Man Month½A Man of Courage

Transcription

1 Man Month½A Man of Courage Joe Coffey 6/10/2018 Great to have you. Great to be with you. I miss you when I m gone; although I was on vacation and had a wonderful vacation, so I didn t miss you that much. But it s always good to be back. A couple of exciting things that are going on right now. You can tell that here at the Hudson Campus we are geared up for Vacation Bible Camp. We have almost eleven hundred kids signed up already, and we expect a couple hundred more. Which reminds me, there are like four hundred of you that have volunteered to help, and I just want to tell you that I love you for that. Thank you for volunteering. We could use about fifty more people. So if you have time this week and can volunteer, you can sign up in the atrium. But I want to ask you to do two things. One is if you have kids, bring them. They will love it. I don t know of another church that does Vacation Bible Camp quite like we do. But also I want to ask you to pray. As you drive by this place, as you think about what s going on this week, pray that the kids that are here will love it. But more than that, pray that the kids that are here will leave knowing that Jesus loves them. That s our goal. The second exciting thing is that Ravi Zacharias Ministries has asked us to host the ReMind Conference that happens August third and fourth. It s a Friday night, all day Saturday. The ReMind Conference is designed to strengthen and encourage the faith of young people from high school to young adults - so between the ages of like fifteen and thirty. What we re going to do is we will host some of the best minds and defenders of Christianity in the whole world will be here that day and a half. So if you are between the ages of fifteen and thirty, don t miss it. You can ask any question. You can just explore your faith. Here are some of the people that will be here: Ravi Zacharias will be here; Vince and Jo Vitale will be here, Abdu Murray, Sam Allberry and Lecrae will be talking with Ravi and also will be performing in concert here. We have nine hundred tickets, so if you re between those ages, make sure you pay attention and come. Then we will also open The Block, which is our student ministries building, for simulcast for anybody who s over thirty who wants to participate. It s kind of reverse. Usually we do it here, and then we simulcast for students. It s going to be the reverse, so pay attention to that. We re really excited. It s going to be awesome! This is June, which means next week is Father s Day. I should tell you you know, on Mother s Day here at CCC as everybody was leaving all the ladies were able to choose between picking up a flower or a chocolate-covered Oreo. Father s Day wait until you see what we have for dads. I can't tell you. It will be memorable though. It s going to be good. We have designated June to be Man Month here at CCC. The reason is because men are in trouble. As a man we have trouble figuring out what it means to be a man and love Jesus. Part of that is because we have feminized Jesus. And we wanted to spend a month trying to cast a vision for what a man could be, should be, what the world needs a man to be because the world needs more than a few good men. The world needs bunches of good men. I hope you

2 know that during this month even though we ll be addressing men, virtually everything that we say will be applicable to everyone. Let me start like this. This past week kind of in honor of D-Day, June 6, I was rewatching some episodes of the HBO mini series Band of Brothers, which chronicles the exploits of Easy Company from the 506 th Regiment of the 101 st Airborne through World War II from Normandy all the way to where they capture the Eagle s Nest, which is Hitler s hideaway in the Alps. There are a couple things I noticed. One was in the episode that I watched I think on Wednesday how many times an officer would look at somebody and just say, You, follow me follow me, and it struck me that every man has somebody following them. Do you have somebody following you? The best, all-time anti-smoking commercial I ever saw was probably three decades ago, and I still remember it. Not a word was spoken. In this commercial you see a man walking and a little toddler walking after him, and he kicks the leaves like that and you see the little boy look at his dad and then he kicks the leaves. Then the dad reaches down and picks up a stone and he skips it across a pond, and you see the little boy look for a stone, pick it up and throw it into the water. And then the man sits down, leans up against a tree and takes out a cigarette, puts it into his mouth and he puts the pack right by himself. And then the commercial ends with the little boy picking up the pack of cigarettes and looking at the pack of cigarettes. It s not a question of whether somebody is following you or not, it s just a question of where you re leading them. But somebody is following you. That is one thing that struck me. The second thing that struck me when watching Band of Brothers was just the flat-out courage that these guys had to go running into a hail of bullets, whatever. And that s part of why I watch it, because there s something inside of me that wants to think of myself as being courageous that if I ever got the opportunity, that I would be one who wouldn t cower but would actually go. And you do too. I ve never met a single person man or woman who came to me and said, You know what, I d like to be a little more cowardly. That s what I m looking for. I want to be a little more full of fear. All of us want to go, You know what, I want to be courageous. And there are times in all of our lives when we need courage. That s what we re going to talk about this morning. If you have your Bible, you can turn to Hebrews 12. Then I m going to read the passage, which is the first eleven verses of chapter twelve, and then I ll give you the three points about courage for today. This is what it says, 12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. 4 In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5 And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.

