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Teaching podcast from the Eagle Community Church of Christ in Mont Belvieu, TX.
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to our podcast, the Eagle Community Church of Christ. My name is John Gunter. This week we are in, I guess, lesson 2 of what I'm calling Be Salty. This is a series that we're we're really talking about understanding our identity, as who we are as Christians and I'm challenging the church to just act like that.
John Gunter:Act the way we're supposed to act. Be the people we're supposed to be. Hope it's helpful. Come see us sometime. Well, good morning again.
John Gunter:Before I get started, I wanna thank, Heath and Jordan and Francisco, 2 of which are not here today. I guess they figured they filled in for me, they could be going when I am here, That's fair, fair enough. But it is such a blessing to be able to turn it over to guys who you know are going to do a great job, and they did. And so I'm certainly thankful for them. We're gonna start this morning with a, with a scripture reading from Luke 17 verses 7 through 10.
John Gunter:Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down and eat?' Won't he rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready, and wait on me while I eat and drink after that, you may eat and drink?' Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So, you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, we are unworthy servants we have only done our duty.' That may hit us a little different, 2000 years after the fact. But what Jesus is saying here in these few verses is, we should know who we are. The last time I preached, I talked about being salty.
John Gunter:Talking about the verses in the Sermon on the Mount that says that we should be different. We should be salt, we should be light, we should be different from others, because if we are not different, why would anybody want to participate in this? If it's all the same, who cares, right? We are supposed to be different, but we are supposed to know who we are. We are not just baptized and say, Hey, I trust you, Jesus, now I want to live my life the way I want to live it.
John Gunter:That's not the way to God, is it? And so what Jesus says here is know who you are, that you are a servant. Now remember, He is talking to His disciples, who seem to really have a problem with this. Do you remember they are constantly asking, like, Who's going to be the greatest? Remember James and John, the sons of Zebedee, the sons of, sons of thunder, I should say.
John Gunter:Remember, even their mother asked, hey, can can they sit beside you when you come into your kingdom? Still this vying for power. How can I be first? How can I sit in the most important seat? Do you think we do that today?
John Gunter:How do I get mine? How do I rise to the rank I want to rise? All the things we pursue. And Jesus in this verse says, we should know who we are, that we are all called to be servants. That we serve each other.
John Gunter:So many times we are so focused on what I want and what I want to get, that I could care less about you. The only use I have for you is that I can step on you to get where I want to be. Jesus said, Be the servant you are supposed to be. Jesus told this parable in Luke chapter 18, 1 chapter down. He says, to some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable.
John Gunter:2 men went up to the temple to pray, 1 a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 1, a church person. The other one, someone that everyone would have despised. The tax collector who would inflate the amount of taxes you owe and they would pocket the rest, and we've talked about that before and everybody loved those kinds of tax collectors. Correct?
John Gunter:Now we hate taxes. We hate those. We understand. But he is saying a Pharisee, someone who, again, is proclaiming that they are following God, but this other person who would say, well, I despise those people, so I know Jesus when we stop right here, you don't have to say anymore. The Pharisee is the good guy and the tax collector is the bad guy.
John Gunter:Right? We got it. We nailed it. Well, he says, the Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, God, I thank you that I am not like other people. Robbers, evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
John Gunter:Can you imagine him pointing him out? Boy, I'm so glad I'm not like any of you heathens out here this morning. How do you feel me pointing at you? Right? And that's what the Pharisee is doing.
John Gunter:I'm glad I'm not like this guy. I fast twice a week. You can hear could you hear that? I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. But the tax collector stood at a distance.
John Gunter:He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. Uh-oh. I thought the Pharisee was the good guy. I knew the tax collector was the bad guy, but how has this been flipped?
John Gunter:Jesus says, for all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. And then we walk around trying to exalt ourselves in every way imaginable. And I am better than them. I am glad I have got my life together more than that family. I am glad we are doing better, and we are always comparing.
