This morning we're talking about something that's really important and I'm going to share why it's going to sound a little boring at first. But then hopefully we're going to understand what's really at stake here. But this morning I want to talk about why theology matters. Last week we talked about why the Bible matters.
I'm going to talk about that this week. Before we jump into that I want to tell you a story about a time I almost got to know McDonald's for good. A few years ago I was going to the, I was serving at another church and I had like a 7 a.m. hospital visit and I went to the McDonald's and Munro on North 18th Street to get a quick breakfast.
Because if you don't know McDonald's biscuits and gravy are really really good and the North 18th Street biscuits are magical. I don't know there's something in them. They're just better than any other McDonald's biscuits ever. So I go in there and order my food and I go and I was in one of these seasons of life where I was trying to be attentive of not like staying on my phone.
Like you know when you're sitting by yourself and you do this the whole time. So I brought a book with me and I put my book and my keys down on the table and I went to get my food and get my drink. And I walk back around and there's somebody sitting at my table waiting for me that I don't know. Now this is one of McDonald's where people have to do their coffee every morning.
I thought maybe I stumbled on somebody's table and they wanted their table back. I was cool with that. So I sit down and the person says I want to conversation with you about that book you have on your table. And that moment I realized that my plan of reading a book and leaving it there was not good because I needed to find a more boring book to pick out.
Because it was a commentary. So it was a book about the Bible specifically on the book of Revelation. And this was yet one of the many times I realized that Revelation has the tendency to draw crazy people in. That's one reason why I'm in a pre-chron revelation the rest of the summer starting in July.
But I ended up getting into this conversation with this person who thought drastically different than I did about nearly everything. And he saw that book and decided that that would be a great person for him to have a conversation with that morning. So the whole time I'm trying to get out of this conversation. Because I'm literally going into surgery and I need to go see and have a prayer with a forehand.
I'm trying every single out I can think of. And this conversation is getting more and more and more divisive. And it's centered. It starts sitting in.
We just practice right now. It's centered in all the baptism. That's fine. What's going on?
It got weirder and weirder and gnarlier and gnarlier. And I'm kind of at hand held. He thought there was only one way to be viable and it got a little out. Baptists.
One way. Then every single thing that happened in baptism was not valid to God. And so I was like, okay, so let me tell you that situation. I've experienced the ministry.
I used to be in college ministry and we had a student who accepted Jesus. She had never been baptized before and she wanted to come forward and be baptized. But there were some unique things to her situation in life that required some accommodation. The first thing was that she was blind.
This is when I lived in Rustin. If you were going to Rustin before, there's a school for the blind. And there's a lot of blind students there. So she was blind.
The second thing was she was terrified of water because as a child since she's blind. She fell into a pool and almost drowned one time. So she's absolutely terrified of water. This was also like in February.
So like the whole, like, where can you find a swimming pool? Like, it's just wasn't going to happen. And other things like she was really, really tall as well. And so the solution that we came up with was for her to stand in a kiddie pool while the director, the only, I mean, she wanted to be immersed, but she could not like emotionally handle that action was the poor, like a tee picture of water over her head.
And that's how she was baptized. And I told her that story and I said, well, that's what we did that day. So you're saying that that's not acceptable to you. He said, well, no, it's not valid.
She's not baptized. She's going to hell. And upon that, I realized, okay, number one, I can finish this conversation. I can get out of this conversation going to my visit.
But number two, I just have to say something now because I just don't really agree. I said, well, listen, I said, man, if God does not see her larger situation in life in the scenario and see the character and the desire of her heart and that she followed through in this, but he will not accept that. I'm just, I can't call that God God. Here's the throwing out part.
At that point in time, he stood up, and when he stood up, my chair, my tray and my uneaten biscuits and gravy and his cup of coffee and my large sweet tea and everything else in the table went spilling and throwing out all over the place as he screamed out across McDonald's, get behind me Satan! And then he ran out of there. Like, man, he ran. Now, I was thankful that I was no longer had to have part of this conversation.
It was getting very, very frustrating to me, but also was not happy that I almost got to know McDonald's because the manager was not very happy about the scenario. But I'm telling you the story just as an example of what happens when we don't think about who God is and what God does. And this morning, we're going to read a story in Scripture where we see Jesus thinking about God and knowing who God is. And we're going to relate this to why this should matter to us, not in a theoretical sense, but why this should matter to our heart.
