Hello and welcome to the Grove Church podcast. I'm Charlie Lofton, the lead pastor
there. And we are so glad that you are joining us. Whether you are
a member and you're just catching up on a sermon that you missed or you're
someone who's brand new, we are really glad that you are joining us. And if
you are new in some way, and I know that a lot of people will
do that, will listen to sermons first before they visit, I want you to
know that we would love to meet you at any point. You can join us
live in our services on Sunday nine and 1030 or our streaming
service at 1030. Either way, we would love to be able to get to know
you. And regardless of why you are here listening to this
sermon today, thank you so much for joining us. Hey, good
morning. Hey, if you are new, I'm Charlie, the lead pastor
here, and really glad you are all worshiping with us today. And as Jason mentioned
a few minutes ago, we are finishing up a series today called Devoted. We've been
kind of working our way through this phrase, and what Jesus said is the greatest
commandment, which is to love the Lord your God, with your heart, your soul, your
mind and your strength. And we've been taking each of those in turn.
And we're wrapping up today by talking about strength. And we just kind of
been talking about, like, if the greatest commandment is to love God, kind
of, what are all the ways that we do that? What does that really mean?
What does it mean to love him with your heart, with your soul, with your
mind? And now today was strength. And if you were here
a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about soul, it was also the
Sunday when it was zero. If you remember that, if you don't remember that Sunday,
you remember when it was zero. And I was actually very pleasantly
surprised and impressed with how many of us were willing to kind of get out
and be here on that Sunday. And we joked about,
long standing joke that it was a double point Sunday, like, you got two
points for coming instead of the normal one. And it kind of made that joke
really to kind of talk about this idea that some of us have felt or
maybe even still feel that I come to church because I have to, to kind
of earn a God point. But really why we're here.
And we talked about that real need for
soul connection. And that really is what draws us
in a deeper way than just some sense of obligation.
I circle back to that because I want to ask the question again, maybe
a little bit differently do you have
to be here? Do you have to be here? Not
that God's keeping a spreadsheet of points.
Do you have to be here? Is it right to be here? Would
it be wrong to not be? Does it matter
to God? Does anything really
matter to God? Do you have to
do anything? If God says it, if
he commands it, what is our
response to that? And I asked this
question that way because I think the
older I get and I feel older every
day. I was at a daddy daughter dance last night with
our twelve year old, Leila, and there's nothing that makes me feel
older. And it's not being around twelve year olds, it's being around
the parents of other twelve year olds. Like, hey, there's all people that
looks normal for them to have a twelve year old, and then there's me, right?
So the older I get, the more I become
convinced that this issue may
be the number one theological issue that
we have to grapple with if we are going to
stay devoted in a committed relationship with God
for the rest of our lives. How do I take these
two truths that I do not believe, contradict,
but complement each other, which is God
loves you through Jesus Christ,
unconditionally, not based on what you do. And
because of what Jesus did for you, you are free.
And the Bible is full of a lot of
commandments, not suggestions,
commandments.
What do I do with these two things? Because I speak to
a lot of different groups of people, and as some of you may know, I
would just came back in the middle of December. About ten of
us went to Thailand and to speak to a group of
missionaries who were there kind of on a retreat, on a conference
from another country in Southeast Asia. And I'm telling you, when you're talking to
this group of people, you're talking to a group of people who are more
committed and dedicated than probably anyone we know in real life, and
they are willing to sacrifice so much to do what they believe is the
right thing. And I've talked to so many people that have that sort of
mindset that are doing these really incredible things for God. And you can just
sense. I can just sense when I'm talking to them, there's a part of them
that is struggling. And they're doing all of this in part
because I have to show God and myself and
the world that I can be good enough. So I'm going to do the
biggest thing, the most important thing, and they struggle with
this battle. I can't really accept that God loves me
unconditionally I've got to be good
enough. And I see other people who wrestle with
this, and they've concluded already,
I'll never be good enough. And they are
sad, depressed, defeated, and
slowly just kind of drift away. And there
are other people to be like that are just kind of like, bro, what are
you even talking about? Did you hear the first part?
Free. I'm free, brother.
Do you all know what free means? Free means I get to do whatever I
want, and it doesn't matter.
And that just drifts you off a different way.
What does it mean in a healthy,
balanced way to understand
what obedience is with the freedom that
we have with Christ. And Paul says it in a really awesome way where he
says, you are free, but don't use that freedom as an
opportunity to do whatever you want. And us navigating
that, I think, is a critical, personal,
theological struggle, balance issue that we need to
grapple with if we are going to remain devoted.
