Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Last week we started this sermon series called God Sidings.
[00:00:06] The phrase God sidings is not something that I am used to. It's not something I've ever really said before.
[00:00:12] I heard it because it came up in vacation Bible school.
[00:00:16] I've always done like the teens in vacation Bible school, but apparently in the elementary grade class, they talk a lot about God sightings. They talk about how when you go out, pay attention to where you see God at work. And from what I understand, they kind of describe like, you know, people will know that you're my disciples by the way, that you love one another. So you see God in the way that people treat each other. When people act towards their neighbor, the way Jesus would act towards them, and you see the love that they show for each other, you begin to see God at work. So pay attention and notice where you see God showing up around you.
[00:00:56] And when I heard that, I was like, oh, yeah, that reminds me of like, when I think about the kingdom of God. The Bible talks about that the kingdom of God is inside of you and that it should. Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I'll be also like, I am present where you are functioning together as you are living, as if I were living through you, as if I am living in you.
[00:01:19] You'd say, the spirit of God is in you. And when you live and function that way, you see people interact in ways you're like, man, I could totally see Jesus doing that. Like, that reminds me a lot of what I think about the character of Christ. And I begin to see God at work around me. So we want to do a sermon series where we looked at these God sightings. What does it mean? How do we orient ourselves to be able to see God at work and to participate in. In God at work.
[00:01:51] If you're going to talk about a God sighting, you have to start with Jesus.
[00:01:55] Jesus is God incarnate. When we talk about God sightings, we're usually talking about a spiritual essence that shows up in the way that two people interact with each other. I wouldn't say like, oh, bro, you're like, you are God. But I would say like, oh, I saw God in the way that you two interacted with each other. Right?
[00:02:13] With Jesus, I would say, yeah, yeah, no, I saw God. Matter of fact, Jesus says, anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.
[00:02:21] He's very blunt about this.
[00:02:25] He is the incarnation of God. And every example we have in the Bible of anything that he had to say, anything that he had, anything that he did the way that he carried himself, the things that he found interesting, like when he like noticed the lady putting all that she had into the offering plate and like all the little stories and the things that, that grabbed his attention, the things he got angry at all. Like literally every single moment of his life is a God siding. Like you.
[00:02:57] To be present with Jesus was to be present to God incarnate, physically demonstrating the character of God in a, in a physical world.
[00:03:08] And I just imagine what it would have been like to, to be present to that.
[00:03:13] On the one hand, I think like, man, I would have, like, how could you do anything but just bow down and worship Him? You know? On the other hand, almost nobody did. Like most people had a problem with him. They had predetermined that God must be like something other than Jesus. And they were really offended by him. Even his own disciples didn't understand a lot of what he had to say and do. They were constantly confused by him because they came with a set of presuppositions about what God must be like.
[00:03:47] What does it mean to sight God. When Jesus was literally present to them, they missed it. So when we say like, you notice, like look around and see God at work around. You understand people looking at Jesus didn't see God. Like that's a, that's a tough gig, right? Like I'm guessing, you know, I'm at an advantage. I'm on this side of the resurrection, I've got all those advantages.
[00:04:15] On the other hand, I bet I am about as dumb as a lot of them are. So my like God sighting skills probably aren't that great, right?
[00:04:28] So how do I go about building my God siding skills?
[00:04:32] Well, the first thing we talked about last week is it must start with Jesus. And from Jesus it comes primarily through his church.
[00:04:43] Jesus was the revelation of Christ Jesus. Disciples followed Christ, those disciples followed those disciples, and so on.
[00:04:52] Paul even says, follow, follow my example as I follow the example of Christ. So when he's talking to Titus or Timothy or any of the people that he evangelized or demonstrated Christ to, he was clear to say, the way that I want you to see God is to pay attention to me.
[00:05:15] Look at me and look at the way I manage my affairs.
[00:05:20] Pay attention to me because I am paying attention to Jesus.
[00:05:24] And as you pay attention to me, you will cite God. You will see God.
