John Gunter: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Eagle Community Church of Christ podcast. This week we're talking about, lie number 9. We've been in the book 9 Common Lies Christians Believe and the subtitle is and why God's truth is infinitely better. We're talking about lie number 9 which is believe in yourself. Now again, as I'll mention in the sermon this is not about having a high or low self esteem.
We want you to believe in yourself as far as as far as feeling worth it. Right? But we want you to believe in someone much greater than yourself. Don't be limited by what you think you can do. Does that make sense?
That's what this sermon is about. We hope you'll enjoy it. Hopefully, it it helps you in some way. Have a great week. Come see us sometime.
Again, we're thankful that you're you're here with us this morning as we have worshiped God together, and we now open up his book, the book that guides us. We have, for the last 8 weeks, been talking about 9 common lies that Christians believe, and why God's truth is infinitely better. Today is the last sermon in that series. We are actually, as I mentioned before, Evan and I are going to preach next week over the book of James, parts of that book, and then here in, I think 2 weeks from today, I think that's right, 3 weeks from today, we are going to start the book, I Will, by Tom Rayner. Those of you who have been here on Wednesday nights, we have been discussing this book, and I am going to turn that into a series.
I have had several people say everybody needs to hear this, and I agree. I think it is a good book. So, if you haven't seen that book, it's, like, this small, very small, and it's, like, $6 on Amazon or something. So if you want to follow along with that and be challenged by it, certainly, I can't cover all of it in a sermon, but, we'd love to love to see you have that and follow along. Today's lie we are talking about is, again lie number 9, is believe in yourself.
Now I don't want you to think that this is about, you shouldn't have self esteem. We want everyone to feel worthy and worth it. Right? We don't want people to walk around thinking, you know, I'm not worth having around or living. That's not what this is about.
But this is about the lie that you should just believe in yourself. And Shane says it this way, he says, as good as it sounds, believe in yourself as a lie. Don't believe in yourself, believe in someone bigger than yourself, knowing that same someone will give you a power that causes you to live differently everywhere you go throughout your life. And to that, I say amen. I want you to feel worth it, and you are worth it.
And God shows you that you're worth it, and how much he loves you, how much he cares for you, and what he would do to have a relationship with you, and that is send his one and only son to die on the cross for you. But don't just believe in yourself. Believe in him. Believe in him who has the power to change everything. Without Him, I'm not standing before you this morning.
I've talked about that before when I was a young kid, and we had to do, we always had the men who were gonna serve communion come up front. Y'all done that before? Almost feels like a dramatic thing when you walk into the room. I wouldn't I wasn't even gonna say a prayer or anything. I was just gonna hold a tray, walk and pass.
And when I knew it was getting close, I could hold my hand up. My whole hand was doing this. Just to stand right here in front of everybody. That is not me, that is not work I've done, though I did have to participate and say yes and stand up here. God empowers that.
Right? And I'm certain if we opened up the floor this morning, there are stories after stories of what God has empowered you to be able to do that you never thought you would be able to do. I can only imagine how many stories we would have. And I hope there are stories like that, because God is greater than anything we can come up with. We should believe in Him, not ourselves.
So this morning, we are going to talk about what believing in yourself gets you and kind of how the Bible is different. So, believing in self caused the fall of the human race. You believe that? Yeah. The story from Genesis 3:5, for god knows that when you eat from it so this is the the serpent talking here.
For God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil. You remember the context of this is God has given Adam and Eve everything they could ever want. That's not true because they wanted something else. Right? Everything they needed And so the only thing you can't do is eat of that tree.
And knowing human nature, we do what? Why not? I wanna eat out of that tree. There must be something good because we're not supposed to have it. That's how we are from kids on up.
Right? It's it's almost like, any of you have been on a diet before? You could have just eaten a meal so much that you were hurting and and that's what pushed you into a diet. I have got to do something, I need to be on a diet. And as soon as you say, you know what, I'm gonna be on a diet, you're hungry again, aren't you?
Like, that's all I can think about. It's food. From the time I ate till when am I gonna eat again? I'm starving. Okay.