And I love the way that Jesus says it. Love the Lord your God with
your heart, soul, mind and strength. It begins with love. I need to
love him. That is the core motivation of all of this.
I'm not trying to earn anything. I'm not trying to be good enough.
I want to love God well. And one of the
ways that we love God well is with our strength, which
means I love God by doing
what he says. I love God by doing what he says.
If God says something, one of the ways
that I respond to him with love is to do
it. When someone you love asks you to do
something, it is an act of love to do it. The relationship
with God is different because he is not just a friend.
He is God. He is a Lord. He is a king. He is a
heavenly father. And so he's not simply
asking, he's commanding. And so it has a certain weight to it. And that is
how we show love to someone who has authority over
us, by responding to what they say. But it is an act of love. And
I think it is important for us, no matter where you grew up,
whatever your background was, whatever it is, you came, wherever you came from,
this idea that somehow we are here today to earn
something, everything that matters
in our relationship with God was paid for by
Jesus Christ and given to you freely through
him. And now, having
received that and been made free, I
respond to him with love. And
so I want us to be able to build a life, a
lasting spiritual life with Jesus Christ,
built on that idea that to love God with
my strength, it is a love response to do what he
commands us to do. And there's a verse where Jesus is
speaking. He exemplifies that pretty well in John
1421. And if you are the verse
memorizing kind or on your Bible app or
whatever you like to favorite, highlight certain verses, I encourage you just kind of
make put, however it is you do put this
one on your list, because I think it is an incredibly powerful, important
verse. John 1421.
Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves
me. The one who loves me will be loved by my father,
and I, too, will love them and show myself
to them. So what he's describing
here is really kind of the process of this relationship.
And again, if you come at this with this negative, sort
of unbalanced mindset of I have to earn
God's love, then you're going to see something different than what's being said here.
God's love has been given to you freely through Jesus Christ. What does a
relationship with God look like? What does an
ongoing, deepening relationship look like?
I respond to the love that God has given me through Jesus Christ,
through obedience. And when I do that,
God is pleased with me, and the love
grows, and I get to know him, and he gets to know
me. There's a deepening of relationship. There is a reciprocal
thing that happens here that happens in all of relationships.
Love is met by more love
relationally. And
so one of the significant things that I do
to show God and to build this depth and love
relationship with him is through obedience. I'm
going to do the things that he says.
And again, putting aside all of the bad
theological baggage that can come from feeling like we've got to
earn something or we'll never be good, to put all that aside, this is just
the way a relationship works,
especially a relationship with God.
And so, again, we're going to have to put all of this together. And so
I want us to just kind of spend some time just kind of breaking some
of this down. Like, if we love God, if one of the
primary ways that we can love God is through obedience, what
does that really mean? And we'll just start here that I want to love God
by doing what he says. And part of that
is I have to love him by following his
code. He has a code, a moral code,
that he says, this is the way you should live.
The Bible is full of commandments, some of which we just kind of
take. We have no objections to.
Don't murder, don't steal, those sorts of things. Don't lie. We
object to it, but not, we know it's wrong, we just do it anyway. Right.
But some of these we're not going to argue
over, right? And then there's some that we like
less. But the Bible is full of commands about the way
that you should be living your life. And some of the biggest
ones that we tend to struggle with have to do with the things that we
talk about very often here at the church.
What is a proper sexual, moral,
relational ethic and what do we do with our money?
The Bible is full of commands on those things that are deeply
personal and have to do with
the deepest parts of our life and not just simply what we do,
but really getting out of the core of what some of our heart
struggles are. And God has laid out a lot
of these commands. And I'm sure you have come across at least one. You don't
have to admit this in church because you're in church now, but I'm sure you've
come across at least one that you look at. I don't like it. I don't
like it. I'm not in thumbs down.
And how you respond to that, how you
respond to a command that you don't particularly
like really depends very heavily
on what your perception of God is.
So I'm a dad. I mentioned that I got a twelve year old,
Leila, but I also have a 26 year old and a 23 year old
daughter. I have three daughters. So Leila is twelve, but she's not my first twelve
year old. So this is my third twelve year old. I'm kind of going through
all of this again. And now is the time where a particular
moral code that dad has is coming to the forefront because
some of her friends are starting to have boyfriends, they're starting to go
out. I roll. They're dating, they like
each other and all these things. And she is starting to notice
boys in ways that she wasn't noticing them, say, three years
ago. She's always noticed boys, but now we're noticing them differently.
