Have a seat. You can dismiss your children to children's ministry. And turn in your Bibles to Acts 2. And we're also going to look at Luke 9 in a moment. So we're only looking at this simple phrase in Acts 2:42, "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching." And we're just going to break through every week and go look at each one of these things in the list. Essentially be asking what I mentioned last week, if you were able to see the Facebook Live feed, that the purpose of the participation in these four activities—devoting ourselves to the apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, to the prayers, and to the breaking of bread—the purpose of those is found in verse 43, which then tells us that awe came upon every soul, and that we're engaging in these activities as a church when we gather in hopes of experiencing awe in the Lord Jesus. So today we're really just going to be looking at this first phrase: they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching.
Now, I think it's important to remind you as a lead-in to this that you're already— whether you're devoted to the apostles' teaching or not— you're already devoted to someone's teaching. The question isn't really whether you'll be devoted to someone's teaching, someone's explanation of the world, but merely which teaching you will be devoted to.
There are two main areas I think that most of us, if we were to kind of look at our lives from a 30,000-foot perspective, would see two main teachers that we're devoted to. And one of them would just be ourselves. We are constantly speaking to ourselves. We're constantly interpreting the world, to ourselves. We're having an ongoing conversation with ourselves. Most of us have learned not to move our lips when we talk to ourselves, but we are indeed always kind of talking to ourselves. I didn't ask permission to do this. I'm sure she won't care, but Audrey actually posted on Basecamp this week this thing about self-talk, and I want to read it to you if you didn't see that earlier. It says, you are the person who you speak to the most. And if you were to realize that most of your unhappiness stems from the fact that you were listening to yourself rather than speaking to yourself, you'd be so much better off. Furthermore, if you train yourself to recognize and debunk the invasive lies and preach gospel truth to yourself through your thought process, prayer, life, and meditation, you would be so much more greatly equipped to demonstrate little moments of peculiarity that in truth are miracles and testaments of the Holy Spirit's perfect work and sanctification in our lives. The truth is that we're always talking to ourselves, and we need to be conscious of that and understand that we are actually, in fact, devoted to this terrible teacher that we have, and that terrible teacher is ourselves.
I mean, honestly, having a terrible teacher is kind of a life-changing event. I mean, how many— have you had a terrible teacher growing up? Like, it really can warp everything about your perspective on something. I remember when I was in, uh, I was actually in preschool and I was coloring. I was— I drew a picture of mountains and a sunset and, and so on and so forth. And maybe I had a camper van in there, I don't remember. But, but, uh, I, I drew this picture And I colored the mountains like red or something like that. And this woman, this teacher yelled at me and said, "Mountains are purple." And I remember being very like, whoa, I didn't know that mountains were purple. Growing up in Missouri, I've never seen a mountain, but I didn't know they were purple. She's like, "Purple Mountain's Majesty, stupid." And like walked off, and I'm like, well. And I've never forgotten this moment where I learned that mountains are purple. Now I've seen mountains since then, I haven't found them mostly to be purple. But, you know, a terrible teacher can do terrible things to your mind, and it can turn you off from a subject. It can turn you off from interest in something. It can change your perspective. And so, the fact that you're already devoted to teaching, and one of the teachers you're devoted to is yourself, and you're not really the best interpreter of reality, not really the best beacon of truth, it It warrants attention. It warrants attention to notice how you are enrolled in this school with this not-so-great teacher named you.
There's another area where I think we don't remember or realize that we're devoted to teaching, and that is we consume an awful lot of media. And in particular, I want to just touch on this phrase, Netflix and chill, that the kids that the kids are using. We watch Netflix. I think I probably watch more movies than a lot of people. I'm really into movies. But I want just to remind you and remind myself that for thousands of years moral truth has been communicated to human beings primarily through story. We are hardwired to learn from story. So as we look through how moral, ethical, how people have sought to get a grasp on the realities of the world, we see that that has naturally come through the use of story. Stories teach us. So Netflix and chill isn't really that chill. You're actually in class. You're actually being taught something. And the truth is, is that humans are just hardwired to learn reality through the use of story. So again, this first introductory point: you are indeed devoted to teaching already. One of those teachers is yourself. You ain't that great. And the other one, just so you remember, is, you know, when you engage with story, whether that be on Netflix or something else, you are enrolled in class. This is how human beings for thousands of years have conveyed meaning and morality to one another. And every one of those stories you're watching conveys meaning and morality. You just need to be aware of that, at the very least.