But in Scripture, we find a couple of things. Number one is that the way that we believe the things that we believe about God tell about the type of God we believe in. My friend that day, we've actually made up a song at McDonald's like a week after that, and we're about his now. We just don't talk about things like that.
But that day, we showed that he believed in a pretty constrictive view of who God was. And I don't really believe in a constrictive view of that. There are things I do believe that are true, but the way that we think God acts and engages with us will tell a story about who we believe God to be. A couple of passages, it's kind of a wild funny story from the book of Isaiah, chapter 44.
They're going to pop up on the screens. But just an interesting thing about the way that we think about God, because in the Old Testament, we read so much about, we have the seven. Okay, so there's a story in Isaiah, chapter 44. And it's about a man who creates an idol.
And in Scripture, idolatry, it's not about worshipping somebody else, it's about the clarity that we believe of who God is. And so the prophet Isaiah tells us this kind of wild story about how someone literally creates an idol. And this is what we're going to read just a bit in pieces of real quick. This is this.
Who is like me? Let him step forward and prove to you his power. This is God speaking. Let him do his I have done since ancient times when I established a people and explained its future.
And so in this story, what we find is a person goes and he carefully selects a tree in the forest. And he carefully chops down this tree in the forest. And he sections the wood off into certain pieces and he brings the wood back to his home. And he proceeds to make things out of it.
He makes a plate or utensils and fork carefully like that. He chops some of this tree up for firewood. And then he takes a part of the tree and he carefully fashions an idol. He fashions a representation of himself.
So from the same piece of wood he makes something to eat with. Something to burn and something to worship. And we pick up on verse 19 in the back part of this. This is what the prophet says.
The person who made the idol never stops reflect. Why it's just a block of wood. I burn half of it for heat and use it to bake my bread and roast my meat. How can the rest of it be a God?
Should I bow down to worship a piece of wood? The poor deluded fool feeds himself on ashes. He trusts something. He can't help him at all yet.
He cannot bring himself to ask. Is this idol that I'm holding in my hand a lie? So this is kind of a wild story. But I wanted to show it first just to see that this is about what we control.
That this is about what we sometimes try to make to put our trust in. And this is one of those exaggerated stories for the sake of us seeing the silliness of things sometimes. But this is about having a clear picture of God. All theology means is it's the way someone thinks about God.
If you're here this morning I'm going to reckon that there's a point in time that you have thought about God before. You might have thoughts of who he is or what he does or what he doesn't do sometimes. You might have moments where you're angry because you think God should have done something in the scenario. Or God should have done something differently.
You might have questions as to why something works the way it does. We all engage and interact with thinking about God. It's not just smart people. It's not just pastors or seminary professors or something like that.
We are all practicing theology. It's the way that we're aware of it sometimes and what we do. So this is the story we're going to read this morning about Jesus Matthew chapter 4 verse 1 through 11. If you open your bibles or you can look on the screens behind me.
And it's the story of Jesus being tempted in the desert. And this is what we read. Verse 1. Then Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil.
For 40 days and 40 nights he fasted and became very hungry. And during that time the devil came to him and said, if you're the son of God tell these stones to become loaves of bread. But Jesus told him no, the scriptures say people do not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. And then the devil took him to the holy city Jerusalem to the highest point of the temple.
And said if you're the son of God jump off. For the scriptures say he will order his angels to protect you. They will hold you up with their hands so they won't hurt your foot on a stone. And Jesus responded to the scriptures also say you must not test the Lord your God.
Next the devil took him to the peak of a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world. And he said, if you will kneel down and worship me. Get out of here Satan. Jesus told him for the scriptures say you must worship the Lord your God and serve him only.
The devil went away and the angels came and took care of Jesus. This is a story some of us might have heard before but it's a little story that's part of a bigger story. Because immediately before this we find Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist. But at his baptism we then see the revealing of who Jesus actually is.
That he is the son of God. And some of our Bibles will say immediately some will say then but what scripture shows us is right after that event. Jesus was taken out into the wilderness for a specific activity for a specific thing. And there's just all sorts of like tiny little details that are piled up in the story.
The wilderness is a place where people prove their faith where people develop into mature faith. The wilderness is a place in scripture where God brings his people through transformative experiences. The second we see Jesus going out there we know something is happening. And all this is related to this revealing of him being the son of God.
In his interactions with the devil here you see say if you really are the son of God do this. If you really are the son of God do this. If you really are the son of God do this. This is a very specific reason.
He's being tempted. It's because of that. But he's led by the spirit. So this is part of God's plan.