[00:05:30] Now I want to say that this is the primary work of the church, and specifically I think this is the primary work of parents before kids ever had the opportunity to really understand prayer like they might kind of engage in some prayerful things, you know, like we might show them, like, bow your head, close your eyes, let's pray for dinner, or whatever like that. Before they can really understand what it means to read the Bible, they read you, they see you, and through you, they understand what's normal in life.
[00:06:11] And what's normal will either be something Christ like or something not Christlike.
[00:06:18] And the way that you follow Christ is the only way that they know to follow Christ because they are observing you, they are following you, they are imitating you, whoever you're imitating.
[00:06:33] So when I read this, it is.
[00:06:38] As a parent, I think this is like a high. This is a big deal.
[00:06:42] But it's no smaller a deal for any other Christian either. Like, this is he. He's not writing to parents. He's writing about himself. Follow me as I follow after Christ. And to Timothy, he's going to tell them to say, do the same thing to the church that you're pastoring. Like, it is our obligation to have our eyes on Christ and then to live in Christ so that people can follow.
[00:07:08] This is what the church is, okay?
[00:07:11] And the church is an unbroken chain of people citing God and following their mentors ahead of them. Now, when we see this, we say, follow me as I follow after Christ.
[00:07:24] I don't know what came to your mind, but I think, like, I need to be a good person. You know, I don't know. I don't want to put words in your head, but you likely have some idea of what Paul is saying. Follow me as I follow after Christ. And if you took that on board and you said, what would it mean for me to follow Christ?
[00:07:51] How would you flesh that out in your head?
[00:07:54] We're fortunate that in second Timothy, Paul fleshes this out exactly for Timothy, what he means by following him.
[00:08:03] He tells Timothy, you followed my teaching, my conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance in persecutions and sufferings such as what happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, what persecutions I endured. And out of them all, the Lord rescued me. I want to break this up a little bit. He says, first, you followed me in what I said, everything that I taught you, the things that I told you mattered.
[00:08:36] You followed me in the way I conducted myself, the way you watched, the way that I interacted with other people. You not only heard the things that I said, you actually observed the way I interacted with other people.
[00:08:49] You knew the purpose that I had when I interacted with them. You knew what was in My heart. You knew the faith, the patience and the love that I had.
[00:08:58] You knew that those experiences, the conduct, the things that I had to say, they were the same thing when things were easy and when things were hard. You remember the persecution and the suffering that I persevered when I was in Antioch. Do you remember that time in Antioch when I had to confront Peter about the way he was interacting with the Gentiles? Peter, who is like, the rock on which I will build this church. Like, the dude everybody's like, oh, yeah, Peter's the head disciple. I went to Peter and said, you're doing it all wrong.
[00:09:33] That was scary. You know, like, that's probably not easy.
[00:09:37] You remember the way that went down.
[00:09:41] That was a hard moment when I had to go to Peter and deal with that.
[00:09:46] You remember what happened to me in Iconium? You remember when I was teaching there, and me and Barnabas both, and they got so mad at us, they picked up stones and they tried to kill us. And we literally had to run. We had to, like. We were like.
[00:10:01] They were chasing us out of the city. Like, we were in good. We were younger then. We were in pretty good shape, and we were able to, like, get out of there before they stoned us to death. You remember in Lystra when I was a little bit older, not as fast, and they actually did stone me and they left me for dead.
[00:10:19] Timothy, do you remember how broken my body? Do you remember that? I was in such bad shape that when they did it, they thought I was dead. When they left me, that was the condition I was in, what persecution I endured.
[00:10:40] And out of all of them, the Lord rescued me.
[00:10:44] You remember that I was who I was in every situation, as bad as it could possibly get.
[00:10:56] You remember that? I followed Christ to the end.
[00:11:01] Follow me as I follow Christ in my teaching, my conduct and my purpose, in my faith, my patience and my love, all the way to the end.
[00:11:16] All right, this. This is what. This is what. This is what Peter is saying. Follow me as I am this.
[00:11:24] But then he does something else that I think is really interesting, something that I think is very helpful to us. It's very important. I really want to stress. We talked about this last week, but I really want to stress again, following Christ.
[00:11:37] I think we are given the church as the primary mode to cite Jesus, like, literally. We are called on to conduct ourselves and to pay attention to other believers, conducting themselves in a way that is like Christ, to encourage each other to follow hard after Christ. We see Christ in the way that the Church shows love to each other. I can't.
