MK040 Sermons
Trust (Video)
[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] >> So good morning, glad that you can be here. My name is Jeremy, I'm one of the pastors on staff, and I am grateful to be with you this weekend. And so just thank you. As you heard, Kerry talk about in the announcements, there will be a night of worship and baptism. But what she failed to mention is that that will also be outside. And so please make sure that you plan to come, and it is a family event. Please bring everyone with your family to the night of worship, and we'll do baptism. But we will be outside. We will not be inside. So be praying for that as far as when you think about what it is you want to wear to that event. This requires a little bit of setup, and for those of you that are probably over there, you're pretty blocked, pretty hard for me, but I apologize for that. So well this morning, we're going to talk about trust. Trust is a very interesting topic, and I would imagine that if I asked several of you, you know, if you could name the top two times that you believe that trust for you has been broken, or has been betrayed, or has impacted you in a negative way, I would imagine that you'll be able to recall those instances very, very quickly. However, if I asked you to recall times when you felt like trust was, you know, built up, or it was gained, or it was encouraged, you probably are going to have a slightly more difficult time understanding, or be able to articulate, or say this moment in time, I just really felt that trust was built up in me, or this person, or this thing, right? So you'll remember that, because in reality, we go through life in a very trustful state. Many of you in the room may be like, well, I don't trust anybody further than I can throw them, and I don't trust anybody other than myself, maybe that is something where you are, but the reality is we live life in a very trustworthy state, right? Driving here this morning, you exhibited trust. You trusted that those who made your car in many different ways assembled that car in a very great fashion, and the wheels didn't fall off, and you didn't slide to the ground, and you didn't wreck and crash and die. You also trusted that all of your fellow people that happened to be here with you stayed on their proper side of the road, and adhered to the rules, and didn't look at their phone or do different things. You trusted all of these people that you may or may not even know to do the right thing and to do what they had, because you don't really want to get into a head-on car accident while you're on your way to church or really anywhere. So we trust in a myriad of different ways. We trust people, we trust things, and we just live life. And so that's really why I think if you think about how has trust built, we don't really think about it because in the reality, trust is just the state of life that we sort of live in. But you can remember very specifically when trust is broken. Now, you may not have stories like mine, but I'm sure that you have stories where you can remind or tell us that trust has been broken. When I was 18 years old, I graduated high school, and I was enrolled at the University of Maryland. I went to University of Maryland in the summer in order to register for classes. 33,000 students go to University of Maryland. You can't just sort of do all these things not 25 years ago online. They had you go, they had you meet other incoming freshmen so you could meet people, and you could pick your classes. I went there, I spent a day there, you know, on evening Fridays, but the night Saturday, I did all my classes, met like 400 or 500 other incoming freshmen that are multiple weeks that they did this. And so it's a way for you to get assimilated into this college life. And so I went, I did that, had an experience. And when I got picked up from that experience, my parents said, "Hey, how was your weekend?" And I said, "Um, interesting, I think I'm going to transfer to Messiah College now, University." And my dad said, "Oh, okay, we'll figure that out, right?" So I have this moment where things didn't go well at the University of Maryland, and I just felt like God was telling me that I needed to transfer to go to another college to spend the next four years of my life. And so I had this moment where I felt like I was really following and trusting God. However, what I didn't know was about to transpire next. A couple of weeks later, I was out on a date with my girlfriend, who I had been in relationship with for over two years. Very strongly that she was going to be the one. And we were going to have the grandiose story that all Americans and people live for, which is meet your high school sweetheart, survive through high college, get a job, get married, have a family, and you get to look back. And I guess I've known this person since I was nine, right? Or whatever, and you have this dream. And you have the same, so that's where I was. And at that moment, though, what I didn't know was after we got back, after she let me buy her dinner, side note, right? We get back to her house, and at that moment, that's when she decides to tell me that she no longer has feelings for me, or they've diminished to such a level that she no longer wants to be in a relationship with me. And in fact, not only has she not had feelings for me, possibly growing for quite a while, so maybe I bought more dinners than I realized, she actually has feelings for my best friend. And she believes that she wants to explore where these feelings are going to go. And so, you know, she just kind of begins to take, you know, a block out of my foundation, or things that I was thinking were going to be what I needed, and little did I know that that was actually going to happen. Ho, ho, hang in there. All right. Right, so not only does that happen, but so I lose my girlfriend, and I lose my best friend through all of high school in a matter