Charlie Loften: Hello, and welcome to the Grove Church podcast. I'm Charlie Loften, the lead pastor there, and we are so glad that you're 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 were joining us. And if you are new in some way, and I know that a lot of people will do that, we'll 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 10:30, or our streaming service at 10:30. 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.
Charlie Loften: Hey, good morning. If you're new, I'm Charlie, the lead pastor here. Really glad you're worshiping with us today. And so I'm joining with Mark, just say happy Mother's Day. And just for all the moms here, we just wanna know how much you are loved and valued and how much you mean to us as a church, to all of us as individuals, and really are glad that you are here and we get a chance to celebrate with you today.
I also just wanna take a second, and this is just important to me because I just know a lot a lot of the stories that are just kind of out there. I just know that because of loss that a Mother's Day can, for some of us, can kind of be a complicated, complicated day. And some of us, it's nothing but a celebration. For some of us, it's nothing. Others, it may just be somewhere in between.
Right? I've just kind of, like, just excited about this, worried about this, remembering this, grieving this, and we just want you to know that we are here for you as well. I'm really glad that you've chosen to worship with us. And, again, for moms, we are just so happy that we get to celebrate. Don't know you noticed, we got a little place for taking pictures out there, and so we are hoping you have a great day today.
And kind of as we're kind of talking about Mother's Day, you know, I knew it was coming. You know, I was prepping prepping my youngest to make sure she had what she needed. We had plans for dinner. I got I got gifts. And so I've got I've got this thing where I had a very clear calendar in my head of kind of like what weekends were in town and where where I'm where and like, and and Mother's Day and then Father's Day, and then this is when Layla goes to camp.
I I have this calendar right here. And on the other hand, I've got a different calendar of kind of what the sermon series is and what all the all the topics are. So there's two very clear things. I've got them both very well organized. There's a thing, though.
They they have some correlation with each other. Right? I mean, there's, like, correlation. It's like there is this day, and what are we talking about on this date? And it dawned on me, I had this very well put together sermon series with all these topics we're going to talk to people.
We're going to take them in this order, We're going do them in this order for this reason. It was really, really good. And then one day, and not just one day, Tuesday of this week, I'm like, wait a second. It's Mother's Day, and we were planning on opening and talking about the sex portion of this series. And I was like, I don't think that's a great idea.
So we chose not to do that, and so we just kind of just adjusted it around. And the worst part of not the worst part. The worst part is me. The the the next, like, people like, several people came up to me after I made this decision. Yeah.
I I I thought about that, but I didn't say anything. I'm like, bro, if you think about it, feel free to tell me. Charlie, it looks like you're about to do something stupid. You should consider not doing something stupid. I am more than open to that level of feedback.
So that's not worth it. We're actually going to talk today about how if you this is our off ramp series, things that kinda derail you from your relationship with God. I'm talking today about how not loving your mom well enough. That's not what we're talking about. Yeah.
So this series, we've been doing it for several weeks. It'll take us all the way to really kind of the beginning of summer. I've just been around long enough to seen enough people who just they start out great in their relationship with God, but then somehow end up taking these little off ramps that just kind of maybe they don't even realize it. And it just started to kind of accumulate more and more of these things that can kind of unintentionally derail us from the life that we want to live in following Jesus Christ. And what we're going to be talking about today really is, are you and to what degree do you live under a burden that God is requiring you to be good enough to be in his favor?
That there is this hand on you emotionally, spiritually telling you that if you want God to love you, you've got to be good enough. And there's a real pressure that can come with that if we do not understand really kind of the blending of God's love for us and what he expects from us. And some of us are kind of new to the faith, and some of us are kind of really kind of working this out. Some of us may have come from some kind of church background that felt oppressive to us. We're trying to we've kind of broken free from that, or maybe at least we think that we have.
And so let me just kind of give you an illustration. How does this work as an off ramp? You know, like, we're about to spend some time theologically talking about this salvation is by grace, and it's not based on your works. And we're gonna talk I'm gonna talk about how important that is and how that can potentially getting that wrong can be an offering. Let me just tell you a story.
This is a family that we met when we were in Cabot, Arkansas. And we moved there in 2006. Essentially, to plant a church. It was really kind of more of a campus of a larger church that was planting from Little Rock into Cabot. And so there was a group of families that were kind of helping, and we were kind of going in to kind of be their pastor and to start this church.
