The Way of Jesus 2.0

Uncovering The Way of Jesus 2.0 - Conversation with Adam and Dale Meredith, and Luke Bates at The Red Door Community Church.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
We have three speakers this morning,everybody, and they are Dale,
Meredith, Luke Bates, and yours truly.
So why don't you welcomethem as they come forward?
We are in a series that, yes, it'scalled Uncovering the Way of Jesus.
Do you want to pulpit as well
a rose between two thorns?
Yes.
Maybe we can share poolpicture of that one.

(00:21):
You are that rose
Luke.
Okay.
So today begins kind of the beginning ofhaving a conversation, in rather than
just kind of, providing information buthaving a little bit of back and forth.
And every time we've done conversationformats, I really think they've
been helpful just to spark yourown internal conversations around,
in this case, the way of Jesus.

(00:44):
Beautiful.
So, Dar, I know you're gonna start us off.
All right.
So yeah, how this morning's gonna
roll is, I'm just
gonna do a bit of an intro.
And so we started this serieslast week, so if you weren't here
last Sunday, if you haven't caughtthe first part of this series.
Make sure you have a listen to the podcast'cause it does lay the foundational
groundwork, for what
we're gonna cover in the weeks ahead.

(01:04):
So you can access that, thatthrough the Red Door app.
And so this morning I'm just gonnashare a bit of an intro, introduce
the passage of scripture that we
are gonna, be speaking
out of this morning.
And then, I'm gonna
have a chat with these two good
people here.
And it's
gonna be good.
Yes, yes, yes.

(01:25):
Let's look at thescripture for this morning.
Matthew four verses 1, 2 11.
And so this is the account ofJesus temptation with Satan in the
wilderness.
And so it
says this, then Jesus was led bythe Spirit into the wilderness to be
tempted by the devil After fasting,40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry.

(01:48):
The temp came to him and said,if you are the son of God, tell
these stones to become bred.
Jesus answered.
It is written, man shall not liveon bread alone, but in every word
that comes from the mouth of God.
Then the devil took him to theholy city and had him stand on
the highest point of the temple.
If you are the son of God, he said,throw yourself down for it is written.

(02:09):
You will command his angels concerningyou and they will lift you up in
their hands so that you will notstrike your foot against a stone.
Jesus answered him.
It is also written.
Do not put the Lord your God to the test.
Again.
The devil took him to a very highmountain and showed him all the kingdoms
of the world and their splendor.
All this I will give you.
He said, if you will bow down andworship me, Jesus said to him, away

(02:29):
from me, Satan, for it is written,worship the Lord your God, and serve
him only then the devil left Himand angels came and attended him.
So in this passage we got, we see thisaccount of Jesus being tempted to walk.
A way other than the way ofGod, these three temptations
that at their core represent atemptation to walk another way.

(02:52):
And so this morning we're gonnaleverage out of these three different
temptations, specifically withinthe context of a way that we are
all discipled in, in the cultureand in a time place that we live in.
And so, yes, this is, part two.
Of our series.
Like I said before, we have laidthe foundational framework last week

(03:14):
when we looked at the wide and narrowway that Jesus teaches about towards
the end of his sermon in the Mount.
'cause Jesus doesn't justcall us to belief in him.
He calls us to follow him, tobe as he is in the world, to
follow and live out his ways.
And why is that?
Because these ways are the onlyways that lead to life, to the
abundant life that he promises.

(03:35):
But we do have this problem, andthis problem is encapsulated in the
wisdom of Proverbs four 12 here.
Which we did reference last week.
Have we got, got that there?
No, we don't.
All right.
Well, it's very easy.
It's very short.
There is a way that appears to beright, but in the end it leads to death.
Okay?
There is, there are ways of beingand living in this world that seems

(04:00):
so very right to us, but ultimatelythey are destructive to us.
They are self-harming ways, butin a sense, there is no such
thing as just self-harm, right?
I know self-harm.
We have a very specificcontext in our time
and place, for what
comes to mind when we think of that.
But you know, scripture talk, Paul talks
about it, those who've

(04:20):
been led away from the face andpierce themselves with many griefs.
When we walk in ways that arenot the ways of God, we pierce
ourselves with many grief, butit's never just ourselves, is it?
You know, whatever harm we do toourselves, whatever ways we walk in
that are destructive, always have aneffect on those around us as well.
We do not live in isolation.

(04:40):
And so this isn't just about you, it'sabout who we are in the world being
a blessing to those around us as wellas we learn to embrace and uncover
more and more the ways of Jesus.
And so
another, important
thing to note, and we touched onthis last week, there is no neutral
third way, which is I think a lot oftimes we get seduced into thinking,

(05:02):
and maybe not terribly consciously,but we might go, oh, I know I'm not.
Fully walking committed to Jesus.
I know I've got these ways that probablyaren't great, but they're not really that
bad because I'm not murdering anybody.
I'm not doing anything deeply,profoundly evil, right?
And so we think we're okay in thisthird way, this neutral territory.
There is no neutral territory.
There is only the narrowway or the wide way.

(05:23):
There is only the pathof life or the path of
destruction.
And so Jesus,
if we just look at,
there's no fe, there's no fence sitting.
There's no fence sitting.
There is no fence.
You cannot sit on it.
You cannot occupy a neutral territory.
So Jesus, have we got this next?
Have we got the slides working this?
Yep.
So Jesus is not a supplementto the world's way.

(05:46):
He is the alternative.
Okay?
We can't just add Jesus to the ways ofthis world that we particularly like
and fond of and think are serving us.
And go, I can supplement my life withsome Jesus and that's gonna add a little
bit of pep and a little bit of zingand a bit of extra guarantee that my
life's gonna be all I want it to be.
He's not a supplement.

