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Pastor Matt Brown and Justin Pardee announce The Debrief Podcast, talk about the 252 sermon series and look at how Jesus models being real with ourselves, God and others.
Real faith. Real life. Hosted by Pastor Matthew Stephen Brown of Sandals Church, The Debrief Podcast goes beyond Sunday conversations—diving into the questions, stories, and struggles that shape who we are. Thoughtful. Honest. Unfiltered.
Well, hey, and welcome to episode zero of The Debrief, a brand new podcast we're launching here at Sandals Church. I'm your host, Justin Party, and I'm hanging out here with pastor Matt Brown, lead pastor here at Sandals Church. What's up, man?
Matt Brown:Hey, guys. Just wanna say hi. Super excited about this. Glad to roll this thing out. So we look forward to having you along for the ride.
Justin Pardee:Yes. So the debrief is gonna be this new weekly podcast. We're gonna be recording every single week to kinda help us go beyond the sermons. We're gonna be doing a lot of question and answers, talking about what it was like to process the sermon. We're gonna have some different guests on and things like that.
Justin Pardee:But as we get started and we're gonna be even recording our first episode this week, pastor Matt, can you tell us just about your vision for this podcast?
Matt Brown:Yeah. So originally the envision the vision was this idea of the invisible pulpit, like taking people behind that barrier to the preparation. But this is really going to be after the preparation and just talking through maybe why I picked the passage that I picked, why we didn't choose the other ones, and then talking about the things that we missed. And so there's so much in each chapter that we can talk about that I can't address in thirty five minutes. I'm just really excited about being able to walk people verbally through the Bible, and that's something that I'm really excited about.
Matt Brown:Because I know there's a lot of people out there that are verbal processors, that are not readers, and this is gonna be an easy way for them to kind of have an ongoing commentary with their church, with their pastor, we process through this. And I think it'll be a great resource for small groups, small group leaders, people in our church who have specific questions. I can have more time to maybe go over some doctrinal things in-depth with our church without having to really worry about all of the categories of people in our church, you know, non believer, new believer, and then mature believers, you know, because I'm always speaking to those three groups. And so I'm super excited and this is just an opportunity for people in our church who wanna get a little deeper, and this is gonna be an outlet for them to do that.
Justin Pardee:So as we record, literally in like just about an hour, you're getting ready to start preaching this weekend on Luke chapter five. And I know that you're doing a specific part of that, but there are other parts of Luke chapter five that like you weren't able to preach on?
Matt Brown:Yeah. So well, I could preach on it all, but people would leave. I'm actually ignoring one of my favorite passages in scripture when it's called the miraculous catch and Peter Paul's in this massive catch and Jesus says, you know, I'm gonna change you from a fisherman to a fisher of men. And Peter's just like, I can't do that. I'm a sinful man.
Matt Brown:Lord, you don't want me. You've picked the wrong guy. And I think every Christian feels like that at some point in time in their life if they're authentic in any way, shape or form. If you're not authentic, you've probably never wrestled with that. But people that have some authenticity, have some integrity, there's gonna be a point in their life where they feel like, look, I can't do this, I'm not good enough.
Matt Brown:And so that's just one of my favorite passage of scriptures and Jesus' affirmation that even the person that he was going to build his church upon, Peter, struggled with inadequacy, struggled with I'm not good enough. I'm a fisherman, I'm a sailor's mouth. I'm not the guy that you want. And yet, it was. It's who Christ wanted and who Christ handpicked.
Matt Brown:And so I love this passage, and really, it kind of, you know, Jesus in Luke five is getting on a roll, and he's starting to pick his disciples. Also in Luke five, he's going to pick Levi, who I'm named after, his other name is Matthew. And just as a tax collector, like a trader. So He starts out with a fisherman, and then He moves on to a trader. And James and John are also in that initial catch of disciples.
Matt Brown:And so it's just a really, really neat passage. The whole passage, I love Luke five because Jesus popularity is starting to steamroll, and he's starting to grow. And Luke takes some twists and some turns that Mark doesn't take and Matthew doesn't take, and so kind of presents these stories in a unique light. And so I just absolutely love the opportunity to go a little more in-depth with the story.