And pretty early on, one of these families invited a friend. It was a mom. She had a young boy, and she was married, but he never came. Got to know her a little bit and found out, you know, she grew up going to church, but a church that was just kind of it was just it was just okay. It was just it just never really meant anything to her.
And so when she got older and she kind of got on her own, she just stopped going to church and was just not very religious, spiritual in any real way. And she married this guy who grew up the exact opposite. He also went to church, but he went to a church that was very heavy and oppressive on him. I'll try to guess what church I'm talking about. You're probably wrong anyway.
But anyway, it's like, it was very oppressive, like, just always telling them what to do, always telling them how wrong they were, how bad they were, and if you didn't get everything just right and follow all of our rules, you are always in constant danger of falling out of God's favor, losing your salvation, and being cast aside from God forever. Just really oppressive. And even within this group or particular denomination, it seems like this was an especially harsh one. And so when he got an adult, he's like, forget all of that, and went what we'll just call the pure full hedonist route. I'm just going to do whatever I want to.
He just threw all of that off, and so grew up in an extreme religion, grew up non religious at all, neither one of them doing anything, they end up. But she's now she got a you know, this happens. I've got a little I've got a son. Maybe I should explore some of this on my own. She starts coming to the church and having a good time.
Meanwhile, he's not into it, but she wants him to be. So she invites my wife and I, and we go to their home for dinner, and the four of us have dinner. And he had a lot of questions because he was hearing about all these things we were saying and doing, and it was very different than of what he grew up under. And even though he had seemingly had completely rejected this, he knew that what we were doing was wrong. This is right religion, and what you're doing is wrong.
And so now he's coming at me because we're not hard enough. We're not we're not strong enough. We're not teaching the truth enough. And we're having this conversation, which is fine, like some awkward dinner, but it's fine. It's fine.
And so we exchange numbers, and we start to meet up. And so he's still not coming to the church and is upset that his wife is coming to this church, but decides, well, if we're going to get religious, we're going get religious. So a little bit of just like he said, and where does he go? He goes back here. And apparently, this church had gotten soft while he was away.
This was not strong enough either. So he and I are meeting on a regular basis, and he's sending me sermons from various preachers that he likes, most notable one of which, like, if you have one drop of alcohol, you're going to hell, and God will hate you forever, which I'd heard I'd heard that before, not particularly this particular guy, so that's one of the things he wanted to talk about because I hear people in your church think it's Okay to drink. I'm like, oh, Okay, bro, fine. And it just got more and more intense. So he leaves the church that he was in to a different church within that same group that is taking things more quote seriously.
Because this, the original one, wasn't good enough, so I needed to go to this one. And then we kept talking, and he just kinda kept getting more and more intense about everything. And then eventually, we just stopped meeting altogether. And the last I had heard, he had quit this denomination altogether and started connecting with this group that I had never even heard of. That line for line, word for word follows every one of the Old Testament laws, every one of them.
And you think that is a lot. There is a lot. And last I heard, like, he like, even to the point to where he had to take two weeks off from work to go out into the woods to celebrate the festival of booths. Now I know this group pretty well. That went completely over your head for a lot of you.
I don't even know what that is and how you would even begin to celebrate it. Well, apparently there are groups doing that. Because he grew up with this burden that in order to be in a right relationship with God, you've got to do it right, and you've got to be good enough. And no matter how hard he tried, he could not be good enough. And so eventually, he gave up altogether and started just doing whatever he wanted to do.
That's one way the off ramp works. The other one is I let them tell me that I'm not good enough and what I need to be doing. And just being in a group of people that know that we're not, that we're, that we're the ones that are doing it right, and we're learning, and they're bad, and we're right, that's good. It feels like pressure, but it's good. But it's still never good enough.
You can never be good. You cannot rule your way into a peaceful relationship with God. And so, like, oh, I need to find more rules, more oppression, more rules, more oppression. Until eventually you just get exhausted and then you're just done. And some of us may feel that we are on the other end of some of that, and maybe that's why you're here.
You are not here because you want somebody to yell at you and tell you you're not good enough. That's just not what we do here. We're not very rules based in the way that we approach much of anything. So if you are here on purpose, then you're currently not wanting any of that, but you may be on the other end of it, and you may identify with it. But also what can happen on the other end of this is that you finally reject all of this, and then we do the thing that he did before, which is what I do doesn't matter then.