A few weeks ago, I was listening to a podcast where it's a podcast led by a Navy SEAL, and he's working through a book that he found that was written in the 1940s, right before World War II, was to prepare men to fight. And it's called Psychology for the Fighting Man. Psychology for the Fighting Man. And he goes through a list in this book, this book lists the approach to psychological warfare, okay, and essentially how to wage psychological warfare on the enemy, or how the enemy might wage psychological warfare on you. Now these are just soldiers, these are citizen soldiers, you know, young men, 18-year-olds enrolling, enlisting, or drafted in the army, to fight in Germany and Japan, and they want these young men to know how psychological warfare works. I just want to read through, it's real short, the 4-point description of how psychological warfare works. The first one is this: the enemy must be weary, he must be tired and discouraged. Number 2: turn disillusionment into despair. Convince the weary enemy that victory is impossible. Number 3: The third step is to promise him something better. Show the enemy a way out. The cornered beast fights to the death unless he sees a way of escape. And number 4: After the creation of despair, after the promise of something better, there is left still one further step for the engagement of psychological warfare. The enemy must be led to believe, led to fix the blame on his own leaders. The soldier who surrenders when he could have fought on must have some excuse, and he will find it if his discipline is broken down by his conviction that his own leaders are responsible for his unnecessary surrender. Suffering for his unnecessary predicament. Typos was present, unnecessary there.
6 · Applies the psychological warfare illustration directly to spiritual warfare, arguing that the devil's strategy against believers follows the same four-step pattern
How prescient is that description of psychological warfare? It is literally like they turned to the Bible and said, how does the devil discourage God's people? Let's go all the way through the scriptures and let's sort out the various strategies. Let's Find them when they're weary and tired. Let's pivot that weariness and tiredness from that thing into despair. Let's give them another option, another option that wouldn't be so hard, that seems to hold out promise. And finally, let's let him believe that it's really his leader's stringedness or his leader's lack of care or wise oversight that makes it unnecessary to suffer in this way. So think, this is written in the 1940s to 18-year-olds going off to war, and yet it perfectly describes the reality of which we face, especially when we're not consciously devoting ourselves to good teachers. And when we're not consciously devoting ourselves to good teaching, this stuff really works well on us. So, that's sort of the problem.
7 · Pivots from the problem (devotion to self, media, and spiritual warfare) to the solution (devotion to the apostles' teaching), returning to the primary text
Now, here's the alternative opportunity presented in Acts 2, and that is alternatively, alternative to devoting yourself to your own teaching, devoting yourself to the stories of the world, devoting yourself to or allowing yourself to be devoted to the lies of psychological warfare or spiritual warfare, These early Christians devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching.
8 · Exposes the critical distinction between devotion to the Bible and devotion to apostolic teaching
Now, as I'm working my way through the Bible, I'm asking questions, and one of the first questions I asked when I came across this phrase most recently is, why are they saying they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching? Why not just say they devoted themselves to the Word of God? Certainly that command is is found many other places in Scripture. Why make the point that this is the apostles' teaching? Why not simply say they devoted themselves to God's Word? Well, because you've got to remember that these people who are newly saved in Christ were, before they were saved in Christ, already devoted to the Bible. So It says, I think in verse 4, verse 5, it says that these men gathered in Jerusalem— by the way, they were gathered in Jerusalem to obey the Bible— these men were devout men. So Luke wants us to see a difference between mere devotion to the Bible and something else that he is calling apostolic teaching. And we're going to define that, describe that as we proceed. But Luke wants us to see a difference because the truth is It is very possible, very possible to devote yourself to the Bible and wind up entirely wrong about what it's about, about who it's about, about what it's for. All of these people in this text did that same, that very thing. They were devoted to the Bible, but they missed Jesus. More than missed Jesus, they crucified Jesus. These people who were devoted to the Bible were reading it wrongly. And because they were reading it wrongly, making the distinction after their conversion that not simply that they'd memorized the Torah, which I would commend to you. Feel free to go memorize Leviticus. That'd be great for you. Right? Do it. But he's making a distinction. I think this is important because it is not likely that many of you are entirely biblically illiterate. But it may be very likely that you, like this audience, are reading the Bible the wrong way, missing the central point of the Scriptures. And the apostles' teaching is the way that Luke is saying what they were devoted to was not simply ongoing reading of the Bible, but an interpretive lens through which they saw the Scriptures. They were looking at the Scriptures in a new way.
9 · Transitions from identifying the problem (wrong reading) to solving it by defining apostolic teaching
Now, let's talk about that new way. What is the apostles' teaching? What does that mean? What does that phrase mean? Well, I did a lot of reading and thinking about that, read lots of original documents in the apostolic age and so on and so forth. I came up with 12 distinctives of, well, this is what apostolic teaching is, and then I realized I really don't I don't want to inflict a 12-point sermon on you. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that probably the best way to communicate this would be to go and find the single best example of apostolic teaching in the Bible, show it to you, and explain why it's the single best apostolic teaching in the Bible. So if you would, turn in your Bibles to Luke Chapter 9, down in verse 28, we get to this story of the transfiguration of Jesus.
