What does it mean to truly change things? You know, we talk about that a lot at Foundry. We've talked about that a lot over these last few months. We talked about the role and necessity of the church being change agents in our culture, but we've not talked about that much or the practicality, especially those inside of our current cultural moment that might lead to significant change.
I'll take it next few weeks to talk about three things that I think can change the world. Three things that we can do to change the world. Three practices. The practice of truthfulness, the practice of sad of keeping, and the practice of graciousness.
Each of these three casts have a very different shadow across the footsteps of our world, and all three of them are distinctly counter-cultural to the tides of this season. My hope over the next few weeks is that we begin to understand these as reorienting practices, things that have been absolutely crissant to the longest, and things that we need to commit to, not just the action of doing them, but the idea of uniqueness as a defining practice in the way of Jesus. The biggest difference that we can make in times of massive distraction and question is to realize that we need to be focusing on what we can control. This isn't just something in modern psychology or developing a coping skill, it's actually a way for us to understand the massive power that's offered to us through the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
This last year I've grown to love the writings and the thoughts and the works of Daoist and Wilward, and he explains this really well in a larger section of his book, The Divine Conspiracy. I actually posted this full quote inside of our message notes in our home sheet, so you know in my friend who died life and you can find those enough, and see those discipleship practices that we've developed this week is a way to kind of pull Sunday into the rest of our week, but you can quickly sum up what he says with this quote. Our kingdom is simply our range of effective will. Whatever we genuinely have to say over this our kingdom.
This is how God's world comes into existence through us and in our world. By faithful followers realizing that we have been given control and we have been given authority through Jesus into the places that we influence. This both expands and contracts our world, doesn't it? I'm going to talk more about that later, but I want to spend some time focusing on how our relationship with the truth and how our practice of truthfulness affects our mental state, but also can transform these spaces of influence.
Emma Martin read our teaching text earlier today, this is from the book of 1 Timothy. Timothy was one of Paul's under studies. He was one of his ministry partners, but more so we see a father-son relationship. In Timothy, so here's Paul at the end of his life.
He's imprisoned in Rome. He's awaiting his trial with the receiver. He's writing this letter to Timothy who is now the spiritual caretaker of the communities that Paul has started. So if you see these deeply personal tones in this letter, would you also see this transfer of pastoral authority over to Timothy?
Now early in verse Timothy, this idea of sound and wholesome teaching came up and it comes back around in chapter four in our passage today. But what Paul talks about is that the teachings of Jesus are the only thing that lead us into a whole and full life. And that which is not of Jesus only leads to brokenness. And so when we attempt to live the Christian life while still doing things that are not part of Jesus' teachings, we essentially get duped.
Like we get fooled. We're not able to actually do the things that we want to do or the things that we've been called to do. We have all of the authority but without any of the power. And it sees false practice as Paul's talking about here.
It sees false practice as it actually keeps us in brokenness. Thomas Oden says that, what's feeding our brokenness will create an unsatiable desire. Paul speaks about having itchy ears and he's doing some fun stuff with the language here. But he's really saying is that we are being tickled to move from one thing to the next.
And to the next thing is the next thing and all we're attempting to do is to try to find peacefulness and stability. But we're not hanging around anything long enough to find that. And everything we're jumping to is actually false. Now running after what instantly soothes our passions and our desires is a signal of being a broken and superficial person.
Adam Clark says this, the truth strips us of our vices and its sacrifices, our idols. Friends brokenness is where falsehood lives. And where we find falsehood, it will always be supported by brokenness. You know this right here is a warning of why the ideal of truth is a necessary power of following Christ.
There is no neutral rep. Friends, there's not neutral rep. It's either truth that leads us to wholeness or a falsehood that causes brokenness. It really, these words of Paul are building up and arguing point towards this question.
What are you allowing to form you? You know what is discipling you? You know what maybe is building the scaffolding that holds in your entire world viewer or your vision of life. You know when we have a shaky relationship with our understanding of truth, we're going to have a pretty opaque and flimsy relationship with where and how God is calling us to embody the change that he's asking us to not only just have, but the change he's asking us to leave.
No truth is the first thing to go when the world begins to cycle in us because falsehood breaks down peacefulness and trust. You know if you ever wondered maybe why the truth seems to be such a hot concept now, maybe why it is such a premium why truth or false or maybe real and fake is all we seem to fight about. It's follows of Jesus our relationship with the truth is supposed to be different. John 114 is where we find so much of our vision and I will wait to move through the world here at Foundry.
It says that we're became flesh and made this home among us and we have seen his glory. The glory of fathers, one and only son full of grace and truth. I want to talk about that grace and truth line just for a bit so we can understand what it reveals to us. The first thing is that God is truth.
When Jesus comes to us to reveal the utter truth forms of God as we see that God is wrapped up in everything that is absolute. It's his way. It's who he is. It's how he made the world and it's full of the truthfulness of what is actually going on here.
Now Jesus Christ in every way is participating with who God is and he's showing us this truth. If we choose to follow Jesus but still believe in falsehood, we're making an absolute assault at the image of God. Remember there's no neutral crown. The second thing is we find total clarity in the truthfulness of God.
You know Jesus fully God and fully man. He comes to us. He brings the holy things among us. It lives in our room where he makes his home among us or he keeps and says in the message he neighborhoods among us.
And he shows us what it is like to live a life that is aligned to the vision of the Father. And not only does Jesus show us these things but he died for us as a sacrifice bringing us back into this union into a right relationship with the truth. So the reality of God is Jesus says in the scriptures if you want to see the Father just look at me. Matthew 5 through 7 the Sermon on the Mount is an excellent way to discover the clarity of what God's truthfulness is actually like.
