Following Jesus Into The Neighbourhood

Lake Ridge Community Church Podcast

Eugene Peterson says that “The life of faith isn’t meant for tourists. It’s meant for pilgrims."

[00:00:03.090] - Speaker 1

Hi there. My name is Preston Pouteaux. Welcome to the Lake Ridge Community Church Podcast. This is where we share some of our messages from Sunday mornings. So we're glad you're here to listen. We'd love for you to join us in person. We meet on Sunday mornings at 10:30 a.m at Our Lady of Wisdom School here in Chestermere. At our core, we're a community of people, so we gather on Sundays, but we also do a lot in the week. Together, we are people learning to follow Jesus and love our city. So to learn more, visit lakeridgecommunity.com. Hope to check in and visit with you soon. Take care. Thanks for listening.

[00:00:44.530] - Speaker 2

My work as a pastor is to take you to the source of life, which is Jesus. If I do anything outside of that, I'm not being a very good pastor. And so we return over and over to Jesus. And so today we are going to talk and continue on on our journey towards Jesus, from residents to citizens and neighbours. If you were here last Sunday, we did these stations, these five stations we moved to talk about what it is to love neighbour. But I want to tell you why I'm so passionate about this idea of love, of neighbor that it is not just a really nice idea, that this is not just a nicety that we do as a Christian to go and love our neighbour, but that we are actually building a proper, rich, and deep faith in Jesus. When we do that, there's this term called deconstruction. It's kind of a term going on right now in the church. It feels new to us that people are deconstructing their faith, right? They look back on maybe their childhood church that they went to and they said, oh, how funny. That is me dressing as Mary or Joseph in a play that just feels so removed from the faith that I have wisely developed now.

[00:01:54.100] - Speaker 2

Right? And so we deconstruct something, but something's happened in our deconstructing of our faith. We do not actually build a way into build our faith. We actually are stepping further away sometimes from Jesus. The Reader's Digest Bible came out actually many decades ago now, but the Reader's Digest came out and a group of people said, look at this book. There's just too much going on in it. We need to strip out all the stuff that just is kind of funny duty stuff, right? So they took out almost half of the Bible and then packaged it up in a way that was a little bit easier to digest. They took out the complex stuff. There are others who deconstruct their faith, and they want to make it about self improvement, that this is about me, that my faith in God, it should bounce back and improve me, that I should get something out of this that makes me a better person. If I'm not winning, getting, or succeeding, then I find, deconstructing my faith until I get what I want. And so we have people who are packaging up their faith in their bill of goods as they go through, and they say, I'll take this bit of God, but not this.

[00:02:58.540] - Speaker 2

Maybe this, not this. And it's complex. Maybe you've been there. Maybe this is your story. While some researchers about 15 years ago, they did some interesting work. They went to a whole bunch of teenagers, and they said, what do you believe? What is your faith? And these teenagers, as I started to go through it with them, these teenagers started to say stuff like this. One teen said, I believe. I believe in well, my whole religion is where you try to be good. And if you're not good, then you should just try to get better. That's all I want, to just be good. And that should do it. Another one. If you're Christian, well, good for you. It's just whatever makes you feel good about you. So how I feel. And another one. I believe there is a God. And so sometimes when I'm in trouble or danger, then I'll start thinking about that. I love the honesty because it's actually probably most of our feelings about things, right? How about this? God's all around you all the time. He believes in forgiving people and whatnot. And he's there to guide us, for somebody to talk to and to help us through problems.

[00:04:06.980] - Speaker 2

Of course, he doesn't talk back. How about this one? Well, God is almighty, I guess. Yawns. It says in there. But I think he's on vacation right now because of all the crap that's happening in the world, because it wasn't like this back when he was famous. I love this. So these researchers came up with a term for this religion, the religion that's quite common today in many people's lives. And it is this. I wonder if we could put it up there. Forgive it. It sounds a little bit long. It's this. This, of course, isn't the term given by the teenagers. It's the term given by these researchers. They're trying to figure it out. These are three big words. I'm going to break them down for a second, and I'll make a good point over this. Moralistic therapeutic deism. This is the faith of these teenagers. Moralistic therapeutic deism. Let me break it down like this. Deism is this. Deism is the belief that God exists, but he engages at a distance if he's engaging much at all. Right. He encourages us to be good. God is not demanding. He cannot be demanding. He doesn't ask us of anything.

