Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Lifetree is a community of believers in Victoria, BC. We are a family all about practicing and proclaiming the way of Jesus to transform lives and bless our city. Our mission is to become more like Jesus to make earth more like Heaven.
You're listening to the Lifetree Church Sermon of the Week. We pray that as you hear this word, you would be encouraged and inspired as you pursue Jesus in your everyday life.
Caleb:Good morning. Good morning. We're gonna we're gonna get ready to, read the word here. And so Jacob, I'm gonna invite you to come on up. Yes.
Caleb:You can welcome Jacob. Hey, Jacob. Before Yeah, that was that was kinda a mediocre clap. We're either gonna do it or There you go. We're either gonna do it or don't do it.
Caleb:So before Jacob reads, I just want to, I'm ask you to stand first as usual. And we're just gonna take a moment in stillness before we hear these words and so just let your your heart and your mind to continue to fix on Jesus and open your heart and your mind to receive.
Jacob:So Matthew seven twenty four to 27. Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.
Caleb:You can have a seat. So, how many of you know that little everyday habits can produce great marriage or a miserable marriage? I I don't know if any of you considered this before. I was really woke up to this idea through Jordan Peterson just talking about that it is actually the little things throughout the day, day after day, that work to create a great marriage or a miserable marriage. Simple things like, hello.
Caleb:Good morning. Goodbye. How was your day? I love you. A simple hug, a quick kiss, a touch on the back, a text, I've been thinking about you, or a little heart emoji.
Caleb:Like, you go down the list. It's these tiny little things done on repeat and regularly that actually help to foster a great connection and it can be the the lack of these simple little habits that can also work to create tremendous disconnect in a marriage. Or maybe there's there's bigger commitments you have about like maybe a date night or an annual getaway or things like that. But it really is just these little things, right? You with me?
Caleb:And what I want us to day is that in the same way we can arrange our lives in such a way that fosters a weak relationship with god or a strong relationship with god. Say it again. We can arrange our lives in such a way that fosters a weak relationship with god or a strong relationship with god. And in the passage that Jacob read to us this morning, Jesus compares our lives to a house, right? And what determines the type of house our lives will be according to Jesus?
Caleb:Okay, the foundation? Yeah. I wanna bring your attention to it. It's this, he says, what determines the type of house you'll have. In other words, what kind of foundation it's built on is whether you hear his word and put them into practice.
Caleb:Jesus did not just say, if you hear my words, you will be like someone whose house is built on a rock. He says, if you hear my words and put them into practice, you will be like one whose house is built on a rock, right? And that house won't collapse when the storm and the flood comes. You with me? Amen.
Caleb:And I want you to note this, the storm comes to the wise and the foolish alike. Okay? This is the reality of the life we live. You can you can have a ton of wisdom in your life. You can lack wisdom.
Caleb:Either way, storm's coming. And it will hit. But Jesus is saying this thing guys that the thing that determines what type of house your life will be is whether or not you don't just hear his words, you put his words into practice. Paul says something similar in Philippians four verse nine to the church in Philippi, he says, whatever you have learned or received or heard from me or seen in me, put it into practice and the god of peace will be with you. In other words, if you practice, Paul saying, if you practice what I taught you, what you heard from me, but also note that what you saw in my life.
Caleb:If you will put it into practice, you can expect to live with a deep awareness of the god who is with you. The god who gives you peace in any season, in any storm. Yeah, that's that's good. That's good to know. If you if you take these two things together, right?
Caleb:Your how, your life and putting into practice the words of Jesus being like building a house on a strong foundation or what Paul says that as you practice what he had taught and passed on to them, the god of peace will be with you. I would like us to consider it in this way, okay? What we practice determines who or what will dwell in the house that is our lives. Say it again. What we practice determines who or what will dwell in the house that is our lives.
Caleb:What kind of house are you building? Another question, is the architecture of your life making you more aware or less aware of god's presence? His beauty, his goodness, his love for you. You can actually design if you will like an architect how the house that is your life gets built. And the decisions we make and the things we practice and the habits we embody on a daily basis determine whether the architecture of that home that is our lives will orient us toward God or away from him.