10 · Expounds Luke 9:35 as the perfect model of apostolic teaching
Peter is witnessing Jesus with an unusual manifestation of His physical glory. Jesus is on a mountaintop, we'll get to that significance in a moment. Peter is witnessing this, he is confused, he is afraid, he is saying dumb things. Then a voice from heaven in verse 35 interrupts Peter and says this: "This is my beloved Son, my chosen one. Listen to him." That, I think, is the single best example of apostolic teaching in the whole Bible. I think I can show you why that is. Why this phrase coming from God the Father is the single best example of apostolic teaching in God's Word. Now I say that because there seem to be 3 essential characteristics to apostolic teaching. If you reduce everything down and try to understand it at its most simple level, I think you would walk away saying there are 3 things, 3 distinctives that make apostolic teaching apostolic teaching. And they are: number 1, the personal adoration of Jesus; number 2, the public elevation of Jesus; and number 3, the practical application of Jesus. If you really wanted to boil it down and ask what is apostolic teaching, I think you would say It comes from a heart, a speaker's heart, who is adoring Jesus, who is elevating Jesus, and applying Jesus. And I think that the reason why I believe Luke 9:35 is the most apostolic statement in the Bible is because God the Father is perfectly embodying these three things. Perfectly, wholly, entirely, no compromise, no shadow or turning. This is fully Him, not just in this moment, but at all time. But this statement, I think, will give us the opportunity to understand what apostolic teaching is and how it's different from just teaching.
11 · Announces the structural plan: present the three points quickly, then work back through for application
All right, so the first point— we'll go through the points kind of quickly, and then we'll work our way slowly through them again and try to apply them and understand what they have to do with our lives.
12 · Establishes the first essential characteristic: the teacher's personal adoration of Jesus
And the first point is this: The heart of apostolic teaching is personal adoration for Jesus. If the person speaking Jesus isn't adoring Jesus, then it's not apostolic teaching. Central to the basis of biblical teaching is that the teacher himself have a heart in conformity to the message. And if you have a teacher whose heart is not in conformity to the message, if you have a teacher whose heart is not subordinated to the message, you could have a great sermon, but you don't have what God wants you to have. This is key. This idea that whatever is proclaimed must come forth from a heart that is personally adoring Jesus is key. And nobody exalts in or loves Jesus more than the Father. And He says elsewhere in Matthew 3, "This is my Son whom I love, with whom I am well pleased." The first thing we want to see as we're describing— first thing we want to make sure we emphasize as we're describing what it means to devote yourself to apostles' teaching, what is apostles' teaching, is it's devoting yourself to the teaching of someone who loves Jesus a whole lot. Apostolic teaching comes from a heart of love, a heart in love with Jesus, and if that isn't there, it isn't apostolic teaching. Even if the message is factually and theologically correct, the absence of love for Jesus invariably mars the message in one way or another. We may not sense that, but over time it will indeed weaken, reduce, or in fact mar, distort, pervert what sounds like a theologically accurate message. A heart that is not in love with Jesus who's teaching the Bible is a Pharisee. That's all you've got. That's the only option you've got. He may be an accidental Pharisee. He may desire not to be a Pharisee. But the simple truth is that a Bible teacher who is not in love with Jesus is one thing. There's one category for that person, and that is a Pharisee.
13 · Demonstrates from John 21 that Jesus restored Peter to apostolic ministry by asking three times "Do you love Me?"—proving that love for Jesus is the central qualification for apostolic teaching
By the way, I say none of this in a spirit of boasting, but rather in great awe and humility as I lay this standard upon myself. This idea that central to the apostles' teaching is the apostles' love for Jesus shows up immediately when Jesus requalifies or restores Peter in John? Because what is the central question after Peter's betrayal that Jesus asked 3 times to restore him and confirm his calling to apostolic ministry? "Do you love Me, Peter?" "Do you love Me, Peter?" "Do you love Me?" This is the central part. Necessarily show you often in Scripture in a simple 1-2-3 kind of way how this plays into effect, except to say read your New Testament and watch the apostles as they write their letters break out into praise. Observe their love for Jesus.
14 · Cites Acts 4:13 to show that the apostles' effectiveness was not their education but their proximity to and devotion to Jesus—the temple authorities recognized they had been with Jesus
You know, there's this one text I think kind of summarizes this best, and that's Acts 4:13, I believe it is. Where Peter and John are standing before the temple authorities, and it says they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated common men, and they were astonished, and they recognized that they had been with Jesus. There's something about their proximity and their devotion to Jesus that, that makes the message different.