of about 30 minutes, because they chose each other, and they didn't choose me. And so, as a massive third wheel, off I went. About three or four weeks later than that, as I was getting ready to know, I wasn't going to be able to go to Messiah for various reasons, and to take a semester off. So I was going to be at home, work in a construction job, just to make money until I could go away in January and start my college career. But my dad knew I loved to play golf, played golf for a while when I was younger, and dad wanted to take me out to play golf, great end of year, and a summer experience. So we go out, we play golf, have a good day, and then we say, "Hey, let's stop for dinner on the way home, not abnormal." We stop and we have dinner on our way home. And in the midst of that, we were having dinner, my father, and tells me, "Hey, something I got to tell you when going over with your family that you're not really aware of." And at that moment, he then proceeds to tell me that my brother has decided to live in a homosexual lifestyle. And not on top of that, he tells me that my brother communicated this to my family over two years ago, and in a time that I was not home for the weekend, I was away, but he told everybody else because he really needed to communicate what was going on. And so he's communicated that, and we've been waiting for him to communicate that with me, but it just never kind of felt the right time, but my dad felt that it was now the right time, and so my dad communicated that to me. And so at that moment, and as I processed in the next couple of days, not only was it trying to figure out how I'm now going to navigate things with my brother and what does it look like, and I'm 18, and kind of shocking this foundation of living up in a Christian home, and all these different things, you know, just on top of all that, I began the process that really, from a family perspective, the last two years of my life have been a lie. They've been a fraud. They've been fake. They've been, you know, this great game of 700 days of charade that we all played together because I was not informed. I did not know. I was not able to be understanding and have the process too, and they didn't think that I was able to handle it, or what. But brick by brick by brick, my foundation begins the process of eroding. And over the next three to four months, believe it or not, I end up having a lot more different things that come into my life, you know, end up construction job that I didn't really like, ended up being alone. All my friends went away to college, had no support system, living in this situation of under 100, 100, what to do with my family, what to do with my parents, you know, and then go to college, it's kind of okay, get home for the summer. So if you may or may not know, I end up getting in a head-on car accident, end up in the hospital, go back to college on crutches, and just thing after thing after thing begins to erode my trust in friends, family, romance, future, and it's just slowly and slowly, slowly fading away until ultimately I also then begin to lose my faith in God. And it all just crumbles, because trust has been broken. And the foundation by which I stood no longer stands, it shattered in pieces. How do I know who to trust? How can I trust? What can I trust? And maybe you have had instances like that in your life where you thought you had something but then you didn't and then it got taken away and then you didn't know where to go and it just began to put to the process and then you just ended up teetering and teetering and teetering and teetering and teetering until ultimately it just crumbles. Maybe you can think of times in your life when that happened. Those are some of the ones that happened in me. Unfortunately I love to tell you that from that moment on I was able to regain my trust in my family, regain trust in my friends, regain trust in all these things and ultimately I have and I've learned reasons as to why certain things were done but at the same time that doesn't necessarily take away the pain or the feeling of when it happened and the trust that was then broken. She was supposed to stay there the whole time. And so what do you do when ultimately you don't really know where to trust? Trust can be defined as a firm belief in the reliability truth, ability or strength of someone or something. So it's something that we put our faith in. We have reliability and we believe that they have the ability, they have strength that there's something that I can hold on to and I can be anchored in this trust. It could also be deemed an assured reliance on the character, the ability of strength or truth of someone or something. So something about truth has something about trust has truth in it, it has hey does this thing have the ability to hold me? Does it have the right character to hold me? Does it have strength to hold me? Does this person have that? In his book called Trust by Dr. Henry Cloud he mentions five essentials for trust. And though these essentials are understanding motive, ability character and track record. And this is a very interesting book, a very interesting read. I actually haven't finished the whole thing yet. But these five essentials of trust are ways for you to look at and say, is this something by which that I believe that I can trust? Because this first one understanding is really people don't really want to know what you know. They don't really care about what you know until they know that you care. Until they know that you care about them and you have an understanding of who they are and what they are and what ticks for them, then they're not really going to care about what you know. But there's this level that there's got to be an understanding going on. Second one says, hey, what's the motive of this person or this thing? What is their motive? Is their intention for me? Or is it against me? Is it just for their gain? Is it