Caleb:I'd say to you that many Christians throughout the ages of the church have wrestled with how do we do this? How do we in our moment, in our cultural moment, design our lives in such a way that we are oriented more toward god rather than away from him. And I would say to you, this might possibly be the most important work of our lives. Figuring this out. How to live more aware of god, how to walk with god, How to, in the words of Jesus, abide.
Caleb:Whereas the famous monk, brother Lawrence, wrote, practice the presence of god, right? There's that word again, practice. And so as we talk about this, right? The things we practice are actually the architecture if you will of our lives that are determining how aware of god's presence we are or are not. I would remind you or bring attention to maybe it's better way to say, this is why we spent four weeks learning about Sabbath this summer, okay?
Caleb:So part of the heart in spending that time over the last four four weeks is to hopefully help you understand that there is still value in your modern life to this ancient practice because in many ways, my experience has been and maybe yours as well since you started with it is that it provides an anchor if you will. An anchor rhythm, an anchor habit, an anchor practice by which we slow down and notice god in a special way. I know there can be concern as we get into some of this talk around practice as I know there was for the last few weeks like, are we talking about like earning salvation and putting all to work? No, we're talking about actually embodying if you will, the grace that's been given to us freely and I would propose that the Sabbath practice we spent time learning about is a actual profound way to embody the free grace of god that's been given to us. To take a day where we see some work and we rest and we delight and we find ourselves caught up in worship and awe of him and his beauty and his goodness.
Caleb:You may remember this quote from last week. I'm gonna share it again. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel says, the Sabbath is to time what the temple and tabernacle are to space. The Sabbath is a cathedral in time. In other words, there were in the ancient world holy places, right?
Caleb:Remember this from last week? If you were here and there were places people would go to have their attention drawn toward god but what the Sabbath taught was that there was a way in which we can create a time that acts like a cathedral or a temple to bring our awareness to god. I just want to ask the question, how many of you would say that you tasted and saw the goodness of god in a special way through starting to practice the Sabbath in these past weeks? Just short hands. The the the practice actually helped you taste and see god in a unique way.
Caleb:Keep your hands up. I want to see you. Look around. I would like to just step into this for a minute, a bit of conversation. Tell us a bit more about that.
Caleb:So, if you if you're like, yeah, I can say I tasted and saw some of god's goodness in a special way through this practice. I wanna ask you the question, how did practicing the Sabbath at any level, okay? You might not be like Louis Flores level. How many remember Louis telling us about what they do on their Friday nights? It was like they're in deep with it but at any level, okay?
Caleb:How did the practice of Sabbath help guard or grow your awareness of God? Say it again. How did the practice of Sabbath help to guard or grow your awareness of God? I'm looking for interaction here. Right.
Caleb:So, Chad Chad saying just putting down the devices as a thing they did in their practice of Sabbath really helped. Yeah. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great.
Caleb:That's great. So, there's more more time connecting as a family, more time in the word as a family. Jacob, you're going to say something? So if you didn't hear it, Jacob's saying they have a business they run from their homes, from their home and the decision to just not talk about and even attempt to not think about work on one day a week was really, really beneficial for them because they can tend to easily just always be in work and production mode. What's that?
Caleb:Their identity was wrapped up in it. Okay, yeah. Go ahead John. Okay. But just engaging in different music on those days really helped you.
Caleb:It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Callie, did I see Yeah. Yeah. So, Callie's just saying if you find a lot of identity in what you do and what you accomplish, the act of stopping and ceasing from work can help to really root your identity, anchor it in something more than what you do.
Caleb:Would that be a good summary? Yeah. So, I'm gonna I'm gonna keep moving here but I wanted us to just take a minute to to consider how this practice actually can help to produce something in us that is if you will, more deeply anchored in the truth of god, in the presence of god, in the love of god, in the grace of god, the the practice helps, right? So, the practice is not anything that in itself saves us but it connects us to that reality in a special way. And we talk often here about this idea of practicing the way of Jesus together and there are many other practices that that some people have identified that we really value.
