Freedom III, From Religion to Relationship

Well, good evening. The awesome privilege of worship is something that I'm going to talk about tonight that we never take for granted. We're in the midst of a five-week or so series on freedom. And we've been introing this with a little video clip, okay? And I want to just pass over that tonight because I want to get right to the core of what we're talking about. We're talking about the freedom that people discover when their lives are changed. And, you know, it's been for us the last couple of weeks, and tonight will be some of that too, primarily about spiritual change. But that spiritual change inevitably and invariably works itself out into our daily lives, into the relationships that matter most. And we've had a couple of great video clips in previous weeks, but today we wanted you to see firsthand a couple that's experiencing freedom in their lives because of what Jesus has done for them. Now, you know how hard it is to come up here and do that? If you've never done it, someday you might be the one invited. So we give people as little notice as possible so they can't be nervous for very long. So we asked them last night, and no, we gave them a couple of this. But give a great welcome to Jay and Jen Simon as they come to share with us tonight, today. Come on, you're not being very enthusiastic. Let's do it. This should be you. Welcome. Thank you. How are you, Jay? Great. Good. Well, I'm delighted to say, really, this is a very sort of like out there honest sort of talk. So you and I are going to chat because we're just getting to know each other. And I think it would be great just to start for all of us to know you guys. Tell us a little bit about where you grew up and sort of the basics. You have a family, right? Yeah. We're married. It will be 16 years in July. We have three kids, 10, 9, and 5, daughter, son, daughter. We actually met at our five-year high school reunion. So we both went to high school together, but we didn't date in high school. So now we go back to the reunions and everyone freaks out and sees that we're married. And you wondered what was I thinking back then that I missed everybody, huh? You have no idea. Okay. We won't go there then. Okay. Tell us a little bit about what it was like growing up in your lives. I was raised spiritually, I think you're asking me, in a very predominantly Catholic household. We did our best to get to church as often as we could and made sure we made Christmas and Easter. But beyond that, there was really little else. I was in a very healthy Catholic family. My dad was a Eucharistic minister for the Catholic church. So I always went to church every Sunday. But what happened to me, like a lot of people, is you go once a week in high school, then college. I was one of those few people that actually went to church in college. But when I was there, it was in New York, there was a foreign priest. And I couldn't even understand what he was saying, but I was still showing up every Sunday. So I knew something was there. Was it Latin, was it? It might have been. I don't know what it was, but I just was showing up. I could feel God's presence. So I've always felt God's presence in my life in college. It's very, very interesting. Many people will say that too. There's something in them that's drawing them, but they don't know what it is, and then they kind of get disillusioned and give up. So you fumbled your way through, and how long after college did you get married? We actually could not get married soon enough. I think it was like the fourth day after that reunion. He said, I know we're going to get married. But it took us a couple years to get it all worked out. All right, so then you were cruising along. Did you have any spiritual direction at that point? Were you still just— He was. Yeah, he was. He knew he was still trying to check it out. I was just sort of pushed away. In my household, I just figured out as a teenager, I was never going to be able to perform good enough to meet God's expectations, so I just gave up. I spent my time away from God in college, and he was still trying to pull me with that presence. So he was visiting churches for a few years. Just on a weekend basis, but the reality of the fact, we were living two separate lives that started with marriage. Then we were classic two jobs, no kids, just both trying to get careers, and we saw our relationship bust. And it came to the point of bust. We sought marriage counseling, and we went to a Christian counselor, which was huge for us. Again, we felt that was the right counselor for us, and that was 12 years ago. That is when our whole life changed, because at that point is when we accepted Christ into our hearts as a personal relationship with God versus some father figure on top of us. Since that time, we've just been, I like to call it a 45-degree angle for growth. But it took a crisis that you realized you couldn't fix. That was your marriage was falling apart. Again, friends, this is so common, isn't it? People go out, and they do their best to make life work. Fortunately, you had the good sense to go to a counselor. Unfortunately, many people don't, and they just give it up and figure they'll go find someone else, and they repeat that same cycle, that same process. Now, what's changed in your life? I know it wasn't overnight holiness, was it? At least it might have