So... What did you think of the service?

"I thought it was good."

Long pause.

"Yep. Me too."

More often than not, this is usually how our conversation goes on the way home from church. Sometime we'll talk about some of the main points, but rarely do we get past the listening comprehension phase of talking about a sermon.

Of course there are those days when the pastor brought a really strong word, or maybe the topic had our attention. After those messages, we have little trouble moving past the facts of the message and taking it to another level as we talk about our feelings, how we felt when he talked about x. But is this how we should be responding each week? Should our response and motivation to reflect on what we heard be conditional to how well we "liked" the message?

Let me offer to you that the answer to those questions is no. Yes, some days we are more in tune with the Spirit, and have no trouble feasting on the message for the rest of the week. But more often than not, this will not be the case. Most of the time, we have to do some work.

We have to move past the reciting of facts that are delivered to us. We need to let the facts sink into our hearts and minds so that our feelings about reflecting on those facts begins to surface.

As we process our feelings, we return to the scriptures and make sure we are correctly understanding what we heard. Then we form conclusions, identifying where our understanding needs correction. Those conclusions should then be shared with other believers to help us make sure we are not making mistakes in our thinking. We also invite others to learn how to encourage us and celebrate how God is at work in our hearts. And finally, we move to identifying what our next steps are for us to apply the preaching of God's word to our lives.

Yes, this is hard. Yes, this requires some effort and work. But the fruit of asking some hard questions of our hearts in light of hearing the preaching of God's word will become evident. We will no longer be mere hearers of the word, but doers.

"But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing." (James 1:22-25 ESV)

Facts: What was discussed?

Feelings: How did I feel about those facts?

Conclusions: What did I learn about God? and myself?

Community: Are my conclusions correct? What do I need to hear from other believers about this?

Next steps: What will I do about it today? This week?

Make it a point today to work through these questions and consider what you heard from the preaching of God's word. Let's move past, "what did you think?" to "what are you going to do about it?"

Big questions

What big questions do you need to ask yourself?

Maybe you've been avoiding them because you don't want to deal with the emotions that are there. Or maybe you avoid the big questions because its easier to live in the shallows and you don't wan to deal with the deep.

Regardless of the reasons, I would commend to you to making time each week to reflect and ask yourself some key, big, deep questions.

These aren't for everyone, but I've come up with a short list of big questions that work for me- they help me refocus, recharge, and remember what is most important.

What is my struggle?
What is my joy?
What is my fear?
What do I now see?
What sin am I still clinging on to?
What do I need to repent of?
What shame do I need to let go of?
What kindness do I need to thank God for?
To whom do I need to show kindness to today?
What things in this season of my life do I need to daily and continually be in prayer for? (Identify and then pray for these)
What big prayer do I need to pray today? (Identify and then pray)
Today's reminder
Next step

Worshipful Awareness

Most churches start their services with the singing of several songs and hymns to God. While this isn't the only way to order a service, I do think that singing to God at the beginning is helpful to prepare our hearts to receive instruction from the Lord through the preaching of His word.

We know that the worship part of the service should stir up our greatest affections, and should be the overflow of our walk with God. Unfortunately though, our hearts have a way of wandering. When our hearts are hardened, we become spiritually numb to the words we sing, and rob ourselves of the joy of seeing God for all that He is, seeing His holiness, and most of all seeing how sinful we are in light of how holy He is.

I think that it is becoming aware of how holy that God is that enables us to see how unholy we are, apart from the finished work of Jesus for us. When we are able to see our sin as God sees it, we agree with Him that it is in fact sin and that something must be done about it.

The good news is that in Jesus, something has already been done about our sin. For us who place our trust in Jesus, our sins are forgiven, and the perfect life of Christ is now imputed to us, making us pure and holy before God. Apart from Him, we are done, totally lost, and fully deserving God's wrath for our sin that we continually commit against Him and others. But God has declared that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because he paid the debt we could not pay and gave us new life. It is through Christ that we find fulfillment, purpose, joy, our identity, and most of all, life.

It is the awareness of his holiness that leads us to repentance, but it is awareness of our adoption as sons and daughters of God through the cross of Jesus that leads us to life and joy!

It is my prayer that our hearts would not be hardened and that God would cause us to constantly remain spiritually aware of these realities, so that we would continue in repentance, and grow in our affection for the ultimate Father who has adopted us as His own.

