologists call the idealized self. When we have this version of who we want other people to see, and we project that to them, why do we do that? John Powell wrote a book called why I'm afraid to tell you the truth. And in it he says, the reason is because if I tell you the truth about who I really am, you won't love me anymore.
That's one of the reasons we don't accept accountability sometimes. Because once you figure out what I'm really struggling with, once you see my weaknesses, you're going to see me differently. And I'm afraid of that. I'm afraid you're not going to like me as much. I'm afraid you're not going to love me anymore. And so I project this other self to maintain and protect that. Here's where this is beautiful and where we'll end.
God set the church up in such a way that when done correctly, that's taken away because he has called us together through our are similar brokenness. But also, who knows you more than God? Nobody. Who loves you more than God? Nobody. Think about that. I'm afraid if you know the real me, you won't love me anymore. Nobody knows you better than God, and yet nobody loves you more than God. So when we say faithful are the wounds of a friend, songs like what a friend we have in Jesus come to mind, or know not one come to mind, because he really is. The good news is, when we accept accountability, God is ready and willing and there to receive us back, not as second class, but as the children that he loves enough to die for. And aren't we glad? Let's say a prayer as we close. Father, thank you for the time we've had together. I pray, Father, that you help us to receive that accountability from you and from other people, and to administer it with courage and compassion. Together, we're thankful for your son, and we pray in his name. Amen.