Jesus also spent 40 days in the desert. If you've read the Bible some you might realize that 40 day theme kind of picks up in several places or 40 years. That's by the time the Israelites spent in the desert. So yet another kind of clue that this is being seen as a transformative experience for Jesus.
This is before and after. Now Jesus did not need to be transformed. But this ultimate outing of him is the son of God. And this taking place that happened.
Also Jesus going through a symbolic journey as God's people went through 40 years in the desert and failed to be transformed and came out of there. That he has ability to go through every single thing that they did and can be changed. Can be changed for us. He can be that example.
He has the power to overcome anything and everything. And that testing here is a part of this. He fasted the whole time. Which is a posture that God's people have always taken when they are seeking to know his truth.
And truth is an important word today. At the end of this fasting we see this temptation. In Scripture though it says testing. And I think that that helps us understand this a little bit more that he's being tested.
And the second thing is we see the devil interacting here. And one of the things that is really important to us to understand is scenario is where that idea comes from. Or where the name Satan comes from. And so many times we think of this as a name.
But if we look at the Scripture and we see how they engage with this, this is more of a job title. He is the accuser. He is the tempter. And we see this working out exactly right now.
And the more I thought about this week, I did a lot of work for this and I traveled for work all week long. And I pretty much thought about this for five days straight. When we think about Satan, and I believe that there is a literal real person out there. A person that is a heavenly being that their role is to accuse and to stop us.
But the more I think about that, when you are a kid and you think about the devil there is the Halloween costume. I don't think kids dress like the devil anymore for Halloween. I have not seen that in a movie or that sort of a thing. We picture this malevolent, ultra-evil, diabolical, horror movie perspective of Satan.
Is that the picture you have in your head? The only thing that is in Scripture is this entity that seeks to confuse God's people. And my buddy JR, Forrest Eris, I tried to get him on the phone to talk more about this. I think I'm going to have a podcast interview with him next week about this.
He said if you really look across Scripture, the role that Satan has taken is just to constantly just try to confuse God's people. That's what his specialty is. It's to test by twisting, by trying to confuse, by trying to make the clear picture that people might have about God to make that picture not clear. And so the more I thought about that, I'll be calling it, what's more dangerous?
I'm pretty sure, can you feel like you can recognize evil when you see evil? I watch television on the news, all the things that have been going on in our world. We can recognize and call out evil pretty well, can't we? But think what's more dangerous.
Something that's obviously evil or something that's coming to just slightly turn what is the truth? The slightly twist, just enough to mess with our relationship with God, just enough to make us start questioning things, just enough for us to start making some different decisions. Think about that. We see the devil doing here with Jesus, and the story that theology matters with the story of consistently having a clear picture of who God is, and that picture consistently growing is defining truth by God's standards.
The truth is about his vision for the world, and not our vision for the world. It's a different understanding of truth. So many times our vision for the world, especially here in the Bible Belt, where we kind of all self-identify Christian so many times our version of truth gets janky because it's been twisted a few times. Just a few degrees off in 20 years, we're pretty far off the mark.
So two things about truth today, and the story. The first is this, the first is about the truth that God has revealed himself to be. The story Jesus answers consistently with every single testing point it is written. He's consistently pointing back to Scripture.
And Scripture matters talked about that last week. What was in Scripture matters so much is that God's people have identified this as truthful statements for thousands of years. Jesus goes back to Scripture. Now, if Jesus goes back to Scripture, it's also interesting to see Jesus using Scripture.
How many times you thought about Jesus using the Bible? That's what he's doing right here. And I would say if he does it, we should probably do the same thing, right? And that's really hard to do if we don't engage with it.
If we don't know it, if we've not taken it upon our heart and owned it. The other thing that's important about when we understand that the truth God's revealed himself to be is that God reveals himself to people in unique and special ways. Now, I don't doubt the fact that God has revealed himself to you sometimes in some ways. God's revealed himself to me and sometimes in some ways.
And the beauty of the church is just that. It's the beauty of the church coming alongside of people's experiences. And there being times where we say this person's understanding and experience of God is important enough to us for us to share it, for us to write it down, for us to think it out. God made us to be intelligent beings.
There have been people who've gone before us who thought deeply about the nature of who God is. And they've passed it down to us in Scripture, then also in other ways and other writings. No, our world now, we love to be individuals. We've seen some amazing things happen to individuals through innovation, through creativity, through art, but the church is about the gathered body of Christ.
