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At Sandals Church, our vision is to be real with ourselves, God and others. This channel features sermons and teaching from Pastor Matt Brown and other members of the Sandals Church preaching team. You can find sermon notes, videos and more content at http://sandalschurch.com/watch
Hey. Thanks so much for listening to Sandals Church. Our vision as a church is to be real with ourselves, God, and others. We hope you enjoy this message.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:One day in the soon future, we will all wake up to the realization that we have become a certain kind of person, a certain kind of father, a certain kind of mother, a certain kind of spouse, a certain kind of son or daughter, a brother or sister, a certain kind of friend, and a certain kind of coworker, and a certain kind of neighbor. And it will not be our best intentions who chose who we became. It will not be our willpower. God knows that runs out real fast, right. Why is it easy for me to say no to a donut in the morning, but hard to say no to dessert at night?
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Because our willpower is a depleting resource and so I'm ready to eat ice cream every night, but it won't be our will power, it won't be our discipline, it won't even be the circumstances whether they be bad or good that determine who we became. It will be, listen now, our rabbi, it will be our rabbi. And the reason why that is is because every single one of us is a disciple. Every one of us is following someone or something and listen now, all of us are multiplying something into other people, through our relationships and through our influence. And we are all aiming at something that we have chosen in our lives with our mind's eye or with the vision of our heart.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:We are all looking at something that we want to become and that is very much formed by the person who is your rabbi. They are forming you into your image. And so let me ask you, do you know who your rabbi is? When Jesus walked around the earth for 33 years, his primary invitation wasn't, listen to me, consider my teaching, or even believe in me. His primary invitation was this, follow me.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:To 2 groups of brother fishermen, he said, follow me. To a tax collector punching the clock for the Galactic Empire, he said, follow me. To a demonized prostitute, he said to her, follow me. To a respected priest who came to him at midnight of all times the day, follow me. To a wealthy young Instagram success story of his day, he said, follow me.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:To a man who was just making funeral arrangements for his dead father, he said, follow me, and to a future betrayer, what did he say? Follow me. Now in the 1st century, this invitation was called in a word discipleship, but when we use the word oftentimes today, we see it as a verb. Like last week Pastor Claude asked a question, are you being discipled by someone or are you discipling someone? Now in some Christian circles, depending on where you were raised, that's kind of code for do you meet up with someone once a week to go through a book at a very unreasonably fancy coffee shop?
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Discipleship for a lot of us is viewed, not for any other reason other than just kind of the culture we swam in for a while, as this thing that you do if you're an ultra special Christian and we treat it only as a verb, but listen, primarily in scripture discipleship is a noun. It's a noun first, meaning it's not so much an activity you do, a class you take even per se, it's an identity. It is who you are and a disciple is dedicated to the whole, their their whole life embodying the ra the the the teaching of the rabbi and they follow them in the most literal sense. So they go where the rabbi goes. They they eat what they ate, they did what they did, and the closest picture we have of this today is actually like trade schools.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Electricians are disciples. They listen to their master teacher. In fact, they're referred to as an apprentice and they learn from them, they sit, they they get instruction, but then they also get their own hands dirty. They tie things together. They make electricity work.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:They turn on your AC when it's really, really hot. And Jesus taught his disciples, but he also sent them out with authority and then in the end commissioned them to go and do the same thing. In a word that is discipleship, and this is the invitation that stands today. Even at Sandals Church in a brief way, we might say it like this, at Sandals Church, we authentically follow Jesus as we become real with ourselves, with God and with others. That is the foundation of this house and today that opportunity still stands to step into the invitation and follow Jesus.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:As we've been in this series called Multiply, we've been talking about discipleship and now today we come to this understanding of what is essential to multiplication. And here's what I think all of us can agree on. We all want to multiply something from our life to other people. In other words, we want something from our lives to outlast us And I would imagine that many of us want the best of Jesus and not the worst of us to be multiplied. And we need, if that's the case, to hear these words from the Apostle Paul today, a disciple of Jesus, someone who knew what multiplication looked like.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:And so I'm gonna ask if you are willing and able that you would stand with me for the reading of God's word. From first Timothy chapter 1, Paul says this, I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has given me strength that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service. Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of who I am the worst, but for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. This is God's word. Let's pray together. Spirit of God, as we have gathered today, we acknowledge that you have gathered with us too and as we hear your word, we ask now that you would speak to us and that you would open up our hearts, open up our minds and our whole bodies to receive all that you have for us in Christ. We pray these things in his name.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Amen. Amen. Thank you so much. You can be seated.