John Gunter:And hopefully, we come out on the right end of that. But Jesus said, The person who humbled himself, the person who wouldn't look up, the person that yes, you thought that, no way that guy is going to end up being the good guy in this story. Yes, he is. Because of what he did before God, and he humbled himself. How many sinners do we have in here?
John Gunter:Maybe I should ask for perfect people first. Do you understand where you are? Do you understand your failings? Do you understand your temptations? Do you understand the way that, Yeah, I walk away from God when I do that.
John Gunter:Yeah. We all understand that, yet we still compare ourselves when we all should be on the same level. We are all sinners in need of God's grace and mercy. Amen? And that's how we come to God.
John Gunter:And He knows it. This is just a parable that Jesus tells, but He is speaking to the heart of what they would have thought. Sure, the religious guy has got to be the better guy, the tax collector, the bad guy. But He knows our hearts. He knows.
John Gunter:Again, as we come to Him, if you came this morning, and this is the first time you've thought about God in a long time, but yet you put on a pretty face, and you said hello to everyone. God knows where your heart is, you know that. You may have fooled some people you shook hands with, but God knows where we are, doesn't He? And so it doesn't make any difference, it doesn't make any sense to sit up here and try to, again, be self righteous, that I am better, I am glad I am not like you folks, glad I don't have the struggles you have, I've already got it figured out. But again, as in the last reading, we should know who we are, that we come before God, that we humble ourselves saying, Yeah, so and so failed, but man don't I.
John Gunter:They need the same grace, the same mercy, given to them that I require every single day. And if we looked at each other that way, our relationships would improve. We would come together more because we would be more relatable. But what we do often is is we bottle those things up, and we try to hide our sin, and we try to, you know, put on, like, everything is going well for us, and so we never communicate. Have you ever been in a situation where you found out that someone else struggles or has the same thing happened to them that it happens to you and you thought you were the only one?
John Gunter:Aren't some of those the funniest times? Like like, even with, even with things that happen in school or even our bodies, you know, things that, you think, well, I'm the only one, I'm the only one cursed with this. And then you find somebody else that can relate. And what does that mean for you? You ever gone through a sickness, and you can compare notes with someone else?
John Gunter:Yeah, okay, here's what to expect. That takes some pressure off of me. Then, church, we are supposed to do you understand? We are supposed to confess our sins to one another. Do you know that church?
John Gunter:How much are you doing that? Need to hold up a big 0? That seems overwhelming. That seems daunting. And I don't think when Scripture talks about this, that what it means is what we ought to do is come stand on top of this thing and say, Here's everything I've ever done.
John Gunter:I don't think that's the case. But I do think it's the case that we don't bottle that up and never share it with anyone. I think we find someone that, again, we trust, that can hold us accountable, and we share those things. I'm going to read to you a couple of scriptures here from James 5 16, Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other, so that you may be healed. He had just been talking about the faith to when someone's sick, you need to have the faith to pray that I believe this person is gonna get better.
John Gunter:So and then he goes into this, therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and what? Y'all are already falling asleep. It is powerful and what? Effective.
John Gunter:But guess what has to happen first? You confess your sins to one another. Proverbs says this in Proverbs 2813, Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds what? Mercy. You understand that you are a sinner in need of mercy?
John Gunter:Yeah. And so, this is what I want to do. I've shared some about my church growing up. I don't want ever to be cast in so negative a light that you think I was just at a horrible church because I grew up in a very loving church, but we also had some flaws. And one of those big flaws was that we didn't confess sin to one another.
John Gunter:If we found out about someone's sin, we put that in our pocket until it was a convenient time to bring that up again. And what that does is that keeps everyone from confessing their sin. We claim to, again, go by Scripture and have a love for Scripture, Bible, what Jesus said, Yet when we come to something like this, we shied away because we had seen how people had wielded it. The only way to get around that is to normalize doing what Scripture says and that's confessing sin. To normalize, Hey, so and so said they had this sin.