just for selfish ambition? Or is their motive toward me good that I can trust in? Is it is a motive for other people then does this person or thing have the ability? Does it have the characteristics of the ability to actually be something that I can hold on to? If I put all of my faith in a one-year-old newborn baby, which by the way, there's 10 of them back in our nursery, so if you want to volunteer to serve on them and hold them, that would be great. But if I put all my trust in a one-year-old, it doesn't have the ability to hold me. It hasn't reached the point of being mature enough, it's strong enough. It doesn't have the ability. So for me to say, well, I trust this one-year-old with my life and with my things and my stuff and who I am, it doesn't have the ability to hold me. Does it have the character? Has it built up certain things that it's honest and that it has integrity and that we believe that it's going for the right things? Does it have the right character? Or is it bad and cuts to circles and is gray and maybe a little bit shady? Basically, is it the video that you watch on TikTok or is it not? So if you watch on TikTok, may not be the right character if you do, then if you don't, then maybe it's something that you could. High generalization, just messing around. But does it have the right character? Has it built up those things inside of itself? But then lastly, does it have the track record, right? Does it have a history of decisions or working out that has been successful, that it can be relied upon, that I can put my trust in it? Often people, and I know for me, I don't like to buy, if I were to buy, a brand new car, I don't want to buy the very first model, right? The very first year of the model, right? So I think you just don't know because it doesn't have the track record of when it's been there for 10, 15, 20 years and they've really worked out all the kinks, all right, then I'll jump in. I don't want to be an early adopter, I'd rather be on the other side of the curve where I'm lagging behind, but I know that I have this thing that I can put my trust in because the track record, either of that person or the thing, has proven itself to be able to be trustworthy. So as we think about some relationships, right? Can we trust? Students in here, can you trust your parents? Or have they made decisions that you don't agree with? Do you believe that they understand you? Do you believe that they're motives toward you or good? Do they have a track record of making decisions by which you can stand and say, yes, I want to trust my parents and I will trust them because they have built the five levels, essentials to trust, or no, I don't want to have anything to do with you. You don't have a clue what's going on. I can't trust anything that you're doing and you feel like you can't trust your parents. Flipside parents, can you trust your kids, right? Do you have that trust? Maybe you did when they were a one-year-old and you could feed them and take care of them and do everything for them, but now they're 13 and 14 and they talk back and they have their own opinions and they have other people speaking into them. Do you trust them? Do you trust what you've done to them for the last 13 years that you can then begin the process of releasing them? But do you trust them? Do you trust their track record? Do you trust their character? Do you trust their motives, right? Parents, do we trust our kids? What about our spouse, right? What about your spouse? Can you trust your spouse? Is that somebody that you can put your faith and trust in? That you know they're going to have those things for you and be able to hold you when you need to be held and comfort you when you need to be comforted and say and buy you when you need to be stood by and not just say you're too much. This is happening. There's too much pain. There's too much suffering between things that have gone wrong and you don't know if you can trust your spouse, right? Friends, maybe a friend's betrayed you. Can you trust them? I don't know. What about me? Can you trust me? Can you trust your pastor? Right? Do we have the five essentials? All right, understanding my mode of my ability, my character, my track record. Can you trust the church? Can you trust church leadership? Right now a globally high level clergy, right, all across men's religious faiths has a 32% rating when it comes to honesty and ethics according to a 2023 Gallup poll that was just put out over a year ago. That's a really low rating. Can you trust me? And what about ultimately God? Can you trust him? Does he have the five essentials that you need? Last week, Mike talked about worry. We had a worry list and we ultimately all ended up under a bridge, right? We all ended up there. All things lead under a bridge. Well, today, the ascent of the Psalm 125 was around page 501 in the Bibles and the seatbacks there in front of you is a security psalm. And it starts out with those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever. Verse two, it says, "As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people both now and forever. The scepter of the wicked will not remain over the land allotted to the righteous, for then the righteous might use their hands to do evil. Lord, do good to those who are good, to those who are upright in heart, but to those who turn to crooked ways, the Lord will banish with the evil doers." Praise be to Israel. So this is David's song. This is David's message to us today that if we are able to put our trust in the Lord, we will be like Mount Zion that cannot be shaken and endures forever. Mount Zion is essentially the area of Jerusalem, back in, and actually if you look at the area of Jerusalem, there's actually two mountaintops. One is Mount Zion. The other is Mount Moriah. Mount Moriah is actually right now where the temple that was built and then destroyed, they're in Jerusalem. And then the dome of the rock was