Morgan Teruel:Hey, everybody. Hey. Before we keep going in pastor Fredo's message, I just wanna take a moment and ask if you would consider giving to the ministry and the work here that we're doing at Sandals Church. If you're interested in doing that, you can go to donate.sc. For now, let's go ahead and get into the rest of pastor Fredo's message today.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:A few summers ago, the, documentary ran, and it got a ton of attention. It was called The Last Dance. It was a documentary about Michael Jordan, the GOAT, this ominous dominating athlete that the world, got to enjoy for a long time. And what I liked so much about The Last Dance was not just all the scenes and reliving my own childhood, watching this man grow up and play basketball. What I liked about The Last Dance was his honesty.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:You, you caught Michael in this moment where he was reflecting on his life in a very honest kind of way so much so that at certain points of the documentary, he tells them to cut because he's about to start crying as he's assessing his own life and he's speaking about what his multiplication, what he translated to his teammates and it hits him so much so in a moment he says cut and the episode goes to a commercial break. It's a profound moment. I share that because Paul in a similar situation I think is reflecting on his own life. This is a unique place in his letter to Timothy who he calls his son, someone who he discipled and multiplied himself into, and he is reflecting on his life and reflecting on what it's like to be a disciple and what it's like to multiply yourself to other people. And a few things kind of stand out from this passage.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:The first thing I wanted to see is this, to multiply my life, I practice being faithful. Faithful. The phrase that we see, Paul that we read from he says, he considered me, he, Jesus, considered me trustworthy. Jesus considered Paul a faithful person. Now that's a word we toss around a lot in Christian circles, faithful, gotta be faithful, gotta be full of faith.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:What do we mean oftentimes when we say that? Well to help us understand I want us to go back to Exodus 34. It's a beautiful passage in the Old Testament where Moses has the audacity to say, God, I wanna see you, some of you might know this passage, show me your glory God. God says you will die, I'm not gonna do that. So he says I'll show you a part of me and in this profound experience and exchange where a human comes into contact with the creator, in Exodus 34, what God does is he gives a sermon on himself.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Imagine that God talks about himself. Exodus 34 verse 6 he says, I, the God, the God of compassion and mercy, he says, I am slow to anger, filled with unfailing love and faithfulness. God describes himself as a God who is filled with faithfulness. The Hebrew word there is emet. Can you guys say emet?
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Emet. Good, Pastor Matt, you're so happy with the Hebrew we're learning while he's gone. Now when we actually get this word it's a derivative also of a word that we say all the time when in prayer, amen. Amen comes from this word emet, which means it's true. Let it be so.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Let it be true. Now when God uses this word, emet, he's full of emet. He's not just saying that I am the God who is true. He's not just saying that I'm the God who speaks truth or that I'm on the side of truth. When God says that he is the God of full of, of Emet, he is saying that I am a God who is trustworthy.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:He's trustworthy. Like when, Moses is holding up his hands in battle and he's getting tired and so as friends come, you might know this story, and they hold up his hands for him. The word they use there is emet. Why is that? Because emet is a word that describes reliability, dependability, sustainability, and and support.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:His his body was being held by his friends in a way that there was a met, there was stability. When God is saying he is full of faithfulness, he's saying I'm a stable God. I am a reliable God, which is why David, when you get a sneak peek into his diary and you read through the Psalms, the phrase he uses a lot to describe God is he's a rock. God is my rock. In other words, God is stable.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:God is reliable. God is dependable. I can stand on him with my whole life, even when things feel like they're falling apart. This is really when you think about it, the story of scripture, God is a faithful God. He's a reliable God.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:He's just a, a stable God. He's consistent and the good news of scripture is that God is really good at being consistent with inconsistent people, with unfaithful people, with people who are not stable, who freak out over the latest tweet, whose emotions are completely shaped and warped by our curated timelines, right. You are doing well or bad depending on what you just read or what you just watched or what show you just binged, right. We're unstable people, which is why the Proverbs even speak to this in human nature. It says there in Proverbs 20, many claim to have unfailing love, but a faithful friend who can find.