It calls us to live this higher life. We've got an exercise on the message of the home sheet with the Sermon on the Mount this week. But we want to find out where truth wants and what falls to the waves and how Jesus moved to this world. We read those three chapters.
But the last thing you see is this. The third thing is that we are to be totally truthful. You know freedom is a hot word right now isn't it? The interesting thing though about the way that New Testament talks about freedom is it never speaks of freedom about the things that we get to do or that we can do or that we have the right to do.
In fact, biblically, the freedom that comes from Jesus Christ is a freedom to not do things. It's the freedom that breaks us away from the rules of a false and broken and secular. What it breaks us from the bondage to falsehood and to sin. It's the freedom for us to choose this different way, this better way.
You know if we're following Jesus truthfulness as one of the primary ways that we now move through this broken world just like he did. Our teaching texts this morning from First Timothy, it shows us where Christians go and we don't have a developed alignment with the understanding of the truthfulness of God and how we're called to with them. Someone's now that's going to move into the space of how we actually apply all of this, how do we build realms of truth around us. There are two places where this really works out the most.
The first one is this in our own life. But the second thing is the world around us, that kingdom, that small little kingdom each one of us have dominion and control and power and right and authority because God gave that to us and we're called to exercise. So freedom in our own life, what does that look like? And really I've been asking myself the last few weeks as this, do I have a bias that's leading me away from the heart of Jesus and closer to just actually being a cultural disciple of this world.
Now is my current engagement with truth? Is it causing me to expand this life that Jesus calls us to or is it causing me to contract just more into a vision of myself? You know why is either the truth or falsehood or real or fake? Why is it taking such a hold on us as individuals?
And maybe it's because we have allowed things outside of our grasp to have too much control over us. This last week I read an article that was a letter written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I'm talking about him a lot lately. I'm turning to a big fan of his, but he was a Lutheran pastor that fought against the Nazi regime in the 1930s.
He was a pacifist. He believed deeply in peace. But at some point in time in the early 1940s he believed that Hitler was causing such a threat that he actually became part of the underground Valkyrie plot that had a failed assassination attempt at the Dolph Hitler. And while Bonhoeffer was in a concentration camp where he died, he wrote this article about what is truth and how we're supposed to speak about truth.
And the thing that jumped out to be the most of this article that was written nearly 80 years ago now that just kind of consistently sloped truth into my own being. And this current moment was one of the things that he talked about was the problem we get into truth and falsehood is when we believe we have the authority to talk about something that we actually don't have the authority to talk about. And when we become obsessed with speaking about things that we actually have no say for. No, we might not know everything we're supposed to be talking about.
We might not have the right to make a decision. That's not something that is owned by our mind or our heart or our community. And we want to exercise authority in that way. That is something that's too big for us to actually have a say in and how we allow ourselves to continue to be participating in this thing that we don't have authority over.
And then we begin missing the things right in front of us that God has given us to control. This is deep truth, false side of thinking. But it's one I think that just completely resonates with where we have been these last few years. How many times are we obsessed culturally with things that we have absolutely no say over.
And we have allowed our opinions and our obsessions with that thing to form us into people that are far from the heart of Jesus. And if we're going to transform truth in our own life, we need to learn to distance ourselves from untruth in a profound way. And we think about that itching ear that Paul talked about. It is falsehood becomes more and more known.
It has to get wilder and wilder to keep contracting and making an even more concentrated following. Now maybe that's why things seem stranger day to day. It's because we keep on needing to get a stronger hit of what is fake. How do we realize the ability for us to not just focus on what we can touch and influence, but also how the false discipleship of this world is simply trying to distract us from us.
The truth focuses us in on mission and falsehood waters our life down and seeks to divert us. The second and last thing is how do we become truthful in the way that we deal with the world. And really it's a simple question the thing that I've been asking myself is this. Where can truthfulness influence these areas that I do have under spiritual authority?
I think the first part of this is us coming to terms. The fact that God has given us places to make manifest His Kingdom. And if we don't know what that Kingdom looks like, if we don't know the words of Jesus and how that Kingdom speaks and what it creates and what it causes and where it brings justice and where it brings goodness and love to the power of the Holy Spirit, we're going to be confused the first. That's what we talked about Matthew 5 through 7 earlier.
If this whole thing seems confusing to you, go read this around the mouth. It'll take you less than 20 minutes. I preached a whole sermon series on three summers ago. But find out this amazing words of Jesus of what does it mean to bring the Kingdom to life in an everyday way.
But the second thing is this. This might seem big, this might seem complicated, this might seem overblown, this might seem out of our reach. But friends, it's small. It's local.
It's literally about you being as Christ like as you can for the things that you can touch the most. If biblical truthfulness is about stability and focus, this is about us realizing where and who can we bring truthfulness in a way that provides peace. Friends being truthful is just us taking up the mantle that Jesus left for us when he went and when he sent the Holy Spirit. He gave us a job to do while we were waiting on him to come back.
He gave us the power to do this. He gave us the authority to do this. He gave us the freedom to live differently. He just asked us to bring his Kingdom into our realm.
Let's pray and get it right. Jesus, help us to see truth. We're first help us to understand and see truth in our own hearts and our own lives and where we need to let your truth exist within us in a way that provides healing and answers. The God we also pray for your truth to then come out of our lives.
God for the time and the work that we have spent in our own hearts to become truthful people and people that just ooze your truth from us that we now can see these places where you have called us to, these places where you have given us, these places where you are asking us to be your presence. God help us realize that it is not our responsibility to change this world. The Lord is our gifts and our call to change the things that we can touch. It's really great.