And so we lift up the experiences that some of God has said, we hold this to be true as well. I think it's one of my favorite writers that I've learned so much and experienced much about Jesus. They've been dead for a long time, but I hold them up. That's why the things we read and the way we talk when we think about matters, because God has experienced sharing His Himself to us in many ways, testing to prove the depths of a person's commitment.
But also, it's the way of engaging the way that each of us have experienced the depth of God's graciousness in a way that has sustained us. And think about the things that have sustained you. We can probably spend all day long listing those out. But what a joy is that God has revealed Himself to us in many different ways, most fall through His scriptures.
But also, I just do the thought of others if they have thought and experienced God. Second thing is this, the truth of God has revealed us to be. Now, Jesus, this whole story is about Jesus revealing Him to be the Son of God. And that's important, theological concept for us to understand.
That's also important thing for Jesus to understand. That Jesus had to know and understand what that meant. That He was the Son of God who had revealed Him personally to be, and God desires to reveal to you who you were to be. As big as He is, He also desires a deeply, deeply personal relationship with you, in which we learn the truth about ourselves, the truth that comfort us, that heal us.
Like this story is literally a Jesus' big enough story. Like we say, Jesus, I'm big enough. No, I don't need you. We will only know God to the depths that we have experienced in ourselves.
That's why the way we think about God matters and why our seeking and investigating matters. Because we will only understand Him to the level that we have experienced Him. And we've experienced Him this much. We're going to be stunted with a view of God that's just this much.
Our faith is a thing that gives credit to our experiences and to others. Testing, that testing can only happen to the limits of our weaknesses. That when we have a strong foundation, what we know God believes, what we believe to be true about God, and we also believe that God has revealed to us the limits of our testing will change. We've not spent that time with Him, and we really struggle with that.
Testing can be really tough, but we will only be tested to the limits of our weaknesses. We're able to overcome testing by simply having a firmer grasp on truth than the Devil has. This is what we see Jesus show us in a very big way today. But it's a story that we can all actualize down to our own lives.
The better of a grasp we have on who God is and who God made us to be the better that we can overcome all of the things of this world to seek to destroy us. Now this matters today because of two things. And one of them is we're coming into this with this idea, but the second one kind of rose up out of the news cycle this week. The first one was, this matters to us.
And I told you last week, I'm not talking about these things over the next few weeks because I think it'd be an interesting thing to talk about. I felt called to talk about this because the conversations I've been having with you these last six months. And the times where my heart has been broken where people have come to me and have had deeply troubling things going on in life about who they believe God to be that are just simply not true statements about God. They've been convinced of a God that had a limits on grace and a God that had limits on love.
A God that had a limits on what He wants to do for us. And so it's important for us to think about that, but also, and I hate that I was in a place where I was preoccupied this week, but you know, on the last week we've seen two incidences of suicide in our news cycle with Kate Stade and Anthony Bourdain. And this matters to us because when we have a grasp on who God is and who God has called us to be, we can have a firm foundation and then we can be a firm foundation to other people. Remember, I'm going to say that again.
When we understand who God is and when we understand who God has made us to be and called us to be, we have a firm foundation and we can be a firm foundation to other people. One of the other things that also saddened me as I was reading through Facebook on the day to day before day and day is people sharing things and sharing the truths of their life and the times where they have struggled with depression and anxiety that scared them to that level. And the amount of transparency I saw those days was huge. Some of you heard me talk about a certain moment in my life in the spring, but it was in the spring of 2002.
And I'll be honest with you, I kept it loaded 12 gauge next month for two and a half months, waiting to work up the nerve. And the nerve never came. Thankfully, I look back now is because I had a firm foundation that was nervous about it, but I had friends about a firm foundation. That when we know Jesus, he does not just belong to us, that we then realize that we take the call and we take what we know to be true about who God is and that we can take that to people who really need us at the time.
And this needs to be a part of our life that's not hidden or quiet, but a part of our life that is well known and deliberate. The way that we think about God tells us to worry about the God that we believe in. And so we need to think big about God. Let's pray.
Jesus, we thank you for things that we understand, things we can't understand. Lord, we also thank you for even through our brokenness that we can experience you in ways that lead to us explaining things about you. And so God help us to all have firm, deep, big foundations, foundations that are much too large for where our life is. But Jesus, those foundations can be big enough for us to allow other people to find firm footing on them.
For us to realize that we do not desire to seek and experience and trust and learn things about you for ourselves, we desire to have a big picture of who you are so that we can be that foundation for other people. Jesus, thank you for being a God who engages with us. It leads us into full experience with you. Let me pray.
Amen.