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:In other words, faithfulness is not natural. Even the ancient wisdom, the ancient writers knew that you don't just stumble upon faithfulness, right? It's difficult to locate, but Jesus himself in his most famous teaching, a teaching I think he gave all the time, the sermon on the Mount, when he re describes the law in a correct way, he gets to this part in Matthew 5 where he talks about oaths and this is uniquely the one place where he actually does away with the law. He says, be done with oaths, no longer swear by the temple, he says this, and do not swear by your head, for you cannot even make one white or black hair. All you need to say is simply yes or no.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Anything beyond this comes from the evil one. In other words, for Jesus, a defining quality, one of the essentials that ought to mark our lives as disciples is that we are faithful people. Your yes is your yes. Your no is your no. What you say you will do aligns with what you actually do.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:This is what it means to be consistent, to be faithful, to be reliable, to be a dependable, trustworthy kind of person means there's an alignment between what you say you do and what you actually do. This is the invitation and the call. Jesus puts a high value on following through so much so that he says do away with oaths, which is a significant way on how they did business back then. They conducted business through oath taking and he says be done with that. People should know that when you say something, you mean it.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:You just don't say true things, you are trustworthy. People can rely on you. Paul goes on to say that this should mark Christians. He says there in 1st Corinthians 4, more moreover it is required of stewards that they be found faithful, so that as you multiply your life, as you practice being faithful, people are seeing your reliability to the degree that they also experience God's reliability. You are reliable.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:You are stable because you are in relation to a God who is first stable for you. You've experienced his faithfulness and you begin to multiply that as you practice that in your relationships. Paul said it like this to Timothy later on in his second letter, you then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. What a statement. Be strong in grace.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to reliable people, reliable people, trustworthy people who will also be qualified to teach others faithfulness. Now what keeps us though from living a life of reliability? Like right now in your life, what keeps you from being stable, consistent, like a rock? Out of all the things that I could share, I wanna just focus in on this. In our modern world, we have a problem of limitless options.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:We can do anything at any moment with anybody and because the world tells us that we can do anything, it keeps us from doing anything meaningful on a consistent basis because you can travel anywhere, watch anything, enjoy anything, consume anything, it over time warps us into people who don't know how to remain consistent and then we become those who would much rather enjoy the benefits of a consistent life without actually having to give ourselves to a consistent life. Like I want peace, but I don't know if I want the consistency that results in a life of peace. Are you with me on that? I know this very well. I can speak to a situation a number of years ago.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:It was a late night y'all and you guys know great decisions come late in the night. I was on the couch, on my phone snacking on something pretty savory and sweet and I came across this ad because I'm looking for the meaning of life even as a Christian still, And it was an ad for a weight loss pill. And with all the godly energy that I have, you thought, well, he didn't click on it, but I clicked on it. And I opened up this this ad and, turned into this video and it's all these transformation stories of people who have just taken this Superman pill they called it in which all of your fat will magically be converted into energy. And so I see images of men with abs and they're hugging their kids and like, oh, I wanna hug my kids with abs and they have energy and they're excited for life and there I am at 12:14 AM with just pretzels emptied out thinking this is the life I need.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:And so, of course, what do you think I do next? With all the godly energy I have, I purchase these pills for 5 easy payments of 49.99. I'm gonna have Superman abs y'all. Now after I made this purchase, the spirit came quickly and said, idiot, you gotta tell Ashley now what you've done. So I'm like, alright, I do.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:I said, well, Ash, I made a purchase tonight. So what'd you do? I said, I bought Superman pills. She said, superman, what are Superman pills? I said, honey, I'm a have abs in 4 weeks, you'll understand.