15 · Establishes the second essential characteristic: public elevation of Jesus
So the first A central characteristic of apostolic teaching is that the speaker must love Jesus. The second is this: pronounced elevation of Jesus. The second distinctive is that apostolic teaching always finds a way to make Christ central to the message. Christ shows up in a preeminent way in what is spoken. It's not a tacked-on, it's not an afterthought, and certainly not a message without Christ at all. It sets him apart. Apostolic teaching sets Jesus apart. It shows him as the ultimate and supreme object of worship. Back to Luke 9:35. So God has set this stage, and it's important to remember this. This is— God has He's putting on a play for Peter, in a sense. And He has built the stage. He put that mountain there to put Jesus on top of it. And He's displaying eternal, manifest, physical Shekinah glory on Jesus. God the Father is literally elevating Jesus. He's literally illuminating Jesus. And in addition to these physical things He's doing, He says it point-blank. This is My Son. My singular, anointed, chosen One. This is the One. This is the One. And that is also an essential quality of apostolic teaching. Christ-centeredness. Gloring in Jesus. Exalting in Jesus from page to page to page of the Scriptures. Gloring in Jesus.
16 · Expounds the content of apostolic teaching using the Greek term kerygma—the essential apostolic message
There's a Greek word that theologians use to refer to the basic apostolic message, and when they talk about this, they wind up coming up with just a handful of essential statements that all apostolic messages contain. And the first one is this: the age of fulfillment has dawned. This idea that that we are in a new time. And why are we in a new time? Because of the ministry, the death, and resurrection of Jesus. That's the evidence that something— God has done something new. And you can see Peter doing this in one way in Acts 2, and he's doing it to a Jewish audience. But then you can turn to Acts 17 and see Paul doing it a different way to a Hellenistic, to a Greek audience, but still the same thing. It's still this, like, we are living in different times, and the reason we're living in different times is because Jesus has come. By virtue— next piece of the message that is common to all apostolic teaching— by virtue of the resurrection, Jesus has been exalted at the right hand of God as messianic head of Israel, if it's a message to the Jews, or if it's just to the world, if it's a message to the Greeks. That's the second thing. Jesus came to He was raised from the dead, and this is evidence of God's unique pleasure in Him and God's unique choosing of Jesus to rule the world. The next piece of this common apostolic messaging that you see throughout the Scriptures is the Holy Spirit in the church is the sign of Christ's presence, of His power and glory. And then finally, This age will reach its consummation, its end, when Jesus returns. So, 3 basic statements: we're living in a new time because Jesus. Jesus is God's chosen one. And this time will end with the return of Jesus. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. It's the central component to everything. History is pivoting, hinging on Jesus.
17 · Acknowledges the revolutionary nature of what he is describing and defers fuller exploration to the next sermon, reiterating that the essential apostolic message is the public elevation of Jesus from text to text
And that's the, that's the key piece of the actual teaching of apostolic teaching, is, is that from text to text to text, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Now we'll look, we'll look at this further next week because this is, this is, I mean, revolutionary for what preaching is. This is revolutionary for what our Bible studies are and so on and so forth. But that's the essential message the apostolic message. It's a public elevation of Jesus.
18 · Establishes the third essential characteristic: practical application of Jesus
So that even when they're talking about marriage, whatever, when they're talking about slavery, when they're talking about how to interact with your employer, every time you see the apostles teaching just ethics, it's always because Christ. Because of how Christ loved his bride. Because of how Christ submitted. To the Father, because how Christ endured reviling but did not return with reviling. Jesus comes through in everything. So the third point is practical application of Jesus. This is the other essential piece of apostolic teaching. We see that also in Luke 9 when God says, God the Father says, "This is my beloved Son." So that's adoration, he's adoring Jesus. This is my chosen one. That's elevation. This is Jesus. He's singular. He's the only one I've put my stamp of approval on in a certain way. And then finally, application of Jesus, where he says, listen to him. So he's adoring Jesus, he's elevating Jesus, and he's applying Jesus, saying listen to him. There is always a call to action in apostolic teaching. And if there isn't a call to action, it isn't apostolic teaching. The call to action always has to do with something we must do in response to who Christ is and what he has done. Jesus isn't an idea, he isn't a concept, he isn't a thing. He is a person who came to earth, who died a real death, and was raised by God. This is a real thing that happened on your planet, and therefore you must respond appropriately. That's key to and consistent with apostolic teaching. And if you've read the Bible, if you've read the New Testament, you've probably noticed the pattern that shows up in all the epistles, all the teachings of the apostles, whereby they start with adoration. They praise God, they thank God, they they enjoy God, and then they move to the elevation of Jesus. And they talk up Jesus and they worship Jesus. And then there's a pivot point, like the famous one is of course Ephesians, where it says Paul pivots and he says, "Therefore, live a life worthy of the calling you've received." And then he goes into ethical and moral teachings, though never abandoning the elevation of Christ even in those teachings. There's always this pivot point where the apostles say, because Jesus is who He says He is, because He has come and the new age has dawned, because God set His approval on Him and showed it through the resurrection, and because Jesus is returning to usher in the new heavens and the new earth, we must do certain things. So that's the third key component, and that's why again I think this moment in Luke where God the Father is being the great apostle— I thought about this a lot this week, like, is that fair? Is that okay to say that God the Father is being the great apostle? It's like, well, of course it is. Paul wanted to go to Spain to reveal Jesus. God the Father sent Jesus. He sent Jesus. He sent the gospel. He sent this truth. And so there's this sense in which we see God as the great and ultimate missionary, the one who is actually showing himself, pressing into our world to reveal himself.