(06:06):
He is the alternative.
There is the way of the kingdomof God and there is the way of
the world, and they stand in co.
Star con contrast to one another, butwe are always being tempted to embrace
the ways of the world are around us.
Dale, I've always liked mm-hmm.
How Jesus is not a, anextra book in your library.

(06:29):
He's a whole new library.
Yes.
Very good.
A
lot of times we'll see him like a Yeah.
Oh yeah, I've got the Jesus book.
Cheers, mate.
Yeah,
no, no.
We're talking about a re a renovationthat's beyond what we've ever had before.
Sorry.
Yeah.
No, no, no.
It is very good.
So the thing we're gonna look in, look atthis morning, contrasting to the way of
Jesus, and we're gonna use that scripturethat we just read at the beginning.

(06:52):
There is the way of consumerism.
So one of the ways, the wideways that creeps into the church,
creeps into the life of thedisciple is that of consumerism.
And so what do we mean by this word?
So it's a word we're all familiar with.
Very familiar with, right?
And so in a nutshell,it's an economic theory.
The consumer spending is the keyto individual wellbeing, right?

(07:13):
And so that's it in its economic sense.
But we know it's far morethan just economics, don't we?
It's an actual identity.
That in our time and place we getborn into and discipled in, it's an
actual identity that we have to learnhow to shed when we follow Jesus.

(07:34):
And if we're not aware of it,we will try to get Jesus ends.
Through consumeristic meansbecause we have been formed in this
identity and it takes some renewingof the minds, but the ways of
consumerism, they are fundamentallyantithetical to the ways of Jesus.
And we're gonna go through some of thisthis morning as we have this conversation.

(07:57):
'cause they're built on opposingassumptions about what life is for, what
people are for and what God is like.
So a
couple of, statements
to help us, I guess,
frame this.
So self at
the center versus Christ at the center.
Consumerism says it's about me, my needs,my wants, my preferences, my fulfillment.
And Jesus says, deny yourself.

(08:18):
Take up your cross andfollow me in consumerism.
I'm the customer in the kingdom.
I'm the disciple.
One demands to be served.
The other exists to serve.
Last week we talked about the good life.
We all want to know what the good life is.
Jesus says, the good life is foundas you walk in my ways, right?
But what we get deceived intobelieving, particularly like in this
area of consumerism, the good lifeis found as I put my needs first.

(08:42):
As I am constantly driven by thequestion, what's in it for me?
Is this good for me?
That's the consumeristic identitythat, speaks so loudly in our
lives if we're not aware of it.
So, next one, acquisitionversus surrender.
So consumerism and thrives onaccumulation, more comfort,
more convenience, moreoptions, more experiences.
But Jesus teaches simplicity,simplicity, surrender, generosity.

(09:05):
So consumerism informs us into takers, butthe way of Jesus is always about giving.
All right, so.
Using or being motivated by consumeristicmeans will not lead to Jesus ends.
And this is somethingthat we have to, I guess,
resolve, in our own
minds

(09:26):
and hearts.
Consumerism
tends to shape, reshape, temptsus to reshape Jesus' ends.
Worship discipleship mission.
Using Satan's means manipulation,spectacle, and power.
That's what we're gonnalook at this morning.
But Jesus refused every shortcuthe embraced the slow, hidden
way of love and obedience.

(09:49):
Can you say that again?
Slow, the slow
hidden way of love and obedience.
Yeah.
One more time.
The slow, hidden wayof love and obedience.
Yes, yes.
It is only obedience to his waysthat will ultimately lead to life.
So let's have a look atthis first temptation.

(10:10):
And this is a framework I've
borrowed from, Eugene Peterson.
And, so yeah,
this is not original to me, so youcould probably track that down if
you wanted to look into it further.
So this first one, stones into bread.
The temptation to be relevant.
Interesting, huh.
So the consumeristic version, this ofthis is give the people what they want.

(10:37):
So just
a quick, picture that
I just wanna present to youthis morning as we dive into
this discussion around this is.
What can the consumeristic, way of livingoften does in the context of church?
It turns church into adestination rather than a vehicle.
Okay, so what do I mean by this?

(10:59):
The people of God have alwaysmeant to be, I. The vehicle through
which Goss outworks his plans ofredemption in the world, right?
We are meant to.
From the time of Abraham to theIsraelites, the call has always
been the same, to be peoplethrough whom God can bless the
world, by blessing them the world.
Is blessed, right?
And but what, when our consumeristicculture says is that church needs

(11:22):
to be this destination place whereall your felt needs are satisfied.
That's, that offers a buffet of religiousgoods and services that you can come and
sample from each Sunday so that you canwalk out with this sense of fulfillment
and feeling good about yourselfbecause you are the center of it all.
And we can so easily form these ways ofthinking and it happens all the time.

(11:44):
You know, where do people go in a, inchurch, oh, well this church wasn't
meeting my needs, so now I'm gonna go andwe've got this buffet of churches and we
can just hop around Because, you know,choice is such a great thing, right?
Well, it's not, it actually stops usfrom just planting and being where God
has put us this illusion of choice.
This is not, red door is notmeant to be a destination for you

(12:05):
where all your felt needs are met.
It meant to be a vehicle thattransforms you for the glory of
God and for the good of the world.
So.
All right.
So churches can often feel thepressure to meet felt needs.
Like I just said, Christiansmay come to church asking, what
is this gonna do for me today?
Rather than, how can I offermyself to God and these people?
So the key concept here, relevance is abyproduct of faithfulness, not a strategy.