Justin Pardee:Man, I'm gonna put you on the spot here, but you just said something that was too good for me to pass up. You said that you're ignoring one of your favorite passages as you're gonna preach this weekend. And I think that's, I mean, that's kind of surprising to me. Why are you choosing to preach on a different part of Luke chapter five than those other ones?
Matt Brown:Yeah, because I think that, you know, so much of being a spiritual leader and being a Christian is is like we said last weekend, choosing to say no to your desires. And so I think that the opening scene of Luke five is a passage that I'm comfortable with. It's in my ballpark, I can hit that out of the park every time, but it's not where I felt like the Holy Spirit was leading me in our church. I think there's a lot of people, we're gonna talk about healing this week, they're in desperate need of healing. And they're hurting emotionally, physically and spiritually.
Matt Brown:And I just feel like it's time for our church to reach out and to pray for those people and anoint some people with oil. And last week we talked about Jesus Christ being full of the spirit. And this week we're seeing Him exercise His power. And we're gonna be talking about the leprous man. I just absolutely love that segment.
Matt Brown:The question, are you willing? And again, all of Luke five really is about inadequacy. Peter feels inadequate. Levi, Matthew is inadequate. James and John are confident, but that's another issue.
Matt Brown:You have this who leprous we're gonna talk about in the message today, we can go a little deeper on it. You know, a lot of people wrestle with whether or not he actually had leprosy. And the reason for that is, is because if he did have leprosy, he should not have been in the town. He should have never been in a position to be exposed to any people. And so for most of human history, lepers were always colonized.
Matt Brown:They had their own place, they were always cast out, they were always alone. Even in our own United States history, our last leper colony was in Hawaii, where Father Damien ministered to and took care of people battling leprosy, because leprosy is dangerous for two reasons. Number one, it's deadly. Number two, it's a communicable disease. And the primary way that the disease transpires is through touch.
Matt Brown:And so here's this leprous man who shouldn't be there, and he just throws himself on the ground, and really his only weapon and only opportunity for safety is his disease, because otherwise everyone would be grabbing him, but nobody wants to touch him. So he'd probably get poked with a spear. And he says, Lord, are you willing? Are you willing to heal me? And Jesus says, I love it.
Matt Brown:He says, yes, I'm willing. And the Bible says, and he touched him. And so Jesus is breaking purification laws, he's breaking all kinds of means. Now Jesus, if he was just a priest, he's unclean. But that's the beauty of who Christ is, is he's so holy, he's so perfect, that his sinlessness overpowers our sinfulness.
Matt Brown:And he reaches out and touches him. And so what's amazing is, he seemingly ignores some of the Torah, but he doesn't because then his very next thing is he tells the man to be obedient to the Torah. Go now and show yourself to the priest so that you can be invited back into community. So this man has been excluded from community because he has a communicable disease, he's been banished. And so he now he says, go to the temple, show and do the offerings that are required in Leviticus 14, give those offerings based upon his salaries, income level, family affiliation, whatever, know, because there's always, it was a taxation scale based upon your ability to pay.
Matt Brown:So it may have been several animals, it may have been very few, but go and do this sacrifice, show yourself to the priest, and then the priest will say, you're one of us again. And so it's just this beautiful picture of Jesus bringing people who are separated from God's community back into his community. It's a beautiful, beautiful picture. And what's amazing and I love about this passage is that Christ gives the man only one instruction, don't tell people what I did. And he's completely disobedient.
Matt Brown:He tells everybody what just happened. And so Jesus Christ's life gets really uncomfortable from this point forward because, right, everybody's heard about this miraculous healing, and not only have they heard about it, but this guy's running around. They know who this guy is, he's probably related, you know, he's well known. And so he's telling everybody, Jesus Christ healed me, Jesus Christ healed me. And the Bible says that Jesus went off alone to pray, and he had to get away, even from his own disciples, because they're probably at this point, right, Matthew's just been called, Peter, James and John are brand new, this is right at the beginning.
Matt Brown:And even at this point, they're they're awestruck by this celebrity whose name is Jesus. And so he has to get away from them. So it's just an absolute absolute powerful story. And I love it.