John Gunter:Should we kick them out? No. We are all sinners. We all love God and for whatever reason we have decided in churches, this is not just unique to the churches of Christ, but if we find out that an elder or a Bible teacher deacon or a preacher has sinned in some way, they got to go. What I want you to do is find in scripture where that is the case.
John Gunter:I had one time an elder who confessed sin, and some of the men of the church wanted to run him off because he confessed sin. He repented of sin. How much better of an example is that? He didn't hide it. He came out with it.
John Gunter:To be an example, you have to set the example. Right? If something is not going on, someone has to be the person to set the example. I've told you several times since I've been here, a fascinating statistic that I had found out. I think it was at the it had to be at the Tulsa workshop.
John Gunter:But a guy had done the research into ways or places where revival had happened. And every time that a big revival had happened, and a revival for him was something that changed in the church so big, so much, that it went out into the community and, like, big things started happening. And every time that that happened, it was when leaders of the church confessed their sin because if all we are doing is coming together and we are trying to put on the pretty church face and we're never confessing sin to one another, well, we just bottle that up and nothing ever changes. But Once leaders of the church start saying, Hey, I sin in this way and I repent of this sin and I struggle with this, well then everybody else gets a little more comfortable with that, don't they? Okay, me too.
John Gunter:You know what? I have that same struggle and I'm trying to fight through that. How do you deal with it? All of a sudden, the dynamics in the church change because we are not setting ourselves on that platform. We are not the Pharisee looking at the others, whether intentionally or not, and saying, man, I'm glad I'm not like you.
John Gunter:You ever walked into a church and looked around and saw a family that you thought, oh, I wish we had it together like them. And the only reason you think that, I'll promise you, is because you don't know the stuff they are dealing with. Because you dealt with them for a few minutes in a controlled environment where you could look at them from, you know, 50 feet, and you don't see all the things that are going on in their life, they don't see the things going on in your life. And guess what? They may have walked in here and looked at your family and thought the exact same thing.
John Gunter:Because we don't confess our sins one to another. We are supposed to know who we are. We are supposed to confess sin to one another. In 1972, Bill Withers released a song, think on the B side of his album. A song that would be sang in churches, on contemporary radio, in prisons.
John Gunter:Bill said he had seen it everywhere and sung it everywhere. He even got kind of corralled into singing, I believe it is his nephew's school. But the song, I don't know, it captures the human condition as good as anything. Anybody know what I am talking about? Lean on me.
John Gunter:I'm gonna sing it for you solo right now. No, I'm not. Don't worry. Some of you got a little anxious and uptight real quick. But as soon as you as soon as you see the title, for most of you, you know exactly the tune, you can sing it all right now, right?
John Gunter:Lean on me when you're not strong, and I'll be your friend, I'll help you carry on. And I love the second verse, It's not just because, right? Lean on me because I'm stronger and, you know, I'm better. For it won't be long till I'm gonna need someone somebody to lean on. That is that is the story of the church, isn't it?
John Gunter:That, yeah, maybe right now, I'm the strong one and and, you know, lean on me right now, now, but guess what? In a week, in a month, in a year, I'm going to need to lean back, because I struggle too. He goes on, he says, please swallow your pride if I have things you need to borrow. Oh, man, we're bad about this, aren't we? I don't know how you ladies are, but I I can speak to the men right now.
John Gunter:It's just much more convenient if I have it at my house. Right? It says, please swallow your pride if I have things you need to borrow, for no one can fill those of your needs that you won't let show. If you've bottled them up, if you've kept them hidden, guess what? You can't get help.
John Gunter:No one else can say, Me too. No one else can say, Here's what I did. No one else can say, Well, this is how God got me through it, because we are so prideful that we have kept it in and wanted to maintain appearances instead of moving closer to God. And that's it. And so we have, every time we come together, a hope we're challenged with Scripture that something needs to change.