(12:28):
The church's role isn't to mirrorthe marketplace, but to be a sign of
the kingdom, even when that's slow.
Countercultural or uncomfortable.
Alright.
Which of you two wants to gofirst on your thoughts and
reflections on this particular
temptation?
I think I
would want to help us to start by,by thinking about consumerism from a

(12:54):
position of that, that this is, it isa system and it's fueled by powers.
It is not a, it's not just, it'snot just something that's come
about that we've all agreed to.
There's forces behind consumerism,and they're evil forces.
They're dark powers that are rallyingagainst the ways of the kingdom of God.

(13:18):
So I wanna start there for usas we talk about consumerism,
because sometimes I think if we,we just talk about, oh yeah, no.
You know, I, I tend to buy a bittoo many things here or there.
We can kind of just erode what isactually taking a place, and I wanna
be more suspect of it than that.
I want to, I wanna encourage you tohave a vision, similar to that as well.

(13:41):
This is, this is a system, this isa power I. There's working against,
and, and we, we, we live in thewaters of these powers and systems in
this world.
And I think
we've gotta be, we've gotta bereally humble, through this series.
Our hope is that we would come withhumility and say, search us Lord.

(14:02):
You know, know my anxious thoughts, know,know all those wicked ways within me.
You know, that's the, that's, that'swhat I'm coming to in this series anyway.
I. Lord, dig up, what am I blind to?
Where am I falling for these powers?
And the thing about consumerism isthat there's a, there's actually a
really, really simple way, to, reflectand to understand whether you've

(14:29):
become a victim of it in your life.
And that is that you will look atthings like community, like family,
a church, and you will view them.
In ways that, that, thatyou'll spend most of your time
and reflection of these, these
life giving, opportunities

(14:50):
that we can
enter into.
You'll, you
will spend most of your timethinking inwardly as opposed to
outwardly, consumerism by its powerwants us to turn into ourselves.
And its promise.
It's actually, it's a, it's, it'sa sneaky little thing, isn't it?
Consumerism.
And I was, it, it wants us, itwants us to, it wants to answer the

(15:13):
question, what do you want and what do
you need?
But the problem
with consumerism, it neveractually answers that question.
It, it, it, it welcomes usinto this infinite loop.
And I was like, I was sitting
at, at on Friday,
I was out with Beck and we were.
Down at
Carousel,
mecca of

(15:34):
consumerism.
Mecca
of consumerism, you know, worshiping the
idols.
And, and someone
in our family just, she, she reallywants some new pajamas and she's,
she's, she loves Peter Alexander
Wright.
And, I'm sort
of standing there and I'm watchingmom and my, my beautiful wife go
through and work out what to get.

(15:55):
And I'm just like, this is amazing.
It's actually phenomenal.
This business model of Peter Alexander.
Here's this guy who'smaking pajamas, right?
And you can get similar pajamas.
They're nice pajamas, right?
You feel 'em, you, oh, that's nice.
And but the reality is you couldwalk down, you could walk down to
Kmart and get something similar.

(16:17):
For like 20 bucks.
And Peter Alexander's charging$130 for something similar, right?
I mean, what's the difference?
What's going on here?
It's a dash out.
It's a logo, right?
They're cute.
It's cute, right?
But what is it promising?
Tell us.
Well, it's speaking into, it'sgoing, it's promising that you

(16:38):
can identify with something.
It's promising that, that as you identifywith this thing, that it will bring
meaning to you.
That, that
somehow will fulfill you.
And, and the reality is that ifwe stand back and look at it and
we go, it won't, there's a, Imean, nothing against Dash Hounds.
They're cute, but a, a a dash houndembroidered onto some pajamas,

(17:03):
they're not gonna, I'm gonna change
my life.
It might
make me feel good about myself,but you'll enter, enter into
this infinite regress, and.
And Jesus, by his example in these three
temptations, offers us
I think a point of, of actuallyreflection as we see him, met with these

(17:26):
deceptions, these temptations, we beginto, we can actually begin to be welcomed
into this story and go, where, wherehave I not cho chosen the Christ way?
As these deceptions have come to us, andJesus refuses in these three temptations
to turn inwardly, he refuses to.

(17:47):
What does he do?
No, he puts his, he puts hismind and his heart and his
affections towards the word of God.
His affections are for his fatherIn the midst of these deceptions.
And, for me, that's, that's what, that'swhat the answer is in the, in the midst
of consumerism is, is to actually askin our lives where this is coming up,

(18:11):
whether it's in the life of the church.
And all you think about is whereyour unmet needs are in the life of
the church, is to actually start bymeditating on the examples of Christ in
these temptations and go, Lord, help me.
Help me to take my eyes awayfrom myself and to look at you.

(18:32):
My God, help me, lead me into everlastinglife and away from this incessant need to
have, to do, to have to, to answer thatquestion is, what do I get out of this?
Jesus doesn't answer that question.
He couldn't care.
He couldn't care less about that question.

(18:54):
By his example in his life.
I could ramble and ramble, but I won't.
I just wanna offer a coupleof examples of where I've
seen this, come and
clash even within ourown church community.
I don't know if you remember that seasonof COVID as we look back on that with
affection.
You know,

(19:15):
for us as a church leadership,there was, there was temptation.
It was to temptation toanswer that question.
What do
they want?
There was,
there was a strong temptation in us, andas we had to make decisions around what
we were gonna do for the life of thechurch, we asked that question, are we
willing to actually meet those anxietiesand face them as a church leadership?