Justin Pardee:Man, for those of you guys that are listening to this while you're driving in your car, you're gonna need to keep like a pad of paper out on your dashboard or something. There's there is good stuff. So I'm really excited to see where the debrief podcast is gonna go especially over the next couple of years even. 2016 is kind of a different year for us because, you know, we've never done this before. We're in this series called two fifty two where you're gonna be preaching through Luke and the book of Acts, a chapter a week.
Justin Pardee:Both of those books together, the two books 52 chapters. Can you just give us a little bit of the inspiration and the vision behind that series and why you chose to go this direction?
Matt Brown:Yeah. So I think that Sandals has been going through a transition the last couple years. A lot of our longtime sandalites, if you wanna call them that, have kind of phased out. The church has grown, the church has changed, and a lot of our mature Christians have been called out, have run out, I mean, for all kinds of different reasons. And so we're left with a lot of baby Christians and non Christians.
Matt Brown:Now we still have some great mature ministers that are working, but the reality is, we need to grow up. I need to grow up the next generation at Sandals Church. And so originally we had a lot of church kids that came, even pastor's kids that came to our church, love being attracted to this idea of being real. So they'd experienced church, but they hadn't experienced authenticity. Now we're at a phase in the life of our church where we have people coming that have no experience whatsoever.
Matt Brown:And so yeah, they like authenticity, but they don't know anything about spirituality. And so Luke two fifty two is the process by which that Jesus grew. And so as Christians, we're called to be like Jesus in thought, feeling and actions. And so Luke summarizes the growth pattern of Jesus in three relationships. He grew in relationship to himself, wisdom and stature, the words that Luke uses.
Matt Brown:And those words are not just, you know, he didn't just go through puberty and grow up, but he grew up in wisdom and stature, he figured things out. He matured. He's not just the teenager who forgets to tell mom and dad, oh, by the way, I'm gonna stay at the temple. And so that verse comes on the heels of that. As he submitted to his mom and dad, he grew up.
Matt Brown:And so he grew in three relationships with himself, in relationship to God, the Bible says, in favor with God and in favor with men. So he became very, very quickly this mature person and we are to become like him, the Bible says. And so that's what it means to be a Christian. And so in order to grow up in our faith, you know, last week in Luke four, all of Luke four is about the Scripture. Jesus Christ is quoting scripture.
Matt Brown:He's refuting a misunderstanding of scripture. He's fulfilling scripture or he's preaching scripture. And so it's all about God's Word, God's Word, God's Word. And so many people today call themselves Christians, but are not in God's Word. I was just meeting with a pastor this week who's fallen.
Matt Brown:He's fallen into sin. His marriage is on the rocks and his ministry at this point in time is over. And as we were talking, said, just tell me about your time in the Word. And he says, it's been horrible for years. And I think that's just indicative of so many people is we cannot be close to God's heart if we're not close to his word.
Matt Brown:And so that's the primary way that we drift. And so I want our church to drift back towards God's word. I want God's word to be the center of our discussions in small group. I want it to be the center of our communication time between husband and wife, you know, friends and family, even brothers and sisters that we're talking about, what does it mean? What God's Word mean?
Matt Brown:Because it's not just enough to know it. We talked about last week, there's nothing more dangerous than a moron with the Bible verse, but to actually grow up and become wise. And so how do I apply this to my life? And what is what is God's will for this text in my life? And so that's why we're doing this.
Matt Brown:I'm so excited. I want our church to grow up. I want us all to grow in Christ and it's just a really neat time.
Justin Pardee:Man, this is gonna be great. Let me give you guys a heads up so you know what to expect. We're gonna be recording the debrief every Tuesday morning and we're gonna go through this question and answer time. So if you've got questions that come up to you during the sermon, man, reach out to your community group leader, let them know what you're asking, let them know what you're curious about and they will get those questions to us and we'll get them in front of Pastor Matt here on the podcast. And our hope is we'll get this out every single Tuesday afternoon so you can have it ready for your your drive home from work on Tuesday evenings or maybe your drive back to work on Wednesday mornings.
Justin Pardee:And our hope is that this can kind of be a support as you go beyond just listening to the messages and and kind of starting to figure it out on the weekends. But we wanna help you as you move towards working it out together in our groups. So man, we're super excited about that. We cannot wait to have you guys back here for episode number one coming out later this week. See you guys.
Matt Brown:Thank you. I hope you guys will be along for the ride. It's gonna be awesome.