FEB 19 2017 | Rooted S1E4

Sea Change Church · Rooted S1E4 · Dr. James Smith III · February 19, 2017
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Well, this morning we are continuing our series of messages that are attuned to a series I'm so glad that Pastor Adam and the elders have led us into, and that is the Rooted series. And week by week, there are numbers, I understand there's close to 170 of us in the church that are involved in rooted groups. And Brother Elliott and I are not holdouts, right, doing regular Bible studies.

He's he on Sunday mornings and our group on Wednesday nights, but simply provides another option. But this week in the Rooted series, week four, we are looking at the reality of hard times. I don't know what you, I don't know what you envisioned when you saw these children being baptized. What can we guarantee them? Can we guarantee them smooth writing?

Can we guarantee them just they'll always be recognized and honored for their faith and integrity? Can we promise them that life is not going to bring some very difficult times? I don't see a lot of hands, I see a lot of heads going like this. Because what we find is that our Lord throughout life, as we seek to follow him, there are still challenging times.

Let me share a word that my wife, Linda, she's in Minnesota right now with two kids and four grandkids, hugging the right people and also helping them out in some very specific ways. She sends her greetings. But one of our sayings together as a couple is whatever we think we signed up for, we signed up for him. I don't know what you think you signed up for when you first came to Christ.

I don't know how you thought the road would be or what you thought the waves would look like. Pastor Adam looked like a kind of a frozen object up there this morning and the kids had it. So baptism, one of the people in our church in Minneapolis, we did a baptismal service. Our church was under construction. A new building behind the original sanctuary.

So we had a sheet of plastic between our baptismal and five below zero. This is not a competition for who freezes fastest, but I'll tell you, that was a brisk service. But one of the people said, how come it's so cold? I said, I don't know. But you're following the Lord. And he said, I sure am. So we cleared the icebergs and went under, and it was a lovely time.

Hard times come. So we're going to look into the word, and you'll find in your sermon notes, maybe this is one of your first times here. We, Pastor Adam, I, others do sermon notes. Feel free to share those. Take notes. Read them at home. Read during the week. And on the back of this week's message notes, if you will, there are some prayers. Because the proposition here in the reading of God's word is, Philippians 4, verses 6 and 7, Do not be anxious about anything.

But in every situation by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And then, the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and guard your minds in Christ Jesus. This is the word of the Lord to us today. So in our Rooted series, How to Face Hard Times, the answer is prayer. And as Pastor Adam has said any number of times here, the secret, the chief secret in growing in your life of prayer is what?

Praying. It's praying. There are all kinds of formula around. There are all kinds of approaches. There's two steps, three steps, all the rest of it. But the secret to growing in our prayer life above anything else is actually praying. is what one of my teachers, a gentleman named Henry Nowen, said years ago, turning the monologue in your head into a dialogue with God.

We don't have to feel especially holy to pray. We don't even have to be in the mood to pray. But the raw materials of prayer are always going on right in front of our eyes and between our ears. The raw materials are there. And so if it's helpful, whether you plan on taking notes or not this morning, if that concept of turning the monologue into our head, how do I feel about this?

Does this appeal to me? Did I expect this? Is my dog getting enough cheese? You know, all the rest of those things, you know, that bother us, whatever they might be. Turning that monologue into a dialogue with God. So the secret to growing in our life of prayer is what? Praying. God bless you. And God bless us all in that. Now, in the midst of hard times, we often ask questions.

Let me be autobiographical. It's not appropriate to talk about hard times without being personal, if only for a moment. So let me say this. I watched these children this morning. I thought, hmm, that's already part of the message. So here we go. At the age of five, my grandma, the only grandparent that I knew, was hit by a car in College Avenue.

She was knocked about 20 feet in the air. She was 77 years old. And she had to learn to walk again. And I said, Lord? At the age of seven years old. That was five. This is seven. The cabin that we had built in the Laguna Mountains, and I still love the mountains. If you want to talk to the Laguna up in that area, I'd love to talk to you sometime. Free offer.

The cabin that we built up there, it's still standing. Thank you, Lord. It burned to the ground with everything in it when I was seven. On Christmas Eve, some vandals broke in. We're partying, and it burned down. And we got the call from the ranger station that said, your cabin has been destroyed with everything in it. That was our Christmas of 1958.

When I was nine years old, third grade, most of that year I was sick. And it wasn't clear whether I was going to make it or not. I didn't go to school a lot. I kind of studied at home and read things that were put in front of me. And I said, why? Now, by this time, you're getting the message, and you're saying, why don't you skip the odd years of your life?