And we've got boys that we like and we got all these people. And dad
has had a very hard rule. Twelve year olds don't date. You don't have a
boyfriend. We're not going to joke about it.
It's a hard line. And every time this comes up,
not only have all of the girls questioned, but
many of you will come up to me and you ask this question
specifically. Well, when then, when?
And then I say when it makes sense.
What does that mean? Tell me about these twelve year olds that are going out.
Where do they go? Twelve year old can't go anywhere. They don't
go anyplace. I remember having this conversation with Maley. She was describing
this relationship that was happening when she was twelve.
Like, yeah, they're going out. Where do they. What, dad? They don't go anywhere.
Well, I mean, do they sit together at lunch? No,
they would never do that. Then what does it mean? It means they like each
other. Then why don't we just leave it at
that? But Leila, she was pressing this was over. We talked about
this a couple of weeks ago. We're sitting over the 3000 piece puzzle working on.
We're having this deep philosophical conversation. She's like, dad, but
when, though? But when? Let me explain to you what dating
is. Dating is a process
that you go through to figure out who you're going to spend the rest of
your life with. And she goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, dad, whoa.
I'm not ready for
that's.
And I'm not telling you that you have to have that. That is not the
point of this. My point of this is not to tell you that
this should be a part of your code. The point of this is it is
part of our code in our family. And our girls have struggled with
it at the time and then even after thinking back
about it. But the reason where the buy
in really comes is what do they really believe about me?
Do they believe that I'm good? Do they believe that
I love them and that what I want is in their best
interest? Do they believe that?
And I think that they do. And so there have been some times where we've
laid some things out that we've asked them to do that they have not wanted
to do, but they have gone along because they believe those
things. Dad is good. He loves me
and he believes this is in my best interest.
But unlike me, God is always
good. God is always full of love. And he
is not just simply thinks this might be in your
best interest. He is the creator, designer of the
universe. And because he loves you and because he
is good and he is always acting in
your best interest, then you can know for sure that
the things that he is asking you to do are
good for you. Because sometimes I believe that we have
treated God's commands as
if we're on some sort of reality show. Anybody ever watched the show
wipe out? Like, you're just trying to navigate
some really difficult obstacle course. And if I can make it all the
way through, I win. And God's
putting up obstacles in front of you. Just to make it difficult for you,
just to see if you're strong enough, committed enough, good enough,
when really he is the creator, designer of the universe,
who was telling you, you want life,
believe this, follow this,
do this. Not because you
have to, because I have to.
This is what I want. This is what I want. This is what I want.
I want life. This is what I want life. I have to do it. Not
I have to do it. I have to do it because of who he is
and the life that I want to have. But it's a little
bit more than that. We're not going to spend a whole lot of time on
this next one, but it's a little bit more than that. That I want to
make sure that we understand not only his code, but also his mission.
He has given you a purpose, a directive in life, and it's
pretty broad in some areas. We
work, we have family, we have friends, we have
community. We worship together. There's a part of that that all is
encompassing in the mission that God has given us on this life.
But we do not live a directionless life. We live a life
with a very specific mission. Jesus said, you're the light of the world.
He also said that we are to go and make disciples of all nations.
He has called us to be carriers of hope and life to a world that
is desperate for it. And it is my hope and desire
that we would be known as a community that is doing this together,
that we are partnering together with one another to do what
we can to bring hope and life to our community and to our
world. It happens every Sunday. Happens every
Sunday. Someone new will walk in. Hopefully they are greeted well and loved well
by someone, and they have a great opportunity to meet some people if they're dropping
off their kids. And all the people, all the work that is done here behind
the scenes to make all of this happen and the worship and all
of that like it a great opportunity for us to one another and to
new people, to bring the hope of Jesus to people.
And we use our financial resources, we use our service.
You are using the influence that you have with people in your neighborhood,
at your work, in your school, to invite them. And
we all together, working together, are trying to bring hope
and life to the world, whether it be from
community care to our food pantry, to
just telling people about Jesus, by inviting them to worship, by loving
them, by meeting the needs around you. This is what we're doing.
You have a lot of freedom and a lot of the choices that you make
about how you live your life kind of what your job is and where you
live, but your mission, regardless is the same.
We've been called to bring carriers of life and light to a
world that needs it. And so if I'm going
to love God well, I'm going to love God by doing what he says, I'm
going to love him well by following his code.
I'm going to love God well by following his mission.