That's like that's what we are in in every part of our life. You can't have that, oh, I want it though. I'm I'm believing in myself and and that's what happened here, is they believe again, God has told them, Don't do this, but all they needed was a little bit of whisper in the ear, and they thought, You know what? It probably is better if I go ahead and have that. I believe not in God, but in something else, and we know what came from that.
Believing in self caused problems for the Israelites, and we read that in Judges 17:6. In those days, Israel had no king. Everyone did as they saw fit. Well, that never led to anything bad, did it? What if everyone today did as they see fit?
Now, I think we're about there, aren't we? I think we're about there, But that doesn't lead us to God most of the time, that leads us to what self wants, right? What I want, what I think is best, what I think is most fun, all of the things. We ignore the law. We ignore encroaches on other people, right?
I do as I see fit. We had just yesterday someone take it in their own hands to try to commit violence against former President Trump. That's ridiculous. That is absolutely ridiculous. That should never get to a point where I think, You know what I ought to do?
I ought to shoot somebody. That's doing what I want, what I care about, not considering what God wants. And that will lead us into trouble. Believing in self was the opposite of what Jesus taught. And again, you have to be reminded, this is not self esteem.
We want you to have self esteem, but not putting my trust in only myself, putting my trust in God. Believing in self was the opposite of what Jesus taught. Jesus taught this from Matthew 16. Jesus said to his disciples, whoever wants to be my disciple must what? Deny themselves.
That's a little different, right, And trusting in myself to make everything okay. Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. That means I don't need to be front and center. I need to get out of the way. I need to deny myself.
And again, that's different than everyone did right in their what was right in their own eyes. Right? No. We are not going to do that. We are going to say, Okay.
What does God want from me? And how many times is that different than what I want? I hate to say that, but it is, isn't it? Sometimes I have to step back and look in the mirror and say, well, is this leading me closer in my relationship to God or will this potentially lead me away? Okay?
Take up your cross and follow me. Deny yourself if you want to be my disciple. It also says that we should humble ourselves before the Lord. This is one of the the many paradoxes in scripture. You know what a paradox is?
A paradox is like thinking one thing is the right way, but it's actually the other way. Right? So Jesus will will say, humble your humble yourself or James says here, humble yourselves before the lord and he will lift you up. So the way up is where? Come on.
You can say it. Well, that doesn't make any sense. Well, that's a paradox. Right? Humble yourselves before the lord, and he will lift you up because what we want to do is live life the way we want to live it.
Right? I want to go out, I want to live the way I want to live, it's my life, and our culture encourages that, right? You only live once, right? YOLO! That is probably already out of style, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, probably so. As some of you younger folks over here. You are not young anymore, that's why I didn't point at you. We got some great folks over here that, I told them I graduated in 'one, and I think you said I was 1 at the time, right? Yeah, there you go.
So it made me feel real good that day. I've been crying ever since, Tristan. But yeah, our culture encourages us to live like the way we want to live. Like you go do you, right? That's a thing we say.
You live your life, you only live once, all the things. You kind of use your platform, you build your platform, right? But James says here, Humble yourself before the Lord, and He will lift you up. We read in 1st Peter 5:6, humble yourselves therefore under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. You don't lift yourself up.
Let God do that. And often because we want the power, we want the control, we feel like we need to lift up. It's not being done in my time. I'm not being recognized. I'm being disrespected, and we take over instead of letting God do that.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10, But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me. And so what he's saying to be strong, you must be what? Weak. Yeah.
Another paradox. What do you mean you must be weak? That that's not it. I'm supposed to be strong. I'm supposed to show strength.
I'm supposed to tell you how strong I am. I believe most of my, life growing up in church, that's what we did. Christians acted strong. So here's my example, I am a strong Christian. I have no weaknesses.
Well, there's a problem with that. We can't relate to that in all actuality, can we? Because we become stronger as a church, again, through weakness, through understanding, okay, yeah, they had this problem as well. How did you get through it? And that's the same way here.
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. That is how God shows His power, because we understand where our weaknesses are. Do you understand where your weaknesses are? Yeah. We all struggle, don't we?