(19:38):
And some of the decisions thatwe had to make, we were asking
these questions, weren't we?
Will people leave our churchbecause of the decisions we made?
Guess what
they did?
Over that
period of time, we, we had about20% of our church community.
Leave our church and maybe go toother churches or, or sadly for some
of them have, they've, they've sortof not found a new church community.

(20:01):
But the problem, the problem was, isthat we had to, we had to ask that
question of what is our responsibilityas, as shepherds of a church.
It's actually not to give you what youwant it, it's to prayerfully consider
to be on knee praying for you andgoing, Lord, what do you want for us?
As a church community, it'sactually going, Lord, what do

(20:23):
you want for your people here?
That's, that's the bigger question.
And we can actually be invited to askthat same question in our lives as well.
Adam, I'm gonna hand over toyou 'cause I could just keep
going here and that's not fair.
That's fine, man.
That's fine.
Can you know
that slide, the relevant slide, canyou just jam, jam that up again?

(20:43):
And we're talking aboutthat first point, aren't we?
Yeah.
The, the temptation to be relevant.
Yeah.
When I. Think about that scripturewhere you know, if you're the son of
God, tell these stones to become bread.
My sort of eyeballs.
See, hey, to be relevant, this isabout you being your own source.
Like you make your own bread, like yougo and get it like you make it, rather

(21:10):
than it being a source of saying, oh.
God is my source.
And I think for me, the idea ofthe temptation of being relevant
is it's such a temptation to send amessage to hearts, even, even right
now to say, it's actually
quite interesting.
It's humanistic culture.
It's individualistic culture,and it's consumeristic culture

(21:32):
merging to send one message to yourheart, you have what it takes.
By yourself.
You have what it takes.
You know the answer is you don't.
Neither do I. If we did,we don't need Jesus.
Does this make sense?
So the temptation is to believethat we can create our own bread.

(21:52):
No.
We need the bread of life.
We need Jesus to be our source.
Can I get an amen?
Thank you, but he is our source.
He is our source.
I think part of the reason why wefall into the trap is how we measure.
Are you being successful in your source?
Being the source?
And the way we measure it is bigger,better, faster, but the kingdom doesn't

(22:17):
measure it in bigger, better, faster.
The kingdom measures it byfaithfulness, fruitfulness, and
finishing the work that God had given
you to do.
As a temptation
to be relevant.
It's recognizing that the, the greatest.

(22:37):
Person who's relevant is Jesus, andwe try and be relevant ourselves
rather than just pointing to thefact that he is the relevant one.
Here's the
relevant one.
This week
I felt the Lord speak to me, and Ifeel like I've got a word for you
all today, and I'm gonna link it intothis idea of being relevant, right?

(22:58):
Because when we meet people, there'sthis pressure to be relevant to them.
Do you agree?
Trying to meet them where they're at.
And that's not a wrong thing, but Ifelt like the Lord and I wrote it down.
I said Thursday morning Iwas with the local pastors.
We gathered together the Coburn
pastors.
And I felt
in that meeting, God speak to meto tell you all red door that.

(23:20):
Over the coming months, there's gonnabe an increased need for you to be
ready to gently and with respect,share the hope that you have in the
relevance of Jesus, that there's gonnabe an increased frequency of this.
The problem is, is that if you don'tknow this, increasing frequency is

(23:40):
coming, you may miss the opportunitythat arrives at your front door
'cause you're not aware of it.
And it may will mean for many of youwho aren't used to doing this, there may
be a feeling of awkwardness, but thisis where I felt the Lord speak to me.
And this is what you need to hear today,that you are gonna meet people, you're
gonna have an increasing frequency ofmeeting people, and what's gonna happen

(24:03):
is they're gonna start asking youquestions about the relevance of Jesus.
Right.
This is what's gonna happen and what'sgonna happen is the other person is
gonna pull out of you in the mostnatural, exhilarating thing you've ever
experienced in your life, the reality ofJesus as you open your gob and tell your
own little stories about who Jesus is.

(24:26):
Yeah, this is gonna happenin increasing frequency.
And so if you're sitting heregoing, oh, I don't know if I got the
right words to say, I'm not sure.
I promise you, you don't evenneed to worry about that.
'cause the person who's hungry forthe relevance of Jesus, they're
just gonna start pulling out ofyou the living bread that is Jesus.
Does that make sense?

(24:46):
So you don't need to make thebread yourself, like have your
little bakery and go, here's myattempt at presenting Jesus to you.
No, he's just gonna get pulled outta you.
I think, when you
have those moments of encounter,you need to be trusting that you
don't need to repackage Jesus.
Oh, that's great.
Don't repackage.
You need to
repackage his words, histeachings in a way that you think
will be, acceptable

(25:09):
to the other.
Okay.
Listen to you.
A really interesting teachingfrom the new Pope, Pope Leo.
On, this week on same sex marriage, andhe could not have been clearer, right?
He spoke it in the most biblicallyOrthodox way, but he spoke it with
such grace and love and truth, andit was astoundingly relevant, right?

(25:33):
Jesus is the ultimate one.
Who is, he is eternally relevant, right?
Because the things that bindand deceive and blind people in
our world, they haven't changed.
They are the same things asthe time that Jesus walked.
He is eternally relevant.
The enemy doesn't have new schemes, sohis truth will always set people free.

(25:57):
But only as we trust in it and wepresent it in all its fullness and
not try to repackage it in ways thatwe think will be more palatable.
Does that make sense?
It's very good, Dale.
All right.
Can we go to the next one?
Let's do that.
All right.
The next one here, the next temptation.
Throw yourself down.
So the temptation to bespectacular, oh my gosh.