And somewhere we've gotta put all we've got to put all of this together. We've gotta put all this together. And like we have done the last several weeks, we're just gonna go to what I would consider a landmark passage on the issue that we're talking about. I'm not trying to find someone you never heard of, one that maybe you have heard of, and just to make sure that these really critical passages on these critical issues are deeply ingrained in who we are. And this passage is in Ephesians.
Ephesians chapter two verses eight through 10. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. So it starts off with a very important powerful phrase.
And, again, I I'm starting to believe. I'm not not starting to believe. I've believed this for a while. Probably theologically, this is probably one of the three most important passages in all of scripture to understand really the point that Paul is making. It is popular and well known for really good reasons.
It is one of the most theologically deep, rich, significant passages that I think that if we get this right, it centers us on that path, on the right road for a lifetime. But if we start to get it wrong, it slowly becomes an off ramp over time, and it starts with a very simple phrase, for it is by grace you have been saved. Now grace means a lot of different things and a lot of different contexts, and it's a really good thing to use. We've even gotten to the point now where grace can mean prayer. Right?
Who wants to say grace? It is a it can be synonymous with a prayer that you say before a meal. Right? Grace can just mean be you're really nice. Sometimes it means poised.
There's lots of different ways to use this word. But theologically, the way that Paul uses it and the way it is almost always used in scripture has a very specific meaning that I think is pretty simple. Know, even when word has so many different definitions, it can feel like a complicated word, but the way that Paul uses is actually fairly simple. Grace is something good that you are given that you did not deserve. You did not earn it in some way.
He actually essentially repeats himself or at least the idea when he says, it is the gift of God. That is a great example of something that is gracious, a gift, something that is given to you not because you earn it. One of the best examples that I use to help people understand what this concept of grace means is a birthday present. It's your birthday, and you get a present. You didn't do anything to earn it.
You just I mean, I guess sort of maybe you survived one year. Give me presents, right? But you didn't really do anything. We didn't earn it in any real way. We never used Mother's Day gift as an example of that.
You earned it, earned every bit of it. And even if you want to say, no, mean, surviving a year is a big deal, give me gifts. Okay, how about Christmas then? Bro, it's not even your birthday. Why do you get a gift on somebody else's birthday?
And the idea, it is something that is just a pure gift. Grace is something that is given to you. And Paul says this, it is by grace you have been saved through faith. This is not from you. If something is graciously given to you, it is not something that you did to earn it.
It is a gift from God, not by works, so that you can't brag about it. And it is really deeply important for us to understand this. And so the question, we're gonna kind of ask some anchoring questions as we have the last several weeks, and I wanna phrase ask you this first one. What am I trusting in? What am I trusting in for my life with Jesus?
What am I putting my faith and my trust in? Is it my ability to be good enough? I can follow enough of the rules, enough of the time in order to cross the line of not good enough to good enough. And if if if I can get over this line, is that what you're trusting in? Because what he says here, it is by grace through faith that you are saved.
All of us are putting our faith and trust in something. We are here today because we believe there is a God. We believe there's a God, and we want to connect with this God. And I believe that this God wants to connect with me, and there are some steps that need to be taken for us to be in relationship with each other. And I trust if these certain conditions are met, then I can come here on a Sunday, and I can worship, and I can relationally, spiritually, emotionally, mentally connect with the God of the universe.
And I am putting my faith that if blank, I can do that. What are you putting your faith in? Well, Paul's saying it is it is by grace through faith. I am putting my faith not in the thing that I have done, but in something that Jesus Christ has already done. There is a reason why there's a gap, and it feels like something has to be done to connect or reconnect with God.
And there's also this thing that you feel. Like, I don't feel like I'm good enough to be able to connect with God. That is true. The problem comes then when you go to the next, but I can be. If I follow these rules, if I do these things, then I can be, and then I put my faith and trust in myself.
And what Paul says, no, it is it's not like that. It's not like that at all. It is by grace. It is a gift from God. It is something that all the work that needed to be done.
I mean, one of the best illustrations out there uses a lot of bridge imagery. In order for you to connect with God, there needs to be a bridge, but somebody blew up the bridge. You blew up the bridge. But somebody's gotta repair the bridge, and we think we can when the scriptures make it very clear that we can't. Only God can restore the bridge, and Jesus Christ, the son of God, dying as a sacrifice for you is the only way to restore and rebuild that bridge.
And what Paul is saying, put your faith and trust in that. Now honestly, this first point and this first question is really more of the on ramp. How do I get on this place to begin with? So I want to bring it up to kind of help you to help you get on this, to get on the right path. But I also want to reemphasize this with all of you.