19 · Pivots from exposition to application, narrowing focus to the first point—personal adoration of Jesus—and deferring fuller treatment of points 2 and 3 to next week
And we'll talk more about that next week. Today we only have time to go back to point 1 and apply it to our lives. And that point is the personal adoration of Jesus that is essential for apostolic teaching, what does that have to do with us? What does that mean for us? How does that affect our lives?
20 · Applies the first point at the corporate level: churches must expect love for Jesus from leaders above all other competencies
So first of all, let's talk about this at a corporate level, like as a church. What does the fact that essential to apostolic teaching is a personal adoration of Jesus by the speaker. What does that have to do with us? How do we respond to that? Well, one thing it means is that adoration of Jesus is a key competency that we must expect from our leaders. We must expect adoration of Jesus more than we expect really anything else. I was with them in Dubai, and, uh, they posed this hypothetical question to them. The other teacher posed this hypothetical question to them, and it was like, okay, so imagine you have two guys and you want to make them elders, and one guy has low character but he's a good teacher, and one guy has a high character but he's a bad teacher. Which one do you make an elder, right? And the answer is obvious. But to them, they're so desperate for leaders, they said, didn't skip a beat, they said, "We would take both." And we pressed them on it a little bit. They said, "Well, what's going on there?" They're like, "We will give the guy with bad character good character. And we will teach the guy who can't teach to teach." It's like, yeah, man, I wish that was so easy. The truth is that the world is desperate for leaders. The world is desperate for people who bring order out of chaos and who seem to give you some sort of system on which to hang this crazy world and understand it and interpret it. We're desperate for people who have vision and for people who have some clue of how to move forward into the future, have some clue of how to help us cooperate together into that future. The world is actually desperate for leaders. And because we're desperate for leaders, we really do often compromise on something we should never compromise on, and that is our leaders have to love Jesus. That's just a must. That's just a have-to.
21 · Deepens the corporate application by explaining church membership as cooperative pursuit of knowing and loving Jesus
You know, your membership in this church— sound a little Jordan Peterson-y here for a moment— but your membership in this church is essentially You participating in an organizational structure because you believe that together we can work together and you're going to love Jesus more, you're going to experience God more if we cooperate together than if you did it alone. That's what this structure is. It's a cooperation pursuing a goal, and that goal is to know Jesus and to love Jesus. Well, in any cooperative structure We appoint leaders who have competencies that we think will get us further toward that goal. That's what a leader is. First and foremost, a leader is someone who has to have the competencies of the thing we're seeking. And if they don't have that, like, well, we're in trouble. So I say this again with deep, like, humility and fear and trembling, but we just We've got to have people who aren't just good at talking, but people who love Jesus. It really is. It really is an inescapable quality. And we can't move off of it, and we can't forget it, and we have to understand that really if we don't have that, we don't have life in our teaching. Loving Jesus needs to be seen as the essential competency of Christian leadership. It needs to be seen as the essential competency of Christian leadership. Every other form of lead— every other quality in leadership, whether that's vision or articulation or interpersonal skills or counseling, or theological knowledge. Every other quality can be manufactured in a way that fools most of the people most of the time. But without the leader loving Jesus, we are whitewashed tombs. There really isn't another form of Bible teacher except the two: apostolic, adoring Jesus Bible teachers, and Pharisees. That's really— those are, those are the two options.