And really I'm going to save this kind of, this one for last. It's kind
of a bigger idea here that I want to make sure that we all
understand that really what this means is I love God by
doing what he says, not just his code, his mission, but really everything. This is
everything that may feel a little overwhelming at
first, but really everything that we do
in one way or another should try to
reflect the love that we have
for God. And there's a verse that gets pulled out context, and I'm going to
do the same thing. I'm going to pull that out of context. We're just going
to kind of look at it and we're going to talk about the way that
people try to misunderstand it and misuse it, and then we're going to put it
back in its context and try to understand it.
One corinthians ten, verse 31.
So whatever you eat or drink or whatever you
do, do it all for the glory
of God. So whatever you do, eating, drinking,
whatever, anything that you do, do it for the glory of God.
There's a couple of different ways that people will try to use this verse. Some
people will be like, man, that sounds like freedom to me. Whatever it
is I do, I'm doing it for God. Glory, God. This is for your
glory, right? I'm going to eat and drink
and just do whatever I want as long as I
say it's for God's glory. Or you can go the other way and
it can just feel like a really weird, pressuring verse. You get up this morning
and you start brushing your teeth and it's like, am I brushing my teeth for
the glory of God today? God, I just pray that you'll be glorified by the
cleanliness of my teeth and good dental care
and you can feel paralyzed.
I thought I just brushed my teeth, did my hair today, but
I forgot to do it for the glory of God. And then you can feel
like, because some of the things I'm just doing, I'm just living
life, I'm failing because I didn't, quote, do it for the glory of God.
But the context of this is actually a very specific one.
He's talking to them about this issue that is unique to them.
It is not unique to mark. If you've ever heard Mark tell stories about being
in India, it is something that he has firsthand experienced these sorts of
things, where they were having meals in
people's homes that were not believers and the food
that they were using was part of a religious sacrifice
to an idol. And now they are serving the food that has been
sacrificed and dedicated to a false God. Is it
okay to eat that? This is a
real question. It's a deep question.
What do you do? And Paul
fails to give them a direct answer to that.
You're going to choose one or the other. Whichever one you choose, whatever
it is you choose to do, you make sure that you are doing
it with a heart that says, I want God to be
glorified. I want to honor
God and love God with the decision that I
make. Because the reality is the
Bible. Life is full of things.
Moral questions about what is the right thing to do in this
situation, full of situations that the Bible
does not answer for you. Let's just go back to dating.
What does it mean to honor God in your dating life?
If you look to the Bible and look for
advice on how to date, you're going to be really
disappointed because it's going to tell you that your dad picks out your
spouse, and then that's it, and then nothing else
matters, which, depending on how old you are and how old your kids
are, starts to look pretty good.
Worse ideas, because here's the
thing that we believe. It's been part of the grow from the very beginning.
Everything that the Bible says is true, but not everything that's
true is in the Bible. And so
we don't know. There's certain things that just kind of have a bit
of uncertainty to them, where people draw different lines in different places
about what is appropriate to watch or not watch,
or how should I manage my screen
time or my screen time for my kids, or these sorts of things.
And the Bible gives us some principles about life,
but doesn't specifically address these issues.
What do we do? Do we have freedom to just kind of do
whatever we want? And this is the question that the corinthians are asking that Paul
is answering. It's like, yes, you have freedom, but
really you need to think about
what brings the most honor to
God in this circumstance for you.
Again, let's not take this too far. There are some
things where God has made it very clear. This is right, this
is wrong. But then there's some things where it just seems a little
vague. And I'll use an example. It is a very popular example
to use if you were here last week, I made a joke. It
wasn't really a joke. I guess I said it in a funny way, but it's
true. I don't like coffee. It doesn't
taste good. And somebody over here told me that I need to add sugar to
it. And it was a great little moment. And just bitter. I
don't like it. I don't like it. No matter how hard people try,
no matter what concoction you make, I still don't like it. I could have also
said at that time, I could have also said I feel the same way about
beer or wine or really any alcoholic drink.
I didn't bring it up then because it would have been overwhelmingly distracting. Not that
me bringing up coffee wasn't also distracting because some of you got really mad at
me. I apologize.
I can say singing. I take a drink of beer, that bitterness,
it just gets me. I don't like it. And I'll try this wine, though. It's
really sweet. And you and I have very different definitions of the
word sweet. It's not sweet. It is bitter.
No. I can make you something. I can make you something. And they'll make me
something that is akin to some sort of fruit punch. And I'll take it. And
I'll take a drink and, like, fruit punch
and. Can I just have the fruit punch, please? Right.
