APR 7 2019 | Accelerate S1E4 | Abba: The Authoritative Parent

Sea Change Church · Accelerate · "Abba: The Authoritative Parent" Pastor Harry Wilson · April 7, 2019
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Hello, I'm Lily Stadtmiller and I'm going to be reading the scripture today. It is Psalms 119, 1 through 16. Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways. You have commanded your precepts to be kept diligently. Oh, that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes.

Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all of your commandments. I will praise you with an upright heart, and when I learn your righteous rules, I will keep your statutes. Do not utterly forsake me. How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you. Let me not wander from your commandments. I have stored up your word in my heart, that I may not sin against you.

Blessed are you, O Lord. Teach me your statutes. With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth. In the way of your testimonies, I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes. I will not forget your word. The word of the Lord. Awesome, awesome. Thank you, Lily. My name is Harry. I'm the student ministries pastor on staff. It's good to have a stat miller in the pulpit, so it feels a little bit more like we're being watched over, you know.

I can't do anything too crazy today, because he sends spies. The last time I preached, his brother was in town. And I was like, I knew it. I knew there's something, you know. You gotta look after me. And so, anyways, yeah, my name's Harry. Before we kind of dive in into the depth of the message for today, I left a short part in your notes that has a space for you to write down one word or a short phrase as an initial reaction to this scripture.

So I want to give you just a couple moments. This should be kind of like a gut reaction to the scripture. For you to write down, what is that first thing that comes to your mind, to your heart? One word or short phrase. It's at the bottom of your notes right here. I'll give you a few seconds just to do that. While you're doing that, I'll explain that we're in the midst of a series titled Accelerate. Beyond the Starting Blocks of Faith.

And this series is really designed for us to learn what it means to go past just, you know, once a week Sunday church attendance and step into everyday discipleship relationship. Really inviting God into the monotony of our everyday life. And that's the idea behind this series as we begin to look what it means to walk with God further and further. And I'll go ahead and I'll read the verses 1 through 8 again of this passage that we're talking about today.

Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong but walk in his ways. You've commanded your precepts to be kept diligently. Oh, that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes. Then I shall not be put to shame, having my eyes fixed on all your commandments. I'll praise you with an upright heart when I learn your righteous rules.

I will keep your statutes. Do not utterly forsake me. So does anybody, let's get back to these one word short phrases. Anybody feel just bold enough to share? I know we're waking up early. Anyone feel bold enough to share their one word phrase? No! That's okay, I'll share with you mine. When I first was preparing this message, I received, like, this would be the scripture I was teaching on. So I didn't pick this scripture.

We're going through a book called Discipleship Essentials. And this was the scripture, and I read it. And my initial, maybe some of you guys had more pastoral phrases, but the phrase I came up with is rule follower. That's what I wrote down. And you know that if you've ever been called a rule follower growing up, like, it's not usually meant as a compliment, right? It's like, no one calls you a goody-two-shoes. No one says goody-two-shoes anymore.

But nobody, that's never meant as a compliment. Yet this was kind of my initial reaction to this scripture. This scripture has got this psalmist who is just celebrating the law of God. Celebrating the ways of God and the law and the rules. He is a, like, type A personality, Enneagram, type 1 psalmist. And so that was kind of my initial gut reaction. And this can be kind of a difficult passage for some of us who don't love rules.

I work with high school kids, and I find out they don't love a ton of rules, but they need them. And so for some of us, this can be a kind of difficult passage to really wrestle, especially if you wrestle with scripture and you wrestle with different rules and different things the Bible says. This can be a difficult passage for us because we don't feel like we celebrate the law in this way. Okay. I know there's kind of a, I would say, there's kind of an obsession with rules.

And I know other people feel the way about rules that I do. I didn't grow up loving rules. I wasn't a big rule breaker. But I didn't love rules growing up. And any time I talk, especially non-church folk, when I'm dialoguing with someone who's not in the church, one of the quickest things they do when they find out I'm a pastor is they ask me about the rules. Like, they want to know what I can and can't do. They really, you know, so one of the first things that'll happen is we're dialoguing.