22 · Offers pastoral testimony that he has been most humbled by pastors who lack polish and theological sophistication but love Jesus deeply—and God uses them powerfully
So what I want you to see is, is that, you know, we want leaders who are both— have high competencies in other areas of leadership, but we really are desperate for leaders who love Jesus. And friends, I've been around pastors all my life, and I've learned from so many of them and been humbled by so many of them. And the one thing that, that, that has humbled me more than anything is to see a person that I know isn't really that good of a teacher, and they're not theologically that, that awesome, and they love Jesus, and they cry when they pray to him, and God uses them. And that's not an excuse to not be theologically equipped or to grow in your teaching skills or whatever, but my goodness, the central life-giving element of all of this has to be the teacher has to love Jesus.
23 · Applies the principle to the necessity of local church leadership
Now this has implications. You're with me so far, but this has implications. And one of those implications is, is that this means that that the local shepherd is a uniquely necessary piece of your Christian development. And that is for the simple reason that if you are depending mostly or even significantly on teaching outside of what you're getting in the local church, you just have no way of knowing whether that teacher loves Jesus. You just don't know. You don't know the guy who writes the blog whether he looked at pornography before he wrote the blog about loving Jesus. You just don't— because you don't have a relationship, you can't know. And so there is, of course, a benefit, a massive benefit. I'm a Desiring God groupie. Like, I'm all about it. But there's a massive benefit to extra-local teaching outside of the local church. But just remember, like, One basic thing we need is to know that our leaders love Jesus. And honestly, that's the thing you should be looking for and asking about and seeking. And you can't do that in the same way with someone posting a blog that you can with the person you do life with. So that has an implication. If loving Jesus is central to this whole thing, there's an implication there that Books are helpful, blogs are helpful, but how do you know if that person loves Jesus? And I recognize that there's no foolproof way to do that. And I recognize that if I'm hell-bent on fooling people into thinking I love Jesus, then I will succeed until I don't, right? And then the Lord will reveal that. But I do believe that there's a reason and a wisdom behind God's creation of a local entity led by a local pastor that you can actually know and see when he hits his finger with a hammer, or when his child sins, or when his wife burns dinner, or whatever. You know, you see this and say, okay, who are you? Do you love Jesus? And so on and so forth.
24 · Applies the principle to congregational responsibility: protect the pastor's devotional life
If this is true, And this is the central element of the thing we can't do without. That also means, like, we need to remember that pastor has a million different jobs, and it will be easy for us to distract him away from this central calling to be a highly competent Christ follower. That central calling, as you all know, cannot be shortcutted. There are not life hacks to having a true, deep, vibrant relationship with Jesus. It's a time thing. It's like, it's literally like there's no other way around it. Last night As I was falling asleep, I woke myself up because I wanted to know if I could get through the whole Bible— audio Bible— how quickly I could get through the whole audio Bible. Because I'm just like, how many hours a day would I need to listen? It's not doable to do that in a week. It's really probably more of like a month thing. Even if I were to do that and listen to the whole audio Bible every month I would need about 3 hours a day to do that 5 days a week or so. The point is that there's no way around a love relationship with Jesus that doesn't just involve time. So being a pastor is a weird deal, and I'll stop talking about this stuff because I know it's not super interesting to you. I'll talk about you here in a minute. But being a pastor is a really interesting thing. At one moment you're managing a budget, next you're repairing a door, next you're writing a Bible study, then you're helping a poor person whose car breaks down on the highway and walks to church to your church, and then you're counseling a marriage, and then you're preparing a sermon. And I'm a weird guy, and so I love the weird job. I really do. I feel so suited for weird jobs because I'm that guy. I love it. But it is the most self-interested thing you could do. Pretending like I'm not your pastor, I'm just telling you like how to help. The most self-interested thing you could do is to pray for your pastor's devotional life and to just believe and hold up that like you got to have that. So you've got to have this. I want you to have this. How do I help you have this? Like keeping a leader's heart close to Jesus is ultimately, of course, his responsibility. But it makes a massive difference. You really don't get very far with a leader who doesn't love Jesus.
25 · Pivots from corporate application to personal application, arguing that if love for Jesus is essential for apostolic leaders, it must be essential for all believers—because everyone teaches the Bible at least to themselves
So that's corporately why this personal adoration for Jesus is so important and why it's a central quality of apostolic teaching. But if what we're saying is, is that you can be Paul or Peter, you could have walked with Jesus, you could have listened to Jesus, but that if you don't have a love for Jesus, you're kind of worthless— if that's what we're saying, that's what we're saying— then that has massive personal application whether you're a Bible teacher or not. Because by the way, you kind of are, of course. You are a Bible teacher. You are teaching God's Word to others. To yourself.