Caleb:We find it easy. Things like prayer, scripture, solitude, fasting, community, generosity, service, witness. As I say these words, you may go, yeah, I could see that in the life and the way of Jesus and what we are attempting to do as a church family is practice that way together. I fully missed the moment. We are we are attempting to engage these practices that that are good descriptors of the way of Jesus because we believe the way of Jesus leads to life and life to the full.
Caleb:And I wanna spend some time next week going into this a bit more, but just for today, I just kinda introducing the idea. So as you think back to maybe what you started to experience as you engaged in one particular practice over the last few weeks, I am here to tell you that there's more and that there's there's more grace to be received as we engage in them. In many ways, I think the idea of Sabbath is a great thing to start with because what we're inviting people to is say, hey, take twenty four hours that you just block off for for delight, for rest, for joy. I mean, if you don't want to give twenty four hours to those things, I don't know, you know, what's going on with you, right? These are, this is just a day to delight and rest.
Caleb:It's great And part of why I think there's wisdom in that is that if we can learn to engage in that, the idea of carving out a few minutes in the morning for prayer or to crack open the word through the week, maybe starts to sound a little more doable, you know, less intimidating and what you begin to see happen as you string these things together is is you create, if you will, like a more of a container in your life in which you get to fellowship with god, experience him. Obviously, we're trying to bring all of our life into this place of worship, into this place of fellowship with god, and embracing practices can assist us in this in a real way. One one famous person in church history who developed this idea would be Saint Benedict, okay? In the sixth century and he developed what later became known as the rule of life. That's what people coined it as.
Caleb:It was originally just known as the rule of Saint Benedict but it became this idea of having a rule of life that a community of people share together in their pursuit to become more like Jesus and their pursuit to orient their lives more toward the presence of god. And I would love for us as a church to be going on a journey of how do we together practice the way of Jesus. And I don't want you to be scared by the word rule. Okay? We could ditch that word.
Caleb:We can call it a way of life. I don't care. But it's less of a burden to bear and it's more of a structure to support a life focused on god. Many have compared this idea to being more like a trellis that helps a vine to grow and find sunlight and the nourishment it needs to produce good fruit. And I personally have been on a journey with this idea for a while of like how do I build into the rhythm of my life practices that help me live more aware of god and his love and his goodness and his beauty.
Caleb:What sort of rhythms and patterns can I have in my life that turn my attention to Jesus and keep me from wandering too far and make fellowship with him more probable, right? And so in my journey, I'm just I'm just sharing it with you guys a way of invitation but it looks like having daily rhythms to open the word and read the scriptures, daily rhythms to pray, daily rhythms to be in solitude and just in quiet. A lot of this happens for me in the morning. You guys have heard me at different times describe a morning routine, but it's it's not complicated. It's very simple.
Caleb:And what I find is that having those routines and rhythms built into my day, like I say, it helps me not wander too far. Do I have rhythms and routines and that means I never sin, I never fail. No. But it does mean that I have a pattern, a rhythm, and a routine that's always bringing me back to god. To acknowledge where I've blown it or just simply to fix my attention on his goodness and his beauty and so it does.
Caleb:It looks like, you know, you guys have heard it. I get up. I walk my dog. I pray the lord's prayer. I come home.
Caleb:I sit. I open the scriptures. I pray through my day and then I go into some physical fitness that's part of my routine and then, when I go to bed at night, I try to just sit in this posture of reflecting on my day going, god, where did I see you move today? Where were you at work in my life, right? And just that practice of prayerful reflection before going to sleep.
Caleb:That's a daily rhythm. Weekly, we gather around a meal. We have people in our home and we gather around a meal. Weekly, I gather in community for confession of sin. I have a morning.
Caleb:Once a week, I sit with somebody and go through those questions that you guys would have seen me share, few weeks ago. I'm not so good at this trying to figure it out but had a rhythm at once of weekly fasting. Right? All these things and then the weekly Sabbath practice. Huge.