I don't like it. And even in me just
kind of telling you this story about my certain adventures I've had with
alcohol and telling you that there are people who are trying to get me to
want to drink alcohol has made a few of you uncomfortable.
Pastor, getting up there, talking about, very freely about
alcohol. I thought we're supposed to be weird about this. And we've chosen as
a church, we're not going to be weird about it. We have a very clear,
yet vague
idea about what alcohol is. Here's our policy.
Always has been, alcohol is fine until it isn't.
What does that mean, bro? You know what it means. Everybody knows what it means.
I don't have to explain that. I could. You know what it means. It's fine
till it's not. And a lot of us have made a lot of different
choices around it. And honestly, we make different choices based on different
circumstances. Pastored a church in St. Louis,
Missouri for a few years.
I don't know if you've ever spent a lot of time with midwestern Catholics,
but they have a different perspective
about alcohol than they do in the church that we came in before in
Cabot, Arkansas, it's a dry county. If you
don't know what that is, look it up.
And so there were a lot of places where I got offered a lot of
beer and a lot of alcohol in places where
they, hey, come to their house here and they would just hand it to
me, what is the right thing to do there?
What is the right way to honor and love God in that situation is different
than the way that I honor and love God in Cabot, Arkansas, is different than
the way that we do it here. Whether I choose to eat or choose
to drink, yes or no,
isn't the question. The question is
in the decision that I make, am I making this decision
to bring honor and glory to God, or am I just doing what I
want to do, what feels good to me?
And if we are going to love God with all of our
strength, then we're going to have just a different
reasoning process by which we decide how
we're going to live again. There are certain things where God has
made himself very clear. He's got a code,
and I want to honor and love him by living that out.
He has given me a mission, and I want to spend my
life figuring out what my particular role and his big picture
mission is, and I want to do that. But
in reality, if I'm going to love
God with all of my strength,
then even in the places where I seem to have freedom,
I want to do it in a way that brings honor to this
relationship. I want to show God that I love
him. Even in areas where there's a little ambiguity,
a little bit of freedom, I'm not going to be somebody who's
like, I'm going to tighten up all the
rules and be as strict on myself as I can
to show God in the world that I'm serious.
But I'm also not going to be like, man, you get to do whatever you
want. It doesn't even matter.
Whatever I choose, in whatever situation,
no matter how vague or complex or uncertain,
with God, I'm going to attempt to do the
thing that I believe brings the most honor and glory to him. Why? Because I
love him. Because he has given me everything through
his son, Jesus Christ. He has given it to me for
free, and he has set me free from a life that was
overwhelmed and burdened by sin. And now I have
life and freedom in him,
and I don't have to. I
have to. I have to respond. I have to show him.
I want to show him. I need to show him. Maybe
we'll say that I don't have to obey. I
need to. I need to for me.
And I need to as a love response to the one who has
loved me so much. So if he
says, this is what I'm supposed to do, I'm going to try to do it.
If he says don't do that, I'm going to try not to do it. If
he says, this is my mission, I'm going to try to live it. And I
find myself in weird situations, I'm going to give it the
thoughtfulness it deserves, to figure out what is best
to honor him. And
I'm not going to allow my brain to crush me
when I fail that somehow I've lost something with
God. And I'm not going to think that I'm better than anybody else because
I succeeded. But with
humility and trust and a heart desire
to love him,
I'm going to love him with all of my strength. Let me
pray.
God, that feels easy to explain and hard
to live. It's not as just hard for those truths to kind
of sink in. God, we're not great with
freedom, but we're not great with rules
either. And we
battle. And so, God, I do
pray that we would just get to the heart of it,
that our lives need to be love
responses to you.
That if you ask, we'll do it not because
we have to, but because we get to. And that
God, through that response, that God, that we would experience your love in deeper and
deeper ways, that we would get to know you in deeper and deeper ways, that
we would be known in deeper ways.
And that God, we could experience real
life with you by
submitting our freedom to the life that you have called
us to God, I pray that we could
be people who do it with joy. And
as always, we are so thankful for your son, Jesus Christ, who makes
this possible. And it's in his name we pray. Amen.
Thanks again for joining us on our sermon podcast and you can learn more about
us@thegrovechurch.org. And if you go to thegrovechurch.org
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been listening. And if you want to dig deeper on some of these topics that
we cover in our sermon podcast or just in other issues of
dealing with culture or theology, those kinds of things, you can check out our
cultivate podcast. It's on the same feed, however
you found this particular podcast. So again, this is Charlie,
the lead pastor at the Grove, and thank you so much for joining us.