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:And she said, no, you're gonna call right now and cancel this subscription. You're not doing this. And so I spent 2 hours online trying to read all the ways to cancel this because it's clearly, you know, just not real. I get on the phone with my bank, I'm pleading with this customer service agent, probably across the world saying, listen, in a moment of weakness, I hit purchase, please cancel the purchase. And in the mercy, they did.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:And I realized, man, I I wanted the benefits of a consistent life without the work of a consistency, but to multiply life, to multiply our lives, we do so as we practice faithfulness. Now I want to be careful as a pastor here and think about those of you today who are living a life marked by the failure of unfaithfulness. Like some of you today are sitting there and you know what it's like to live an unfaithful life. You know what it's like to be wounded by unfaithful people. And again, I I call back to the goat MJ who once said I have failed over and over again and that is why I succeed.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:And I think to myself, failure doesn't always have to be the last chapter. It just doesn't. And so please hear this first point about practicing faithfulness, not as a moment of condemnation, but one of invitation in your journey with Jesus. Because I can tell you this, I've been following Jesus for 16 years, which is roughly, as you know, I like to do math in public, especially when I'm teaching. It's about 5,840 days.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Right. That's correct. You can fact check me on that. Now out of those 5,840 days, I am not sure that I can even say I've been faithful to Jesus for 2,500 of those days. There's roughly about half.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:But you know who has been very reliable to me and trustworthy to me all the time has been Jesus. And it's cliche to say, but it's very true still. The best part of following Jesus is Jesus. He's the best part
Pastor Fredo Ramos:of it. It's not you. It's not your show. It's not you going to church, doing your thing. That's, it's not about you.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:It's about the one who you're multiplying, not the worst of you, but the best of him. That's what's coming out of us. He has been faithful. And so let me just pause and ask you, what areas of your life right now do you need to grow in faithfulness? Where do you need to become a more reliable person?
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Is it is it at work? Are your words in danger of, you know, maybe being out of alignment with your actions, especially as a Christian? Is it at home? Is it your time management? Is it in your time with God?
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Is it, is it a purity issue? Is it with your friendships, service, generosity? Like where in your life do you need to become and practice more faithfulness? Where? What a moment to pause and just to say, God, would you help me in this area?
Pastor Fredo Ramos:I want to be done multiplying inconsistency and I want to, as I receive your faithful love, you who are full of faithfulness, I want to see that poured out through me. I wanna multiply your reliability. I want people to experience your consistency as I hear the words of Jesus say, let your yes be yes and your no be no. The second thing we see from Paul is that his life multiplied yes out of trustworthiness, but secondly, his life, listen now, was open to God. Paul lived a life fully open to God.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:In other words, to multiply my life, I need to practice being available. He wrote there in the passage that we read that Jesus, he appointed me to his service. Jesus appointed Paul to service. In other words, he brought him in to be with him and then sent him out. In his own discipleship journey, we see Paul first and foremost open to a life with God and so when you hear the word available, what I'm saying is open yourself to God, open up to him and open up to people because the the the thing we learn about movements in the world, movements through history, revival movements is that they are all built off this reality that God goes where he is wanted.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Revival happens where God goes where he is wanted, so open up to him and open up to his mission, open up to what he has appointed you to do and to serve in. And that first and foremost starts with being with him. The disciples before they did anything for Jesus, listen now, they were with Jesus. And when you think about it, nothing is more meaningful in the human experience than the four simple letter word with. To be with is critical to us as human beings.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:When we celebrate a birthday, we're with people. When we, graduate, we are with people. When you get a, invitation this summer for another wedding, it's someone saying, hey, I wanna be with this person forever and I want you to be with us as we mark that occasion and celebrate that covenant. In our times of grief as well, we are with people in their pain so that our presence says so much more than what our words can. Like when you think about breakups, like who did you call over to to come pound a whole thing of, like, dryer's ice cream with and listen to breakup music with?