been for Jay, but you had a harder time. I did. For me, and I look back, and I spent a long time feeling regretful over that period of my life. But since then, God has showed me that my works, whether they were regretful works from my past or the good works of the present, aren't how he sees me, and that he went from being a cruel judge to being a loving father. So I have this profound sense of his grace in my life, and that just compels me onward to share that with other people and serve others. So we went from two very selfish, almost separate individuals sharing a life to really understanding what it means for two to become one and then want to serve other people out of that love. And it's been a decade process. So I look back at the beginning, right at that point, God then blessed us with our first baby. So I'm so thankful that it happened after the problems, but we were on good ground. Then we found a non-denominational church. We started going every Sunday, and one of the biggest impacts that we had was when we dropped off our baby in the nursery. I couldn't believe the love of these people to take my baby so we could go learn about God because we knew nothing other than we knew we needed to be there. And to this day, I'm highly motivated to help young families because if those people didn't take my baby, I wouldn't be here right now. So this freedom is something that you're continually discovering. It's ever-increasing. I can attest to the fact that you're both very passionate about sharing with others. Just sharing, closing, like one thing that's got you really excited about what's ahead. Oh, there's so many things that are exciting. I think what excites me the most is almost out of sheer panic, I too started to work with kids and families because I didn't know how to pass on the things I was just learning for the first time to my own children. And I thought, how am I going to shape beliefs in them that I don't really understand? So I decided to get into the classrooms with these kids. And I found by learning that lesson to teach other kids, I could take that home to my house. And it's been an amazing blessing. And just this past Christmas, our fourth grader came to me and said he really thought that he never accepted Jesus into his heart. And he was tearful. And I just praised God because I felt very confident in how to direct him to do that. It was a beautiful blessing. And I look back and see how all of that got shaped to that thing. So the family work is what gets me so excited about the head and about what's ahead just in my service. And we both share that passion. And the last year or two, I've really opened myself up to God. Every morning I just surrender. And I'm just asking him for guidance. And I have a gift of administration for some reason. But I can put things together. So I've always put small groups together and things. But the one thing that really came to pass in this last year is the passion to connect all churches together as one church. So I call it the big C, the big church and the little churches. And I'm doing that with the other six days of the week. So my motto today is to do church. But the other six days of the week, and I'm doing some ministry in the workplace, et cetera. It sounds like the freedom that you found just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And it looks like you guys, all we have to do is just stay out of your way. Right? You keep it going? That's the way it is. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing with us, guys. Thank you. Very, very good. Awesome. Bless you. Thanks. All right. Thanks, Jay. Thanks, brother. You won't find two more dedicated servants, and they're still discovering, as they would be happy to tell you. We could go on and on talking about that. I want to invite you to take your outline out of your notes. You should have these, whether you're in Oakland or here. The notes help us just to sort of stay on the same page together. And, you know, when I was thinking about our title, From Religion to Relationship, it reminded me of something that happened to me when I went out last fall to my cousin's wedding. I mentioned to you that I have a cousin that I had not known for many, many years, most of the years of my life. She was about to be married. And in California, I'd gone out with Carol and some other family members, but I didn't know many of the folks that were there for the wedding because they were all folks from that, you know, from her hometown area, and the same with the groom. And inevitably, we're at the reception, and the question comes up, well, you know, we're talking. We're all really, really duded up. I mean, this was a super high-class Beverly Hills thing. I mean, it was way over my head for most occurrences. And I had the inevitable question, well, you know, what do you do question? Now, most of us who are pastors will tell you, that's a question we don't like to have because, you know, once that question gets out there, the rest of the evening, like if you're at the table with that person, they, you know, they filter everything they say, and they're not real. And I kind of, but, you know, of course, the alternative is to lie and say that you're something else. And then they'll come and say, hey, Pastor Jay, and then you go. So I said, well, I'm a pastor. And this person looked at me, and she said, wow, that's interesting, you