3 6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. 7 It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8 If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9 Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? 10 For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. 11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. This is God s Word, and it s true. Okay, three points about courage: What is it?, Why do we need it?, How do we get it? What exactly is courage?, Why do we need courage?, and How do we get courage? First, what exactly is courage? Courage is the strength to do something or say something that goes against your nature, at least part of your nature. Think of any activity that involves courage. You have a firefighter running into a burning building, somebody stepping in front, putting somebody behind them when a threat comes. When Karen and I were first married probably in the first couple of years we were out walking one day and we were holding hands. We still walk and hold hands. But I was holding her left hand in my right hand and we were walking in kind of an unfamiliar area, and I heard something kind of in the distance. You know how your brain when you hear a sound, you kind of go, Huh, what is that?, and you try to identify it. So I was walking and I was going, Huh, what is that? It was a jingling. It was like a low it was a metal jingling. It wasn t a high jingling; it was a lower, stronger jingling. So this is the way my brain worked walking and I was going, What is that? What is that sound? It s a chain. It s a chain. It s a dog. It a big dog! Like that fast. So I realize that there s this big dog that must be coming up right behind us. So I turned to face the dog, but I turned this way, which meant that I put Karen between me and the big dog. So I actually gave her a chance to show courage, if you think about it. I ve been looking for a big dog now for thirty-five years to try to redeem myself. But that s the opposite of courage, right? Courage is when you have a commitment to someone or something that supersedes your own desire for comfort or for security, for pleasure, or for happiness. That s why courage is so hard. It s also why you can identify the moments when you re called to be courageous. Because when you feel like you should do something or say something that cuts against your deep desire for comfort, for security, for pleasure, or for happiness, chances are you re in a moment where you have a chance to show courage. Courage is not fearlessness. Fearlessness is stupidity. In order to have courage, you have to know exactly what you re committing to that supersedes your basic desires, and you have to choose the higher point. That s what courage is. Now the question is, Why do we need it? Look in verse one. It says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which

4 clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. The reason we need courage is because life is a race. It s a race. The Greek word that s used there is the word agon, where we get the word agony. If you ve ever run an endurance race, you know there is pain involved. True Christianity is never guilty of false advertising. The Bible says over and over again that life is going to be filled with difficulty and hardship and suffering and pain. One of the many things I love about Christianity is that it rings true in my day-to-day life. It s how I experience life. It s how you experience life. When the Bible talks about things like sin and grace and forgiveness, it s the way it really works. I was talking to somebody not too long ago, and they were saying, Why did Jesus have to die on a cross? Why did he have to suffer so much? If God wanted to forgive us, why didn t he just forgive us? And I asked him, Have you ever been hurt deeply by someone and tried to forgive them? And he thought for a minute and he said, Yeah, I have. I said, How d that feel? He said, It hurt like hell. And I told him Jesus would agree. Because forgiveness is not pain free. When you are called to forgive somebody in your real life and you have to forgive somebody, it hurts. When God chose to forgive you, it hurt. That s why the cross. The same thing s true with suffering. What the Bible teaches about suffering is the way we experience it in our day-to-day lives. There s a nuance kind of to the way that Christianity describes suffering that is absent from other worldviews. There are two ways that you have to look at suffering if you re going to have courage, and you have to see it both ways. The first way to see suffering is that it s not natural. It s not the way things are supposed to be. We all feel that instinctively; although, we literally came into this world through pain. We came out of the womb screaming, right. But still, every time we experience pain it s kind of a surprise. I m walking in my house barefoot, I stub my toe and I m going, Are you kidding me?, like it s a shock. You watch somebody that you love go through excruciating pain and you can't do anything, you don t just feel helpless, you get angry. Why? Because deep down we know this is not the way it should be, and the Bible completely agrees. The Bible says that God s original design for this world was not to include pain and suffering. God s original design for you was not for you to experience pain and suffering. When Jesus goes in John chapter eleven when he goes to the grave of his friend Lazarus, he doesn t just say, Hmm, these things happen. What he did was he wept and then he bellowed, he screamed, Lazarus, come forth. There s a word in that story where it says that Jesus before he yelled, what the Greek word really means is he snorted, like a linebacker about to make the biggest hit of his life. Don t ever feminize Jesus. So suffering is not natural. That s the first perspective you have to have on suffering. But the second is this, according to Scripture suffering is necessary. Suffering is necessary. Because it s not just the world that s broken, you re broken and I m broken. And there s something that God can do with the shards of this broken world to heal the shards of brokenness in your soul and in your life. We see it all the time.

