MCC Podcasts
Working It Out - The No in Every Yes
So, we're in this series called Working It Out, Lessons from Church, for Church Living from the Book of 1 Timothy, and we're attempting to be reasonably practical in these things. How do you actually make some concepts work, some things work? Give me some measurable help. And last week, I was focusing on the God of the exuberant, yes, that God is actually yesing all over us. We have to find those yeses. Yeah, it's up on the website if you want to take a look at that. Don't get too bored. And this week, I want to follow up on that because I landed last week with a question. It was sort of a trick question or maybe more of a trick answer, and I said, "Some of you must be thinking, 'Yeah, but isn't the right answer sometimes no?' And I said, 'Yes, but not really.' And I want to follow up on that today with this message called, 'The Know That Lives in Every Yes.' Remember, we're trying to be practical. So how do we take some of the teachings that Paul offers here responding to the challenges and the projections that he's aware of in this text in 1 Timothy, we're in chapter 4 now, and really 1 through 10, but today's 7 through 10. How do we take those things that were inherent in that text that Paul was teaching, sort of embedded in there, in the context that he was dealing with back then and find workable practical, helpful ways to make those things work? So that's what the attempt is this morning, however feeble or boring you can take it home with you today and hopefully find some help. Eight years ago, I was considering a call to Marin Covenant, and I remember several conversations sitting in my office and every week, sometimes more often than once a week, I would get a phone call from one of our most precious and faithful members, John Green, who was heading up the search committee to find a new lead pastor. And usually, it was another guy calling as well named Bob Bursari, who was really involved in our church back then. Many of you have never had the privilege of meeting the Bursaris. I hope most of you avail yourself of the opportunity to get to know John and Gwyn Green a little bit, fantastic people. And they would call and they would ask me a question, they would say, "Art, how's your temperature?" And it was our little code word for, "How are you doing with the process?" Because we want you to consider coming to be the lead pastor at Marin Covenant. My boss at the time in Chicago was Gary Walter, who found Christ through our church, experienced his call through our church, met his wife, I believe, in some way through our church. Gary would say that every important decision in his life was somehow connected with the covenant. That's our denomination. And in particular, Marin Covenant Church, I think it was one of the early interns that we hired. He went to Cal and so he got to hang around for a little while. And now he's the president of our denomination, but then he had a different job and I worked for him. He was in the office just two doors down from me. And he knew that I was considering this call. And he was encouraging because he loves Marin Covenant. But without verbalizing it, he was secretly hoping that I would say no to this and stay in Chicago with the job that I had there. Finally, I called John Green and said, "John, I know I was supposed to have an answer to you by this weekend, but I need another week. Can you give me another week to think and pray about it?" I heard that I had asked for another week and he said to his wife Nancy, "Baby, he's not going to go." I took the other week and then I finally called John back and said, "I have no peace about it. I have no excitement about it. I have no longing for it, but I'll come." And John was very excited about that. Oh, great. I went into Gary's office right after I talked to John Green and gave him my yes. And I said to Gary, I just said yes to the call to go to Marin Covenant. And when I said that to Gary, he also understood that I had just said something else. My simple statement of yes to Gary didn't need more specificity because embedded in my yes to Marin Covenant was even though unspoken, a very certain understanding of no to a lot of other things including staying in Chicago, right? Because in every one of our yeses are several no's. That's the no that lives in every yes. Sometimes hundreds of no's live in every single yes, sometimes thousands of no's live in every single yes. God is the God of the exuberant yes, but aren't there times when the right answer is no, yes, but not really? The right answer in making it work, in figuring out the trajectory of life, in figuring out the next steps we take, in figuring out what we're supposed to actually say no to, to make that word, the focus can't be on no. The focus has to be on the yeses that we choose. And I said last week, the trick is to discern enough to align our yeses with God's yeses. Think of it this way, have you ever been working at your house in the summertime and inadvertently left the screen door open? We used to live in Sacramento. And I remember the time we were working on the house, we were remodeling, the air conditioning wasn't on and it was Sacramento. We had the doors all open, we were just working. We weren't paying attention to anything and when the day was finished, we had done our projects and a look up and there were like a thousand flies all over the