[00:11:59] Usually when we talk about God siding, it's almost like we want to talk about, like, oh, some miracle thing that happened over there or some, like, some, like, random act of chaos that happened, right, or something, when actually it is the church primarily following Christ that is the incarnation of God.
[00:12:21] But then he says this, continuing on, you must continue with the things you have learned and found convincing.
[00:12:30] You know who taught you since childhood, you have known the Holy Scriptures that help you be wise in a way that leads to salvation through faith, which is in Jesus Christ. And then he says this, I just told, follow me. You've been following me. Follow me as I follow after Christ. You saw all the way I followed Christ. But all scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for showing mistakes, for correcting, and for training in righteousness so that the person dedicated to God can be capable and equipped to do every good work.
[00:13:06] It's not just enough that I am paying attention to those who have gone before me.
[00:13:12] I am constantly refining what I am seeing in those people and what I am learning to do myself. As I read the Scripture, it's like I grow up seeing the way that my mom or dad conducted themselves growing up in a Christian household.
[00:13:30] But I read the scripture and I begin to see, like, why, how it played out for them.
[00:13:36] They're human. And maybe, maybe, maybe there were ways that Jesus wouldn't have done it that way. And before I couldn't distinguish. I just knew that that was my mom, my dad, and everything that they did was what I was following. But now that I'm reading the Bible, I can distinguish between, between the times that they were following God and the times that they weren't.
[00:13:58] I can see that they went this far in following Christ, and here they didn't. And not that I'm judging them or critiquing them, but I'm constantly looking for the best way to follow after Christ. And I'm grateful for the example that I had before me. And I'm also grateful for the refining act of reading the Bible to help me translate what I experienced in those people around me so that I can push that ball forward so that I can myself follow after Christ.
[00:14:29] I'm going to give an example.
[00:14:32] I want you to think about something that I think is very tough for people generally. And that's like dealing with conflict.
[00:14:42] How do you deal with conflict with somebody else? And I don't mean like, you know, somebody that you don't know. I mean somebody that matters to you, somebody that. Like a family member or a longtime friend, somebody that.
[00:15:02] Somebody that you want to be close with, and for whatever reason, you haven't been able to be close with them.
[00:15:09] Okay.
[00:15:12] When you think about how to address that, how do I bridge this? How do I resolve the conflict that exists between us?
[00:15:20] The first thing that we always do is go back to whatever was taught to us. That's our. We have this gut instinct, this reaction, like, when that conflict occurs, we have this gut reaction that tells us this is what we should do. If it's like fight or flight, you know, depending on the person, you could kind of see that for some people, their first instinct is to jump. Why did you do that? And for some people, it's like, oh, it's okay. It's not a big deal. It'll be fine. You know, there are these instincts that we have that have been built up a lot of times because of whatever we were taught growing up. And then past those instincts that we kind of developed, we have these examples.
[00:16:05] We remember, yeah, this is what I ought to do, because I know this person who's good at dealing. I remember. I remember this time that I really screwed up. And I remember the way that this other person came to me and addressed it. And he didn't make me feel judged.
[00:16:27] He made me feel like he really.
[00:16:29] It mattered to him and that his goal wasn't to, like, you know, rub my face in it. He just really wanted us to be okay again. And that.
[00:16:42] That was really cool.
[00:16:44] I wonder if I can emulate that. I wonder if I can, like, copy that.
[00:16:47] Follow me as I follow after Christ. That's good.
[00:16:52] But then I think before I do that, it might be good to, like, read what the Bible has to say about conflict.
[00:17:01] Did Jesus have anything to say about conflict that could give me. Could inform me about how I should deal with things?
[00:17:09] So, first of all, I remember in the Sermon on the Mount, he says, before you ever go and address anybody else, make sure that your heart's in good shape. The way he says it specifically is, before you go, deal with the speck in somebody else's eye, deal with the log in your own eye. Like that thing that you think is so big in them. Make sure that there isn't something massive in you. And the truth is, I really don't know enough about what's going on in you for it to be more than a speck. But in myself, I know deeply what's going on. I know it's like an iceberg, like, in you I can see this thing that's poking above the water. That's a real problem.