Because once you get on this path, you don't you don't lose this. You don't lose it. You have to stay grounded in this. And the older I get and the longer I do this, I am becoming more and more convinced, and I say this in a lot of different contexts. I'm becoming convinced that this is the most significant and important off ramp.
And in fact, I think it is this off ramp that can lead to all the other ones. It was so important, we were gonna finish with this one. My bad. And so we kinda arranged it. We had to switch it around.
We had to switch it around, put it in the middle. We gotta make it maybe make it the yeah. I don't know. The anyways. It's the most significant one.
Because if you don't understand that what I put my faith and trust in is not my ability to be good, but in what Jesus has already done, there are lots of different ways that we can go wrong with that. So this is how we get on, but we've got to mentally, emotionally, theologically stay here. It is a gift of God not by works, but there's something about it we don't like. And it's not just an external force that pressures us and tells us, if you want God to be pleased with you, you better follow the rules. It's not just external.
It's internal. There's a reason why we're drawn to it. It just sounds right. It feels right. If it's significant, it can't be free.
If it's important, I have to earn it. And everything that matters and is good in my life, I have earned it. Right? Much of our political discourse goes around that. You earn what you have, you earn.
And when somebody has too much, they didn't earn it. We have a very strong sense of what is right and good, I earned. And so if we're going to stay right on this, right, we need to understand, I'm putting my faith and trust not in myself, but what Jesus Christ has already done. And secondly, I wanna ask this question. How important is it to you that you feel like you've earned it?
You may sit here and you've heard me. You've been around. If you've been around more than a couple of times, I've heard Charlie talk about this. You come around anymore, you're going hear me talk about it a lot more. Again, I think it's number one.
I think it's the number one issue that we need to wrestle with. And there's a reason why for some of us it just kind of rubs us the wrong way. How important is it to you in your mind? No, I just no. It just feels like it's something I have to work for, like, inside of you.
Because I think there's something inside of you. Even when the hand of oppression is gone, there's still something in you that makes you think I'm supposed to earn it. Let me tell you a story. If you were here last week, told you a story about a friend of mine. Friends he and I were friends in high school, And we were going to Wild River Country, his dad had a his granddad had a wallet full of hundreds.
We we talked about that if you were here last week. Same friend. I bring that story up last week, not because it's not about a granddad with a lot of money. Same friend. Same guy.
And in my school at the time, you know, however many years ago it was, the way the the cutoff for where you could join kindergarten or whatever, it was way pushed back compared to what it is right now. So as someone with a November birthday, I was in fact one of the I was one of the oldest people in the class. It kind of keeps pushing, pushing, and pushing, where it's like maybe even August and September people are amongst the oldest now. But in my end, August and September, those were the youngest in our class. So I was one of the first in my friend group in November to turn 16 and to be able to drive a car.
And so there's my friend of mine. He was one of my really good friends. We played basketball together. And so then most days after practice, I would give him a ride home. He lived relatively close to the school, and he was a friend of mine.
And so just about every day, I would take him home from practice, and then I would go home. And this went on for, obviously, for several months because he turned 16 very late in April. And so at some point after that, I don't even remember what it was, he had given me a ride home for something. And as I'm about to get out of the car, I'm I I kid you not, I hear him say, well, that's one. And I looked at him.
I'm like, one what? That's one ride I've paid you back. Because in the time that since you started driving, you have given me 127 rides. I needed to pay each and every one of them back to you. Even at 16, I'm like, that's messed up.
It was never in my mind. I I I certainly was not keeping a tally on my end that something was owed to me. I don't even know if I was consciously giving him a gift. I was just giving my friend a ride. But for him, it was something, it meant something that he had to take something from me that I that in order for him to be okay, I had to give him something.
It was a problem for him internally to the point to where at 15 years old, he's making a mental list of every ride he got from one of his friends to see if he could pay back. I have no idea. I I I didn't keep up with two. Like, I don't I don't know if we ever evened out. I still gave him rights to things.
I don't know if it ever evened out or not. I just know for sure, you know, almost forty years later, that's a heavy burden to live under. And some of us are living under a very similar burden that maybe I can accept on the front end that it is a gift that is given to me freely, But on the back end, there's this part of me that's still saying, but I have to pay him back. But I have to pay him back. I have to pay him back.