This isn't good. Five, seven, nine. Why don't you go directly to 12, right? Or something like that. Right? But you don't have that power. We don't have the authority to say, I think I'll skip this one and kind of move forward. So there we are. And at age 11, I broke my dad's nose. We were playing croquet. And with a backswing of a croquet mallet, he got his nose broken by his 11-year-old son.

And I said, how does this stuff happen? So these are interesting times. These are challenging times. What do we do with that? And so I began to ask my parents. And I want to say this morning, Lord, please let my parents know that I'm grateful for them today. Please pass on the word. I don't have a direct line. But you know exactly where they are in heavenly places.

Please let them know I love them. They taught me. And I said, how does this work? This whole thing of cabins burning down, grandma getting hit by a car, me getting sick, you know, and pop, how's your nose? How does all this happen? And what they taught me essentially was, as these notes will reflect, is that any attempts to figure out completely causation in hard times.

This is exactly how this happened and why. We may learn something from that. It may be instructive. God willing, we gain wisdom and insight from that. But it's always going to fall short of a full explanation. Does that make sense this morning? The why question isn't going to get the whole deal. So I can't tell you, for example, I'll just take one, whether my grandma was hit by a car and her brother who was walking with her, my great uncle Frank, was killed on the spot.

And she went to the hospital. Finally got out. I can't tell you whether it was because the driver was playing with her dog in the car. She was. College Avenue had just been widened from two lanes to four lanes, and she had a harder time making it all the way across the street before the traffic came. Or she and her brother were customarily walking across the middle of the street but not at a corner.

So whose fault was it? So what happened? And my parents taught me that it's fine to ask the question. It's good to learn something. It's good to gain insight. And if any part of it is because of our mess-ups, well, let's correct those. Let's repent. Let's renew. Let's get it better. But ultimately, the key issue is that God can be glorified in the answer.

And that whatever the situation, grace meets us there. May I ask you to repeat that with me this morning? Whatever the situation, grace meets us there. God's grace is right there, and it's sufficient. So as a child, I'm looking at these children and just getting a little dippy, you know, at the eyes. I'm saying to myself, you know, what can we promise them?

We can promise a God whose grace is always present and who can learn through asking the why question in difficult and hard times. But beyond that, there's a sense in which God will lead forwards and be glorified in the answer. So your sermon notes, if you will. Track with me, whether you're reading or just listening, whatever God leads you to do.

There is, suggests this morning, what we call an existential reality. That is to say, there's a reality of the existence that we simply have varieties of hard times. And some hard times are moral in nature. And God's word, for example, in Micah 6, 8 says, what does it take? What does God call us to? Someone knows that by heart. To do justice. To love mercy.

And to walk humbly with our God. And when we see, therefore, injustices creating hard times. When we see a merciless or a lack of compassion in people's attitudes. And an arrogance rather than a humility. Then we have a call to be prophetic in following the Lord as people of justice, mercy, and humility. That is true in this day. That's true in every day.

My wife and I are asking the question. Lord, what is it you're calling us to do that's going to make a clear statement? Whether it has to do with one or another or another topic. I'm not going to wade into political waters here this morning. The Lord, the Spirit will make it clear to you. We can read. We can listen. We know what time it is. So, with that.

With that. If there's a moral issue involved in these hard times. God shows us a way to be part of the solution. President Kennedy. Who I got to see as a kid on El Cajon Boulevard when he visited here in 1963. I waved at him. He was speaking at San Diego State. I swear he waved back at me. Right? Yeah. JFK. Right? It was JFK that said what? God's work must truly be our own.

So, when there's a moral issue involved, let's stand. Let's be spirit-led. Biblically informed. As we seek to be advocates for the values of God's kingdom. But there's some other hard times that aren't caused. I don't know the degree to which, the percentages of which, the vandals that help burn down our cabin. I don't know if that's the whole answer.

But what I can tell you is that there are other things that aren't quite as serious that are just inconvenient. How many of you in the last year have prayed for rain? Come on. Come on. Come on. Come on. We hear confession at, you know, 11 o'clock. Right? Okay. Now, how many of you have been annoyed by the rain in the last few days? Right. Okay. Some of you with the same hands.

Good. So, in any case, there are things that are just inconvenient that we trace as hard times. One of the sayings that my kids are aware of in our family is, sometimes I have a hangnail and think I'm Job. Sometimes it's just something that said, I don't like that, or that's not convenient, or I hadn't predicted that. Those kinds of things. As you see in your notes, others seem hard times by degree, or by timing, or by desirability.

