Pastoral Resident Ryan Gawrych finishes our Unforced Rhythms of Grace series, preaching from Philippians 4:4-9 and reminding us of the importance of imitating Christ.
Hello everyone. This is Pastor Damian. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, orlando. At New City we believe all of us need all of Jesus for all of life. For more resources, visit our website at NewCityOrlandocom. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:Now, if you're new or just getting to know New City, we'd love to connect with you. Out in the foyer after the service there's a connect table with people at the table. They would love to talk with you, hear a little bit about your story, answer your questions, even maybe set up a coffee date where you could hear more about New City and how to be plugged into life together in this community. Speaking of that table, I'm going to move to our announcements. The first announcement is that there is a Connect Team breakfast on February 4th, that's next week, in this building on the third floor at 8.45. So the Connect Team again. They serve in that capacity every Sunday morning, welcoming people to New City. They're looking for new people to serve with them and the breakfast is also for those who are currently serving. So if you're interested in serving in that way, please sign up on the app. The second announcement is about our event called Discover New City. This is on February 7th at the New City offices at 7 pm and this is an opportunity to come kind of informal gathering to ask questions of our pastoral staff. Pastor Damien is usually there and it's opportunity for you also to hear a little bit about our vision and our mission at New City. And it's just a real informal time and so it's fun. It's February 7th and if you're interested in learning more about New City and the vision and mission of our church, please RSVP in the app Now. The last announcement is related to our learning event next month on Slow Down Spirituality. As Ben helpfully diagnosed us last week right, he went through a list of nine or 10 things. We all have a bad case of hurrying us, so this learning event will be an opportunity to pause, slow down and learn from the gentle yoke of Jesus how we should love God and love our neighbor. Please see the app for more information.
Speaker 1:Now, as we transition to our call, I'm reminded this last week in the Gospel of Matthew. We've been reading through the Gospel of Matthew in our reading plan together as a church. We read over the Passover meal and then the subsequent prayers of Jesus in the garden. In that moment of need, right, jesus and his friends were there praying, but his friends kind of failed him. Jesus found that his friends were unable to remain awake and stand watch with him. There was a simple call from him to imitate him, especially in prayers to the Father, in uncertainty and in anxiety. Indeed, jesus even says that their spirit was willing, but their flesh was weak, beloved in our weakness. Jesus is calling us here this morning to see him in this service, to be fed by him in spiritual nourishment and to grow in grace. So, to all who are weary and need rest, to all who mourn and need comfort, to all who fail and need a Savior, this church opens wide her arms and her heart with a welcome from that Jesus, the one we are called to behold, to praise and to imitate. So let us stand and worship Jesus now. From a call and response from Psalm 121.
Speaker 1:I will lead out in the leader portion. I lift my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun should not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and coming from this time forth and forevermore. Amen. Join with me in your hearts in this prayer of adoration and confession.
Speaker 1:Father, you are our Lord and we praise you that you are the one who calls a people to himself from every tribe, tongue and nation. We praise you that you are the Creator who created the heavens and the earth and all the peoples in it. We praise you that you are a shade and life's painful rays will not strike us in a way that keeps us from you. We praise you that you are a keeper. We praise you that you are a good and gracious Father. The same yesterday, today and forevermore.
Speaker 1:And yet, jesus, you are our high priest and you are our Lord, the very one whose spirit and flesh has completely obeyed to the point of death. You know our feeble frames. You know our temptations of anxious worry and uncertainty. You know how we fall into despondency in the valleys of depression. You know we rejoice rather in our own name than in yours. And yet, jesus, you who have done the will of the Father perfectly. Your spirit and flesh were willing and continues to be. You provide a meal for your people by your body and your blood. Strengthen us, o Lord, in the work of our hands. Holy Spirit, meet us in this service today. Remind us that you dwell with your people and in your people. Father, son and Holy Spirit, show us all of who you are. Let us see you clearly. To you be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Speaker 3:Please stand and pray this prayer of illumination with me. Guide us, o God, by your word and spirit that in your light you may see light, in your truth, find freedom and in your will discover your peace Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Please remain standing, if you're able, for the reading of God's word. Today we will be reading Philippians, chapter four, verses four through six Rejoice in the Lord. Always, again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. This is God's word. Thanks be to God. Be seated.
