Confidence

Introduction- Carl

There is one scene that I’ve been thinking about when I was working on this sermon, from the movie Up.

When I’ve said that to folks this week, they’ve said “Oh no, please don’t do that to my emotions.”

Don’t worry, this isn’t the super sad scene.

<Play clip from Up>

Confidence is a good thing.

But misplaced confidence can be disastrous!

And so I have a question for us to ponder together:

Are we confident in what Jesus has done for us?

What is salvation?

Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf.

We know that God created a perfect world for us in the beginning.

Perfect in this instance meaning everything was exactly as God planned it to be.

This is why through the whole creation narrative God keeps saying “It’s good. It’s good. It’s good.”

And we know that God included in that way it should be that we shouldn’t eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.

The sin wasn’t so much that they ate the fruit.

It was that God told them not to, and they did it anyway.

Because of that, the world was no longer as it should be.

And the more and more and more we choose our own way over God’s way, the more we wandered away from God as our source of life.

In fact, the closer and closer we got to death.

It’s like the writer of the scriptures tells us: the wages of sin is death.

The longer and longer you walk that road, the less and less likely it is you will live.

Enter Jesus.

Because Jesus was God, everything Jesus did was exactly as God would have it.

So Paul was write in Corinthians when he said that Christ “Knew no sin.”

Because he knew no sin, Jesus did not need to die.

But chose to anyway on our behalf.

Jesus pays those wages of sin for us so that we don’t have to pay them ourselves.

There’s a simple version of this:

Heaven…

That because Jesus took care of the eternal death that would be the wages of sin, we will get to live forever with God in heaven.

And this is true!

It’s the truest thing out there!

Each of us, because of the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf, get to live in eternal relationship with God, Father Son and Spirit.

It’s true, it’s true, it’s true!

But not just heaven!

There is a version of this that treats Jesus like he’s just some kind of ticket to the afterlife.

Some kind of insurance policy against eternal damnation.

And…Jesus is much bigger than that, isn’t he?

As we continue to think about that movement we make away from God as the author life, we see that Jesus was interested in bringing us back closer to God’s gift of life here in this life as well, didn’t he?

Jesus talked about forgiveness, because forgiving those who have wronged us is actually life giving.

Jesus talked about generosity, because generosity is actually life giving.

Jesus talked about welcoming everybody because it turns out that when we offer folks a place to belong, it’s life giving for them and for us.

A new and living way.

There is a picture of salvation where Jesus is just a ticket in to the afterlife, and that’s true, but incomplete.

Instead, we as the church hold to a deeper salvation, one where our souls will indeed enjoy the eternal fellowship of the trinity, but one where we can start enjoying that in the here and now.

The writer of Hebrews calls this “a new and living way.”

A salvation that’s good for the next life, but also extremely good for today.

Because after all, this is the day the Lord has made.

Not the day to come.

The day we have now!

Can we be confident in that?

And if we are, what would that confidence look like?

Biblical scholars are not sure who wrote the letter to the Hebrews.

But whoever it was, she was brilliant!

It turns out in this passage, we get four markers of what it looks like to have confidence in the work of Christ on our behalf.

Four Marks Of Confidence:

A life lived in hope.

Hebrews 10:23 “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.”

Hope defined

I’ve used this definition of hope so many times that you might think I’m tired of using it.

But you’d be wrong!

Hope is a faithful confidence that God continues to author a story that moves us from vision to action.

This kind of hope is uniquely tied to this new and living way, isn’t it?

We have confidence that God’s story will end with our eternal salvation, endless communion with God.

We have confidence that that story includes the here and now.

And that story moves us from just vision, just sitting around and waiting for that future, to action, where we get our hands in the game and start bringing that future to fruition in the here and now.

We can talk a lot about what hope isn’t…

It’s not optimism, it’s not wishful thinking, it’s not naïve.

But instead today, I have been captivated by a story of hope that we’ve all been watching from a distance.

Hope we can see

Five of our guys went down to North Carolina to do a lot of things, but what they really wound up doing is delivering hope:

They went down there and told complete strangers that their story isn’t over yet.

They moved from vision to action, sometimes by moving bales of hay.

They got their hands dirty shoveling mud, and in so doing leaned in to that new and living way.

And I don’t tell you all that just to tell you that those five guys are awesome (they are).

But the one thing I heard when they came back was that we need to go back, and so we will.

So if you need a bit of hope in your bones, keep an eye out. There are many opportunities coming!

A life lived in community.

Hebrews 10:19 “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus,”

Adelphoi- Brothers and sisters.

This message from the author of Hebrews is meant for everyone.

There’s a version of this salvation we’re looking at today that claims to be an individual sport.

I’ve got a Bible.

I’ve got a prayer spot in my house.

I’ll show up to church every now and again, but I won’t really talk to or interact with anyone.

I’ve got me, and I’ve got Jesus, so I’ve got all I need.

And again, that might actually be “true.”

But it’s not super great.

And while there are plenty of people who think that organized religion is a detriment, I see things quite differently.

We need each other.

We can do more good together than we can alone.

Sarah and I have a few charities we give to on our own, a child we adopted through World Vision, little things like that.

And that’s all great, and we should all be doing our own individual charity and giving.

But this year’s mission budget here at Beulah is $62,000

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have that lying around in my couch cushions!