26 · Applies the principle personally: there is nothing more important in your life than loving Jesus
So there is simply this— at the personal level of application, it's just simple. There is nothing more important in your life than loving Jesus. Everything else flows out of that. You may act entirely the same— I don't predict that this would happen often— but you may act entirely the same in love with Jesus and not in love with Jesus. You might have set your life on moral autopilot But the dynamic power effect of a man or a woman who is in love with Jesus will produce different fruit and lead to a different outcome than someone who is simply moral. And again, back to the Pharisees, they start off on the same trajectory, Peter and the Pharisees. They kind of follow the same course for quite some time. The differentiator ultimately being a love for Jesus. You've got to constantly remind yourself that the basic point of your life, the thing that defines whether it's successful or not, is a love for Jesus. And that's what winning looks like.
27 · Illustrates the absurdity of competing definitions of greatness through a Chuck E
So imagine we're at Chuck E. Cheese's— heaven help us— or something like that. And we're watching a group of 9-year-old boys that we know these boys, and they're all sitting at a table eating their pizza. And we know that one of the 9-year-old boys earlier in the week saw his younger sister choking. And he went over and gave her the Heimlich maneuver that he had learned in school, and he saved her life. So all the other boys know about this boy saved his sister's life. Earlier in the week. And there arises this little subtle competition of greatness at this table of 9-year-old boys in Chuck E. Cheese. And another boy says, "Well, you know, I can actually touch my nose with my tongue." And another boy says, "I can make fart sounds with my elbow." And it goes around and around the table as every boy tries to say, like, "Well, I'm important too." I'm winning as well. Now, I think we can imagine that actually happening. One boy saves a kid's life. The other boy is making fart sounds with his elbow, and there's a competition there. And maybe the boy who saves his life, like, for a moment is drawn in and is like, man, I am a failure. I can't make fart sounds with my elbow. What's happening at that table is that there are competing views of greatness. And at that age level, competing views of greatness don't get very sophisticated. And hopefully at some point, the boy who saved his sister's life realizes that the other kids are simply not in his league, and he chills out, and he's okay.
28 · Applies the Chuck E
Friends, you're at that table every day. There are competing views of greatness thrust in front of you, I mean, even by like who you park next to, or what some person's wearing, or what their figure looks like, or what their bank account looks like, or how well-behaved their children are. You are engaged in that Chuck E. Cheese table moment your whole life. There's psychological warfare going on all the time. It's trying to redefine your vision of greatness and get you to pursue other things to make you compete for something you don't need to compete for. The simple truth is loving Jesus is the definition of human success. It's the definition of winning. It's the definition of greatness. Loving Jesus. And every other alternative explanation for what winning looks like is not any less ridiculous than elbow fart sounds. It really isn't. No matter how alluring, important, attractive the alternative explanation for greatness is— so-and-so has a boyfriend, I do not; so-and-so is in better shape than me; so-and-so has a better job than me; so-and-so has kids who obey— at Walmart, so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so. It is hogwash. Loving Jesus is winning. End of story. End of story. That's what success looks like.
29 · Cites Henry Scougal to establish a theological claim: the worth and excellency of a soul is measured by the object of its love
Henry Scougal wrote a book. He's a Puritan. He wrote a book called "The Life of God in the Soul of Man," and he said it perfectly. The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love. The worth and excellency of a soul is to be measured by the object of its love. Don't fall, don't fall for the competition, because if you love Jesus, you have a worthy and excellent soul. We could say this of God the Father, right? God the Father is madly, perfectly, truly for Christ. Fully approves. Fully endorses. Tells the world, listen to Him. And we see the excellency of God the Father in the object of His love, the Son. And we see the excellency of the Son in the object of His love, the Father. Don't fall for the competition. I know some of you are. Get back. Get back to what the thing is that you're here to do. Because if you don't have this, you could have everything else, and what would it profit you if you gained the whole world and lost your soul? This is it, guys. And it's not just it for leaders, it's it for us.
30 · Offers pastoral encouragement that many in the congregation are better evangelists than they realize, evidenced by their children's love for Jesus
I want to say, as I— you know I pick on you sometimes about sharing your faith, and I'm trying to get— let's do this, let's be eager and ambitious in sharing the love of Jesus with other people. But I want you to know, I want you to think about something for a minute. I was praying about this a few weeks ago. The simple truth is that many of you are better evangelists than you know. And I say that because I know your children, and so many of them love Jesus. And that is not an assumption. That's not an automatic. That's not something that we should take for granted. If your kids— people my age, older— if your kids, younger, if your kids love Jesus, something's going on there. That's not an automatic. I see it all the time. It's not. You know this. You know this. Something's going on. If you can look and say, you know, my kids love Jesus, my kids are trusting in Jesus, my kids are praying to Jesus, Adrian was sick the other day and his daughter laid hands on him and prayed for Jesus to make him better. What's going on there? What, what is happening? Because that is not an automatic. Your love for Jesus will overcome so many of your insecurities, so many of your actual failures. Your love for Jesus will ring true. And that's true of a leader, right? Leaders fail, they fall short, they're weak, but if they love Jesus, that kind of wins out. And likewise, when you love Jesus, all of these other things that you're so concerned about and self-conscious about, like this thing, this glorious thing, you love Jesus, that will shine through and it will have an effect.