Speaker 2:Thank you. There's actually more to that scripture. I'll read it later. That's my fault. I didn't add it where I should have, and actually most of the sermon revolves around the last two verses that weren't up there. So, yeah, off to a good start.
Speaker 2:You guys sounded so good this morning. I want to say it sounded so full in here and I appreciate that there's. I'm a big baseball fan and on occasion when you listen to a game, sometimes they mic up the bats to make the sound louder so it sounds like when you're at home. You hear. When you're at home it sounds like you're at a game. That's what it sounded like in here. We must have like mics focused on all of us here. It sounded really good this morning.
Speaker 2:Well, there are times in life when paying attention to what someone is doing and how they're doing it really matters. Just to name a few examples if you're a firefighter or an EMT, it matters that you pay attention to those who've come before you and the job and the work that you're doing. If you're a firefighter, you need to know how to suit up when to go into a house, when to come out of a house. If you're a surgeon or a doctor, it matters that you imitate those who have come before you well In so many ways, not the least of which is at a scrub sink. At a scrub sink, you learn how to wash your hands in the right way to reduce the risk of infection and lead to positive patient outcomes. If you're a pilot or you're in the airline industry, it really matters that you pay attention, because you're flying a 200,000 ton hunk of metal 30,000 feet up in the air with 200 people in it, so you need to pay attention and imitate those who have come before you well. I also want to mention Jason Dunne, because he's actually an example of this. For those of you who don't know, jason Dunne just passed his final ordination exam this Tuesday, and Jason had the put in the work to do that. But he also imitated those who have come before him in Damien and Ben and the path Ben took towards ordination, and so imitation matters. Now, if you're a financial planner or a teacher or a retail worker or a parent, one of the first things we do is to look to others so we can imitate them. We are creatures who imitate. In most cases, our jobs depend on it and in some cases, our lives and the lives of others even depend on it. There are times in life when imitation really matters, and it turns out from our passage this morning that the Christian life is one of those times. The Christian life is a life of imitation.
Speaker 2:If we could spend more time in Philippians which we can't, we're just landing on here this morning in chapter four, what we'd find is that it's not an easy world to follow Jesus. Then Paul is in prison, which is pretty par for the course for Paul. The help that the Philippian church sends Paul in the person of a Epiphoditis has fallen ill and he almost dies. Two prominent leaders in the church in Yodia and Sintica these are women who are prominent leaders in the church at Philippi. They're having some sort of a dispute that Paul wants to mend and is worried could potentially cause some division. That's all just in this book. It's not an easy world to follow Jesus then, and so what Paul offers us as a remedy is a life of imitation.
Speaker 2:Paul encourages us to imitate Jesus and, contrary to our cultural moment, to imitate others. But this is hard for us to do and it often doesn't come natural because what we've been told through music, through movies, maybe even friends and family is that the path to authenticity isn't found through imitation, but through self-expression. The most important thing you can do, what's most essential in your life, the one thing you need to focus on is expressing yourself. And so the greatest sin in our culture, you might say, is to be seen trying to constrain anyone from being who they are. And yet Paul is telling us that the greatest possible gift you could ever give somebody is to say follow me as I follow Jesus. We often don't see it that way, but it is a gift.
Speaker 2:Imitation is a gift, and so this morning we're just going to look at this life of imitation from three perspectives or angles, and that is what we imitate, how we imitate and why we imitate. So the first thing Paul shows us is what we imitate. There's three things that he's really concerned with in the first part of Philippians 4, 4-6. And we're going to look at really two of those. So if you want to turn there now, philippians 4, chapter 4-6, I'm going to go ahead and read and you guys can follow along.