Pastor Fredo Ramos:You you are with people. It's so important to be with people in the moments of our lives. There is nothing more important in the human experience than to be with one another and when you think about your life right now, are you available to people? Can it be said of your life that you are marked by someone who is available both to God and to those that he's sending you to? Can it be said of Sandals Church that we as a church live and operate in such a way that we are open and available to people.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Because I want you to know that the primary way that we demonstrate our love to God is in the way that we love people. You cannot say that you love God and you are not available to people. That's not possible. When Jesus gives the greatest commandment, he makes it really clear. Those two things go together consistently in our lives.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Paul said it like this in Philippians 2, do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, rather in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, which sidebar, if you are only looking to your own interests, your life is closed to people, right? We live closed lives, why? Because our interests have captivated all of our attention. He says, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interest of others. Later on in Colossians to another group of Christians he says, be wise in the way you act toward outsiders.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:In other words, be mindful about your conduct with people who are not yet in God's family. And then he says, make the most of every opportunity. Well, opportunity for what? Opportunity to multiply through your availability to them, right? Every opportunity you step into is in fact ministry.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Ministry is just not for people like me or other people who work for a church. Everywhere you go is ministry opportunity. The whole earth belongs to God. All of it is being restored by King Jesus. Everywhere you go is a ministry opportunity.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:You gotta break out of this small thinking that only views people who work for a church, get paid to do what we do, are in ministry. You are all in ministry. I talk to people regularly, like I wanna go to ministry.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:What do you mean you are in ministry right now? You're doing it right now.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Make the most of every opportunity, but again, what prevents us in the same way that keeps us from being faithful I think also keeps us from being available and that is our busyness. And now some of you, if you've heard me a lot, are like, here goes Fredo getting on his busyness kick. Everyone's busy, busy, busy. We're busy. Listen to this quote.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:If you don't want to hear me, hear Eugene Peterson. This is what he says. Busyness is the enemy of spirituality. Let me say that again. Busyness is the enemy of spirituality.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:It is essentially laziness. It is doing the easy thing instead of the hard thing. It is filling our time with our own actions instead of paying attention to God's actions. That's Eugene Peterson from subversive spirituality. Busyness is the enemy of spirituality.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:What a word for us because we love, especially in America, we prize and wear like a badge busyness and our culture moves at a speed right now where we just can't be open to people and we're so good at just moving on to the next thing that, as some people have said, we have lost, even as American Christians, the the spirituality of lingering. Now as a Mexican, I know about lingering. People linger all the time at parties, right? We have about 10 goodbyes and I know that's common to other cultures, we know how to linger, but I I've I'm hearing it more and more in conversation with Christians, there is of being open and going slow and being available to what God wants to do. We want revival, but we need revival in the first 10 minute worship set because then I gotta go to breakfast and brunch is coming, right?
Pastor Fredo Ramos:But do we know how to linger? Can we as a counter cultural movement of God break away from the American pace so that we're not always on to the next thing? Some of you live your lives like that little bar that comes up on Netflix, on to the next episode in 3, 2, 1. That's how you want to grow as a Christian. Doesn't work like that and I feel like over the last few years I've been hit by this and I I find myself, I get home and I realize like and maybe this happens to you too, I don't know if anyone gets home and you just realize like this is not how life's supposed to be.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Like I went through a full day of work, I went through so much and I, this ain't it y'all, like I was around people, but I don't know if I was with people. I don't know if I was available to people and I fear and dread as I lay down and go to sleep tonight that I have not been available today. It is one of the sins I find myself repenting of most often. God, I was not available and I worked for you.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:I get a direct deposit from a church
Pastor Fredo Ramos:and I have not been available, and I have a hunch that there are more like me out there, we're not available. And so what's it gonna take for you to no longer cancel on your spiritual community? Like, is it really going to be a sport, a TV show, your shame, your self pity, your fatigue, like how many more excuses will we draw off the line and say this is why I can't be available. What if revival would start with a people who can consecrate themselves to God in being available and open to him, to being open and lingering with him. The last thing I want us to see is that Paul to multiply life talked about being teachable.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:I gotta practice being teachable. The phrase I want us to zoom in on now is there in the passage where he says, of whom I am the worst. Speaking of himself, Paul described himself as the worst of sinners, the chief of sinners. Now in order for Paul to say that, I don't think he was like chief of sinners, they really think this is true. I think he's being honest.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:I think he had an accurate view of himself, not just before he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, but even as an apostle to dozens of Christian churches in the 1st century. He had an accurate view of himself. People who are not teachable are individuals who cannot listen to different viewpoints. If you cannot receive correction from both those that love you and those that don't care about you, you may not be open to being teachable, but a teachable person is someone who the Proverbs say can receive a bit of truth from even their enemy. A teachable person is someone like Paul who can say, I am the worst of sinners.