built on top of it. And there was the whaling walls, so that's Mount Moriah. And then just to the south is Mount Zion. But now the area globally, as you think about it, as it's been referenced over 152 times in scripture, is referring to that whole area is Mount Zion, a very holy area, a very holy state, ultimately where Abraham was sent to sacrifice his son Isaac, right? Many things have, many important things have been done here for the Lord. And so he said, "You are going to be like this place." This place says holy. This place that is important. This place where many important things, and it will endure forever because ultimately Jesus will come back and he will re establish his kingdom there. And so it's going to endure forever. And so that is what David is saying. If we have the ability to put our trust in the Lord, we're going to be like that. We're going to be that important. We are that important to the Lord that we're going to be held in that kind of high esteem as well as we're going to be protected because we cannot be shaken. Our foundation cannot be destroyed because we're going to endure forever because we cannot be shaken. Other passages of scripture talk about what is this concept and idea mean to trust in the Lord. Proverbs 3.5 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding." Okay, so I don't necessarily know exactly what trusting the Lord is, but Solomon in Proverbs says that if I need to trust in the Lord, I'm not supposed to lean on my own understanding. So what does that mean? I can't rely on myself, my own wisdom, my own knowledge. And he's really just kind of coinciding and going parallel with what Jeremiah communicates to us in chapter 17 verse 9 where he says, "The heart is wicked and deceived. No one can trust it." Right, so in Jeremiah, he says, "Listen, your heart is wicked and it's deceived. You can't put any faith in it." It's the same thing that Solomon was saying, "You can't put any knowledge in it or strength in your knowledge and can't lean on that. You've got to trust in the Lord because you will ultimately, possibly deceive yourself." Just before that verse, Jeremiah also says in chapter 17, "Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord whose confidence is in him. They'll be like a tree planted by the water that sends out roots by the stream. It does not fear when he comes. Its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit." So again, this idea of what does it look like to be trusting the Lord. And so Jeremiah says, "Blessed are you if you can put your confidence in him and but your trust in the Lord and you're going to be like a tree that's planted by the water, planted by the stream. You're going to be full of leaves. You're going to have a water source that is feeding you. This tree is being fed by the source and its roots. And so because of that, because it has something that's pouring in to its very core and is connected to the source of its life, it blossoms and blooms into an amazing tree. And then when this happens and a drought comes or a heat comes or things are just going to want to knock this tree down, hurricanes, winds, it's planted and it's rooted. And so it's not going to fear drought. It's not going to fear the heat because it knows that its source is already well grounded in what it is. So that's what it means to be planted by a tree planted by a stream is that we're being fed from the bottom. For you being fed, you have those things that are feeding into you. You have a support system. You have friends. You have colleagues that are feeding into you. You have spiritual disciplines that are feeding that are feeding into you. Prayer, Scripture reading, silence and solitude, Sabbath, these things that are connecting you to God, filling you from the bottom. So when that heat comes or that drought comes, you've already gotten the food to endure. But I don't know about you, but oftentimes I don't look like that tree planted by that awesome stream and green and growing. I look like this barren tree all alone by itself, not connected to any source, got no leaves, got no life, just dead. Because life beats you down. You've been betrayed. You've been let down by others. You're not fully fulfilled. You didn't meet your dreams. You didn't meet your expectations. And we just sit in it and you just struggle to figure out what it is. And so instead of trusting in the Lord and being connected to Him and allowing Him to feed you from the bottom, you isolate yourself and you lean on your own understanding and you ultimately become a barren tree separated from God, not protected, not enduring forever. What are those things that erode trust, right? What are those things that will take us from a flourishing tree to a barren tree? What does that look like? If we talk to ourselves, we need to be planted by the stream and be filled from the bottom, but yet life has things that come to us. And Pete Scazarro has a list about things that will take us away from God. Pete's a pastor and written some books that we use here, emotionally healthy spirituality. And he says, "Hey, here's seven reasons that we don't trust God." And ultimately I tell you, these are seven reasons that we don't trust each other sometimes. I got fear. I've got worry. My family of origin that's poured into me may have poured in some of the wrong things or I react and I behave poorly. I've been betrayed in the past and I just can't get past these past, these I can't get over these past betrayals in order to me trust other people or let alone to trust God with my life. I may have a distorted image of God and then ultimately two, six and seven, controlled or denial. We hold on to our lives and we think that we're in control of it all. And that guy of an idea of denial is that we're in denial that we're ultimately not in control. We believe that we are in control. And then things like car accidents or sicknesses or illnesses or lost jobs or