John Gunter:If you are following Scripture perfectly, that's wonderful. But for the rest of us, normal people, we have to be confronted with scripture. How are you going to, again, see these scriptures this morning and go, okay, I need to fix this. There is something in my life that I need to change, I need to confess. I don't know if I have shared this from this platform, but one of the things I do, once we get comfortable with a small group, is that's when I, when it is appropriate, that's when I choose to do things like this.
John Gunter:That we've got a group that's come together, and we're comfortable with each other, and all of those things. And it was kind of funny because, at my last church I decided to do that, and I think it was on the first night, you know how we do it, we do it, you know, school year kind of thing. And we had been with that that group for, I don't know, 2 years. And I thought, okay, we will start off the year with this and kind of set the tone for it. And so it was the 1st meeting of the school year, and our normal group was there, but for some reason, a couple of other guys from the church decided to show up at our group.
John Gunter:Well, uh-oh, but I went ahead and did it anyway. Their eyes were about that big, but it was okay. I trusted them, loved them, they loved me, it was fine. But they didn't realize they were walking into a family discussion. But it was a fantastic thing because what happened was, as Katie and I shared the first group meeting, well, then all of a sudden, we will take next week.
John Gunter:And then another couple, we will take the next week. And so for several weeks, we had people telling their story. You want to talk about powerful, You want to talk about life giving. You want to talk about something that makes you feel, okay, I'm moving closer to God. Because what we think is, if we hold on to those things, if we keep them bottled inside, that somehow protects us.
John Gunter:But what it does is chain you down, and you don't even know it. And so when you let that loose, what happens is you are freed from that prison that you have created. Just thought of a creed song all of a sudden. Some of you are old enough to know that, my own prison. That's what we do.
John Gunter:We create our own thing that we think protects us, but what it does is keeps us in. So what I want to challenge you to do is, when appropriate, is to, whether it's in small group or someone you love, like I tell you at the end of sermons, find someone who cares about you, who will hold you accountable, and share life with them. And the only way we are going to do that is if we are people who, again, normalize that in our culture right in here. Because if what we want to be is a church who just runs and tells everything and wants to, Yeah, yeah, and oh, so and so, What you are going to do is you are going to stand against what Jesus has said to do, and that is certainly not being a disciple of Christ. So what I want to challenge you to do is to step up from that.
John Gunter:One more verse of that, he says, You just call on me brother when you need a hand. We all need somebody to lean on. I just might have a problem that you'll understand. I might have a problem that you'll understand. Not I might have a problem.
John Gunter:I'd rather you not know about it. There is freedom in finding out that, okay, I'm not holding that in anymore. You ever told something, you were scared to death to tell someone and once you did you go, oh, I can breathe. That's exactly what we are talking about. Jesus knows what He is talking about, I believe.
John Gunter:Matthew 5, you are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. And backing up in verse 13, you are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.
John Gunter:You have to know who you are. You have to know what you are called to be. And again I say be salty. Don't buy the thing on the shelf that says, Hey, this is a good rub for ribs, it tastes like air. That's not healthy.
John Gunter:That's not going to make your chicken pop. Okay. Be salty. Know who you are. Know what God has intended for you and follow that.
John Gunter:Amen, church? Let's close in prayer. God our father, we thank you for this day. Lord, we wanna just, come before you right now as people needing your grace, needing your mercy. Lord, help us to never be the Pharisee lifting himself up, but let us be the tax collector humbling ourselves, acknowledging our brokenness, acknowledging the the weights that hold us down, the chains that we have created for ourselves.
John Gunter:Lord, help us to have the courage to, to share with one another, to become a close family of people who love each other, who love you, and and, Lord, to get over our own pride, to lean on each other. God, be with us and and, lord, convict us of those things if we're not acknowledging those that that lead us away from you. Shine a light on them and and Lord help us to come through repentance. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.