don't look religious. I said, I processed that. Now, I wanted them to say, you know, tell me, what does religious look like? But they quickly moved on and said, you know, I had a friend in college that was religious too. She said, what's it like to be religious? And I said, you know, to be really honest with you, I don't know. Well, she said, didn't you say you were a pastor? I said, yes. She said, well, aren't you paid to be religious? I said, I said, I have no offense. I said, but you couldn't pay me enough money to be religious. And her stare was getting increasingly blank. And she said, okay, well, let me see. So you're a pastor of like a church? I said, yes. She said, well, what religion is your church? I said, it's not religious either. She said, okay, I'm getting another glass of champagne. That's enough of this. I don't understand. I don't have a category for that one. See, when I think of what it means to be a pastor, that's just a privilege. That's just a privilege like Jay and Jen have of being great parents and just great members of the community. But when I think of having a relationship with Jesus, what it means to be part of a great church, to have purpose in life, to have a sense of why I'm here and eternal security and understanding how things fit together. Friends, you know what really surprised me more than anything? And I'm not just talking about Northwood. I'm talking about the church of Jesus just in general. What I don't understand is why aren't our churches, this church and every other church that preaches the gospel like we preach the full gospel, I mean, why aren't we just packed with people? I mean, we have the best news. We have the most vital answers to life's most important questions. But in just about every service, there's lots of empty seats, and many churches are closing their doors. It's interesting when we do events. Oakland's going to be doing some events. We do events. We've got a kid's gig thing coming up. And we've got, you know, just special, like we had an extreme makeover thing which was a nutritional kind of deal today, and of course the car cruise, things like that. People come to events, and they feel safe coming to the events. But when you begin to talk to them about, well, would you be interested in talking some about the weekend service perhaps or what happens in our church at other times? They say, no, I don't think so. Or they have a lot... I've had countless conversations with people, some people I've prayed with and talked with for years, and I cannot get them passed in a particular event. And I've come to the conclusion it's this. They equate what happens in here, in the church as we know it, as religious. And people hate religion. Jen just gave us a little peek at the way religion crushes and kills. Religion kills. And so people think that, well, if I get into the church, I'm going to become religious, and I don't want to be religious. I don't want anything to do with religion. Religion is not life-giving. Religion is not fun. Religion is not what it's about. I don't want anything to do with it. Interestingly enough, that's what Paul had come to tell the Galatians. And J.R. told us in the first week how just incredibly important it was that the people of Galatia understood the gospel, the truth that comes from the gospel, the peace that comes from the gospel. And last week we looked at the cost of freedom, and we talked about just what Jesus paid in terms of our freedom, to purchase our freedom. And here's the interesting thing. In Galatia, the people had heard this message, this story, but then had begun to buy into some, and I talked a little bit about this last week, some people who were telling them to go back and do a Jesus Plus thing. And last week we looked at that. That whole thing of, you know, yeah, you've got to believe in Jesus, but you've got to do some other things as well. And see, religion has a way of adding to, adding to what Jesus did for you. And I think I explained to the best of my ability last week why that's just such a fruitless and futile effort, because you can't ever add to what Jesus did for you. But I want to talk tonight about something that is really important, and it's a little bit of a risk, and I was sharing with the brothers earlier this week that I'm, you know, you know if doctors will tell you the earliest they can discover something wrong with you, the most likely, you know, you'll have a positive outcome in your treatment. So, you know, they tell you to get tests, and so you get angiograms and mammograms. I'm going to give you a religiogram. Are you ready for a religiogram? And I know, and a religiogram can be a little bit painful for the next few minutes, but if you can detect legalism a little bit early in your life, it may spare you from falling back into religion. And that's, you know something? Listen, the thing that's most shocking is so many of you left religious churches to come here, and unbeknownst to you, you're already infected with the spirit of religion, and it's starting to pull you back. Ready to take your religiogram? All right, number one, here's five ways that you can get rid of religion. All right, number one, and this is going to be right here on your outline. Refuse to bind others to man-made rules. Notice this in Galatians 5. Here's the text. You, my brothers, were called to be free, but do not use your freedom to