white ceiling. You ever had an experience like that? Here's an illustration of what I'm talking about in life. We'll get to the text in just a second, but I think I'm setting you up for what Paul's trying to say. You can either choose to say a thousand no's as you take a swat at each of those flies, no, no with the fly swatter, no, no a thousand times or you can take care of all of those thousand no's by saying one yes to closing the screen. Do you get how that works? And life is like that and the Christian walk is like that, embedded in every yes or a thousand no's and we can either spend our time trying to figure out all the ways, all the things to which we're supposed to say no to be considered a faithful Christian and that's a pretty busy exhausting experience or focus our minds on what we're to say yes to and the no's take care of themselves if we've really said yes, that's where we're going. I want you to kind of feel that. Now here's a warning, come on Greg, aren't we actually talking about semantics, the plain and simple and unobstructed answer to a very clear and simple question is yes we are. Of course we say no sometimes in life, but I'm trying to figure it out in a way that actually works for us and is healthy for us. So I'm not saying we never say no, I'm playing with words here, but sometimes that's the trick to getting some things unstuck, right? I never saw it from that perspective before and that actually works better than trying to swat every fly. I maybe should spend my energy figuring out what I should say yes to and be tenacious about that yes and let the no's in life take care of themselves. So first is when I said yes to Brenda Bell almost thirty five years ago now she deserves an award for that, almost, don't clap so loudly Jeff. We're all ready to bless Linda too for the, no, no. But when I said yes for the rest of my life, if I was glued to that yes, focused on that yes, committed to that yes, I don't have to go around saying no to everybody else, it doesn't happen anymore, but they used to wink at me, nope, nope, nope, nope to that guy over there, nope, you know, I just focus on my yes, I don't focus on all the things I can't do, I'm no longer able to, my yes takes care of that, okay that's been redundant, that's enough said. Sometimes the best way to choose the no is to choose the right yes and here are a couple of examples of that. For instance, Paul is dealing with spiritual folly in the context of Timothy's, I mean Timothy's dealing with that and Paul's helping him deal with that. You jump in on that chapter four of 1 Timothy, but you may remember that in chapter one, there was this, there was dealing with this as well and I explained when I preached on that text that what Timothy was facing was this idea that you take the Bible and you creatively interpret it and you talk about all these genealogies and this metaphorically means this and really people began to applaud the most creative interpreter. You were creative in your statements of what scripture meant and that was kind of in vogue and so you had theology as a hobby, theology as a way to not be bored with the text anymore and it was frivolous, it didn't result in anything good and helpful and Paul is encouraging Timothy to continue to resist that and he goes on with that theme now. And one of the ways of this yes focus works is this, you say no to spiritual folly by saying yes instead to serious spiritual formation. We're asking the question, are you being formed? You are being formed. Are you aware of how you're being formed? Are you investing in how you're being formed? Are you strategic about how you're being formed? You say no to spiritual folly not by identifying every way you can be wrong theologically but by focusing on what is true and helpful and productive theologically, am I being spiritually formed? We live in the headquarters of spiritual folly, can you agree with that? There are other places that there's a lot of spiritual folly as well but we're actually fairly intelligent about it, exercised about it, creative about it in our part of the world. Even in the church it's amazing some of the stuff we hear, the creative interpretations of scripture and they're actually usually rather convenient by the way, spiritual folly and the growing disregard for, listen now, for formal theological education and significant informal theological education. I'm sorry this is my soapbox, I'm on it often so you've heard it before but in a time when there's so much theological variance being offered and it all sounds so tantalizing the church doesn't need less theological education, the church needs more theological education. And it's not just for those of us who have the opportunity, the wonderful opportunity to take time to dig into that education formally, it's for the whole church. We all feel, all your pastors feel, we're asking the question is our church being formed? Are we being faithful pastors to the people that are coming here and trusting us? What are we offering? We're talking about our vision being to engage with the spiritually hungry, toward a life in Christ that's inspired, intelligent and involved and we have this plan that you saw up there that we think, people who tend to move in that direction or formed into that kind of a Christian involved themselves all the time in these four quadrants of worship, ghost, serve and grow and that's our