We all have things that we constantly fight, that constantly torment us, but in that weakness, God is made strong, and we are made strong because God works through us. From Acts 20 verse 35, that well, I'm not there yet. Verse 10. That is why for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses and insults and hardships and persecutions and difficulties. When I am weak, then I am made strong.
You see how that's different than what I said my growing up was? The apostle Paul is talking like this. And sometimes we feel like we need to come to church with the right face on. Right? I need to make sure you think that I have it all together.
And if I do that, then I've got it over on you, and then you think highly of me. Is that why we're here? Is that why you're here this morning is to to walk away thinking, alright, good. Those folks thought I had it together today. Or do we come together, we come to again lift each other up, to be encouraged, to draw strength, to say, yeah, I have my weaknesses, I have my failings, and I'm here just like everyone else.
We have different sayings about this, don't we? Church is not a museum for saints, right? It's a what? Hospital for sinners. I love that.
Now, and I've said this before, one of my professors at, I believe, is Harding said this. He said, I like that saying, he said, but we all can't be in the hospital at the same time. He said, some of us have to be taking care of others and sometimes that means I'm taking care of you. Sometimes that means you're taking care of me. Right?
That we lift each other up because in our weaknesses, we are made strong because God works through us, but we can't do that if all we're doing is putting on this fake suit of armor and showing that to the world or the congregation. We work together, right? Understanding that we all have failures, we all have fears, we all have anxieties, we have all of these things, but we come together and not depend on ourselves, but depend on God. Now in Acts 20:35, In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said, It is more blessed to give than to receive. Did you use this verse earlier?
You used one of my verses here earlier. But yeah, So to to become rich, you need to give. You understand that this morning, church? To become rich, you need to give. Now the the if this was not a paradox, you would think to become rich, I need to save.
Right? I need to put everything I've got into my bank account. We studied last week in our class on Luke chapter 12 about a man who had a great harvest. And his idea wasn't, you know, with this great harvest, I can help other people. His idea was, I had a great harvest.
I can build bigger barns, and I'm set for life. Because that's a focus on me, right, instead of everyone else. That is not, thank you, god. That is, oh, I did well and I'm going to plan for the future because of that. It is more blessed to give than to receive.
Anybody ever receive something and you would just, I can't believe you would give me that. Yeah. I don't even think that that goes well for us because we want to be able to match that. Right? We we want to be able to to feel like, alright, we're all on equal footing here, but as we talked last week, God has given us something we can never repay.
God has given us something that is worth so much more than we could ever repay that it's it's not even worth the conversation. Francisco just talked about that that we are given this gift by grace, right? Not merit, we didn't earn it, we will never earn it, but we are given this thing by grace, a gift that is way outside of what we can even fathom. It is more blessed to give than to receive. Also in Philippians 3:7-8, But whatever were gains to me, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.
What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For whose sake I have lost all things, I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ. Now, to gain, you must lose. And that's what Paul's talking about here. The word garbage there is this, I'm gonna teach you some Greek this morning.
I know everybody rolls their eyes when you say Greek or Hebrew. Right? But but the word there is, scuba. And this is a word that is, pretty harsh. Jordan has the minor in Greek.
You can talk to him more about what that means. But it is, it is almost like saying human waste. Okay? You get my my drift this morning without me losing my job? Okay?
This is a word that Paul is using intentionally to tell you, I consider all these things. I consider everything a loss because of surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them, this word, garbage, that's a clean word for what he used, that I may gain Christ. I'm going to throw away everything I have. I consider them nothing.
I consider them worthless, worse than worthless, because I have and I have gained Jesus Christ. Alright? To gain, you must lose. And what we do a lot of times is we don't lose, we collect. Yeah?
We I love having things. We talked in class this morning, Brooke mentioned minimalism. Katie watches that stuff on YouTube and then tries to, you know, throw away all my stuff in the garage. Okay? Yes, my garage needs to be bigger.
That's what it needs. It needs to be bigger. Bigger barns, bigger garages, all those things. I've got plenty of stuff in those. That's what we do a lot of times.