And we should get some perspective on that. We should realize that this is not the end of the story. This is not a moral issue. It's a convenience or some other kind of issue. So, I look at my brother here in the first row. Will you hear a confession from me this morning? I'm looking at name tags. Don't you love name tags here? It helps us so much.

Dan, I'm jealous of your hair. I had one grandfather that was completely bald. I had another grandfather that had an awesome head of hair, like you. You know, I'm recycling mine. It's migratory. It comes down to here, right? Now, I can't tell you what that story is exactly. Even people that I know that are in the life sciences have a hard time saying how much of this is what DNA and which way goes what.

But I'm just jealous. But the Lord's rebuked me. And so, I'm saying I've pulled it back here. The issue for me is that's inconvenient. It's not a moral deal. But it's tough, you know, up here. Especially when you go out in the sun, right? And you get sunburned. Anybody know what I'm talking about here? Uh-huh. Yep. So, with that in mind, there are different kinds of hard times.

What they have in common is that the why question, once again, Harold Kushner wrote a book on this, Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, some years ago. I thought even at the time it was kind of a funky title, Why Somewhat Bad Things Happen to Relatively Good People. Because nobody's pristine out there, right? I don't deserve a free pass for anything in terms of the hard times that are out floating around.

But Kushner wrote a good book on that. In the notes, you see, that ideally, the why questions bring insight, but they fall short of a full explanation. You know, even in the Bible, explanations were attempted. John chapter 9, verses 1 through 3. The man that was blind. You know the passage. The man that was born blind. And Jesus is there. And the people said, Jesus, we want to find this out from you.

Is this guy blind because he messed up or his father messed up? And Jesus doesn't go into a thorough explanation. He says the real action here is that God may be glorified. That God may be glorified in this challenging time. And that's the core, really, of what we're talking about. In hard times, there is prayer. God's grace enables him to be glorified.

Okay? I don't know if you do schematics in your notes. But you might consider that this morning. In hard times, God answers with his grace in prayer. And he is glorified. And we are demonstrated as his children. And we have that assurance in our lives. So the familiar principle is there. That in the scriptures, God intends every hard time we face.

Every challenge that we face. Whether, for example, he has sent it or simply allowed it. And that's too deep for me. God intends trials to build our character. To build our moral strength. To affirm that we're getting in condition with him. God intends maturity. Satan intends crash and burn. God intends. So how would I like to approach this? I want to approach this from God's side.

I want every such thing to build character. And develop what God's seeking to do in me. In that, then, what we find is that we are never alone. There is always the prayer that we have. To turn a particular moment, which may be very difficult, into a godly and a spirit-led way of life. We have a couple of great examples. Just very briefly. And one of them is the example of David.

I'll say this in this manner. Have you ever noticed that the path to Psalm 23 is through Psalm 22? Now somebody is saying, how dumb is that a statement? Right? Pretty dumb. But why not? Have you ever noticed that the path to Psalm 23 is through Psalm 22? For David. As the Psalms are ordered in the life of King David, in the life of the people Israel.

What's Psalm 23? How does it begin? Anyone? The Lord is my shepherd. I have everything I need. Makes me to lie down in green pastures. Leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in righteous paths for his namesake. And even when I walk through deadly places, I will not be afraid of evil or the evil one. For you're with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

The rod bangs the opponents. And the staff pulls me back from the precipice that I'm wandering toward. You prepare a table in front of me, even with tough people around me. You anoint my head with oil. My life has purpose. I'm anointed. I have a mission. Surely goodness and mercy follow me every day of my life. And then I get to dwell in your house.

I'm coming home. The path to that is through Psalm 22, which begins how? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? You ever notice that? Welcome to spiritual lessons. The path to Psalm 23 is through Psalm 22. I don't know what your Psalm 22 is. Well, I have an opportunity for prayer at the end of the service. If you want someone to pray with you, God bless you, and we'll do that.

But that's a lesson from the life of David. How about the life of Jesus? John chapter 14, verse 1 says, Let not your hearts, let not your souls be troubled. You believe in God. You believe also in me. On it goes. Beautiful. Don't let your heart be troubled. The path for Jesus to the assurances of John 14, 1 is through the passage in John 12, 27 to 28, where Jesus says what?

Now my soul is troubled. So what will I say? Hard times. Cross ahead. Clueless disciples around me. Sayeth the Lord. Now what will I say? My soul is troubled. What will I say? Father, beam me up. Save me from this hour. No. For this cause, for this moment, I've brought forth. Glorify your name. And the voice comes back and says, I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.