Speaker 2:Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with Thanksgiving, lets your request be made known to God. The first thing Paul tells us that we are to imitate is joy.
Speaker 2:Now, if you're anything like me, your knee-jerk reaction to hearing this is it's easy for you to say Paul, you don't know my life, you don't know the things that I have to deal with on a daily basis. How can you say to me to rejoice always? In this modern age, that's nearly impossible, paul, if you only knew. You don't know what it's like to have four kids foreign under and be home with them all day, have to take care of them, make all their meals and keep them from killing one another. You don't know what it's like to want children and to not be able to have them and to pursue some adoption process that's asking you for insane amounts of money for children you don't yet have. You don't know what it's like to have a child who's followed Jesus all his life and now wants nothing to do with him. Paul, you don't know what it's like to have cancer. You don't know what it's like to hear hey, your body's going to start failing you in all sorts of ways and there's nothing you can do about it. You're going to have to learn to be reliant on everyone for everything.
Speaker 2:Paul, you don't know my life, and yet Paul's writing this from prison, which tells us when Paul talks about suffering, he knows something about it, which means when he talks about joy, he knows something about that too, and we ought to listen. But when we come to this passage, if we're honest with ourselves, we're tempted to skim right past it because it just doesn't seem realistic. We can think of the law of God and we say, yes, we should do those things. But when someone commands us to be joyful, we're like, yeah, I'll try, but it doesn't really seem like it's something I'm going to be able to achieve. But this kind of talk from Paul isn't just a primitive form of positivity culture. Paul isn't saying, hey, you know what you need. You just need some more good vibes. Just be positive, things are going to turn out alright. Paul's actually saying something much more profound than that.
Speaker 2:Look at verse four again, because how we understand this imperative, this command, which is what it is? Jesus here is telling us he's commanding that we be joyful, which, I admit, it's hard to hear, it's hard to wrap our minds around. But how we understand this imperative depends on how we understand the three words right in the middle of verse four in the Lord. In the Lord, the command is not saying rejoice in your circumstances. It's saying rejoice in Christ in your circumstances. Now that's different, isn't it? That's different. The most important word in Philippians 4 is also the smallest. In that little word is highlighting something about the joy commanded, namely its location.
Speaker 2:The joy that God commands is not a joy that starts in us, it's a joy that starts in Jesus. And here's what that means. We're not being commanded here to focus on the positive or to just dig deeper. God doesn't hold out the prize of joy in front of us and in order that we muster up some sort of self-confidence or self-improvement, god doesn't do that. He doesn't work that way. God commands us to go somewhere and to get something that we don't have in ourselves Jesus himself. The joy that Jesus brings. That was the whole point of last week's sermon from Ben. It's that you have to go to the secret place to get the joy of the secret place, to get the joy of Jesus. That's where you find the joy of Jesus and spending time with Jesus. God is not making life impossible. It can feel that way sometimes, I know, but God is not making life impossible. He's not saying to us I command you to rejoice. And then, holding out on the resources that we need to do that, when God says, rejoice or have joy in all things, he supplies the joy that he commands. He always supplies the joy that he commands. That's the first thing that we are to imitate and that's joy. Excuse me, joy. The second thing we're to imitate is praying.
Speaker 2:So far these are rather simplistic, but Paul says something very similar about prayer too. He says in everything, pray. He just said rejoice always. Now he's saying in everything, pray. He says the same thing in Ephesians 6, actually at the tail end, just before Philippians, just before we get to Philippians, he says be praying at all times. 618, ephesians 618, be praying at all times. And do you know what that means for us? There is never a bad time to pray. It doesn't matter what you're going through, what it is, it's always a good time to pray. James 513 says is any of you suffering, let him pray. Is any of you cheerful, let him sing praises.