When we are charitable and generous on our own, that’s a good thing.

When we combine our efforts, when we work in community, that’s a great thing.

It shows a remarkable confidence in that new and living way to work together to change the world.

We can lean on each other when we lose some of that confidence.

Confidence is great, but even those who have the greatest confidence can lose it from time to time.

I’ve been biking for longer than I can imagine.

I’ve bombed down hills more frequently than I can remember.

I’ve done it thousands and thousands of times.

It’s really no big deal for me.

Every now and again though, that little thought creeps in my head.

You know, if you get a flat coming down this hill like this you’re going to crash.

And all of a sudden I hit the brakes a little bit!

Confidence can be shaky.

When we lose confidence in that new and living way, we can lean on each other.

When we lose sight of that story that God’s authoring, we can look to our brothers and sisters here in the community of Christ.

When we can’t feel that new and living way welling up inside of us, our brothers and sisters can share some of their life with us.

When we can’t carry the burdens of this daily life, it’s such a beautiful thing to see our church family come alongside each other can lift our burdens together.

A life lived in solidarity.

Hebrews 10:24–25 “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another,

Some word play- Provoke.

We’re on a pretty solid streak of “funny sounding Greek words…” so let’s keep the good times rolling!

paroxysmos

Stirring up, provoking, sharp disagreement.

It’s got a little bit of that feel of “I’m not touching you!” in the car, right?

Trying to provoke your sibling.

Which is kind of a negative word to throw in there, but…

Provoke to the good kind of culture.

We’re to paroxysmos each other to love and good deeds.

And this idea of good deeds combined with love, it sounds to me like we’re to provoke each other to a good kind of culture.

One that is beyond complaining.

Not here, but at other churches…

There’s a tendency to drift in to complaining.

And to be clear, my definition of what complaining is would be to name a problem you have no interest in solving.

It’s to keep bringing up something that feels wrong to you, but that someone else should fix.

At other churches…

To provoke the good kind of culture in the new and living way is to remind each other that if our hope moves us from vision to action, we shouldn’t complain.

We should ask how we can help.

We should see what we can do to make situations better.

We shouldn’t be focused on the negative around us, but rather on the positive.

When you’re confident in the salvation of Christ, you don’t need to live in a cycle of complaining.

But don’t worry, that’s only happening at other churches.

One that lives for encouragement.

Can I sneak another short video clip in?

Setting aside my utter disgust with the Penguins right now, this video clip is amazing to me.

You’re going to see it, but Geno misses a shot in a pretty important game.

Watch what Sid does when some of his teammates are giving Geno a hard time

<Play Sidney Crosby Video>

I think he knows!

Crosby in that moment has no interest in beating somebody up.

What he does instead is once again focus on the positive.

You’ll get another chance!

Let’s go!

And it turns out, not for nothing, we won the cup that night.

What if we as teammates for each other, confident in Christ’s saving work, were able to provoke each other to this kind of encouragement?

When someone fails, we don’t need to chirp them. I think they know.

What if we provoked encouragement? Get em next time.

When someone lets us down, we don’t need to keep them in the penalty box.

We offer forgiveness and provoke each other to do better.

We can provoke each other to that kind of culture only when we actually have confidence in the salvation Christ offers.

Other cultures, they can be good.

But that new and living way is really the only one worth standing on.

A life lived with urgency.

Hebrews 10:25 “and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

When the Penguins are at their worst, and that’s a lot…

One of the things you’ll hear is that they’re not playing with a sense of urgency.

I’ve begun to wonder if we as Christians in the 21st Century have kind of lost our sense of urgency.

Worth mentioning that there are two different kinds of urgency here.

An urgency for eternal salvation.

Some flavors of Christian read this text as saying that we need to be urgent in our sharing of the Gospel.

That we need to make sure those who don’t know Christ come to know him.

That we don’t know when any of us are going to pass on from this life.

That we worry about our friends and neighbors.

And yes, folks should know about Jesus, and we want folks to experience the kind of eternal salvation that we are all confident in.

But there’s another kind of urgency which the church should pick up.

An urgency for the new and living way.

There is an urgent need in the culture in which we find ourselves for saints who are confident in the salvation of Christ.

There is an urgent need for those of us who live in hope, who live with the understanding that God is authoring a story, and inviting us to play a part in it.

There is an urgent need for community in this world, where folks who might disagree on everything else can come together and be united in our love for Christ.

There is an urgent need for us to provoke each other in this culture to love and good deeds, to stand in solidarity to create a culture where we’re less about complaining and vitriol and anger, but more interested in love and acceptance and grace.

We can’t stand on false confidences to get this done.

We will never stand on hope if our confidence is in someone else to write our story for us.

We will never stand in community if our confidence is in ourselves and our own abilities.

We will never stand in solidarity of culture if our confidence is in our chosen media source, or politician, or ideology.

Instead, we stand in the confidence of Jesus Christ.

We stand in the confidence that he saves both our eternal soul, and our waking lives.

We stand in the confidence that God welcomes us into communion with the Trinity in everlasting life.

We stand in the confidence that for all the more loudly the world screams it’s anger, Christ proclaims a new and living way.

And we stand in confidence that God loves us enough that we can share that love with others.

There’s an urgency to share that kind of love. So, if you’ve got some confidence in Christ’s call for us…