5 One of the longest stories of the Old Testament is the story of Joseph and his brothers. It s in Genesis, begins in Genesis 37 and goes all the way to Genesis 50. In Genesis 37 we re introduced to Joseph s family, which is a wildly dysfunctional family. Jacob, his father, has twelve sons through four different women. Jacob spoils and has one child, Joseph, that s the apple of his eye, that s his idol and it s ruining Jacob. It s about to destroy Joseph. His brothers are filled with a murderous rage and hatred. That s in chapter thirty-seven. Chapter fifty we find Jacob a completely different man at peace. We find Joseph mature and gracious and his brothers healed of their hatred and their murderous rage. And then between chapter thirtyseven and chapter fifty is a whole lot of pain and suffering and hardship. This is really important. How does anybody get stronger? If I take this barbell and I start to do this, am I getting stronger or weaker? You guys don t know? It s kind of interesting, isn't it? Because I m getting stronger I think, but my arm feels like it s getting weaker, and it is. It s getting weaker and weaker. But after four services in two days, I m going to be a beast. (laughter) Muscles only get stronger if you put them in distress. So how do you get stronger? This is true. Your faith will never grow unless it s tested. Your commitment will never grow unless it s challenged. Your patience will never grow unless it s taxed. And your courage will never grow unless it s threatened. That s just true. The thing about courage is we desperately need it, but we try to stay away from it. And if you don t know that this world is going to have hardship and difficulty, that the goal of your life is to have a trouble-free life and to have comfort and pleasure all the time, then when hardship and suffering comes into your life and it will, it will wipe you out and you will do the exact opposite of courage. You will run, and I see it all the time. You will run away from things that are good. You will run away from your family. You will run away from God. You will run away from the church. You will run because you did not see it coming. So how do we get courage? How do we get it? Look in verse two of chapter twelve. It says, Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. It start out, Looking to Jesus. In the New International Version, it says, Fixing your eyes on Jesus. I like that term fixing your eyes, because in English there are two meanings. You can fix your eyes by putting on glasses and correcting the way you see. You can also focus on something and fix your eyes on something. I want to use both those. The way you get courage is you have to fix your eyes at least in the way that you see you. You have to see yourself in a different way than you probably see yourself right now. When I first read this passage, I read the first eleven verses, but we ve only talked about the first two. Let me read beginning in verse five just a few verses. It says, 5 And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.

6 6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. 7 It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8 If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9 Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? 10 For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. Do you hear that? It uses the word discipline nine times in seven verses. You know when we think about discipline at least when I use that word in English, we almost always think about punishment. If I said, How do you discipline your kids?, you re going to think through how you punish them. But that word in the Greek is the word pedia, where we get the word pediatrics. And a pediatrician isn't just interested in correcting a child, a pediatrician is all about a child flourishing and giving them everything they need to flourish. I just got back from vacation. We took our whole family. We had our three kids, our four grandkids all in the same house. So there was a lot of laughter, a lot of playing, a lot of flourishing, a lot of correcting. Why correcting? Because they re children. My grandkids range from twenty months to nine years, and children need correcting. What this says is that you re like a child. You feel like you re an adult. I mean we feel like adults and we re not children because we re at the top of the food chain. But I was watching my four grandkids one time and they couldn t tell I was watching them, and they thought they were by themselves out on the porch. They act differently the two older ones act differently when they think they re at the top of the food chain. And all of the sudden I come out, and it s like back to where they really are. The same thing with us. When you have to correct a child, why do you have to correct your children? Because you want them to flourish. And you know that if you don t correct them they won't flourish. So if your child lies and you don t correct them, then you know that later on it s just going to get worse and they won't flourish, so you correct them. But when you correct them, what goes on in their little heads? No matter what you do, whether you say, Okay, no dessert. You ve got to go to your room. Or you say, No video games, two things go on in a kid s head one, That s unfair. I don t care what you do. I don t care what kind of punishment you mete out, I ve never seen a kid go, Hmm, okay. I think that s good. That will probably keep me from lying. Perfect. Mom, you did great. That s awesome. Right? No way. The first thing they say, I can't believe you did that. That s unfair. Unfair. The second thing is that you become the enemy. The lying is not the enemy. What they need to do in order to flourish, that s not the enemy. They don t even think about that, they just think, You did this to me. I see people do that with God all the time. Something happens in their life suffering, hardship, difficulty and they say to God, That s unfair. It s unfair. And instead of trying to figure out what it s doing in their life, what God is trying to do to help them flourish, they get angry.