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:I am open to learning. I am open to growth. I am open to being told what I am missing in my life And, and my concern as a pastor is that as we continue to see more and more Christians around us that we have confused agreeing with Jesus for obeying Jesus so that you have a lot of people who say, yeah, I agree with Jesus, but that's not obeying Jesus. Like you can nod your head, your, your head, your head in agreement and not take steps with your feet in the direction of obedience. Agreeing with what he said and doing what he said are 2 different things.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:A teachable person is open to doing what he said and allowing his teachings to shape your life. Peter just gave this beautiful picture of what this looks like, in 1st Peter as he's writing to a bunch of Christians who are scattered around the 1st century world. He said this, likewise, you who are younger be subject to the elders. You who are younger be subject to the elders. What a beautiful picture of intergenerational connection.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Multiple generations of people listening to each other, spending time with each other. Now, if you're young thinking, well, that just sucks for me, listen to what he goes on to say. Clothe yourselves, all of you, young and old, clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another. So in the same way that you subject yourself, an older person is to be humble toward you as well. For God opposes the proud, but give grace to the humble.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:What a picture of teachability in the church and so I want to ask, like, young people what what is your vision for life? Like, you want to go to college, you wanna marry someone, like Fred, I wanna marry a baddie, you know. I guess we can say that. You want a career, you want a home or you wanna travel? Like have you considered just for a second the wisdom that is waiting for you in the relationships with a generation older than you?
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Like I look around at Sandals Church and I just see people and I see wisdom waiting for other people if they would just have a relationship with them. Like you wanna answers on how to get there in your life, wisdom is waiting for you in relationships. It's calling out to you if you would just become teachable and open to what it might have to offer you as you listen to somebody else in another generation. Like when you look at me right now, please know I am not the product of all my good decision making. That's just not impressive.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:I am the product of my environment and I am the product of how teachable I was in my environment. I'll give you an example. When I first became a Christian, I just married myself to the church. I spent all the time I had with people at the church. And one of the guys I would spend time with was so friendly, so open to me, And, I remember one time I was driving in his car with him.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:We were pulling up to a house that we're gonna hang out at for a bit. We got there a little early, so he's like, let's, before we go in, let's pray. I'm like, pray. Is something serious happening or are we gonna pray? So we're just gonna pray.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:I'm like, okay. So we pray, and to my surprise he prays for, like, 30 seconds, like, oh, that was cool. I like that. I maybe I'm gonna do that before I get somewhere. I'm gonna just quickly pray.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:And he's like, you know what? We still got time. And so he reaches behind me in the back seat and he grabs a book and he starts reading. He He's like bro we got like 8 minutes, I'm gonna just read a little bit. So I'm just sitting there awkwardly like oh he's just reading, who carries a book in their vehicle?
Pastor Fredo Ramos:He's reading,
Pastor Fredo Ramos:this is astounding. I never read, I never grew
Pastor Fredo Ramos:up reading, I could not stand to read. I went to a private school, you had to read, but I found ways. Between periods I just got answers to the quiz and was good to go, but then over time I became a reader. I loved to read, so much so that when I went back and became a teacher at the very school I was at, my freshman English teacher, Mrs. Musser, was like Fredo, you're reading.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:I'm like,
Pastor Fredo Ramos:look at me, I'm reading books Mrs. Musser, I am reading books and teaching students how to read, it's amazing,
Pastor Fredo Ramos:but that is not a product of my decision making. That is a product of being in an environment where I was teachable and I saw something that struck me. Homie had a book, a John Stott book in his back seat. You know what I had in my back seat? Just a bunch of compact discs, right, that old book of discs.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Some of you are like, what is that? Compact discs. Teachability is so important. So much so that, Paul in this same letter to Timothy offered these words on the front end. He says the purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be able to accurately give a political answer on TV.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Someone would have said said the purpose of my instruction is that all believers would be filled with love, love. The purpose of instruction is that we would be filled with love that comes from a pure heart and a clear conscience and a genuine faith. Teaching is not an end in itself, but a means by which we become a loving disciple of Jesus. That's the purpose of teaching and instruction. The goal of you being teachable is that you would become a person of love, of love.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Now, as we close, I want to be careful here because I would imagine that if you came to church today and you listened to this talk, you're like fantastic, 3 more things in my life that I am not right now. Church is good for that, right, reminding you here's what you're not, we're so good, this is your weekly reminder, you are not gracious, okay, you are not faithful. That is one way to listen to a sermon. I would hope though that we would catch something deeper than just that. There is an astounding phrase that I wanna come back to, the worst of sinner, the worst, the chief of sinners, Paul says, and then he says twice over though that he was shown what?