And, again, I understand the instinct. There's something broken in the relationship. Correct. I'm not good enough to fix it. Also, correct.
I don't feel like I feel like I'll never be good enough to pay him back. Also correct. All of those things are true, and that can either be a burden to you or it can become freedom for you. Because God also knows on his end that there is a brokenness in the relationship. That's why he sent his son Jesus.
He also knows you can't fix it. That's why he sent his son Jesus. He also knows that you'll never be good enough to pay him back. That's why he sent Jesus. And it is time to give up trying to be good enough.
It is an overwhelming pressure to try to do something that is not possible. There is no accumulation of your good works that will equal the power and goodness of the gift of the son of God, creator of the universe, coming to Earth and giving his life for yours. So stop trying. But he doesn't end there because I don't want you to think that it ends there either. Because one of the things, a subtle variation of this off ramp is to then get to, well, then I guess then it doesn't matter.
I guess it what doesn't matter? Freedom from the burden of requirement doesn't mean that it doesn't matter, and Paul knows this too because he says this. Verse 10, for we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. A lot of wordplay here that Paul's doing to kind of really draw you into it. You are saved based on a gift, not based on your works because you can't I don't want you to brag about it.
You're not saved based on your works because you're God's work created to do work. And so you hear that word over and over again, it kind of draws you in. What is he saying? Like, all the work you're trying to do, that's not what saves you. In fact, your placement into the kingdom, you being created in Christ Jesus is God's masterpiece.
You are a one of one. You are a handiwork. All the work done by him. He may he placed you here. He did the work.
You are the work. You don't do the work. You are the work. You are a result of God's work. But he did this work so that you would do good works.
And then even to just kind of narrow the field even a little bit so that we don't even get any kind of bragging in our head. What works does he call you to do? Works that he prepared in advance for you. So even in you doing the works, it seems like God's already kinda done the work. It is your responsibility to walk the path of works that God has already laid out for you.
You specifically, because you individually, each one of you, you are God's handiwork created with a purpose. And there's value there, there's life there, there's power there. I am uniquely loved and created by God with a purpose. Last question, am I fulfilling the purpose? And am I fulfilling the purpose to honor and love and appreciate the one who did all the work to place me where I am is vastly different than am I trying to pay him back?
Am I trying to be good enough? Again, I believe this issue is number one. And it is so important that if you come here long enough, you hear us talk about it all the time. In fact, brief commercial, it is important enough that we're gonna spend the entire summer talking about it in a thing that we call summer seminar. It's a thing that we do in the summer every other Monday starting the first Sunday in June.
This is a primer for the primer of what we're gonna talk about, the importance of holiness. The importance of living a life honoring to god while freeing ourselves from the burden of I have to be good enough. One of our elders, Dan Rasmussen, is is heading this up. He's going to kick it off the very June. And we're here from a lot of different people in our church on this topic and how we can really thrive here.
And while we can avoid all these off ramps, that we can stay on the path that God has called us to. Because too many of us have been burdened. Some of us are still carrying that burden around, not able to fully trust in the completed work of Jesus Christ and his death on the cross. And some of us in our rejection of the burden have decided that we can have a a freedom in life that really doesn't exist because we were created with a beautiful and glorious purpose. And me figuring this out how to rest and trust in what God has already done and then freely live a life to honor him.
That's not just the on ramp or keeping us from beyond. That that is that's the road. That is the road that he has called us to. And what we want for each one of us, we want each one of us to be able to say, I am free. I am free from the burden of having to be good enough.
Not but not but, but and. And I am highly motivated to live for the one who did the work. Let me pray. God, I thank you for your son. I thank you for all the work that he did.
And I thank you that that what Jesus Christ did for us, god, it it satisfied the debt. It gave us life with you. So God, I pray that we'd be a people that put our faith and trust in what your son has already done. We would feel like we have to earn it. We do not feel like to pay it back.
And, God, I pray that we would live, though, as men and women created with a purpose to love and honor the one who has done so much for us. Again, we are so thankful for your son, his sacrifice, his death for us. And it's in his name we pray. Amen.
Charlie Loften: Thanks again for joining us on our sermon podcast, and you can learn more about us at thegrovechurch.org. If you go to the grovechurch.org/connect, there's a form you could fill out. Just let us know that you've been listening. And if you want to dig deeper on some of these topics that we cover in our sermon podcast or just another issues of dealing with culture or theology, those kinds of things, you can check out our cultivate podcast is 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.