I love the one who tells me the truth

It's great to listen to others singing our praises. We love to hear all the good things that people say about us. Makes us feel good, right? Boosts our all important self esteem!

But that's not what we seek when we see the doctor, is it? When we see the doctor, we want him to tell us the truth, right? Not, "hey, so good to see you! Your health is great!", when really he knows that you have cancer.

There are few who deserve our deepest affections than those who tell us the truth.

When we know the truth, we know what to do. If we are diagnosed with cancer, we then will focus on getting treatment so we can be made well. But if we don't know the truth, we will continue in ignorance thinking that everything is fine, and never seek the cure that we think we don't need.

Yes I know. Bad news is unpleasant, and hearing it will probably make me unhappy. But my happiness is not the most important thing. Knowing the truth and responding to it is far more important than my temporary discomfort and pain of discovering I had believed a lie but now know the truth.

In the end, I am thankful and praising God for the one who tells me the truth, who calls out my sin, who causes me to seek repentance and seek forgiveness from the only One who can ultimately forgive the debtor. Yes, this person I thank and love profusely, because they have shown me my sin and caused me to return to Jesus where I find the only grace sufficient to save me from myself.

I'll say it again, because we will need to remember it the next time someone tells us the truth about us: There are few who deserve our deepest affections than those who tell us the truth.

Lead well

How would you define the culture of your office, your church, or the team you serve with? Is it a fun place to work? Do you like the people you work with? How about problems versus solutions- are the people you work with driven to find solutions or do they campout and critique the evidence of the problem? Do they dream about what's possible? Do they get excited about what could be? Do they celebrate when their coworkers succeed?

These questions and many like them will reveal if healthy leadership is present within your team or office. It is because of good leadership that people learn to discover solutions to problems, find satisfaction in their work, persevere through difficult assignments, and enjoy working with the people on their team.

In small teams, the leader has direct access to the team, and they to him. The leader can develop relationships, help them grow in weaknesses, develop them as leaders themselves.

Large organizations with multiple layers of management and leadership are different. Someone with 100 people under their care cannot foster a leader/learner relationship with each person. Not only is it impossible, but to attempt to do so discredits the authenticity of their attempt while stunting the growth of the people he leads.

If you want to lead your people well, lead your leaders well. Leaders who are led well will lead well.  

The leaders within the organization are the culture shapers. They are intimately familiar with the issues and concerns of the people. If the leaders don't have vision and drive and and desire to improve, to create, do do the impossible, if they don't enjoy what they do, then neither will their team.

A leader can only lead as high as the leadership he reports to. If the leadership above him is strong and leading him well, then he will rise to that level of leadership with his team. If the leadership above him is poor, then the leader will either resign his will to lead, or more likely, he will simply leave and go to a place that has a higher level of leadership.

If you are frustrated with the culture of your organization, then start leading your leaders well. Leaders who are led well will lead their leaders well. And as the leader goes, so does the culture.

The right leadership at the wrong level is the wrong leadership for all levels. If you want to lead your people well, lead your leaders well.

The Traditions of Men

Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat." He answered them, "And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded, "Honor your father and your mother," and, "Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die." But you say, "If anyone tells his father or his mother, "What you would have gained from me is given to God," he need not honor his father." So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: ""This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men."" (Matthew 15:1-9 ESV)

Jesus has no problem telling it like it is. 

"for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God."

What's a Tradition?

Traditions in this context is describing a set of beliefs and values that are passed down from generation to generation. Each generation has an obligation and privilege of passing on to the next what they esteem to be most important, most valuable. The passing down of traditions is a means of preserving values and beliefs with respect to many things, including culture, family, and faith.  They are like containers, that encapsulate what we think is most important for the next generation to believe and to do. 

So traditions in and of themselves are neither good or bad because they are just containers. It's the things we put inside the container, the things that a given tradition is comprised of that, when measured against an objective moral standard, are determined to be good or bad. 

It's What's On The Inside That Counts

In this interaction, Jesus is making it clear that the objective moral standard for determining if a tradition is good or not is the commandments of God- the Bible.  And this is the very basis for which he uses to judge the teachings of the religious teachers of his day. 