plan to get to spiritual formation and everything we offer, the classes, the, what would we call it when we did the Tuesday night classes, the MCCU and all these different things we do, the formation classes that are meeting across the grass right now and we'll meet again during the second hour, the youth ministry, the children's ministry, it's all about spiritual formation and we're asking the question all the time. Are our people being formed, are they being conformed to the image of Christ? The best way to say no to the spiritual and theological folly that's around is to say yes to something that's much more productive, rigorous theological development, theological formation. Isn't the correct response to this kind of nonsense, theologically creative, seemingly initially compelling but not really, nonsense, isn't the best answer no, yeah, but not really. The no to a foolish waste of time and energy theologically, the no to swatting all the flies that come in is found in one yes and it's a yes to something good. Verse seven, now we get to the text finally, but listen for that in this text, have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives tales, that's the idea that let's just think about with oh this means this and this means this and this genealogy, all this creative talk and you get together in small groups and just talk in circles and it sounded really intelligent and really productive but when it was all done what difference did it make? Was anybody's heart formed? Was anybody's heart challenged? Did anybody hunger to go deeper and hunger to be more? No, they just hungered for a more creative interpretation that was more impressive than the one before. Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives tales. Rather here's the yes, train yourself to be godly which includes practice and thinking. Do you remember that? We spent several weeks talking about the relationship between what we practice and what we come, what we think and what we do. Rather train yourself to be godly just for physical training is of some value. Probably here a reference to the notion that your spiritual depth is measured by what you don't do, you know discipline yourself to not eat this, don't do that because there's some value in physical disciplines. But godliness or the development of theological depth, the development of your life, true spiritual formation has value for all things. It's the greater thing, holding promise for both present life and the life to come. If you look back and look at that text, train yourself, that word train, discipline, whatever, however it's translated in your Bible, it's a word that is actually a physical word, exercise yourself. It's a word from which we get the word gymnasium. He's saying whatever you do to gymnasium your body if you want to get in shape and some days some of you can tell me what you do because I absolutely have no idea obviously. Do that to your mind. How often are we saying I'm going to go work out or I'm going to run or I'm going to do this or that? And it's a good thing to do. But compared to that, how often are we saying I'm going to go work this out? I'm going to go read something I can't quite understand. I'm going to go to a theological discussion group with substantive people. I'm going to go gymnasium, my mind and my soul and give it the same attention, if not more attention than I give to my body. Now Paul is implying here that physical disciplines to which we subject ourselves do have some value. But he's implying that they really only have their ultimate value and so far as they serve the formation spiritually of the person. So there are benefits spiritually to me saying to my body, "No, yes to this, no to that." There are some disciplined benefits there for my soul. But the greater benefit is when I invest my whole self in spiritual formation. That's what's implied if not taught in this text. He says in other words, "Let your yes to spiritual formation be your no to the foolish endorsement." And he even says, "Don't even imply that you're a little bit in favor of this circular reasoning and the fanciful different ways that people talk about spirituality." You know, there's nothing new to be discovered theologically. There isn't. Now there are nuances to be realized and there are things to recognize that are fresh again in our lives and there's depth to find. But trying to be creative with things that centuries of great theologians have already figured out, and I'm not saying quit searching, it's figuring out how that applies to you. But the desire to be on right now and put it this way, the need to be relevant, he warns us against the need to be relevant, the need to be fresh and new. Because we'll create something fresh and new and introduce ourselves to the room of heresy in the doing. Say yes to spiritual formation. Say yes to training your mind and the things that will really result in godly thinking and godly behavior. And the nose of your journey will take care of themselves. You say yes by means of purposeful theological development offered as the opposite of all this circular reason. One commentary, R.C. Linsky, whom I use often, says this about this text, "Timothy has far more valuable things to do than to argue with ignorant shallow fanatics." And now, so do we, we have far more important things to do than to waste our time with ignorant shallow fanatics, theological