Right? So, the path to John 14, 1 is through John 12, 27 to 28. Isn't that right? We follow the Old Testament example of David. We follow the New Testament example of Jesus. And it's that springboard, that reality, by which when we face hard times, whatever the details are, and we find God's grace in prayer, and we find a way forward in growth, in maturity, because God never intends anything we face to be something that leads us into sin, into brokenness, into a crash, into a burn.

He intends it as a trial, as a test, to build us, to redeem us, to draw us to be more like people like King David, but most especially Jesus, our Lord's. That's his purpose. Paul knew that. Now, Paul, if you want to read, like, the total summary of Paul saying, man, have I been beaten up. Man, have I taken a hit. Boy, this has been a tough gig. This whole apostolic thing, I wouldn't have applied for this.

Right? I don't think so. Bad job description. But here we go. 2 Corinthians, verses 11 and 12, where Paul says, yeah, you know, I've been shipwrecked, and they've tried to stone me to death. I've, you know, been beaten up within an inch of my life, and all the rest of this stuff. And now I've got a thorn in the flesh. Even when they're not after me, we don't know what his thorn was.

Some said, because he said elsewhere, see what large letters I write, that maybe his problems was with his eyes. And there were no kinds of eye surgeries at that point. It wasn't going to happen. But we don't know what the thorn in the flesh is. Some of us who have health problems here can rename that the thorn in the flesh. But Paul found the grace.

2 Corinthians 11 and 12 are those passages. If you want to say, hey, David gets it. Jesus gets it. Paul gets it. Hard times. But there is help up in the midst of all this. That's the background, that life story, to Philippians chapter 4. Notice, if you will, then Philippians 4. There is help in Paul in wisdom that God gives. It says, do not be anxious for anything.

But in every situation, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And then the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds. Phrase by phrase, briskly this morning, he says, do not be anxious for anything. Now, Paul preaching to that original audience would have hit, no doubt, any number of people that are called Stoics.

Stoics, a popular philosophy. The chief virtue of Stoicism as a philosophy then and now is apathia. What English word do we get from that? Apathy. It means without feeling. Since life's tough and there are going to be hard times, let's just not let emotions have a significant role in our life. Let's not get worked up. We see somebody who's hurting.

Let's not let compassion work us up. We see a situation where there's a tragedy over here. Let's not get involved. Just, you know, keep a stiff upper lip. So I want to invite you for a moment, just for a moment, to make a stoic face at the person next to you. Tough times have happened. Come on. No smiles. Come on. Cut down on the smile. All right. That shows feeling.

What's a stoic? Come on. Not good. You're so, you're so, you're so, come on. Stoic face. Help me out on it. Friendly, help me. Oh, that's good. Oh, Friendly's got it. Friendly, come up here. Friendly has got it. All right. All right. Kneel him with a stoic face. Let's give it up for Friendly. All right. All right. Yeah. Spiritual gift of stoicism. Okay. So anyway.

So for any number of stoics, when they first hear this, when they first see this in the text, says, don't be anxious for anything. They go, well, yeah. Hello. As if I care. As if I'm going to get involved. As if I give a rip. Paul doesn't stop there, right? Right. The key to not living an anxious and anxiety-filled life, a fluttering life, a beat-up life, is not stoicism.

He says, do not be anxious, but in everything by what? By prayer. And prayer is turning your monologue into what? A dialogue with God. Let's let him in. I'm tired of my monologue. Right? Tired of saying, oh, does this appeal to me or not? You know, the fussy life has very little fruit. So, in this then, Paul says, don't be anxious. Don't let it get you.

But in everything, with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known to God. Do not be anxious. Do not be anxious. We have such a wonderful opportunity to grow. And we give prayer supplication upward. I'm going to tell you a fast story. And it's this. We've talked about children this morning. Our oldest son, who now is in his 40s.

There he is. And when he was just a little sprout, we were living in Boston. And I was doing graduate work and pastoring a church. And a third of our kids had been hatched. And our son, Ben, took me out to the front of our house. Took me next to a tree. And he said, Papa, I want to tell you. All three of our kids call me something different. Our oldest son, I'm Papa.

And to our second son, I'm Pops. And to our daughter, I'm Daddy. Okay? Go figure. Anyway, so always a blessing. He took me out and says, Papa, I want to talk to you. Come with me. Led me out past the front porch. Out to the front step, Quincy, Massachusetts. And he said, this is a tree. He said, I want to tell you about this tree. This tree has bark, but not the kind of bark that the dog has.