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Mercy. Paul was shown mercy. How was Paul able to call himself simultaneously the worst of sinners and yet be regarded as faithful by Jesus? How is that possible? That is a paradox according to Christians.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:In other words, that is an apparent contradiction in which two things that should not be true together are very true together. Paul is the worst of sinners and yet he's faithful. Paul is the worst of sinners, but yet he's available. Paul is the worst of sinners, but yet he is still teachable. Multiplication is made possible by mercy you guys, mercy.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:It is the mercy of God that has held your life together whether you see it or not so much so that Paul says that his life was an example of the Lord's patience so that when people looked at Paul's life, they would see an example of how patient Jesus actually is. And I think about my life man and for 21 years I think about the Lord just patiently pursuing foolish Alfredo. For 21 years I think about the Lord patiently, gently, mysteriously loving me through people who are saying, Fredo, you're dumb. Come back. I think about the Lord patiently taking his time to answer the prayers of people saying, would you draw Fredo to your love?
Pastor Fredo Ramos:My life, when you look at it, you gotta say, man, if Fredo's a Christian, Jesus must be a very patient rabbi, and the answer to that question, absolutely yes. He is so patient, so patient with all of us. In fact, man, God took his time to save you and is still taking his time to save you. So please don't receive this word as another reminder of why you're not it, but receive this word that you are a perfect recipient for the mercy of God right now. And if you wanna multiply your life, it begins with mercy.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Because one day very soon in the future, we will all wake up to the realization that we have become someone. We have become a certain kind of father, a certain kind of mother, a certain kind of spouse, a certain kind of friend, brother, sister, coworker, neighbor, and you have multiplied yourself. And what you have become will not be your best intentions. It won't be your best effort. You know it won't be your willpower.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:That that thing was out the door 8 minutes ago, it won't be your discipline, it won't even be the circumstances whether they be good or bad, it will be your rabbi. You will wake up to the realization that you have become someone because you have a certain rabbi. Do you know who your rabbi is? If you don't, that is a worthy question worth considering. And I want to tell you for those of you watching, wrestling with if Jesus should be your rabbi, I love that.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:I want you to know that we welcome you here at this church. I get up in the morning as a pastor in part because I love to think about people wrestling with God. I love to think about them trying to connect the dots. And so if you're trying to understand what it looks like for Jesus to be a rabbi, you're in a great place. Stay, stay here.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Because at Sandals Church, we are a counter cultural movement beating to a different drum. To put it briefly, we authentically follow Jesus in a way that makes us become ourselves, real with God, real with others, and we are lining up behind our rabbi to go on that journey with him and we encourage you to do the same. This is not an invitation to an easy comfortable life in which anonymous sporadic church attendance and podcast consumption is the primary way that you think of yourself as a Christian. Be done with that. Be done with that and step into an invitation to make Jesus your rabbi, to multiply your life.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:And then as Paul said in Romans 12, in view of God's mercies, in other words, as you consider all that Jesus is and has done for you in light of God's mercies, offer yourself as a living sacrifice to God. In other words, follow Jesus. Let him multiply you. Let's pray together. Heavenly father, we thank you for your patience towards us.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:God, we thank you for your mercy towards us. We are unworthy to be yours and yet you make us yours. God, thank you for your love. Thank you for being faithful, Jesus. Thank you for being available to us, Jesus.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:Thank you for being humble enough to teach us the way to you, to become the way, to be the word made flesh. Jesus, we thank you today. Would you make us people who are faithful? Make us people who are available. Make us teachable so that we might multiply not the worst of us, but the best of you to the world.
Pastor Fredo Ramos:We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.