[00:17:43] But when I look to myself, it's not just the thing above the water. I can, if I'm ruthlessly honest with myself, I can see the whole iceberg and I can see the depths of what needs to be addressed to myself. And he says, before, before you ever go to somebody else, you need to repent of your own stuff.
[00:18:03] I gotta tell you, if you do that first, it changes your demeanor when you go to somebody else in conflict.
[00:18:15] If you've gone through the.
[00:18:17] If you've honestly gone through the process of repenting and turning away from whatever sin you've been dealing with.
[00:18:28] And it is, for me, I don't know if it's like, for you, but it's painful, it's good. Good like broccoli.
[00:18:36] It's like, good, but I don't want to have to eat it. You know, once you do that, you have a different attitude when you go and address the other person.
[00:18:51] But then Jesus says this In Matthew, chapter 18, after you have put yourself in the right head space to go to the other person, you're not going as their judge. You're literally going to try to help them be saved from sin the way you have been saved from sin. The release from whatever you, whatever log has been in your own eye.
[00:19:16] He says, if another believer sins against you, after you've addressed that, go privately and point out the offense.
[00:19:26] Go one on one. Don't make a big deal out of it. Don't try to do whatever you can to be. To not make a scene on their behalf.
[00:19:34] And he says, if the other person listens and confess, you've won the person back. He literally says, you've gained a brother. It's like this person that was a becoming an enemy to you, like you were frustrated with them or they were causing anxiety, something in them was causing your gut to clench up.
[00:20:01] If they agree with you and they're like, I did not intend it, I did not recognize that I was doing that, or you're right and I don't want to, but that's the only thing I've ever known. Like, how else could I deal with that situation? However they respond, if they don't respond by attacking you, you've gained a brother. Now, practically, let me say this.
[00:20:29] Generally, if I have to go to somebody else and to address a problem, I assume that the first reaction that I get from them is not going to be.
[00:20:37] Usually the first reaction is they're unhappy with me. And they have some way to lash out at me back. Okay, that's fine because they're caught off guard.
[00:20:49] Let that go and like, give it a little bit of time. And I would come back to it again after. They're not surprised by it. Okay, just. That's just my practical addition.
[00:21:00] If you're following me as I follow after Christ, that's going to be my example. Addition to what?
[00:21:05] What Paul has to say here.
[00:21:07] When you go to them, if they respond poorly the very first time, don't assume that that is the final answer. That might just be that first instinct that they had.
[00:21:21] Give it a minute, go again. And if the other person listens and confesses, you've won them back. That's awesome.
[00:21:30] But if you're unsuccessful, take one or two others with you and go back again so that everything they say may be confirmed by two or three witnesses.
[00:21:40] When I do this, I always want to make sure that I'm going with people that like them more than me.
[00:21:48] I want to go with people that love that other person as much or as more than they care about me.
[00:21:57] I don't want to go with people who have my back and are going to see things my way. I'm going to go with people who really want that other person to do well in their life. Right.
[00:22:12] Again, it's going to be daunting for that other person to be faced not just with what you had to say, but with a couple of other people.
[00:22:22] And so for it to be people that care for them and that they know care for them, that makes a big difference.
[00:22:32] If the person still refuses to listen, take your case to the church. Now, I want to say this. When he says church, he means people following Christ, people that love one another like a brother. The assumption here was the church were people that loved that person, knew and loved that person.
[00:22:49] We think of church, we could think of like a 20,000 person church or like, you know, I would say a church is more like a small group. People that have known that person for a while, have cared about them for a long time.
[00:23:03] Their church are the people broadly that want them to be restored, want that relationship to be brought back.
[00:23:13] And again, you, you're going with the hope that they begin to see that this is not a conflict between just the two of you. This isn't just like a personality. They're likely at that point to have assumed the first time that it was just a personality conflict between the two of you, which it wasn't.
[00:23:35] Your goal is for them to be restored to faith. To following Christ, not to be restored to you. You brought those other two people back. Hopefully that they would see these people that care about them and say, man, all these people that really care about me see something in me that needs to change. Is there something there that needs to change? By the way, when you do that, it sometimes happens that you didn't see things right. Which is also helpful.