indulge sinful nature. Now, it's interesting. Right away, you think indulge sinful nature. You think of, well, you know, something sexual or something lascivious or something, you know, a drunkard or whatever. Interestingly, look, he says, rather serve one another in love. So, something about the sinful nature is me-focused, and he's saying don't use your freedom to be me-focused. Use it to serve one another in love, not to bind one another with your man-made rules. Friends, we are very good at sizing someone up based on our experience. And so, well, God said, well, you haven't been baptized in water? Well, I'm not really sure, then, that you are really a Christian. And we add things to the Bible based on our experience or our interpretation and we think other people need to live up to in order to really be truly godly. I mean, you can't really know Jesus in a movie or rated movies. You can't really know Jesus. I'm not advocating you do, by the way, but this is something people might put on. You can't really know Jesus, and, I mean, you still need confession in your life, don't you? You can't really know Jesus and still, well, how about this one, still smoke. You know, my mom was part of the World War II era, and those of you who lived there know this is true. Smoking in that time in our history, in the 20s and 30s, it was just a thing that everybody did. And so my mom began to smoke at a young age. And so did my dad, and through their whole adult life, it was one of the worst things for us as kids. I'll never forget riding from Beaver over to Hazelwood to visit my mom's mom with the windows up in a winter day and both of them smoking. I mean, I wanted to, it was, I mean, you could see my fingernails scratched on the side of the, but, you know, my mom would tell me, she said, I can't tell you, and she would tell me this with tears at times, how many times I'd go to meetings, not just church meetings, but meetings of Christians at other places, and if I was there and people knew I smoked, or they saw perhaps after a meeting I went to a restaurant and I was having a cigarette, people would come over and tap me on the shoulder and said, you know, if you really, and this is the key word, if you really wanted to, Jesus would free you of that. And for many, many years, my mom struggled with shame and guilt, being, here's the word, judged by people. And yeah, I want you to know she was passionately in love with Jesus. Now, she had a difficult time. She finally was healed of that, by the way. Took her almost dying, but she doesn't smoke anymore. But you know what? She's not saved anymore than she was 20 or 30 years ago. She's free. She was free the moment that she opened her life to Jesus. We need to be very careful not to put our definition of what it means to be really spiritual on our family members, on our friends, on the people around us, because, listen, loved ones, you are not, you are not the sort of the evaluator of true spirituality. There's none that's righteous, no, not one. You may have some things that you're really pretty spiritual about, but please don't look at me and put them on me and say, well, if you're really spiritual, Jay, then you do it the way I'm doing it, or you'd see it the way I'm seeing it, and vice versa. Loved ones, do you see how dangerous that can be? And we start looking at one another that way, and by the way, that happens most often with our family members. Be very careful about that. Don't bind others up. Love them. Love them with the Spirit that you are loved. Second thing is this. Reject externals as spiritual yardsticks. This is going to be a tough one in the religion, Graham. Are you ready? Paul writes, so I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. The sinful nature desires what's contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They're in conflict. See, the sinful nature has some obvious external carnal things, and in Acts 19 it starts talking about them, and we see the obvious ones that we think about, sexual immorality, impurity, devoultry, idolatry, and witchcraft. But then look at the next several. Would you look at them? It says hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions and factions. Seven or eight of those are very relational. Do you see that? They're very much about the way you see other people. They're very much about the way we measure people's behaviors as a spiritual yardstick. Let me just be real about this. Let me bring it down to some stuff we can relate to. Some of us measure spirituality around here based on what people wear. Now, boomers, listen. If you're someone in the 40 to 60 category, I want you to get over something, all right? Blue jeans are not from the devil. And those of you who are under 30, I just want to have a little word with you. Neckties do not cut off the circulation to your brain and make you a nerd. Okay? We have to stop judging one another's spirituality or ability to even affect us spiritually based on what we wear or how we wear our hair or the shape of our bodies. It's so weird. I've had so many people just say, I just, you know, I was so distracted by what, you know, by those blue jeans. I just couldn't hear what he had to say. Oh, I'm not, this isn't, I'm not saying it to be funny. Now, let me be very clear. I'm not saying that we throw decorum out. I'm not ever going to stand up here, especially me, you know, with