Speaker 2:Now, I don't fish very often. It's not because I don't enjoy fishing. I do, I just don't have the time for it, but I come from a family who enjoys fishing. My dad is here today who loves fishing. He's one of the first people who took me fishing. His father loved to fish, his grandfather loved to fish. My brother-in-law loves to fish. In fact, him and his wife moved to a piece of property with a giant lake, which they own a portion of, just so he could fish. But I've heard it said before, because I've been around these waters, no pun intended that there are two signs that tell you that you are to keep fishing, that you should keep fishing. One is that the fish are biting and the other is that the fish aren't biting. And it's the same way with prayer. Things are going well. You should keep praying. Things aren't going well, keep praying. There's never a bad time to pray.
Speaker 2:Now, our desire here at New City is to be a praying church. If you've been around here for any amount of time I'm laughing because it's so true If you've been around here for any amount of time, you've heard us say praying matters. We have Seek Night, which happens at the end of every month. We have various spaces that we've cultivated to promote prayer in congregations, which is what we're doing here, communities and circles. You've even heard us say before punctuate your day with prayers which could look like setting an alarm on your phone three to five times a day. That forces you to pause and pray. The point is that we want to be forced to do that because it doesn't come natural. So I would encourage you, if you're not already doing that. In fact, as I was writing this yesterday, my alarm went off and I confess I didn't pray because I had to get this finished. But here's the point If you can't pray in that moment, then at least you walk away convicted that you could have been praying, which isn't nothing.
Speaker 2:The point is, at New City, we want prayer to be normal. We want it to be normal. It should be normal. It shouldn't be thought of as something that's just off in some corner for the super spiritual elite. Do we have any office fans in here? If you know anything about the office, the one line that probably comes to mind the most is Michael Scott says I'm not superstitious, but I'm a little stitious. That's how we want to think about our prayer life. It's not something that's super spiritual. It's just like the normal amount of spiritual and it can be anywhere, with anyone, and it doesn't matter how you feel, because the Psalms show us that basically whatever your emotional state is, you can come before Jesus. There's never a bad time to pray. But perhaps more than that, what Paul is saying here when he says, in everything pray, is that there's never a time when God doesn't want to hear us pray. It's not just that we ought to, but it's that God desires to hear, that he finds that lovely.
Speaker 2:Now I don't know about you, but if I've had a really long day, maybe I was short with people at work, maybe had a late start to my day and I didn't give people the time they deserved. Maybe I got angry or short-handed with my children when I got home because I still had work left undone that I had to do and I didn't have time to spend with them in this long bedtime routine. Maybe I got annoyed and angry over that. Maybe I've fallen into some particular temptation that day. If that is the kind of day that I have, I'm tempted to think I can't really pray now. I was going to go home and I was going to pray, but I can't do that now, whereas if I've had a good day, maybe on my way into work I gave some money or food to someone on the corner. Maybe I've shared something with someone that doesn't know Jesus. From what I read this morning or that particular morning, I'm tempted to think that doesn't know Jesus from what I read this morning or that particular morning. Maybe I've even resisted temptation that day. If I have a good day, I feel like God can't wait to hear from me tonight. Just wait, jesus.
Speaker 2:But when we do that, what we're doing is we're making our prayer life conditional on our feelings and our experiences, and what you've probably heard Ben and Damian and a number of people around here say before is that a good approach to life, the Christian life, is faithfulness comes before feelings or feelings follow faithfulness. Feelings shouldn't direct really any part of our prayer life, our life, including our prayer life. Don't make your prayer life contingent on your feelings. You'll be disappointed regularly. So if you've just dropped the ball, reflect on your life this week. If you've just dropped the ball on something, I actually did this this past week in a pretty significant way. I'm not going to share that with you guys, but pray. If you've just accomplished something really awesome, pray. If you're upset with Jesus, pray. If you just sinned pray. There's never a bad time to pray.