(26:18):
Has this not crept into the WesternModern day church in big ways?
So the consumeristicversion make it exciting.
Keep people's attention.
You know, churches might relyon performance, personality,
production, emotional highs.
Wow.
People into the faith.
Measuring success.
And I think through the, the ninetiesand the early two thousands, we saw

(26:40):
this big time church megachurchesexploding and they, and competing
in production levels with the
world.
Right?
And, and
that can be great for bringing peoplein through the door, but does it form
them into disciples of, of Jesus?
Well, that is the question, isn't it?
So Christians influenced byentertainment culture may expect

(27:00):
worship to be stimulating or novel.
And can be quick to disengage ifit's quiet, if it's slow, if it's
clunky, if it's ordinary, now knowthere, the pressure on preachers to be
entertaining and to, you know,
to, to excite and to evoke emotion.
You know, people wanna walk out of churchoften with this consumeristic mindset of,

(27:22):
oh wow, that really resonated with me.
That message, I hear this all thetime and it drives me bonkers.
Right.
I think if a flying fig, if it resonateswith you, I always wanna know, are
you gonna walk in obedience to it?
Is it transforming you?
Do you look more like Jesus?
Not Are you stoked with a bunchof fun resonating feelings, right?
Resonating, it's a great word, andit's a terrible word all at once.

(27:45):
Sometimes they
do mean like it's theHoly Spirit sometimes.
Sometimes that's.
It's a great word,
but it's also when we think,oh, the work's being done, just
because I resonate with it.
Yes.
No, I think we're pickingup what you're putting down.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay.
Good.
All right.
Cool.
The way I like to talkabout it, sorry, and again.
No, you
go.
Just, just, you can speak up,
rose, anytime.

(28:08):
Do you know how you have a balanced diet?
Is you eat, you eat well, right?
Right.
Now, if, if you're gonna only servechocolate with vegetables because you
need to get the vegetables down andyou're serving chocolate with every single
thing, you know how your diet's gonna go.
Pretty, pretty, pretty bad, right?
Where the church, and pleasedon't hear the anti production
megachurch conversation here.

(28:29):
We're not talking that way.
What we're talking about is actuallyserving a balanced diet where you taste
and see that the Lord is good, right?
So it's not, chocolate's not bad.
Yes.
Who likes chocolate?
I think I'm the best.
I love the Tola the most.
We do it with moderation, right?
We don't live off it.
Does that make sense?
So I think that's just something tocomment around this whole church space.

(28:50):
Well, it comes
down to the deep motivationsand the means you are using.
And so if you, you can expressthe beauty in the wonder of Jesus
through high level production.
Don't get me wrong.
But if your ultimate goal is actuallyyou've been led in the deceptive path
of consumerism, yeah, you can easilyuse those means to draw a crowd and
think you're doing the work of God.

(29:11):
Right, and all you've done is drawa crowd and you've hyped up some
emotion, and we don't want that.
The world doesn't need justpeople who are hyped up on good
worship and an entertaining word.
They need disciples of Jesus who aresalt and light in the word, who've been
def, who've been formed deeply moreinto the likeness of Christ, not just
had a, a good experience, you know?

(29:32):
All right.
Luke, what are your reflections on this?
Yeah, what do you think?
Yeah, I, I.
I disagree with everything you said.
Yeah, I knew
you would.
I think this,
I think this is one of our biggesttemptations, within our modern
culture and, yeah, I wrote
down where we're kind of likezombies when it comes to being

(29:55):
entertained and having what we
want now.
And we feed on it and, and you know,
it fires the dopamines, youknow, and it, it feels good,
right?
Young people.
If
there are, any young
people in this morning, you, youprobably wouldn't believe this, but

(30:15):
there was a day, there was a day when,
when movies, didn't, didn't
come out on
your phone.
There was
a day when movies used to
come out, down at the,
at the
theater and, sometimes
you had to wait like a couple of years.
Didn't we Adam?
Well, you'd have to wait.
You had to be patient
for the next IndianaJones install for that

(30:36):
next Indiana Jones.
Or worth waiting for, by the way,a lot of the rings not always.
Yeah.
And or, and then
if you couldn't go to themovies, sometimes we couldn't
afford to as a family.
We had to wait until itcame out in blockbusters.
And where did that take?
That took another couple ofyears to come out on tape.
And so this incessant need to beentertained to have things now

(31:01):
is actually eroding us as humans.
It's, it's deforming us.
And why is it deforming?
'cause we're actually losing.
Imagination, which is a very humanthing to do, is to create, to dream, to
imagine, to be in
places where we actuallyhave freedom to do that.

(31:22):
We don't have that
anymore.
And the sacredness
of wonder is
escaping us.
One of the
greatest gifts for me as I traveledacross the country with my family last
year for three months was just beingdisconnected and just being able to sit.
In wonder of what is around me and justlike quite, quite con, like a lot of

(31:47):
conviction of actually realizing thatI don't do this in my day-to-day life.
I don't sit in wonder in simplicity.
There's a sacredness ofsilence is a nourishment.
That we are letting slipthrough our fingers.
We're missing opportunities of silence.
And the gift of silence.

(32:09):
Do you know there's a gift of themundane, like to actually just
to enjoy the mundane of life.
Do you remember back in theday when your mobile, you know,
you'd have snake and that was
about it and and you got
bought a snake for a while andyou, and you used to just stand
lining up in a fish and chip shop.

(32:29):
You actually start havingconversations with people?
Yeah, we, that has, that's, that'sdisappeared from our culture.
And that's a, that's, that's actually,that's a d detriment to us as
humans.
And, so this incessant
need has bled into our church culture.
We're needing to be entertained.