fanatics. I'm not naming anyone except to say that occasionally that's me, and I'm just as ignorant and shallow and capable as an ex-guy, but that's not the yes that we offer to our lives. The best way to say no to theological folly and a pointless life that looks Christian but isn't, is to say yes to every opportunity to grow, every opportunity for spiritual formation. We are about transformation. We are Christians, and that means we're in the process of being formed, of being reconstructed, of being reinvigorated, of reconstructing and reinvigorating our world and helping our world to be formed to the image of Christ. It's not a bad goal, is it? So there's a yes that needs to happen when it comes to rigorous theological study. Second point, and the final one, you say no to all the wrong paths by saying yes to the right path. Well, that's brilliant. Oh, really, I never would have figured that out except think about it though. When we choose to focus on the right goal in life, we autumn, if we really choose to focus on it and to pursue it, we automatically choose to blur all other goals in life. When I chose to focus on the bride that was walking down the aisle 35 years ago, I chose to blur every other one without even being conscious of it. When I chose to focus on a theological education or a degree program that I was in, I chose without even having to do it to say no to every other degree program or form of education. If you want to say no to the wrong paths, you don't do that by focusing on, no, I'm not that one. Oh, I can't go there. Oh, that's wrong. Oh, gosh, there's so many flies on the ceiling, I can't figure out how to swat them all and all your life is spent figuring out what you're supposed to say no to. The best way to say no, because in every yes, there is embedded a no or a thousand or two, is to figure out the right goal, the right trajectory, the right end and focus on that and go like a bulldog to the prize to that finish line. There are all kinds of no's in that, yes, you see how that works? Listen to what Paul says next. It is a trustworthy statement in verse 9 of 1 Timothy chapter 4, deserving of full acceptance for it is for this that we labor and strive, and there's that word, same word, exercise or gymnasium ourselves. For what? We focus on this, we labor and strive for this because we have fixed, fixed, locked in our hope on the living God who is the savior of all, especially of all believers, because especially of all believers. I mean, they're the ones that actually have experienced the saving power that he offers. But I want you to pay special attention to this because we have fixed our hope on the living God. We have said yes to the right objective and everything else falls off. We put this stuff on our dogs to keep the fleas in the ticks away, you put a little bit between their front shoulders, you put a little bit between their back shoulders, their hips. And what I'm told is this, that something is in the bloodstream, I don't know if this all works, I'm not a scientist, I don't care, I just know that it works and it's very expensive so it has to work. I used to think, well, that kills the fleas, no, what I've been told was it actually makes some jump off, so do it in the backyard when you do it. It somehow suffocates them, it coats their bodies and they can't breathe. But the deal is this, when that goes on, they bail, they just jump off of there. When we say yes to the right objective, nose jump off, the wrong choices abandon us because we're locked in on that. And in route to that, all sorts of things fall to the side. The right yes has all sorts of nose attached to it, saying right, saying yes to the right plan in life, the hope fixed on Christ. Having the right fixation, the healthy absorption is the key to getting all the rest right. For example, there's one text in Hebrews chapter 12. This is, you could go to many places to find this, but listen to how that shows up in Hebrews chapter 12. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles us, instead, let us run with perseverance or by means of running with perseverance, the race that is marked out ahead of us. So you have this race marked out ahead of us, this sense of a goal toward which we're running. Let's sing our eyes on Jesus, there's the locked in destination, the pioneer and perfective factor of faith. And then the example of how Jesus lived this great life of yes, who for the joy set before him, forward again, endured the cross something that all of history has said he should have said no to and could have said no to. That would have been the wrong yes, to jump off the cross or say is there any other way that we can do this father and then follow through on that, regardless of the answer, would have been the wrong yes. That would not have been an example of Jesus aligning his yes with his father's yes, yeah? Instead he aligned his yes, I will go there. I will feel every inch of that nail coming through my wrist. The point of that sword piercing my side. I will lose my breath, I will suffocate and die a slow and agonizing death. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, why? Because he loved that, no, he despised the same with the cross, but he still went there. Scoring the shame, he sat down at the right hand, the throne of God, consider him who endured such opposition for sinners so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. So our eyes are fixed on Jesus with endurance, we move toward that goal. We remember the journey that set before Jesus and pursue the journey that set before us. He had his eyes fixed there. Paul is saying we pull this off in life because we know that embedded in every yes is a no. We don't focus on swatting the flies and the ceiling, we focus on the one yes that keeps him from getting there in the first place by closing the screen door. We have our eyes fixed on the hope of the living God and it's almost like there's this great divine suction that pulls us right toward that perfect destination and all the rest falls in place. We say no to all the wrong paths, but how do you make that work? By saying yes to the right one, that we can get our heads around. In route to that pursuit of that yes, other things scatter like roaches on a floor when you turn on the light. Contained in my one yes to Jesus or a thousand no thank yous to the life sucking parasites that lead to detours full of potholes and burned out bridges in life. Is it no? Sometimes the right answer, yeah, not really. All of the no's we offer to theological folly, to choices that aren't the best choices for us that don't get us from here to there, are embedded in healthy, thoughtful, decisive yeses. God is the God of the exuberant yes and we're the people of the yes to God life. I've got to find his yes that's fairly well laid out and align my yeses because life is about choices and I get to make them right. They lay them right over the top of his yeses. So my yes and his yes by the same yes. In the Olympics we just watched, in case we're watching the Olympics, it was fun. Well, some of it was fun. I actually don't believe synchronized swimming, never mind, didn't do anything for me. Not at all but we won't go there. We already went there but we won't go there again. We just completed these London Olympics. The decision for London to hold the Olympics at London and give London the bid for the Olympics was actually announced July 6, 2005. We just did the 2012 Olympics but it was announced that it was going to London July 6, 2005. After seven years before the event, we just finished watching. Nine cities applied to host those Olympics. Five of which were actually considered as finalists by the Olympic Committee. So Madrid, Moscow, New York, did you know that? And Paris, Paris was actually the final consideration between Paris and London. And all of those cities heard a resounding no when they heard the Olympic Committee offer London a very clear yes. They're all sitting there on TV. You've seen that when the cities, the fathers, the mothers, the city are watching and who's it going to be? And that there are five cities that are in the finals. Do they say Madrid, no, okay Madrid can turn off their TV. New York, no thank you, they can turn off, they don't do it that way. They don't say no to each specific city. They say yes to London and in that yes or four or five other no's. That's how it worked with the Olympics. Paris's no was housed in London's yes. But we have to decide today is what knows or housed in our yeses that works for health. You know it also works for the opposite of health. Some of us have been saying yes to moles you the right things but we've given away a couple of yeses we should have held back our redirected some of us. What are we saying no to by the things we're saying yes to? What I want to do in the last few minutes that we have available to us here this morning is give you a chance to silently reflect on that question. We're just going to be in silence here just for a few minutes. Is there something you know you've given a yes to and it's not aligning with God's yes and you're having to say no to something else, something that really contributes to your spiritual formation. You're saying yes to something, some practice in life, maybe a relationship, a habit, whatever it might be that it really deserves, it doesn't deserve a yes. Just to be aware of it, what I'm going to ask you to do after that is to pray. I'm not going to ask you to say okay today I've said no to that or today I've said yes to something better. We all know that that may or may not be the case but here's true, this is true, you can go to the Holy Spirit and say having recognized I've given away a yes some place that doesn't deserve a yes. Will you empower me to redirect that yes? In the next weeks or months or days or hours even, but Holy Spirit will you partner with me empower me as I choose differently. That's what we're going to do in this prayer time okay. So right now some quiet time, am I saying yes to something that's not helping me, it's not God's yes. Just admit that ask the Holy Spirit of God to direct you in that. And for those of you for whom something has been revealed or admitted or you've already known it's just you know whatever your revelation has been. Very now in ask the Holy Spirit in effect to become more than a concept ask the Holy Spirit to be busy doing what He promises to do to empower us. Holy Spirit of God will you give me the power, the strength I need to make changes for a different yes. The best way to say no to theological folly is to say yes to true spiritual formation. The best way to say no to an unhealthy path is to say yes to a healthy objective that go in life pursuit in life. Isn't no sometimes the right answer, yes but not really. the right answer.