Speaker 2:We pray in all things and rejoice in all things because, as Paul tells us in verse five, the Lord is at hand, he has drawn near to us. So these are the things that we must imitate joy and prayer. Sandwiched in between there is humility, which we sort of glossed over, or gentleness, or selflessness. Paul spends a lot of time unpacking that in Philippians two and then points to the life of Christ. But it's one thing to know what we need to imitate. It's another thing to actually be the kind of person who rejoices in all things and prays in all things and who is humble in all ways. Which leads us to our second point, which is how do we imitate? How do we imitate Jesus and others who are attempting to imitate Jesus? How do we begin to become the kind of people and, more importantly, excuse me, the kind of people Paul wants us to become and, more importantly, the kind of people that Jesus wants us to become?
Speaker 2:What does the process of imitation actually involve? Well, jesus tells us Look with me in verses eight and nine. That's what we didn't read, but we'll read it now, verses eight and nine Philippians four, eight to nine. Jesus says through Paul finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things, what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me. Practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
Speaker 2:So, if we're to take this formula, discipleship equals thinking and practicing. You may have also heard it hearing and obeying, being and doing. You can pick whichever words you'd like there, but Paul is telling us that discipleship equals thinking and practicing. It must involve both our minds and our hands. I mean setting a time to be with God so that we can serve with God. And it's interesting, I think, that Paul starts here with the mind, because physiologically, that's where everything starts. Our mind sends signals, excuse me, to the rest of our body, which results in doing work. It's thinking and then it's doing. But Paul's also saying that spiritually, we work the same way, we operate the same way. Our life is going to influence our thought life, rather, it's going to influence our work life.
Speaker 2:In other words, imitation, or we could call it discipleship, begins with the mind. It begins with determining what's worthy of imitating. Now the problem is we're really bad at determining what things we ought to imitate and who we ought to imitate and how we ought to go about that. We're just not good at it. We might get it right sometimes, but by and large we get it wrong, probably a lot more often. We're just not good at it, which is why, in chapter two, paul says the mind that you want, the mind that you're after, the kind of thinking that you're after, that you want to have as a disciple, you can only get through Christ. He says in Philippians 2-5, feel free to turn there if you'd like, or you can just listen. Have this mind among yourselves, okay, paul. Well, how? Which is yours in Christ Jesus, as a disciple, christ has to give you the mind of a disciple. So a life of imitation begins with thinking, it begins with meditation, it begins with considering those things which are worthy to pursue and those things which really aren't, which we ought to leave behind us. But how do we nurture our minds? Well, paul has already shown us in the first few verses pray. That's a great way to do that. Read scripture, read the works and books of Christians who have come before you, who have spent time thinking about God. You should do that. You should absolutely do those things. But here's the thing the Great Commission is in a book club. Jesus doesn't say go now and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of RC. Sproul Bonhoeffer, matt Chandler, john Mark Comer insert your favorite theologian. He says go now and make disciples of me, baptizing them and teaching them in my name.
Speaker 2:Thomas and Kempis was a churchman in the 15th century. He wrote a book called the Imitation of Christ, extremely pertinent to what we're talking about this morning. John Wesley says this book, imitation of Christ, is the best summary of the Christian life he had ever read. That's significant. There are a lot of one-liners and two-liners, for that matter, in that book, but one I wanna share this morning is Thomas says at the day of judgment we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done. So a life of imitation begins with thinking, but it doesn't end with those things. It can't end there, which is why Paul goes on to say in verse nine practice these things. Thinking and practicing must go hand in hand for the disciple.
Speaker 2:One pastor I really admired has said that it's really easy to be a fan of Jesus. Let's just think about that for a moment. It's really easy to be a fan of Jesus. Our gut reaction might be to look at the world around us and the culture that we live in and say, I don't know, there's not a lot of Jesus lovers out there, but we're talking about being a fan. Being a fan of Jesus is actually pretty easy. There are portions of Jesus that even an unbelieving culture can admire. There might be people that you know who think that Jesus' ethical teachings are really great. I have a friend like that. He's a Hindu and a Buddhist, but he thinks Jesus' teachings are awesome. Others might say that it's his love, the way he spoke and the things that he did. It's really easy to be a fan of Jesus, especially if our understanding of him is that he's here to give us the things that we want. But a fan is not a Christian, because a fan is not a disciple.