[00:24:01] These people that cared about that other person, you went to them to address their thing and it turned out there was something you missed. That's great.
[00:24:08] That's also helpful. You just got some information. You got your brother restored because you understand the situation better than you did before. You're just human. Right?
[00:24:17] Okay.
[00:24:19] And then he says to take the whole church and then if the person won't accept the church's decision, treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt tax collector. I want to address that in a minute, but first I just want to say I want to look at this process that's just gone on.
[00:24:38] If you see this happen, if you have been a part of this, and I mean on either end of has been awful, probably, unless the person did repent and like people restored, that's a blessing and that's good. And you could say, like, oh, I saw God in that. I saw God in that person being restored. Fantastic.
[00:25:02] But you saw God even if that person wasn't restored. When you saw the church functioning as the church loving that individual, even if they didn't receive that love, you were still citing God as you participated in that process. And it was awful.
[00:25:15] You can be a part of things that are not like, oh, that was so gushy and nice, like touching the new baby and holding it. It was so good. No, it wasn't. It was like. It was like a moment you would love to never have happen again in your life. And that was a God sighting because you actually saw people live in a way that invited other people to come and participate.
[00:25:36] When you cite Jesus on the cross, you have not cited a more horrific thing in your life. And that's a God sighting. It doesn't mean it's a thing that, like, makes you feel gushy inside. It means that is as Jesus would act if he were me.
[00:25:50] That is the action of God in a sinful world. How does this loving God act in this sinful world where the church is doing that?
[00:25:59] That is God being sided.
[00:26:03] And thank God that sometimes it's beautiful because sometimes it's not.
[00:26:09] Anyway, he says at that person, at that point, you treat the person like a pagan or a Corrupt tax collector. At which point I think, thank you, because this process has been horrible. And I Time to write this person off because, like, I've done everything I could and they're a jerk. So, like, clean hands. Where's the bowl of water? Like, I'm ready to. I'm ready to, like, shake the dust off, right?
[00:26:37] Well, so Peter.
[00:26:39] Peter gets super. Like, Peter, who is much more, like, holier than me. I'm thinking like, whew, thank God that's over. Peter says this, lord, how often should I forgive someone who sinned against me? Seven times. I'm like, peter, bro, you've been through the whole process once. That's plenty. You're gonna go through this seven times? That's nuts.
[00:27:00] So Peter's like. Peter's like, yeah, I see that process, but I don't wanna give up on that person. How many times should I not give up on them? Seven times. And Jesus says, you never give up on that person.
[00:27:11] 70 times, seven. Like, you don't ever give up on the individual.
[00:27:17] Which is funny because he says, treat them like a pagan or a corrupt tax collector. Which my first instinct would be like, yeah, like, how are you gonna treat somebody? Like, I don't want to have anything to do with him. But then you look what Jesus did. He's like, everybody's freaking out that he's having lunch with these people, right? That he's like, he never gives up on anybody.
[00:27:45] And so what it means to treat that. Treat that person like a pagan or tax. A corrupt tax collector is your assumption at that point just has to be that they are not following Christ.
[00:27:58] If they don't intend to love you like a brother after you've done everything that you can to restore them.
[00:28:07] You know, you're not in charge of who's saved and who's not saved. You don't get, oh, that person's saved, that person's not saved.
[00:28:13] That's God's decision to make. Like, he knows the heart, not me. But at that point, I have to say, whatever their salvation situation is, I need to start treating them as if they're not. I need to start treating them as if they don't understand what it means to follow God. And I am now responsible for, like, showing them what it means to follow God, like, from the start. Like, my goal is to see them from the base up begin to follow Christ.
[00:28:44] I'm not trying to, like, resolve this as, like, two brothers figuring out what it means to follow Christ. I'm now resolving this, like, here I'm a follower of Christ interacting with somebody who doesn't yet. And I'm praying that they do.
[00:28:57] My goal is that they would start following Christ, which is not somebody you give up on.
[00:29:04] Okay, now, the way I explain that comes a lot from what I experienced growing up with my parents.