They'll be like, oh, so you're a pastor. They'll say, well, so you can't, you can't drink, right? Or you're a pastor, so you can't get married, right? They have all these different, like, notions of what it means to be a pastor and the rules I have to follow. Like, so you can't get married, right? You're not allowed to do that. And if it's a man asking me that question, you know what they're actually trying to ask me and trying to find out.

They're trying to, they want to know, like, how does this religion restrict your life? And there is, I would say, an association with religion and legalism. And there's been some history there that might call for that. But there is this outside association that religion is legalistic. And I think that is what is leading to this rise of, there's a growing trend in the United States of individuals who are considering themselves spiritual but not religious.

That's a, that's a growing trend that's on the rise. They did a study, this is from the Pew Research Center. And what they found out is that in 2012, about 19% of people considered themselves spiritual but not religious. And then in four years, in 2017, they tested again, and that number had rose to about 27%. So all of a sudden, it's like a little over a quarter of the population that's considering themselves spiritual but not religious.

I think there's probably many reasons for that. But I think one of them, a big part of it is, is a dislike of rules. It's this association that if I have to, if I have to be a part of a church body, I have some responsibility and there's relationship. And that comes with rules and regulations. And a lot of people would rather chase after an individualized spirituality to try to get the good stuff, try to chase after divinity and all that stuff.

But to try to do it, to do it on their own without rules and, and regulations and legalism. And, but what we have to ask ourselves, especially in this series where we're going beyond the starting blocks of faith, is what, what place does the word of God, the, the ways of God, the laws that Jesus talks about, what place does all of that have in our daily walk with Jesus? How much weight, how much control, how, how often should we be turning to scripture in our everyday life?

Is God a God that's really controlling? And I think to, to get kind of a, uh, idea of this, we can, we can look at some child psychology. There's a child psychologist by the name of Diana Bomren. She was a psychologist in the 1920s. And, uh, she studied child psychology and was a clinical psychologist. And she, she found out a couple things. She said two things to parents. If parents can get these two things right, she said your kids are going to be better off.

If you can get how much warmth you show your kids right, which is like love and affection, if you can get that right, and the amount of control you have over your kids. If you can get those two things right, control would be like clear rules, clear guidelines, uh, consistently enforced rules. If you can get warmth and control right, your kids will be better off. In your notes, there's a, there's a, there's a section where I included her graph.

And she came up with four parenting styles that, based off this research. And the first parenting style is this top left corner is what she titled the negligent parent. And this is a parent who is low in control and low in warmth. Uh, not a lot of, not a lot of rules, but, uh, not a lot of love either. Uh, and this parent's pretty much uninvolved in the child's life. And as you can expect, this is pretty negative results for kids.

We see kids have a decrease in academics and an increase in, uh, drug abuse and delinquency. If we go over to the right of that, you get the authoritarian parent. And that parent is high in rules. They've got a lot of rules, uh, but not a lot of warmth, not a lot of love. Uh, and that parent's really, you know, really, really strict. The parent that you can just never, never seem to please, never seems to be proud of you.

That parent is, uh, also has negative effects for kids. Increase in anxiety, decrease in social skills, decrease in self-esteem, decrease in academics. Just really negative results. Uh, if we go to the bottom left, you get the permissive parent. And this is the parent that's kind of more friend than parent. You know, kind of the parent that's more like your buddy than your, than your parent. This is the parent that kids often think they want, all right?

They want this parent. They want the bro more than they want mom or dad. Uh, but it's not true because it's not good for them. What we also find out is these types, these, uh, these kids end up being more impulsive, more irresponsible, more manipulative, showing kind of like antisocial type behaviors. And they're four times more likely to abuse drugs. But if we go to the right of that, then we get to, uh, what she calls the authoritative parent.