Speaker 2:The last thing I'll say here is this If one danger is to elevate the thinking part of imitation to the exclusion of practice, then there's an equal danger that we enjoy the work of Jesus more than we enjoy Jesus himself. It's a real danger. I've been there and you don't have to be a seminary student or pastor to fall into that. Do you remember when the disciples came to Jesus in Luke 10, they said hey, we're casting out demons in your name. This is amazing. You remember what Jesus said? Jesus said rejoice, rather, that your names are written in the book of life.
Speaker 2:We can't love serving Jesus more than we love Jesus himself, even as we recognize that one is actually an outpouring of the other. So following Jesus and serving Jesus go together. If we're serving Jesus without following him, then we're really not serving him. And if you think that you can do one without the other, you're really doing neither. So a life of imitation consists of thinking and practicing, hearing and obeying, being and doing. And then, finally, paul tells us why we imitate. Why should we imitate? The tail end of verse nine reads if you wanna turn your attention there, we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it. Turn your attention there, and the peace of God will be with you. And the peace of God will be with you.
Speaker 2:Paul is saying that a life of following Jesus, regardless of what it feels like, is actually our greatest hope for happiness, not just an end time happiness, but a here and now happiness. There's something we get from that now, something greater we'll receive later. But it's worth remembering again that Paul's writing this in chains, in darkness, in isolation. And yet we know that he is experiencing the peace of God, because some of the most famous lines from Philippians come from him, in chapter two, when he says for me to live is Christ, to die is gain. Only someone who knows the peace of God is able to talk like that. But Paul's not rejoicing in his circumstances. He's rejoicing that the God of peace has him in his circumstances. He's not rejoicing in his circumstances. He's rejoicing that the God of peace has him in his circumstances. That's what it means to rejoice in Christ.
Speaker 2:Always Listen. The peace of God isn't a promise to take away all your suffering. If you read it that way or understand it that way, you will be disappointed. But it is an invitation to consider a new way of life. But it is an invitation to consider a new way of carrying your suffering. It's also an invitation to consider that maybe someone else can carry them better than you can. In a nutshell, the peace of God is an opportunity to give your life away, to give it away to Jesus.
Speaker 2:In Mark, chapter eight, verse 34, I'm just gonna focus on two verses here real quick, and make a connection. You feel free to turn there if you'd like, but also read it so you can listen. Jesus is talking to his disciples and he's also talking to those who are around, these non-disciples who are listening. And Mark 834 reads calling the crowd to him with his disciples. That is Jesus. He said to them that it's the non-disciples in the crowd.
Speaker 2:If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. This is Jesus saying if you're interested in getting in on this stuff, this is what it's gonna involve. You need to deny yourself and you need to take up your cross and you need to follow me. Jesus wants people to know up front what he's all about. He doesn't try to hide it. He tells us it's gonna involve carrying your cross. He didn't say hey, follow me, ask for a small print, you know, at the end of those infomercials, by the way, following me involves taking up your cross and denying yourself and it's gonna be very costly. Dot, dot, dot, dot. Or maybe something more pertinent to all of us in here, since we have iPhones or some other phone that's lesser than an iPhone. When your phone updates, it asks you before have you read all the terms and conditions? I would be interested to know if anyone in here has actually done that. Every time it updates, they spend three days reading the 30 pages.