[00:29:11] I saw a lot of this play out the way I described it to you.
[00:29:17] I read the passage and then I inserted details that don't actually come from the passage. They came from what I saw played out from people ahead of me. And what I actually experienced is I've been doing this in my life for several years now.
[00:29:33] So the way I described this wasn't just. I didn't just, like, exegete the passage. I didn't just, like, teach the Bible. I literally looked to Scripture and I explained it through my own experiences to say, this is what you might want to pay attention to if you intend to cite God to see God in the midst of conflict.
[00:29:57] So who has come before you?
[00:30:01] What does the Bible have to say?
[00:30:03] How have your experiences interpreted all of that in the way that you live that out?
[00:30:11] This is how we begin to see God at work.
[00:30:14] There's something, and I mean this in the best possible sense, there's something very childlike about simply following somebody else as they follow after Christ.
[00:30:25] There's a very important stage in your. And anything that you do. Like, one summer I worked with Brandon cutting grass. I'm sorry, Brandon. I did the best I could, but, like, he told me how to use that zero turn, you know? And the first day, I literally rolled down a hill and he had to come rescue it. And it was my job to listen to him. I didn't do a very good job. He was very patient with me, surprisingly patient.
[00:30:55] And I will never forget the way that he didn't yell at me for almost breaking a very expensive piece of equipment. Like, I noticed that I learned from him how to teach somebody else how to do something.
[00:31:14] There was a stage which I had to have a very childlike response.
[00:31:19] I did what I could. I failed. And then I received whatever I was going to get from the guy who knew more than me about that. You know what I mean?
[00:31:27] But then there gets a point where you need to learn how to. Like, it's not okay that I'm running that thing down the hill a month from now, a second time, you know, tomorrow. Like, you've got to learn from those things. And then you got to start picking up from your own experiences how to not make those mistakes, not how to those things. Don't become a lifestyle.
[00:31:51] You don't begin to live a lifestyle of sin and failing and just looking to mentors. You actually want to start looking how to develop your own self to see, to see Christ for yourself and to see how it plays out through what you've learned and hopefully going back to Jesus, what Jesus has to say on that topic, and trusting Jesus enough to say, okay, I saw the way that my dad dealt with that conflict and I saw a lot of this in the way that my dad did that. But I saw some things that he didn't do there. And I want to try to see what it would look like to conform more closely to the standard here when I deal with this conflict the next time.
[00:32:35] Does it make sense as you develop a maturity in the way that you follow Christ?
[00:32:45] That's not like, that's not how you begin to see God. That is seeing God. That's not the, that's not the lens through which you see God. That is you seeing God.
[00:32:55] The application of following Christ is you seeing God. Do you understand that?
[00:33:03] Like, he literally shows up.
[00:33:06] He is in you.
[00:33:08] He is showing up in the way that you are interacting with other people. You're literally bringing the sight into the incarnational world. You're bringing the sight of God physically into the world in the way that you follow after those who follow after Christ.
[00:33:25] Learn from those experiences and pay a lot of attention to what the Bible has to say practically about how to live those things out.
[00:33:33] And in maturity, you begin to conform more closely to Christ, to the incarnation of God in day to day life.
[00:33:41] This is how we start.
[00:33:44] This is how we start to see God at work in us tomorrow, next Sunday. I want to add another layer to that. I want to talk about prayer and the role that prayer has in helping us being able to see God as we are. People who have followed those who have followed after Christ, have been paying attention to, paying attention to the word of God. And we begin to talk directly to God through prayer, asking, asking him about what's going on in the world.
[00:34:15] That's going to be next week.
[00:34:18] Let's pray, Father. God, you called us to follow you and we know that we can't do that unless we know what you're telling us to do. Lord, unless we see you, unless we hear you, we can't follow you.
[00:34:34] And God, we are your followers, which means we are people that want to listen to you and to pay attention to you.
[00:34:42] God give us the humility to look to mentors and the doggedness to approach your word in order to find what you have to say.
[00:34:56] Your laws for life, the way that you say that we should live life, trusting that when we follow you, we are bringing you into the world.
[00:35:06] We love you, God. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