7 I think it was John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace, who said that everything God brings into your life is necessary, and nothing is necessary that he withholds. Think of the story of Joseph, alright. Joseph is being spoiled rotten and he loves his life at that time, and he is headed for absolute destruction. But to be sold into slavery, really? To be thrown into prison, doesn t that seem unfair? And yet in chapter fifty Joseph is the one who tells his brothers, What you meant for evil God meant for good. And when he says, God meant it for good, he wasn t saying, God meant it for good for everybody else. He was saying, God meant it for good for me for me. If we re going to respond with courage to the things that happen in our lives, we have to see ourselves differently. You have to see yourself as a child with a father who wants you to flourish. And every single thing that happens to you can be used to make you flourish. The second thing it says, Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross. Again, that s the way things work in our lives. How does anybody stick to a diet? Or train for a triathlon? Or go through rehab after a joint replacement? How does anyone study to get an advanced degree? You look to the joy. You see, you answer the why question a thousand times. Why no dessert? Because I want to fit in my clothes. Why run? Because I want to finish the race. Why study? Because I want to be a doctor. Why rehab? Because I want to walk without a limp. Answer the why question. What s the purpose of your life? What if the purpose of your life isn't pleasure or happiness? What if the purpose of your life is glory? What if you were created to inhabit the very presence of God? What if God wants to turn you from what you are right now into the image of his son, Jesus, so you look more like Jesus? What will it take to go from here to there? Probably a ton. And you may be happy as a lark right now and not be even close to what God has in store for you or wants for you and you re not flourishing. It says this, Jesus, who for the joy set before him endured the cross. What was the answer to Jesus why question? When he was hanging on the cross and he said, Why am I doing this? Why am I allowing people to nail my hands and my feet to this wood? Do you know what his answer to the why question was? You. It was you. When Jesus asked himself, Why am I doing this?, it was your face he saw. And if that s true, then when you are struggling and trying to do something that goes against your pleasure, your comfort, your security, your happiness, then surely you can look and have his face be the one you look at and say, That s who I serve. That s who I m becoming. That s what I want to be. I ll finish with this, you can't choose your times to be courageous; those times choose you. I ve been looking for a big dog for thirty-five years to try to redeem myself. There will be a time and you may be going through it right now where you know God is calling you to do something or to say something or to act in such a way that cuts against everything inside of you that wants comfort and security and happiness and pleasure, and that s your opportunity to be courageous to forgive, to stick it out, to endure, whatever. And when you do, you become more like Jesus. To the degree we re able to fix our eyes, the way we see ourselves,

8 the way we see the things that happen in our lives, to the degree we re able to fix our eyes on Jesus as the author and perfecter of our faith is the degree we ll experience courage and perseverance when we need it the most, and we will become the men that the world desperately needs and that we want to be. Man Month man up. Transformed Let s pray. Lord Jesus, we come to you. You know my heart. You know I love comfort and security and pleasure and happiness as much as anybody. And if you do not do something in my life, I will stay right where I am. So I pray that you will allow me to trust you. I pray that for all of us, that you will give us eyes to see the opportunities that you bring into our lives to trust you and do things that are courageous. And when we do, I pray that you will give us a vision of what you are doing in us and for us, and we will trust you in everything, that your desire is for us to flourish and to be what you created us to be. Make us that, I pray. Thanks for your grace. Thanks for making us your joy and the answer to the why question for you. We pray this in your name. Amen. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version Containing the Old and New Testaments: ESV. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, Print.