Caleb:Monthly engaging in generosity. You know, our our giving happens on a monthly rhythm. Our monthly rhythm also involves like serving out in some way and seeking to be a witness in the city and we're finding ways to put these practices into the rhythm of our life and my experience with it is that it orients me toward god in a very real way. You don't have to limit to those Like in other words, it's not like, oh, sorry, it's not my time of the month to witness right now or it's not my time of the month to be generous right now or anything like that. But having it built in to a rhythm and a routine guarantees that it's finding place and expression in my life.
Caleb:And in the same way we said at the beginning like habits can actually create a healthy marriage, habits like these can help create a healthy relationship with the lord. And we're naming practices because we want to take the idea of practicing the way of Jesus out of some sort of nebulous thing, right? And actually put words to it, put put definition to it so we can actually look and and and go after it, put targets if you will. Are you with me? In other words, by naming them, we're moving our discipleship to Jesus from mere aspiration into actual architecture.
Caleb:In other words, we can easily be like, I I wanna follow Jesus, right? And we all as Christians go, absolutely, that's the whole goal but by actually naming it, it looks like rest. It looks like generosity. It looks like service. It looks like witness.
Caleb:It looks like doing life in community, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. We start putting definitions that move it from just aspirational. Yeah. Into having real architecture built into our lives to be disciples of Jesus. We want architecture that that looks like Jesus.
Caleb:Because I don't know if you noticed but the life of Jesus is beautiful. It's gorgeous. It's freeing is what was just said. Jesus makes this profound imitation in Matthew 11 where he says, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and burdened and he goes on and he says, take my yoke upon you, right? He says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Caleb:That word yoke that Jesus is using is actually a word that was used to describe the teaching of a rabbi. So, what he's saying is that if you will take my teaching upon you, you will find that it is light, that it is life giving, that it is actually restorative to your soul. Like on the giving thing, Chelsea was talking about giving, right? And we we can have this cowering in fear and clinging to our stuff but Jesus, the rabbi, the only one who lived such a life that could defeat death claims it's more blessed to give than to receive. There's a great joy that you will experience when you release, when you let go, when you give generously.
Caleb:The way of Jesus is life giving. Practicing the way of Jesus leads to life, not legalistic duty. We all have habits and practices in our life. Again, many ways, each one of us already has a rule of life. We just maybe haven't been intentional about it.
Caleb:If your rule of life involves waking up to this and going to bed to this, it probably won't serve you well. It probably isn't producing overflowing abundant life from your soul and there are other habits and rhythms and patterns that we can embrace. That lead to life. Your daily practices make up the substance of your life. And there is, as we sang, Tulsi was bringing attention as well that he handed only only one.
Caleb:The name above every other names. There is only one teacher whose words and ways offer a strong enough foundation to support our lives through any season, through any storm, even through any sin that may come. Amen. Follow him. Hear and practice his words And so in closing, I just invite us to consider some questions, okay?
Caleb:What are your current set of practices producing in your life? Or another way to ask would be what kind of house are you building? Now, as we consider those questions, they can they can serve to really just feel heavy and make us feel bad and lame about, you know, our current set of practices and all the house and buildings. So, pathetic or whatever, right? But I'd invite you to consider that there is one.
Caleb:His name is Jesus who has shown us a way that we can practice a house we can build that is full of life. It is full of peace. It is full of hope. That is full of joy. What kind of house do we want to build?
Caleb:So, we'll spend some more time on this next week. We're going to dig into it a little further but before we go, I'm gonna invite you to stand and we'll pray. It's a simple prayer. Jesus, we thank you for the way that you showed us. The way that you taught.
Caleb:You've promised us that if we put into practice your words, we will have a house built that will not collapse when the storms come. So we ask you help us build a life in which remembrance of you and awareness of you is woven into the very structure of our ordinary everyday lives. Amen.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Lifetree Church Sermon of the Week. At Lifetree, we are a family all about declaring and displaying Jesus to transform lives and ben lives and benefit our city. If you'd like to find out more about Lifetree, you can find us online at lifetree.ca.