And the authoritative parent, parent is both high in control as well as high in, uh, in warmth. A lot of love, a lot of affection, but also really, really high in, uh, clear rules that are consistently enforced. And this is the best results for kids. On a, on a broad scale, kids like this, they tend to have more self-control. They tend to have an increase in cognitive skills, increase in social skills. And so to bring all this up, and it's kind of a lot of information, to bring all, all that up, I think there's a lot we can kind of take from this.

And part of that is one that I think we tend to project the parenting styles of our own parents onto God. We tend to project, especially in the beginning walks of faith, if we're in this, you know, stepping deeper into faith, when we're just getting to know God, we can often project the parenting styles of our own parents onto God. I'll give you an example of a, of a good friend, uh, growing up. And I remember we were in high school, and I went to his, I went to his house, and we were going to hang out.

And I went to his backyard, he's in his backyard, and, uh, I go to see him. And he's, he's got, like, lines of women's purses out. And he's, like, photographing these purses, and they're in, like, the sunlight. And he's not just, like, taking quick pictures. Like, he's getting the purses good angle, you know what I mean? Like, he's really working these purses. And, uh, and I'm, I walk in as a adolescent male, like, what the heck are you doing?

Like, what is possibly going on here? And he explains to me that he purchased these purses, and these purses are $200. But they are really close replicas of very expensive, like, Gucci-type purses. And he, so he's purchased these purses, and then he was selling the purses online as if they were Gucci purses. And so these purses, he's selling them for, like, $1,000. My buddy's making $800 profit on these fraudulent purses.

And I'm thankful to say he has been healed of the fraudulent purse game. Like, God has rescued him from that. He's no longer there. Uh, but it was just a wild story. But the most wild thing to find out is that his main accomplice in this whole situation was his mom. Mom was the brains behind the whole operation. And this is, this is really just an example of, uh, of the permissive parent. A parent that is more friend, uh, than, than setting harsh guidelines and strict rules.

And later, I have a conversation with this, with this same friend, probably, uh, multiple years later. We were in Bird Rock, and we were talking, and we were talking about God, and I asked him, well, what do you, what do you think? Like, what are your views on God? And he begins to explain, he's, you know, I think God's there. I think God's loving. I think he cares. But, like, I don't think he's too involved, like, with our everyday life.

Like, I don't think he really needs to know, like, really cares about all the decisions we're making. Kind of the nitty-gritty of the choices we make. Like, I don't think God cares too much about that. He doesn't need to micromanage us. And, uh, and really what he begins to describe is God as the permissive parent. And, and that's what I've heard. I've heard stories as God is negligent. That God is, you know, pretty much non-existent.

Or God is authoritarian, the bully in the sky. We really do project these stories onto God. But the rising trend is that God is permissive. That's this, like, rising desire in our culture to have God as the permissive parent. And I wrote in your notes that the desire for permissive spirituality is an accelerating cultural trend in which standards and accountability are casualties. The result is the rise of the spiritual but not religious.

These are those people who want the spiritual experiences, but they don't want to pay the cost of relationship or responsibility. And really, that's what this psalm emphasizes. This psalm that we've been studying today really does emphasize God as the authoritative parent, as a good, good father that we sing so often in this church. That God, this psalmist, is celebrating the statutes and the laws and the ways of God, but also delighting in him.

This is like a high warmth, high control relationship. That God truly is an authoritative good father. Let's read verses 8 through 11 again in this passage. I will keep your statutes. Do not utterly forsake me. How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you. Let me not wonder from your commandments. I've stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

The psalmist is really acknowledging when he says that how can a young man keep his way pure? He's acknowledging all of the different pulls on someone's life, all the different messages in our life that say, this is the way to be truly alive. And it was like this back then too in the surrounding pagan nations, all these different practices and rituals. And so there's all these different messages out there, about this is how you pursue God.

Like indulge in this and you'll feel fully alive. Like indulge in this. And it's the same way today. We have all of this media that tells us, this is what you need to feel fully alive. This is what you need to be really human. This is what you need to get ahead. And so the psalmist asks the appropriate question, how possibly can a young man keep his way pure? And then he gives the answer and it's by guarding it according to your word.