We collect instead of thinking about, okay, I need to lose to be able to gain. That's what Paul is talking about here. 1 Timothy 610, For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people eager for money have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. The very love of money we focus on that first part.
Right? The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith. Your love of money can take you away from your faith in God. Now I've mentioned this before as well that that oftentimes people want, the preacher to preach on a certain sin.
Well, greed is mentioned more than like any other sin. But we don't wanna talk about greed. It's always something else. He said the love of money has is is taking people away from god because we are pursuing other things. Well, I don't worship an idol.
How do you spend your money? What do you focus on? What are you fixated on? On? I've got to have this and I've got to have that and, to feel like my family is coming up in the world.
I need to accomplish this, that, and the other. Right? And we keep fixated on the wrong thing instead of fixated on God and what he has done for us. In Romans 8:13, to live you must die. He said, Paul says, For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.
But if by the spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. To live, you must die. To live, you must put away. And often, we are elevating self. We are believing in self, and what I want and what makes me happy.
And our culture stands right there with us holding our hands saying, You betcha, you do what makes you happy. From John 3:30, He must become greater, I must become less. This is a great verse in the Bible. He must become greater. I must become less.
This is a a John the Baptist quote. The idea that in our culture is, again, you build your platform, you stand on, and you're able to use this and do all of these things and become great. John the Baptist had quite a platform. Even as a man wearing camel hair, eating locusts in the desert, people came out to see him. They knew who he was, thought he was a great prophet.
They said, you know what? This man here, this Jesus I've been telling you about, he must become greater, I must become less, and all of us. This is the kind of verse we need on our, on our walls at our house. He must become greater. I must become less.
Because if we get the priority right, that's going to change everything in our lives. Because oftentimes, though we wouldn't say it and we might not put that on our wall, I am up here and Jesus is a, you know, when I need Him, I will pull Him out of my pocket type of thing. He must become greater, I must become less. From Proverbs 1412, there is a way that appears to be right, but in the end, it leads to death. I think that's true for all of us.
There are ways we'd really like to follow. There are ways that seem very attractive. Things in in the world that just, man, I love to do. I love new experiences. I love to try different things.
I go down the rabbit hole of YouTube. Actually in this chapter, I sent a picture of something I had highlighted and Katie asked me if I wrote a book she didn't know about, because he talked about how he will try something and he will buy all the stuff in that new hobby, and work on that for just a short period of time in the movie. I see some of you looking at your significant other. Yeah, some of you are right there with me. Katie says, John goes all in when he goes.
Right? I've got to have all the stuff. I don't even buy the entry level stuff, you know, the smart thing to do. I'll see if you like it first. No.
To do a good job, you have to have the high end stuff, right? And so I go all in and there are there are ways that seem right to me and then I move along from it. Just like in life, there are ways that seem right to us. There are ways that feel good to us. There are ways that are very attractive and our culture will pat you on the back and say, good job, but in the end, you are being led to death because you have been led away from God.
And I don't want any of us to be in that situation. I don't want my family to be there, I don't want any of you, I don't want me to be there. I want us as a church to have God in His rightful place, following Him. So don't believe in yourself. Love yourself.
You're worth it, But believe in God who's greater than all that we can imagine. Believe in God who empowers us to do things that we never thought we could do. Believe in God who has created the world and shown you how it can function and shown you how it was made for you. God could have destroyed the earth after Adam and Eve and just left it barren. He loves you so much that he said, okay, well, we'll do this a little differently.
I will even send my son for all of you. And you know your sin. What about all of our sins together? But Jesus came and he died on the cross for people who would reject him, people who would continue to sin, people who would at times be hot, sometimes be cold, and many times be sitting on the fence, winging our feet, not making a clear choice because I want to be on both sides of the fence. So this morning, I'm gonna ask you, how's your relationship with God?
Are you elevating yourself? Are you elevating him in your life? Jordan has an invitation song picked out. We'd love to pray with you. We'd love to see you baptized into Christ.
You haven't been, thus far in your life. But if you have any need,