Speaker 2:You don't, you don't do that. We don't do that. We know that Christians aren't supposed to lie, but we don't do that. So we just say yeah, yeah, whatever, it's fine, we click it and we get on with our day. But there's never anything like that with Jesus. He never hides things in the fine print. In fact, he's very upfront about it. He says if you want the peace of God, you're going to have to deny yourself. And that's significant because our culture, at this particular point, believes that, as I mentioned earlier, expressing yourself is the greatest good in your life. So if you wanna flourish, our culture's message to you is you need to discover your true self. How do you do that? You look deep inside your heart. Listen. I love Disney. We have four kids, five kids who are no, four kids gosh, it feels like five kids. And that doesn't mean we're anticipating a fifth kid, so don't think that we have four kids who spend a lot of time immersed in Disney culture. But that's the constant theme is look in your heart. You need to discover your true self. And then, once you discover who your true self is, you need to be true to your true self. It's really a broken record at this point. It's something we've all heard time and time again, but nonetheless it's still a reality for us, for our kids and for everyone out there.
Speaker 2:I'm currently curating a list on an application that I have on my computer. It's called well. The list is called my Life in Music. The application is called Kraft. That's a note-taking app that I use, but I have this list called my Life in Music and I've basically broken it down into childhood, teenage years, young adults where I am now and I'm doing that because I want to remember the things that I was listening to, whether I chose to listen to them or not. Most of them I did, but I want to hand them down to my kids one day, and I think it'd just be a really cool thing for them to be able to look at and say, hey, that's what my dad listened to. It wasn't just all Chris Thomas, he was like a real person who enjoyed music and stuff. So I'm doing that right now and taking time to throw stuff in there and in my teenage years there's Can't Stop by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Josh has told me that after the sermon we're gonna close out with that song. So you have that to look forward to.
Speaker 2:But one of the most iconic lines in that song is Can't Stop addicted to the shindig. The shindig is this band's addiction to the life that they've chosen to perform and pursue music and the life of rock and roll. Chop top. He says I'm gonna win big. Choose not a life of imitation. Distant cousin to the reservation.
Speaker 2:He's suggesting in this song that people should not try to live their lives imitating others. That's the one thing you absolutely shouldn't do. Instead of living life on their own terms, without comparison or imitation, you have to stay true to yourself. Don't try to be someone you're not. That's the message. Don't try to be someone you're not. But Jesus says if you don't become someone you're not, you'll never be truly authentic. In other words, it's gonna involve saying a profound no to some of you, because Jesus says you have to deny yourself if you wanna find your authentic self. It's gonna involve a profound no in many areas of your life. Some of your deepest ambitions and your deepest longings you will have to say no to. It's gonna be costly. Some of you have already experienced what that's like. Some of you will experience what that's like. Some of you are experiencing that right now.
Speaker 2:But in the next verse in Mark, jesus says this for whoever would have his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake and for the gospel, for my sake and for the gospels, will save it. So when Jesus says make or excuse me, when Jesus says my sake and the gospels, he's not saying you've gotta live in some vague and undefined way for me. He's actually telling you exactly what you're living for. Again, he's not hiding it in the fine print. He's saying you lose your life for the Jesus who comes with this gospel message and who summons you with this specific hope. So it's not follow the Jesus that's in your imagination, that's not what we're asking. That's not what Jesus is asking. That's not what Paul's asking the Philippians to do, but follow the Jesus of this gospel.
Speaker 2:And here's something that's actually really oddly comforting when we hear that Jesus is saying there's going to be a lot of time in your life when it feels like I'm killing you. He's saying following me is going to feel like you are really losing your life. He's not just adding that in there as fluff, he means it. It's gonna feel that way. And yet the weird thing is, whoever loses his life for my sake, he says and the gospels will actually save their life the very fact, the very excuse we have yielding ourselves to Jesus is the means by which we receive and gain ourselves, which will become our true, authentic selves. So denying yourself doesn't mean you become something less than what you ought to be. Actually, it's a beautiful paradox. As you deny self and follow Jesus, you become the true you that God thought up in the first place, and as we become more like Jesus, we become our true selves, which, again, is why the world's view of this is so tragically twisted, because the best way to be yourself is to deny yourself, and there's so many people who don't know that the best way to be yourself is to imitate Jesus and to imitate those who are imitating him, to say follow me as I follow Jesus, and to follow those who are following Jesus. And it's probably just has a side note important to say when Paul says imitate these things that you've seen in me. Paul's not claiming some element of perfection here. He's saying insofar as I'm following Jesus, follow me so you can actually say the same thing and not feel weird about saying that.