And then the next thing that he says is that he will pursue after God with his whole heart. That I will pursue after you with my whole heart. That I will both guard my ways and pursue you with all that I have. And it brings to mind that scripture that we talk about here often, which talks about guarding our heart as well. That we really need to guard our heart and guard our way. And really because it is the heart that governs the way, but I do think there is a conversation between the heart and the way.

As far as our heart affects our way, but the ways and the things we participate in also affect our heart. And so we have to be really diligent about what we do. That actually matters. The things we do and participate in matter. And it's difficult because, as I wrote in your note, the ways of the heart are fickle, flickering between content and contemptuous. Though love is rarely on short supply, wisdom is always needed to direct its aim.

The question really is, is where are you sourcing your wisdom? Where are you sourcing your wisdom? And like I said in the point before, that below human beings are full of good intentions, but without wisdom, good intentions are easily misguided. Really, scripture for us needs to be a daily source of wisdom. We need to be seeking out scripture for wisdom. There's so much information available for us to go and try to get some wisdom, try to get some knowledge, try to get some information.

Recently, Adam will be very upset if he finds this out. I do have an Alexa in our home. We have an Alexa, and he's very against robots right now. He's not into robots. The Alexa, I will say in my defense, it was given to us as a gift from a family member. So it's, you know, if you have an Alexa and you need to confess, you can confess to me and it's okay. Don't tell Adam though. You won't be happy about it. But there's this new thing with Alexa where you can say, hey Alexa, make me smart.

And Alexa will start spewing out statistics and different information. If you have one, try it. It's wild. So you say, Alexa, make me smart. And she'll start giving you information. I mean, information is so readily available to us today. You can go anywhere. So where is it that you're sourcing your wisdom? Is it Alexa? Is it the news? Is it social media? Is it, I mean, there's all of this information, but we gotta be sourcing it from the word of God.

The thing about that though, is it's really easy to say that up here and much harder to do in practice. And this is what I found out in working with kids is that so often people say, God's word's important. God's word's important. We preach about the importance of the word of God. And then kids go to read the word of God and they fall asleep. And they get confused and they get frustrated and they feel like, well, how come this doesn't speak to me?

And so what we wanna do at this church, because I think sometimes that also transitions into adulthood, is God's word is incredibly important, but we've gotta give you guys the tools and the resources to approach it if that's something that's a difficulty for you. So, and there's all sorts of things. We have a lot of pastors at this church that you can talk to. Pastor Jim, who I think is in the second, he'll be in the second service, but he's got a lot of wisdom as a Bible scholar.

And so there's pastors to talk to you about how to do that. But what I will do is, I will go ahead and I'll give you just what the book we're going through gave us about approaching scripture. Scripture. And it says, do this, three things. It says observation. So first it says observe, and then interpret, and then apply. So observation, interpretation, application. Those are the big three. And observation is basically, it's really what we did today, observing the scripture, getting our initial reactions to the scripture, seeing what's happening in it.

That's what we did today with our gut reactions. And then the interpretation of it is finding out the context of what's really happening, what's going on at that time period. That's the interpretation of the scripture. And then the application of the scripture is, what does that mean to me? What is this scripture, what is God saying to me through this scripture? And really praying through the application part is a really, really good practice.

So that's just one practice that we can begin to make scripture more of a center point in our life and our daily walk with God as we move beyond the starting blocks. Let's go ahead and read verses 12 through 16. I really get a sense of joy from this psalm. That wasn't my initial reaction, but after reading it a couple of times, we're preparing for this. I was like, this psalmist is really, there's a sense of joy that if I follow the ways of God, if I lean in, if I follow God's ways, follow God's rules, man, I will get to this place where later the psalmist writes, and I believe longest chapter of the whole Bible, Psalm 119.