31 · Anticipates the objection that some listeners do not feel they love Jesus, and pivots to the final section on how to cultivate or re-spark love for Jesus
I bet some of you are like, well, thank you, but I don't really feel like I love Jesus. Let me talk about that. Let me conclude with that— how to cultivate or re-spark love for Jesus.
32 · Explains how Peter came to love Jesus: through being forgiven
Yes, Peter spent time with Jesus. Yes, he listened to Jesus's teachings. But this is factual, this is not my supposition. Factually, Peter wound up loving Jesus because Jesus forgave Peter. This is the simple deal. All of the apostles were first and foremost men who loved much because they had been forgiven much. And I know you can sin, so you can love Jesus. Because what happens when we sin and we fall short is we go to Jesus and we do not expect the levels of grace we receive from Him, the levels of patience and mercy and kindness we receive from Him. You know, the story of Peter denying Christ 3 times, it says he went away and wept bitterly. So that's a lot of tears. It's a lot of tears. That's a lot of Kleenexes. But I want to tell you something I think I'm only underestimating, I'm only underselling this truth with this metaphor. For every one of Peter's teardrops, Jesus brought a Pacific Ocean of grace, an ocean of love, ocean of mercy. For every single teardrop, Jesus brought an infinite amount of love and kindness and restoration.
33 · Applies the mechanism of how forgiveness cultivates love: being forgiven means receiving the Father's love for Jesus applied to you
So being forgiven— here's how I think I want you to think about this throughout the week— being forgiven means being loved by God, right? It means God applying— specifically, it means, how are you forgiven? It means God applying his love for Jesus to you. He's forgiving you for the sake of his Son. That's what the Gospel is. So the Father's love in His act of forgiving you is applied to you. The Father's love for Jesus is applied to you. And He's pouring it in you. And over and over and over again, He's giving you His love for Jesus. His pardon, His forgiveness towards you is coming through His love for Jesus so that as you repent and as you go to the Lord and say, I failed again, Lord. Oh, how I failed. As you weep bitterly over your sin, you're being filled up with the Father's love for Jesus. What you're going to find is that you're full of love for Jesus, and it didn't come from you. It came from the Father. In His very act of forgiving you and pardoning you, He was giving you love for Christ. And you will be forgiven much, and you will love much.
34 · Closes by returning to Luke 9:35 and the problem of self-talk from the sermon's opening
So there's hope, because I know you can sin, and I know that Jesus woos people to him by being such a wonderful Savior. You can love Jesus. The second point I want you to see in Luke 9, because we won't be there again for a long time, I would imagine. Luke 9:35. We started the message talking about self-talk and how we're terrible teachers to ourselves. We just do a really lousy job interpreting reality and assigning meaning and value to things. Peter is caught in a moment of essentially self-talk in this passage. He's experiencing something he doesn't understand. He's confused, and he just starts rambling and saying dumb things. Sound familiar? And he's rambling and saying dumb things, and this is pretty great. God the Father interrupts him. It actually says that in the text. God interrupts him. God interrupts his nonsense speech, and he says, "This is my Son, my chosen one. Listen to him. Don't listen to your self-talk." Don't listen to the way you're trying to talk your way through getting understanding. Like, this is Jesus. Listen to him. God interrupts Peter's stupid self-talk, we'll call it, with this apostolic message: this is my son whom I have chosen. Listen to him. How do I love Jesus more? How do I make that the singular definition of success in my life, I look to God to interrupt through His Holy Spirit, interrupt my nonsense and say, this is Jesus. Look at Jesus. Listen to Jesus. You don't really have anything good to say right now. Listen to Jesus. Your explanation for your predicament is woefully coming from a position of finiteness. You don't know how dumb you sound right now. Listen to Jesus. And I think that's how we fall in love with Jesus, is that through the Holy Spirit, the Father interrupts our self-talk and interrupts the spiritual propaganda we hear. And he just says, this is my beloved Son, my chosen one. Listen to him. And there is this moment that looks just like the beginning of Genesis when this happens. Happens, where we are hovering above the chaos, and then the word brings order and light to the darkness. And we love Jesus.
35 · Closes the sermon with prayer
Let me pray.