Speaker 2:Deny yourself and imitate Jesus. That's where life is found. That's the promise. That's why we imitate, because life is found there, peace is found there. So we're to rejoice always and we're to pray always. We're to grab hold of these things, paul says, through thinking and practicing after our brothers and sisters and after Christ. When we do that, we will find life.
Speaker 2:But here's the thing as we close, even though imitating the right things and the right people promises peace and a type of life, a good life, we know deep down that the truth is no amount of imitation could ever get the fullness of peace that we really need and the fullness of life that we really desire. We can't imitate our way to God, we can't imitate our way up to heaven, and that's not what we're asking you to do here at New City when we give you something like the all of life guide. It's to keep you in the peace of God, in the presence of God, being with God, thinking with God so that you can practice, and we're offering you what we think is the best way forward to a happy life, but we're not offering you eternal life through the all of life guide. I hope that's not your impression that you're gonna find eternal life through the all of life guide. But there is a type of life we can't imitate our way to God, and Jesus knew this.
Speaker 2:Jesus knew that the people that he was sent to rescue wouldn't be able to follow God the way that he is able to follow God. He knew this, which is why, in the garden, he looked at his disciples and he said just before, it says that Jesus began to felt tormented and anxious. He looked at them and said my soul is very sorrowful. I think in that moment Jesus probably had a fullness of the weight of what he was about to enter into. But I think he was also sorrowful because he knew the people that he loved and was looking at couldn't go where he was going. They didn't have the ability to follow him, to follow God. Jesus knew more clearly in that moment than any before that he was going to have to follow the Father to a place that we couldn't go. This isn't true of the cross now, but it was then, and I'm gonna say this and hopefully understand what I'm trying to get across here.
Speaker 2:The cross was not a place for imitators. Impostors were not welcome. The cross demanded someone truly authentic, someone truly original, someone perfect. So, realizing this, jesus said is there any other way? And he was met with silence three times. You know, for some reason, whenever I read this passage, I always had the same thought, and I'm not quite sure why, but when I read it, I think Jesus knew what it was.
Speaker 2:He actually knew what it was like to be diagnosed with a terminal illness. Jesus knew what it was like to have an expiration date stamped over his head to say, hey, you have limited number of days. But here's the thing with terminal illness, which we all have, by the way, it's called sin. Prescriptions won't cure. Vitamins won't cure a terminal illness. Imitating Jesus isn't going to cure us. It will help ease the pain along the way and it does promise a better quality of life, but it's not the cure. The only remedy for our sickness is Jesus.
Speaker 2:So let's hold fast to that cure, but let's also take our medicine along the way. Let's imitate others, let's pray. Father, we thank you that you have called us to follow your Son, to imitate Jesus, and that by your spirit you actually make that possible, even if imperfectly and inconsistently. But we also thank you that you haven't just asked us to follow your Son, but that you've given Him to us, that the most authentic person who ever lived has given us life. May we take Him up on that offer this morning. Pray in His name, amen.
Speaker 2:Now we come to our prayer of response. I just want to prompt you guys with a couple of questions. Think on these for a minute or two, then Pastor Ben will come up here and lead us through the table. But just consider these, because they're pertinent questions. When we think about imitation and we think about the fact that we're not, when we think about imitation and what it means to follow Jesus, I want you to think about what does God love that I'm tempted to hate and what does God hate that I'm tempted to love. What does God love that I'm tempted to hate and what does God hate that I'm tempted to love? Just take inventory of your life over the last week, or even longer than that if you want, the last six months, because following Jesus and imitating Jesus will mean loving what God loves and hating what God hates. So do that for the next two minutes.