And he writes at this, that God's word will be a light to my path, that it will light my way. And I will find a light, I will delight in your word. This is a psalm that is full of hope. God will guide us. But it's a really active hope. I want you to look at the scripture again, just at that part where it's at verse 12. Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statutes. With my lips, I will declare the rules of your mouth.

I will delight as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts. I will fix my eyes on your ways. And I will not forget your word. This is an active participation in the work of hope. The psalmist is actively participating in what God is doing, actively participating in the work of hope in his life. And I wrote in your notes that hope is not passive. We do not hope in idleness, but we actively participate in the work of hope by attending to the ways of God in scripture and in prayer.

We have to be actively participating in the work of hope. There's a example, I think, a story that really captures this idea. It's in the book of Jeremiah. And my high school and I just did a study on it. And the gist of what's happening is Jeremiah is a prophet of God and he's been thrown in jail. And Babylon, who's come in as the enemy, has come in and taken over Israel and they've sent anybody influential into exile.

And Jeremiah is left in prison. He was God's prophet, but he wasn't considered very influential because nobody listened to him. So he's staying, he's left in prison. And God approaches him in prison. He hears a word from God in prison. And God says to him, your cousin is going to come visit you tomorrow in jail. And he's going to try to sell you his field. He has this field at Anathoth is the place and he's going to try to sell you the field.

And so sure enough, the next day, Jeremiah's cousin comes, tries to sell him the field. And let's be clear that it makes no sense for Jeremiah to buy this field. Zero sense. Let's go through some pros and cons. Cons, he's in jail. He's got no access to the field, right? Like that wouldn't help him to own a field. He's in prison. Another con would be the field is currently under enemy military occupants. Like the enemy is coming in and they're on the field.

Like you, even if you weren't in jail, you have no access to the field. Like it is very silly of Jeremiah to buy this field. Pros. Well, God told him to do it. So what's Jeremiah do? He buys the field. And then if you look at the book, he spends about the entire next chapter just confused and angry. He's, the whole next chapter is a prayer to God. Like, God, why did you make me, I feel like a fool. Why'd you make me buy this field?

And he spends this entire chapter in prayer. And the only thing God says back to him is that one day, fields will be bought again in this land. One day, fields will be bought again in this land. And ultimately, what God is having Jeremiah do is actively participate in the work of hope that is to come. He's having Jeremiah actively participate in the work of hope, in the promise that is to come. And that is our role as followers of Christ.

That every day, we are actively participating in the work of hope through prayer, through attending to the scripture. And there's really little in our life in which we can kind of, especially when in the crisis of our life, if you have a financial crisis or you have a marriage crisis or any of those situations, to sit back and to cross our fingers and hope that God comes in and fix it, God often wants us to show up and like buy back the land, buy back the territory in your life.

And don't mishear me because we preach about rest a lot at this church. It doesn't mean toil. It doesn't mean strive. God often will defeat your enemies. We see that all the time in the Bible. But usually, you gotta show up to battle. Usually, you gotta show up with your armor on. And you gotta actively participate in the work of hope. That's our call as Christians. And then, I would say that this psalm ultimately leads to joy.

The psalmist talks so much about just delighting in God. God, I delight in you. And I wrote in your notes that hope is a prerequisite to joy. We need hope. We need to hold on to the hope of the truth because it is a prerequisite to joy. It's really hard to be full of joy but have no hope. Don't meet too many people who have that too often. Hope is a prerequisite to joy. And we, as followers of Jesus, should be full of the most joy because we have hope in the redemption, in the resurrection, in the victory of Christ.

We should be full of hope. G.K. Chesterton says it this way, that joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. That all the other messages of the pagan people were, come, you'll feel fully alive, you'll feel fully alive. Like, embrace this, embrace this. This is our publicity. It's gonna be great. But the secret of Christianity is that the center of it is finding joy. As Jesus says in one of the Gospels, enter into the joy of your master.

Like, at the center of our Christian faith is joy through the hope of Jesus. Amen?