(32:51):
We're needing to have what wewant out of this experience.
And so we see within the church,people running around looking for the
better preacher, the more charismatic
preacher, the better
worship.
And this is so apart from theheart of Christ for his bride.
Let me use a biblical example of whatGod is like in comparison to this.

(33:16):
Think of Moses.
Moses rejected by the Egyptians, right?
He does a naughty
thing and so he's rejected.
And, and then questioned by theIsraelites is called by God to
come and be the voice of God to hispeople and then also to Pharaoh.

(33:42):
And we forget this man is the voiceof God and God's people, and he can
barely string a sentence together.
God uses that type of personto liberate his people.
That's what God's like, God'sslower, God's so much more in
the mundane than what we suspect.

(34:04):
You think that he's here to
tickle our, our emotions
or to, to make our hair stand up?
No, he's, he's, he's doing afar more greater work in us,
and that's what he's welcoming
us into.
And that,
that's, that's, that's what I've got to,
mm, very good.
Very good.
Just, just quickly, we had thisexperience at Easter in Fremantle and I

(34:28):
had this, privilege
of having a conversation with a younglady, her name's Shawni and Shawni
happens to be here this morning.
I did not know she wasgonna be here this morning.
I didn't know.
That I was gonna talk about this,Shawnee and I had a conversation
around the nature of AI and
creating, videos using
the AI tools that are currently existand are developing as we even speak this

(34:50):
moment.
And, I. I didn't
know Shani was gonna be here.
So Shawni, thank you that the Lordused you to speak to me about the way
of Jesus in relationship to artistry.
We live in a society and a world thatis saturated by make it spectacular
and do it in 14 seconds flat.

(35:12):
Whilst as quickly as
possible with as little as possible,possible, most, most efficient as
possible, whilst taking everyone else'screative capacity and merging it into
something that doesn't look like anythingthat anyone ever made, which literally
is called stealing other people's stuff.
That doesn't sound likethe way of Jesus, right?
What ended up happening was Shawnee's.
His voice spoke to my heart and I cameaway going, wow, we're not gonna do that.

(35:35):
And what ended up happening wasthis young lady spent 400 hours
painstakingly animating these littlenuanced images at each little station
and the heart, the time, the effort.
That's the type of stuff that God'sspirit infiltrates and uses to speak
to hearts, not the drive through.

(35:57):
I wanted yesterday.
No, it's actually the delayedgratification journey that
Jesus infiltrates and uses.
Does that make sense?
So as much as we can go, yay ai and Sure.
I'm, I'm sure I'll getsome emails with this week.
You can send, send themto I don't give a rip.com.
That's fine.
But.
What I'm trying to say thereis we just gotta be so careful

(36:17):
about the tools that we form.
There was once a quote, I think,I think Churchill said it.
We, we build buildings and thenour, oh, we form buildings and
then our buildings form us.
These tools that we form end upbeing the things that form us.
So we gotta be very careful aboutthe, the, when our little eyes see.
Okay.
Anyway, that's around thespace of being spectacular.

(36:39):
Mm. I'm wondering if we need a
whole
service on the topic of ai.
Yeah, I'm, you'll probablydevelop it isn't I feeling?
I just go, man, we gottathink well about this.
It's just 'cause it's quick and it's fast.
I use it and sometimes I feel like,am I eating the forbidden fruit here?

(36:59):
Like something and thisneeds to be thought through.
Well,
we're not.
Yeah, we're not doing it now.
That's a whole idea.
We're not doing it.
Well, I,
I do like to think
you do like to think on the fly in the
moment and we're going.
I think it's still worth going 0.3.
My love.
Point three.
It's definitely worth being's polite to
0.3
before it takes over the world.
Yes.
Before it takes over the world.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, we all become its
minions.
All right.

(37:19):
Point three.
Yes.
Okay.
All the kingdoms.
The temptation to be powerful for theconsumer's version to grow the brand,
dominate the market, and so churches canadopt corporate strategies, branding,
competition platforms, influence andempire building, all to win for Jesus.
Now, as I, as we talk about, you know,these observations of how these things

(37:40):
can infiltrate the church, right?
And.
Don't, don't sit here thinking we'regoing, oh, red door's got all this nailed.
And it's all those other churchesout there, all these temptations that
we've talked about, the, these aretemptations that we face as we seek to
shepherd you guys and lead this church.
And we are just as guiltyas any, any church of the

(38:04):
temptation they're giving into
these things.
You know,
just even an example of how we talk about.
You know, our announcements, likewe've gotta check ourselves, right?
Do we announce it in a way oflike just leaning into fomo?
Yeah.
Which is the world's way of consumerism.
You've gotta come to thisor you're gonna miss out.
Right?
And that's to use the world'smeans to try and get Jesus ends.

(38:26):
And that doesn't work.
You can never get Jesus ends by using theworld's means, but in our own desires to
wanna be validated by having people showup to the things that we're doing right?
Because we are weak and humanand flawed like everyone else.
We can give into these temptationsand try and emotionally manipulate.
Using consumeristic means to getpeople's buy-in and stuff like that.
It happens in overt ways in thechurch, and it happens in subtle ways.

(38:49):
And we need to be aware of thesethings in our own heart because they
are antithetical to the way of Jesus.
So the temptation to be
powerful, Christians
may be drawn to influential churches,leaders, celebrity appeal, seeing
churches as a product to consume orof movement to boost their identity.
Again, I'm gonna say this all right.
Please, please, please.
'cause you hear these things andthere's a root can be a temptation

(39:11):
to slip into self-righteousness.
Oh, I don't do that.
Oh, I would never do that.
Oh, those don't do that.
Please just allow the Lord to examineyour own heart in these spaces.
So the way of Jesus isthe way of the cross.
It is not coercion, it's not dominance,it's humility, it's sacrifice, it's love.
You cannot advance the kingdom of Godusing tools of the kingdom of the world.
You know, one thing Jesus was neverworried about was drawing a crowd.