This is tree skin. And if you look, the tree's leaves have gone away. It's because the tree doesn't want to get cold. Because it's wintertime. And there's some acorns up there. And pretty soon there'll be squirrels. You get the idea. And he kept talking. And I started just these tears rolling down my cheeks. Now, why would I feel that way? How much of what he was telling me did I not know?

But I love what was happening at that tree. He still remembers that to this day. God doesn't need our information, but he loves the relationship that is built when we come to him hearts to hearts. God doesn't need my information, but he loves the relationship. God, this is the way it looks. This is what's happening. This is how I feel. God doesn't need, but he loves the relationship as I share upward, forward with him.

Make sense? It's a movement of prayer. And so we have that access in everything. By prayer, supplication, then we make our requests known to God. And with thanksgiving, with thanksgiving, we receive an answer. You see in your sheets there. Thanksgiving. Part of that is gaining perspective. My grandmother, after she was hit by a car at 77, bought a plaque.

And she put the plaque up on the wall. I don't know how many of you have sayings on your refrigerator or on the wall or carved into your daytime, whatever else is going on. She put a note up on the wall. She was trying to learn to walk again. And the notes, the plaque up on the wall said, I had no shoes and complained until I met a man who had no feet.

That's called perspective. That's called wisdom. In the great variety and continuum of life, we're all experiencing some things somewhere as hard times. For my grandmother, it was a reminder. I'm in my later years, I'm trying to walk after somebody mowed me down with a car. But you know what? I'm not walking very well. But then I had no shoes and complained, but I met a man who had no feet.

So I want a hard day. I've mentioned him before. Try Nick Vujicic. Life without limbs ministry. No arms, no legs. I've met him. I won't tell the story. I met him twice. Wonderful conversations. It wasn't about cure for him. It was about wholeness of life. Wholeness of life. I don't want to sprout new arms, new legs. How freaky would that be? I just want to be whole.

And he is by God's grace. And the peace of God that goes beyond understanding guards his heart and his mind. Next to a football game out in Minnesota, sat next to Abby and Brittany Hensel. They're conjoined twins. H-E-N-S-E-L, if you want to look it up. Abby and Brittany Hensel, sat next to them at the football game. Amazing time. Amazing time explaining who these people were to our oldest grandson, too.

But love in the Lord. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, guards our hearts and minds. Guards it. Why? Why that word? Because it's spiritual warfare. We need to guard. We need a defender. We need an advocate. We need someone who is Semper Fi. We need that. guarding our lives. That is our Lord who is always, always faithful. So, Abby and Brittany, peace of God, even though they're the conjoined twins.

Nick Vujicic, no arms, no legs. Peace of God. It's not the absence of hassles, but the presence of God, right at the center of the picture. Whatever frame we're in, may our screensaver bring the face of our Lord. Whatever the details, may we sense we're following our Lord Jesus, who moved from, now my soul is troubled, to let not your soul be troubled.

By personal experience, and then by the grace that flows from his cross. Center of the picture is our Lord, who invites us, ask, seek, knock. Now I've got a couple lines at the bottom, and we've got just a couple minutes left in this, and then we'll sing a wonderful song of the church, and Pastor Adam will give a blessing. But at the bottom of your sheet, I want to take a hat off today to Katherine Goebel Johnson.

Some of you have seen the movie Hidden Figures, right? Marvelous story about three African American women, so often victims of prejudice, and yet instrumental as mathematical wizards in creating the space program in this country. Hidden Figures is the movie. She's 97 years old. Strong Christian woman. Let nothing deflect her from being a daughter of the Lord's.

I want to quote for, especially for Surf Church, our son, Andy, who is indeed a, I get wet once in a while, but he's a real surfer. One day in PB, down on the boardwalk, we're looking out, and he says, you can't control the waves, but you can choose how to ride them. Isn't that life? I want to mention, on Valentine's week, my dad, the tuna fisherman, who said, keep the pumps working.

All the water in the ocean can't sink you until it gets inside. Keep the pumps working. The chief pump in my life is prayer, and it pumps that stuff right back out where it belongs. President Lincoln, as God gives us to see the right, let us bind up the nation's wounds. How wonderful we can have this. God's peace, God's shalom, and the reality of contentment.

What does that mean? Contentment, a Latin word, tener in Spanish, means to have. Contenere basically means my life contains right now. Contentment, it's not being someone who is not caring or stoic. It says, my life contains everything I need right now to be fully alive as God's person. That's contentment. My life contains what I need to be fully alive. There are prayers on the back of the notes this morning.

I've got my favorites. Maybe you've got some of yours. If you'd like to talk about where they're from or the stories, I'd love to. But meanwhile, let the worship team come. I'm just going to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to do you like to