[00:05:16.780] - Speaker 2

He is here to help, and he's asking nothing. He's a divine butler and a cosmic therapist. This is deism. God is somewhere away. Have you seen him today? I haven't seen him today. I don't know where he is, so he must be out there. But he probably generally hopes the best for us. You can hear that in some of the language of these teenagers, right? How about this other word moralistic? The goal then is to behave in a way that is good and nice and fair, okay? Not according to a particular God, not according to a particular picture of what's nice and fair, but to a general goodness of my individual choosing. I get to decide the level of goodness and moralism that I live, and then I judge other people maybe according to the moralism that I've chosen. And the last one is therapeutic God's goal. And my goal is to be happy, to be secure, to be fixed, and to be well fed in all circumstances, right? It's about me. God is about giving therapeutic benefits to his adherence. It's a transaction between us and God, right? We turn to God and we say, god, I want a good, proper life.

[00:06:32.020] - Speaker 2

I want to feel good about myself. I want all the feelings that I've lined up to be met. And if you're able to meet that, then I in turn will come to you and I will worship you at a distance. This is Moral Therapeutic DSM, and it's the faith of many of the teens that were in this research study. And frankly, I think it might be the faith of many people who are Christians because actually, the Church has done a very good job at promoting this. The Church has made this because we actually set ourselves up for this, right? It's a lot. It's a lot to follow Jesus, and so the idea of loving neighbours is a challenge. And so instead, moralistic Therapeutic Deism works kind of plugs a hole, and we can all generally agree to it, right? If you want to go to church, you should feel good. And if you don't get what you want from God, you're fine to change loyalties until you find something worth worshiping that makes you feel how you want, and God is fine with whatever. Right? Am I hitting a little bit close to home in our own hearts a little bit here, right?

[00:07:37.930] - Speaker 2

This is not what Jesus invited his followers into. Moral therapeutic Deism is not a picture of what Jesus invited us to. In fact, if you start to begin to read Scripture, you see that he's painting a very different picture of what he's hoping his disciples to be a part of. Matthew 633. I got this up there. It says this seek the kingdom of God above all else and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. It's actually a very different picture than Moralistic therapeutic deism. We are actually seeking God's kingdom here, not mine. We are seeking what God is interested in and living righteously according to what he's inviting us into, and he will give you everything you need. This is not cosmic Santa who's giving you what you need, not everything you want. It's what you need. So what is this kingdom life like? How does Jesus describe it? Well, Matthew five lays out some of it in rapid succession. We went through this not long ago. Blessed are the poor, those who mourn the meek, merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and persecuted because of the kingdom of God. These are the people at the center of the kingdom of God.

[00:08:47.690] - Speaker 2

And some of these don't feel very therapeutic, does it? Bless it or the poor, the meek, persecuted? A peacemaker? Have you tried to make peace when things are going rough? That's not very fun, right? Was following Jesus going to be fun? Was it going to be easy? And would I find my full potential in doing that? No wonder many left Jesus, and they did. There's a number of times in Scripture where a bunch of people said, whoa, whoa, whoa. We thought following you was good. When you gave us a whole bunch of food and fish to eat, when you rose some people from the dead, when you walked on water, that was great. But now this is tough. And a number of times, the number of people left Jesus was not handing out what every person wanted. He was declaring that he was king, and that had implications for how this relationship would go. So people wanted to know, what did this king want from them? You see, they were used to kings that crushed down and that took away people's liberty. So the idea that Jesus would be king even for us today, we might be nervous about that, right?

[00:09:56.950] - Speaker 2

What if we give God our allegiance? I know what government people do. They tax us and take stuff from us. I want to be free. And Jesus says, Trust me. I'm the one that made you. I'm a good king. I'm a prince of peace. But yet we go our own way. So this happened in Matthew 22. Here's a picture of what this king wants from them. Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert of the law, tested him with the question. Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus replied, love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind. And this is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it love your neighbor as yourself. And all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. What did the king want? The King wanted his people to love. That's what he was interested in, to love. And who is worth loving? God and neighbour. And by how Jesus lived, it seemed that God might actually be next door. The focus of the love of God and neighbor was these people who were right in front of Jesus.

[00:11:14.920] - Speaker 2

You see, moralistic, therapeutic, deism, it feels a polar opposite to what Jesus next door is inviting us in to join him in doing, which is loving a real, actual neighbor. You cannot be good moralistic therapeutic deist and love your neighbor. Have you ever tried to love your neighbor? Anybody here giving it a solid effort and just kind of retreated back from it? I have. I'm the guy that's written, written books on this and I still go cause I got some real winners of neighbours, right? And they probably think the same about me too, right? Yeah, they do. Will you encounter a world of morally dubious people next door? If you are trying to maintain a certain moral standard and you encounter them in all their morally dubious lifestyles, you are going to have a hard time and you will reel back. You won't step in. Or if you are maybe somebody in your faith that you do things that only make you feel happy, but your neighbours do not make you feel happy and then God is inviting you to love them. That is a great challenge to your idea of living a therapeutic life, right?