(39:33):
Jesus was great at drawing a crowdand he was great at decimating a
crowd as well and neither bothered him
particularly much.
Yeah.
All
right.
No, he wants to reflect on this one.
I
just think of things quite humorousbecause there's a Satan telling him
all these kingdoms can be yours and hisJesus, like the king of every kingdom.

(39:53):
I go, and don't you know who I am?
Like, I just think it's humorous.
I'm sorry.
I think.
One of the things that this, again,it's probably more prevalent in
0.2, where we see Satan twistingscripture and when every time you
see s scripture twisted, it tendstowards the elevation of self, right?

(40:14):
The Bible's not aboutyou, it's about Jesus.
Right?
And I think it extends into this sectionwhere I think there's a. There's a
definitely a, a, a desire in all of us.
You know, the, the idols of theheart are power, comfort, control,
approval.
These are
the things that we, wesort of, we head towards.

(40:35):
And, but how do you followJesus the way of Jesus?
In light of the, the water weswim in, it becomes critical to be
able to discern the voice of God.
So what's happening here actuallyis Jesus discerning the, the voice
of God, the voice of the Fatherto know, yeah, all these kingdoms.

(40:58):
It will be mine, but now's not thetime In this, you don't understand
what I mean, but like in the timeline.
So Jesus was able todiscern the voice of God.
And I think that just the thing I wantedto take this moment is to remind us
how do we discern the voice of God?
'cause I think we forget.

(41:20):
How we actually meant todiscern the voice of God.
So lemme give it to you quickly.
The w the written word of God.
We must be referencing whatwe are hearing to God's word.
Would you agree?
I. Thank you very much,which means be careful.
'cause guess what we justread could be twisted, right?
So that's why step two wise counsel, ifyou're just doing this discernment process

(41:43):
by yourself, you might make an error.
Actually.
Go to wise counsel, go to peoplewho aren't gonna give you the
answer you really want to hear.
Go to people who are gonnachallenge you, right?
Number three, I call itthe unction of the spirit.
The Holy Spirit is gonna bringa sense of direction, a sense of
movement, a sense of clarity to your
own heart.

(42:04):
But be careful
because that's also very closely connectedto the peace of the heart, right?
But who knows?
Our hearts aren't perfect.
So yeah, we're looking forthe peace of the heart, but
beware the heart can be easily.
Misled.
Oh yeah, that feels good actually.

(42:24):
Careful, you might beslipping down a slippery path.
So the, the heart is a measurementof discerning the voice of
God, but it's not the only one.
You with me?
Yeah.
And then the last one I've gotwritten here is external confirmation,
bit like, fleece man.
What's his name?
Gideon.
Gideon.
You know, he threw the fleece down.
You know that thing?

(42:45):
Fleece man.
You know, he tested externalcircumstances, right?
Oh, as a confirmation thatGod was speaking to him again.
Everyone say beware.
Beware.
I mean these are ways, butthere's a couple of them.
We've just gotta use carefully, whichis why the word of God and why is
council so critical to be a part of howwe discern when we might be slipping

(43:08):
into, what is the temptation here?
Oh, it's actually about me to be powerful,Adam, be getting too big for your boots.
Sit down, let someone else do it.
Like, I gotta hear that.
Do you understand what I'mtrying, trying to say there?
Yeah.
Okay.
That's enough.
Luke, what are your reflections?
Yeah, I think
power is, the struggle

(43:31):
for power is really the struggle for
control.
And, and that,
that was, that's where it
all began, in the garden
with Adam
and Eve.
God blessing
them with life, with true liberation and
freedom, in him, with
him.

(43:51):
And yet that wasn't enough.
They wanted
more.
And, and that's,
that's our, that, that's what we'vebeen struggling with ever since.
We want more, we want more power.
And there will be a hundred percent areasof your life where this disposition,
this desire for control and power will be

(44:13):
coming up.
And it's
hard work.
It's hard work 'cause we're soblind to it and we, we, we speak
it away.
We validate, and we dismiss, where this
is
coming up.
I wasn't
gonna share this, but this hasbeen something that's really been
a work for me over the last few

(44:34):
weeks that, I'm understanding
that my
anxiety.
How I operate
internally, my anxiety isusually in other people's heads.
I spend a lot of time worryingabout what other people are
thinking, whether I know about
it or not.
And, but
the, the root cause ofthat anxiety is control.

(44:56):
I want to have power.
That's where it comes from.
It's self-seeking.
It's selfish.
There's no, there's, andI, I cloth it in in love.
I cloth it in, oh, I wantthe best for this person.
So I wanna, I wanna try and help them seein Dale, and I've joked about this, you
know, if this other person just knew myway, they would be, they would live the

(45:21):
right life and they'd be happy, you know.
And so what I'm saying is, is it's, it's,it can be very, it can be very subtle
and it can appear like other thingslike anxiety or worry, or, but the root
cause is this desire to have control
over others.
And it's
subtle and it's, it's, it'snot, it's not life giving.

(45:45):
Jesus isn't wanting us just tobe clear as a church, to be a
better church, in our branding.
In our stage, in our production.
He's not wanting that.
What does he want?
It was so beautiful that youquoted Isaiah, 'cause I'm
gonna speak from Luke four.
Jesus's mission isn't that he's callingus into something different as a church.