like a tank top or something on, you know? Easy, Mike. Not you either. Okay? But the reality is there's so much more to understanding a person than what they wear. And what happens, unfortunately, is we start to think about others in terms of, you know, just their external things. What, you know, the kind of clothes. And some of you even start, some of you were in churches and sometimes you come to this church and you wonder, well, you know, I'm not sure this is the right socioeconomic group for me. I mean, it just breaks my, I just, I just, I gnarled up inside when people sort of scope out the parking lot and see who's driving what and sort of base their church affiliation based on, well, they kind of drive the same kind of car and wear the same kind of clothes and look the way I do and attend the same clubs and so on. You know, where does this all stop, loved ones? Where does the cool factor end? Is it with weight? Is it with age? Is it with color of skin? The sinful nature has a way, doesn't it, of just pulling us under very, very quietly, separating us out and making us just sort of judge each other. I loved the way Eugene Peterson says this in the message, and I've asked the guys, I think we have this, I'm going to just break out of the mold of reading it. Listen to this or read it with me from the message. These are the same verses I just read. It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time. I think that's the sinful nature. Repetitive, loveless, cheap sex, a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage, frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness, trinket gods, magic show religion, paranoid loneliness, cutthroat competition, all-consuming yet never satisfied wants, a brutal temper, an impotence to love or be loved, divided homes and divided lives, small-minded and lopsided pursuits, the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival, uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions, ugly parodies of community, I could go on. Isn't that something? Powerful language, isn't it? It paints pictures for us. It helps us understand what says, don't let that be what you put on each other. I have to tell you, for almost 30 years, I feel like I've been spitting into the wind, hoping that one day it wouldn't matter if you drove in on our campus in a big Mercedes or a mountain bike, if you wore Armani or Fubu, or if you had like all kinds of markings or you were just as clean-shaven and quaffed as you could be, you would be accepted and loved just because you were here. And the reason why I say sometimes I feel like it's just been futile is that we still just tend to look at those things. And a verse that I just cannot escape, a verse that comes back at me over and over and over again is when the Lord very clearly spoke and He warned. This is 1 Samuel 16, 17, if you want to put it up. Here's what He said. He was warning about choosing people by appearance. Do not consider His appearance or His height, for I have rejected Him. The Lord does not look at the things that man looks at. Man looks at the what? The outward appearance. But the Lord looks at the heart. Loved ones, it doesn't matter what you wear, what you drive, the color of your hair. It doesn't matter. God looks at your heart. And I pray that that would be the lens whereby we would look at each other. Say, Lord, just let my heart be pure and let me see others with lenses that see just the heart. Well, you know what? I tell you what, it just bothers me. I mean, you can't get ahead in the world unless you know how to dress right. Anyhow, you got to ask the guys at Google about that, you know. I think they're doing pretty well dressing sort of casually, aren't they? What's their stock right now? 400 and what? So, you know, we're way past that, aren't we? I think we can do better. I think God wants us to understand that. We're not a corporation, we're a church. Let's love the way He did. Number three, we need to review our relationship with God in terms of form and content. Form and content. Circle the word and there, form and content. Okay, and I need to do this rather quickly, but it's real important. I promised myself I wouldn't hurry through this. It's real important because what happens is this. People will say to me, I used to go to so-and-so church and I liked it, but the liturgy just got kind of old and I just got stale and I got bored and off they went. And you know what I've discovered now after the many years I've been privileged to be a pastor? It's this. That the same mentality can creep in right here. That it, I'm here to tell you, we can find ourselves in a trap of just going through the motions of doing the form without the content. So let me talk about just a few areas specifically. Are you ready? This is part of the religiogram. It's really gonna get your, this is where it's gonna hurt a little bit. Okay, let's talk about the worship services. You know, clearly the Bible exhorts us to gather every week. And Paul warns us, don't start being casual about getting together as is the habit of some that comes out in the book of Hebrews. You know what? Do you know the average church attender now comes once or twice a month? Did you know that? You should make a passionate commitment to be in church every weekend. And the only time you should miss is if you're ill or you have some unavoidable conflict that you, I