The scribes and pharasies were teaching a tradition with respect to children giving honor to their parents. It is a good thing to give a tradition that instructs how children should think of and interact with their parents. But if that tradition violates the teaching of the objective moral standard, then that teaching is determined to be a bad tradition. 

So seems simple enough right? Bad traditions are bad, and since no one wants to pass on something that is bad to others who we esteem, then why anyone ever pass on a bad tradition? It is for the same reason that Jesus came and gave his life: our sin. 

The Problem

As the saying goes, we are not sinners because we sin, rather we sin because we are sinners. We like to do what We like to do. We rely heavily on emotion, on what "feels" right to us, and because we are absolutely convinced that we know best, we close our minds to all other supposed authorities and do what we want to do, because we want to do it, because it makes sense to Us. 

It is because we are sinners that we look at the bible and say, "hey God thanks for the advice, but I don't really like what you have to say about "x". I think your teachings are a little dated; your ideas may have been good back then, but not in the 21st century. We really know better now, and are going to make sure that the next generation knows better like us too."

The Rebuke

And the rebuke of Jesus is to the heart of the issue: since your tradition is so good, and God's is so unuseful/irrelevant/whatever, then why do you continue to bother with all the worship and praise for God and his word? Jesus is rebuking them for two things: their blatant hypocrisy, and their blindness of heart, their ignorance, as they are the teachers of the Law and are unable to discern that they are teaching traditions that nullify the word of God. 

"for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God."

So what?

A couple of key takeaway applications:

1. The scribes and pharasies were not perfect. They were sinners just like you and me. They needed a savior just like everyone else. So be careful to not judge them for their sin without also judging yourself for doing the same things. 
2. Apart from the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and illuminating His Word when we read it, we too are capable of inventing all sorts of ill advised traditions that would contradict the word of God. We need The Lord to illuminate his word in our lives daily, moment by moment, or we too will be like blind guides. 
3. Pray. Pray that God would reveal our sin in this area so that we would confess it and repent from it. When God reveals the hypocrisy in our lives, adn the things that we have believed in ignorance, then acknowledge it, confess it as sin, and stop doing it. Otherwise we too will continue in the sin of the scribes and pharasies by passing on the commandments of men as doctrine, above the Word of God. 

What other points or takeaways do you have from this passage?

Still in need of a savior

Time has a way of making the heart forgetful.

If you are a true believer in Christ, don't ever let this reality escape you: Apart from Jesus, you are dead in your sins. No amount of bible reading plans, quiet times, church attendance, reading Christian books, listening to Christian radio, keeping a list of "do's and don'ts" or any other religious activity will get you any further into God's grace than you already are. Your salvation, your standing with God has everything to do with what Jesus... the one and only God, Holy and blameless... did for you... a hopelessly lost sinner that is totally unable to gain salvation apart from Jesus.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Ephesians 2:8-9

We are all sinners and are in need of a savior. Before you believed, you were a sinner in need of a savior. And this never changes, even after you first believe- no matter what good works you do, no matter what sins you continue to wrestle with and succumb to. Your salvation has everything to do with what Jesus has done, and nothing to do with what you have or will ever do.

"The only thing of our very own which we contribute to our salvation is the sin which makes it necessary."
William Temple

For all believers, I pray that you would not let your heart forget what our Lord has done for us. Do not forget- apart from Christ, we are lost, dead in our sins. Jesus is our savior, now and forever. We never out grow our need for him, we never out earn our need for salvation. Though you may sin less, you are not sinless.. you and I are still sinners, still in need of a savior... Do not let your heart forget what our Lord has done for us. Live from His salvation everyday, moment by moment. The war is over, the victory over sin and death is Christ Jesus's. His rest is ours.

For all who not sure about all of this Jesus stuff, or maybe who flatout reject Christ, I pray that your heart would hear the call of hope, of life... I pray that you would understand that you and I are sinners and are totally unable to earn God's approval, his favor, his forgiveness. It's only found in Jesus, who freely gives to those who believe, who would receive the free gift that He offers all who would come to him. Do not let your heart continue to believe the lie that it's too late. You're not too bad to be saved, you're not too far for His reach. There's still time on the clock, there's still breath in your lungs. If you are ready to receive this free gift, or have questions about it, please email me- I'd love to see how I can be of help! leavingthegray@gmail.com