(46:10):
What is it?
Oh, he is, he's calling us to actuallycome and, and not just say the gospel.
It's to live and act outthe gospel to those in need.
That's the mission of Christ, toseek and save the lost to, to come
and help liberate those who are in

(46:31):
captivity.
To meet those
that are in our society.
Homelessness is huge.
One of the greatest privilegeswe have is people coming to our
offices during the week in despair.
They've got no money.
They, they, they, they'reliving in their car.
They, and for us to be able to handthem some groceries and say, bless
you in the name of Christ, you know?

(46:53):
That's right.
And, and, and in that exchange, I don't,I personally, I don't get a lot out of it.
Okay, I might get a thank you, but that'sactually the work that God's calling us
to I is to come and seek and save thelost in partnership with the spirit.
And, and these are people thatdon't have power, isn't it?

(47:15):
That we're called tothose that are powerless.
We're not called as a church.
We're not called to cozyup with those in power.
Oh, that's hard work, isn't it?
To fight against thatdesire within our culture.
I'll leave it there.
Just wanna, en encourage.
My good friend
Phil Baker, who's
here today, we were on

(47:36):
a plane once, this is many, manyyears ago, and he told me, well, I
think it was from Adelaide to Perth.
We were flying and he said to me,Adam, it does not matter a, a scare
the crowds that you minister to.
It only matters if when you ministerto the one, so here's the funny story.
That day, I don't even, Philprobably doesn't remember that
same day.
We got outta

(47:57):
the airport late.
It was like seven o'clock and we hadto take some stuff back to the church
'cause we'd been doing some stuff.
Anyway, I'm there at the front andthere was this one person, the doors
were closed at the church and theywere asking for help at the front of
the church on the same day that Philtold me it only matters about the one.
And so I'm sitting on this.
On the curb with this persontrying to listen to their woes.

(48:19):
And I just remember thinking, oh Lord.
Like see these moments thatare are difficult, right?
They're difficult.
But see the reality of the richness ofthat's the Jesus way, his ability to
just sit with the one, sit with the one.
And that's not powerful or spectacular.
No,
it's
not.
But yeah.
But
God says, but it is the
way of the kingdom,

(48:39):
I think by way of bringing
this home.
I was just,
I was just thinking of thesethree different things and
I said, you know, at the
beginning, you know,
this is a framework developed byEugene Peterson, and I just love
Eugene Peterson, but I think as I'mreading this, I'm going, oh my gosh,
this is, this is what he lived.
So if you don't know Eugene Peterson'sstory, he was a faithful pastor

(49:01):
to a church of about 300 people.
His entire, pretty much hisentire ministry life, but he
was a man who was given multipleopportunities to be powerful, to
be relevant, to be spectacular.
He was invited to come and be pastorof bigger congregations, because
that's often, in particularly theAmerican context, it's like a.
You know, it's like a career pathway.

(49:21):
You're, you're, you know, you, you,you're meant to just take on bigger
churches as part of your career.
And he just felt that call toalways be faithful to this community
that God had placed him in.
But he was constantly had thesetemptations put before him to be relevant,
to be spectacular, to be powerful,and he consistently said no and stayed
faithful to serving these people in thisplace, in this community for decades.

(49:46):
And look at his legacy.
Yeah, right.
In not seeking to be powerful,spectacular, and relevant.
He became one of the most powerful,spectacular, and relevant voices
in modern day Christianity with somuch, he's just got so much validity
because he walked the way of Jesus.

(50:06):
He sacrificed.
He stayed in these humble waysand that did not for a second.
Discount him from thecall of God on his life.
And I love his story and that's why Ihave so much trust in his written words,
because of the life that he lived and thehumble life that he demonstrated that in
so many ways looks like the way of Jesus.

(50:28):
And this, I would say to you as you findyourself tempted to the spectacular,
to the powerful, to the relevant, asyou listen to podcasts and whatnot,
do you know the way of the lifeof the person you're listening to?
Because they might be able tohave all the charisma in the
world, but do you know their life?
Can you testify to being able toobserve their life and go, oh,

(50:50):
they live in the way of Jesus.
This isn't just words for them.
They have incarnated whatthey are preaching about,
and I can testify to that.
So this is where we've gottabe so careful of this diet that
exists out there of spectacular,relevant, powerful content, right?
Do we know the lives of theones who are preaching it?
And are they incarnatingthe life of Jesus?

(51:12):
And these are good questions.
It's so interesting,
isn't it, that the result.
You know, we are readingit like, thank you, Ana.
Avoid relevance, avoidspectacularness, avoid powerful.
But when you do the way of Jesus,
yep.
They actually become manifestedin a way that's glorifying to him.
Like I said at the beginning,seek first his kingdom.
And all these things will be addedto you, but don't seek his kingdom

(51:35):
through worldly means, I guessis a way to sum up this morning.
Are we good?
Yeah.
Why don't we stand?
I'm gonna pray for us and then we'rejust gonna sing together as we close.
It's all good.
Created chaos up there.
It's good.
Just close your eyes.

(51:57):
Just put your hands out in front of youif you feel comfortable to do that today.
And
remember this, pathway,
this way of Jesus is notsomething that you've got to
kind of do better, try harder.
It's just a simplereceiving of the Spirit.
So Holy Spirit, please come and reveal tous the way of Jesus so it becomes so clear

(52:18):
and visible in our eyes, in our minds, in
our hearts.
Father, we
thank you, God that you've not.
Left us alone, but you'vegiven us your spirit.
So come Holy Spirit that we've beenpraying these last few weeks, like,
come Holy Spirit and lead us into theway of Jesus, the way of everlasting.

(52:41):
In Jesus' name, amen.
Amen.