[00:12:36.350] - Speaker 2

Loving God and loving neighbor. God is inviting us next door. So what do you do with this? Why would you love your neighbor? This is why I preach on love of neighbours so much. This is my great big secret. I'm going to reveal it to you. My big secret is I do not actually want you to be a really nice person who just is smiling all the time and waving nicely to your neighbours. And if we could only get a bunch of church people who are just waving nicely at their neighbours, we will somehow successfully be the people of God here. I think Jesus is doing something much more dramatic than that. He knows your neighbours will break your moralistic therapeutic deism because when you love your neighbour, you are going to encounter somebody that God is in the midst of working on and you're going to encounter somebody that God deeply loves. And when you encounter your neighbour in this way and if you stick with it a certain amount of time, you will suddenly see the face of God in a place that you did not think you could. Okay? The King wants his people to love neighbours.

[00:13:45.500] - Speaker 2

This is why I preach on it. You see? No preaching on being better, stronger, less sinful works. You cannot bootstrap yourself into morality. You can try. You can pretend to be moral for a while, but you cannot bootstrap yourself into it. Only the present love of the spirit for others growing in you to forgive and shape you will change you. I'll say that again. Only the present love of the spirit for others growing in you to forgive and shape you will change you. It's love that changes our moralism. It's love that changes how we act to each other and see in others somebody who is broken. No preaching about how to be happy and satisfied will work in you. I will not give you ten tips for how to be happier and more satisfied. And feel better. Only giving your life for others with Jesus will shape you into a person of joy and love and peace. Laying down your life for somebody that actually brings you peace. There's a veggietail song that my girls love, and it's I don't want to be happy. I want to have joy. And you're like, it's not happiness, it's joy.

[00:14:56.070] - Speaker 2

And that comes from loving people. Dad, that's what the veggietail song says. Thank you, my little preacher kid. And also no preaching of a Santa in the sky who has little claim on your life will help. You will not hear that from me. You need a saviour and a king and a brother and a friend in Jesus who actually knows how to live and live in you and with you. So when I say we need to love our neighbour, we are joining with all the saints throughout time who have actually decided to follow in the way of Jesus. This Jesus way is a way of sanctification. It actually changes us. You are made in the image of God, but you're also being made into the likeness of Christ. So you have an identity that you start with from the moment you're born. You are made in the image of God, but you're being made into the likeness of Christ. And he says, there's one way love God and love your neighbour. That's how you change. We love our way in this life and through this life. Love is the way. Love is a verb. It's an action.

[00:15:59.140] - Speaker 2

We do this like Jesus. I said before, it's not enough to believe in Jesus. We must also believe Jesus, that loving God and loving our neighbor is at the core of our faith and the core of our humanity. Following Jesus invites us to shift our allegiances and our ideologies and our divisions. It moves us from being a resident to a citizen and a neighbor. I got a quote here I want to put up. It says this no fight no fighting or bitterness you harbour today will change you or the world. Like following the Jesus way into the neighbourhood. Do you not like something around you? Being bitter and angry and stomping around is unbecoming of a follower of Jesus because it does not get us there. There is no pathway for it. I'm often tempted by people to say, Preston, don't you disagree with this. Join us in our stomping and our railing and our yelling and our wrath. And I sometimes when I pause and Jesus is like, I've not shown you a way to stomp in bitterness and wrasse. You do not have a way to do that. And I'm going to be out of my league if I join anybody here in stomping against some big problem going on in the world because I do not know how.

[00:17:14.300] - Speaker 2

My Master has not shown me. The only way he has shown me is to follow Jesus into my neighbourhood in love. You do not need to protect God or fight for Him. In fact, Jesus told his disciples, put away your swords. Instead, we love our neighbours, and a picture of a mustard seed replaces the sword. That's why in our logo that we have here for this, it's a mustard plant sprouting up, not swords. We'll go out with double wielding swords to help people meet Jesus. It's just not our way. We have no idea how. So this work takes time. It took Peter several years. Even after being with Jesus for three years, it took him years longer to get it. We get Jesus not by force of will, but by walking beside Him, doing what he asked. It takes time for the Jesus way to grow in us. I think that's why Jesus used metaphors of seeds, takes time. We're not going to get this quickly. We're going to experiment with loving our neighbours, and we're going to try it. We're going to be hurt a little bit. We're going to try it, and it's going to work out.