mean, but people, you know, if I pick it up at once, that's the average, according to George Barnard, the average church attender who's a Christian, committed Christian, is once or twice a month. And when you come, you should compassionately and desiringly pour out your heart to God and make this the best 75 or 80 minutes of your week. You should be able to come here and give it your best. And I have to say, friends, sometimes when I greet you at the door, some of you look like someone brought you into the back of a tractor. I don't mean that about your physical appearance in terms of your clothes either. I mean, it's just like, you're, oh, God, you made it. Don't really want to be here. And I have to tell you, we have from time to time even had conversations, honestly conversations, how can we help the congregations to just sort of get going? That should be the last, you know what we should have to do? We should have to say, how can we help the congregations just to calm down a little bit so we can communicate? You should be so anticipative of that God's going to meet us because He promises that when two or more of us gather in His name, He'll be here in the midst of us. So let me just ask you a question. When we were singing today, were you singing with, as the Bible says, all of your heart? Or were you just kind of being cool and casual? A couple of people, I'm very able to say, well, you know, if I would sing, it would just like mess everybody else up. My voice is that bad. Well, I've got a verse for you. It's Psalm 66, 1. Make a joyful noise to the Lord. That's not it. Okay? Psalm 66, 1. Make a joyful noise to the Lord. So you're singing as bad as it is. Just lay it out there until someone turns around and says, would you stop singing? Then, okay. We'll give you a pass. We have a special section for those people. The noisy section. Okay. You should come and pour out your heart. It does say, let's put that scripture up there. Sing joyfully to the Lord, you righteous. It is fitting. In other words, it's the right thing to do for the upright to praise Him. So this whole idea of singing isn't something we made up. The Bible says it over and over and over again. Sing to the Lord with all your heart. Sing joyfully. Make an offering of your praise to the Lord. Religion just goes through the motions of singing. Don't let that be the practice that happens here. How about this? When we come to gather together, do you give joyfully? Or is the moment you most, I mean, honestly, some people literally get up and leave when the sermon's over because they just don't even want to sit through the agonizing experience of having to have an offering. Loved ones, listen. If you're going to be, if you're going to be free from religion, you have to understand that God did not free you to be like clutching onto your stuff. He freed you not to be like all uptight about money. He freed you not to give the minimum, but to give the maximum because it's an evidence of your trust that He cares more about you than you do yourself. We sing songs about, as Jade did, songs about God literally adoring us. How could a God who loves us that much not care if we're having a tough time financially? Of course He cares more than you can imagine. But the answer is not by you clutching it tighter. The answer is by you learning how to give generously. And I just want to say a word. I've had some interesting conversations in the last few weeks with a number of people, just sort of random conversations, who are doing quite well and prospering quite well in their businesses and in their pursuits. And I didn't have the liberty, I don't have the level of relationship to ask them about their giving, but I hope that you are, that you're one of those people that when it comes time to the offering and Scott or J.R. comes up and they say, well, you can have the freedom to let the basket go by, you don't think that means you. Rather, you should delight in it. In fact, we should collectively say, awesome, it's time to give. It's time to plant a seed to make it, we can plant some seeds. And the Bible says when we plant seeds, God says, you know what, I'll never be in debt to anybody. And if you plant a seed, in fact, we have a verse, let's look at this one. Remember this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Let me ask you a question. Today, in about 10 minutes or so, are you going to sow like, well, okay, here's a little bit just to get J.R. off my back. Are you going to say, God, here's just, here's one little token of my profound love for you. By the way, who gave you the ability to get the money you have? Did you make that up yourself or did God give you that? Of course, it all comes from Him. And then the third one, just real quickly is this. When we come in this service to the time of the teaching of the Word of God, you should be like many of you are. You should be, you should be like, I mean, sitting up, leaning into it, focused. If you're daydreaming, slap yourself and say, wake up. Because these 30 minutes or so could be, I can't tell you how many times in my life I heard one thing in one sermon that absolutely changed the course and direction of my life. And I don't know when it's going to be in the sermon. I don't expect you to remember everything I'm going to say. But I hope you'll take one thing out tonight and you'll say, I'm going to make that part of my lif