people share secrets or this or that. Something happens and ultimately you realize that you are not in control and all of these reasons are reasons why we don't trust each other but ultimately why we don't trust God. We don't trust God and we end up with a shaky foundation which ultimately crumbles. But David is saying that he wants you to trust in the Lord. I'm not saying that these things are not real. I'm not saying that they're not hard to get by but at the same time if we can work our way back to God or in the better place if we were already rooted in Christ before these things happen then we'll know that we're being fed from below and even though we may waver a little bit it will still endure. Can we say these five things are essential and true about God? Does God care for us? He doesn't have an understanding about who we are. Do we believe that God's motives toward us are good? Does God have the ability to hold us? Does he have the ability to hold us? Does he have those types of things that he can do? Does he have the character and does the God have the trek record that he's fulfilled his promises? I argue that God meets all of these with exceptional flying colors way more than I do as an individual. So for today if you let him when you're feeling fear, worry, doubt, out of control, when you're struggling with past betrayals, whatever you want to put in here but when you are struggling with those things God wants you to know that he will surround you, he wants to protect you and he wants to provide for you if you will let him and put your trust in him. As the psalmist said in verses 1 and 2, those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion which cannot be shaken but endure forever as the mountains surround Jerusalem so the Lord surrounds his people both now and forevermore. So God wants to surround you and put up a wall of protection for you so that those things that are coming to knock you down do not have the ability to get to you and where you sit. Just like the mountains surrounded Jerusalem God wants to surround you to keep you intact so that you will not be shaken because you've chosen to trust him and have confidence in him so that he can protect you, he can provide for you, and he can keep you shaken and on firm foundation. If you let him when you are feeling fear worried doubt he wants to surround you, protect for you, and provide for you. So where are you today? Are you struggling to trust God? What is stopping you from putting your trust in God? Do you have worries? Do you have doubts? Do you have fears? Things in your family have origin that would stop you. Do you have past betrayals and relationships that have hurt you that you just you can't yet pass them? Are you living in denial that you believe that you have control of your life? Are you struggling and then what is stopping you from putting your trust in him? The other thing that I'll say is do you have a support system that's speaking into your life? Do you have people that are speaking truth in a world that comes at you with lies? Are you daily seeking God to fill you from the bottom so that you will not waver in a time of uncertainty, fear, and worry doubt? Are you struggling to trust God? Trust others? What's stopping you from putting your trust in God? And do you have a support system that's speaking into your life? God wants you to put your confidence in him to allow him to hold you in pain and suffering that when trust around you gets broken by others or other things you can remain like Mount Zion unshaken and that you can endure forever and that ultimately he wants to surround you he wants to protect you and he wants to provide for you hopefully all of you got this little block little version of this up here I'd love for you to take this home with you put in your car put it somewhere put it by your nightmare stand but the idea here is that you'll look and you'll remember and you'll say God can I trust you? What is it that I am using to build my foundation so that I can ultimately stand and not waver and crumble in times of distress but that I will trust in you and that I'll build my foundation on you and that I'll be fed from the bottom by you and meet with you because I want to put my trust in you and this is where I want to be with you Jesus to lay my foundation let's pray Father we just thank you for today we thank you for all those that are here and paying attention to those that are online Father life can be pretty harsh life can be really difficult and sometimes we can get beat up by life and ultimately if we are not being held by you and being fed by you then we can struggle Father I know that I've got a past that's got many betrayals hurts pains that ultimately came to question my faith in you I don't know what everybody else has swirling around in their mind and of their life and their past experiences but I pray that you'll speak to them today I pray that you'll be speaking to them to let them know that even in those moments though they may have thought you were far away you were close to them and you were there in their pain you were there in their struggle and that at those moments you so desired for them to turn to you for help protection love and support and comfort Father I'd spray for all those today that are struggling to trust you and struggling to trust others that you'll work with them the process past pain past hurts past betrayals struggle with worry doubt fear and they'll begin the process of walking through those and replacing those feelings and those experiences by putting trust in you knowing that those times may come again but instead of teetering and wavering and leaning on our own thoughts and minds and think and the wisdom that will lean on you will allow you to feed us from the bottom and will stay connected to you so we will not be shaken or moved but that we will endure because those who trust in the Lord will not be shaken but will endure forever