[00:18:20.410] - Speaker 2

We're going to try it again and again. It only grows in us when we do what Jesus said we were made to do. Let me say this. If you want to deconstruct your faith, as many of us are doing, trying to find an easy pathway through, trying to wonder if we can trust the Bible or we can trust God's Word, or we can trust Jesus. Let me offer this bit of advice, if I can. Don't burn down the house in an act of spiritual arson. Don't take your faith and put a lighter to it and say, I experienced something weird, or I see church people in some part of Texas doing something strange. If you're in a family, you'll see a lot of strange people doing a lot of strange things. If you're in this family, you'll see a lot of strange people doing things. You can start with your pastor first, right? But deconstruct your faith by doing it like Jesus did. You know how Jesus deconstructed his faith? He did it by giving up his life to God. So don't give up your faith. Give up your life. Walk with Jesus. He stepped into a world that was so religious, that was so morally superior, that was people who just wanted something from God instead of joining with God.

[00:19:35.140] - Speaker 2

And they thought God was at a great distance. He dealt with people who were moralistic, therapeutic, deists all day long. And what did he do? He laid down his life. If you want to try your faith, I would suggest laying down your life with Jesus, because he laid down his life for his friends. We begin with those beside us. How about we lay down our lives beside our neighbours and not worry about your moral superiority? Or maybe you lay down your life and not worry about your personal happiness. If your neighbours make you happy, or not. Maybe we will be the spark that lights the flame of love in your heart. And as you experiment bit by bit with loving your neighbours, maybe something will change in you. You see, Jesus is found in the complex, beautiful, interactive, weird, nerdy person next door. That's where God is found. Our whole faith and reason for being. The church is found there too. What are the mustard seed things that you can try this week to set aside our moralistic therapeutic diesel and take up the liberating life of Jesus? A life laid down for others. But how about this?

[00:20:47.330] - Speaker 2

Let's not worry about being right. Ours is not a faith of morality. Actually, it's right. Living is not manufactured. Are we going to live right? I sure hope so. But it's not in the way we think, right. Living is not manufactured. It is grown. Right. Living is grown in us. You cannot speed it. You cannot fake it. You must nurture it. And Jesus says, this is how go and love your neighbor. We cannot change our neighbours. We can only love them. Billy Graham's wife said, what is it like being married to Billy Graham? And she said, oh, I can't change, Billy. I can only love him. He was apparently quite stubborn. And all these sorts of things right. We cannot change, but we can love. How much should you love them? This much? This much? How much should you love your neighbor? What is the limit to the love where they disappoint you and you stop it? Well, love them as much as you love yourself. Jesus said that whatever extent of love you give to yourself, extend that to your neighbours also, and you'll go far. Don't worry about being happy. If you follow the Jesus way of love of God and neighbour, set that first you'll find happiness and much more.

[00:22:08.380] - Speaker 2

Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you. Jesus said that you don't know how to be happy. Seek whatever God is interested in doing. And last one, don't worry if Jesus is not seen. Sometimes we wonder where God is and if he listens and speaks to us. Well, I think God may be found in a stranger. We don't see God clearly from our safe vantage point. You, though, are held. Jesus is with you always to the end of the age. You know who said that? Jesus did. He said, Love others as you love yourself. Jesus said that? Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you. Jesus says that, and I'll be with you to the very end. Jesus said that? Let us join in loving our neighbours. We are involved in something much way better than we know when we do. Amen. Amen. God, please invite you to stand, friends. I'm excited to hear your stories of experimenting with loving neighbours in this good Canadian place. We have in the summer, it's too hot to be out loving our neighbours, so we stay inside.

[00:23:24.290] - Speaker 2

And then there's this in between time called mosquito season, where we can't love our neighbours because there's too, many mosquitoes, and then the snow comes, and so we can't love our neighbours then because it's too snowy. So there's about 18 hours in the whole year that we actually see our neighbours. So may you find those 18 hours of real joy as you go out and follow Jesus. Or in between, may you find ways, creative ways, over snow drifts, and whatever you do to find your neighbours, because I think, as we do, we will find Jesus there. So may Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you his peace as you go from here. Jesus, thank you for this day. Thank you for this community of faith. Thank you that you are inviting us into Jesus way, a deeper way, a better way. May we not be people who abide in the shallow waters of moralistic, therapeutic. Deism, you are so much closer and better than that offering will ever give us.

[00:24:22.260] - Speaker 2

Thank you for hot dogs. Many good things happen around hot dogs. So may this next little bit of time, as we eat together be a place where your spirits found and we meet each other again. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.