Fill 'er Up
Notes
Transcript
Fill ‘er Up!
Fill ‘er Up!
When you were 16, what did gas cost?
For me it was .55
Do you remember gas prices in the 60s when there was a price war?
.19, .15, .22?
And, what did you get for that?
Pull into a gas station, drive over the black hose that made the bell ring.
When the attendant would come out, and my g-father would say, “fill ‘er up, and he’d pump your gas, check your oil, tires, and clean your windshield for that price.
Now, for $2. whatever you get to do all that yourself.
We pay the price b/c we need the gas. Fair? Well, the market or gov’t regulation sets the price and we pay it. To the bsns owner, yes.
Swipe your card, get your gas.
We have this innate sense of fairness, things need t/b fair.
And, this is the time of year we have to make sure things are filled up.
Cars, b/c when it gets into the teens gas lines can freeze when the tank is low.
Propane to heat your house.
Or, wood pile or wood pellet pile is filled up.
LIfe-threatening stuff.
Snow blower tank and gas can. Or, whatever you use to remove the snow.
Might be you stomach.
Make sure your pantry stays full
Sara’s been doing lots of canning and shopping.
The power will go out this winter and we have t/b prepared.
Some of this is convenience, some is a real life or death stuff. We have t/b prepared by having these things filled up.
If these things are empty bad things can happen.
Whether you think the price is fair or not, it is fair that we swipe our card, pay the price, and get the goods.
Relationally, w/ ppl, things work a little differently.
Emotionally, we can be just as empty as our gas tank. The needle is pointing at the ‘E’.
This season that we are in we have experienced more emptiness for a longer time than at any other time in our lives.
We have all the normal stuff going on.
For us, we’re dealing w/ the situ w/ Sara’s parents.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Many of you have had similar situs, families go thru this.
But, there is so much more going on that is emptying us out.
The fear and the unknown about the virus.
Fear of the unknown emptying. Anxiety.
These emotions burn up our reserves.
Will I get it and how bad?
Will someone I care about get it and will it be bad?
The country is divided. There are political things we just can’t talk about w/ ppl we don’t agree w/.
The convo gets emotional quickly w/ no resolution in sight and it’s draining.
Even w/ ppl who agree, there is no national resolution in sight.
Conflict, disunity, discord burn up our emotional reservres.
So now, empty ppl, we have to socially separate. This is a recipe for disaster.
That’s not how we get filled up by being apart.
Zoom is just as affective in filling our emotional tank as it is our car’s gas tank.
One local PHX news station did a story one night this week about the dramatic growth of online dating.
Not just for young adults any more.
PPL looking for some social interaction.
But, what we’re discovering is it does little or nothing to refill our emotional reserves to be talking to a 2-dimensional picture on our computers or phones.
We leave the meeting emptier than before we started and craving more.
We need the contact and interaction. These are req’d to refill us.
But, it’s not just contact and interaction that refills our emotional tanks, there are some specific things that need to happen.
When we’re emotionally empty, if we get together w/ someone for the sole purpose of getting something from them, it won’t work.
God wired us. And, whether a person believes in God or not, psychologists and sociologists have said over and over that if your priority in a relationship is to get something, then the only thing you are going to get is disappointed and disillusioned.
Relationships don’t work this way.
Just like our propane tank or our stomach, when we are emotionally empty bad things can happen.
But, we can’t fill our own emotional tank ourselves.
We can’t make others fill it, either.
We have to work together in community, in a family, to keep each other emotionally healthy.
In just about everything else, we have to give something in order to get something.
Swipe your card, get your gas.
If you don’t swipe your card, you don’t get your gas.
You’re not going to swipe your card if you’re not going to get your gas.
We don’t make donations to gas stations.
But, relationally and emotionally, we cannot give for the purpose of getting in return. That’s manipulation.
It may work in business and politics.
But it doesn’t work in relationships.
Using ppl drains you.
We need to get something from them. But, we can’t use them, manipulate them, or make them give us what we need.
When we are emotionally empty, We can’t give in order to get. If we do then the only thing we are going to get is disappointed and disillusioned.
In the one we think is responsible for not giving us what we want.
Marriages, families, businesses break up over this.
If we give just to give, expecting nothing in return, then we will get an abundance back.
One of the few things in life that works this way.
This is where John takes us next in his letter b/c this is the way it works w/ God, too.
If you are giving something to God (check in the offering plate, church attendance, reading your bible, etc) for the purpose of getting something from God then it’s not going to work.
If you will give to God what He wants from you w/out expecting anything in return you will get what you want from Him.
But, if you give expecting to get, all you are going to get is disappointed and disillusioned in Him.
You may be here this morning and running on empty. But, if you give to God out of your emptiness expecting nothing in return He will fill you abundantly.
God did that for Jesus and He’ll do it for you.
So, we’re running low, even on empty w/ nothing in our emotional tank. It feels like we could cry w/ little effort.
What do we do?
First, John talks about what not to do.
A little about what to do, but mostly what not to do
Don’t Give Like Cain
Don’t Give Like Cain
For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.
Love ea other has been the message from the beginning. From the beginning of time, beginning of creation, and the beginning of their faith when they first accepted Christ as Savior.
Talking about love, all the guys tend to check out. This ooey, gooey feeling is for women.
Here’s the deal guys; love is more about what you give, why you give, and what you get than it is about how you feel.
And, guys, we’re empty, too.
In Genesis, Cain and Abel, the first 2 sons of Adam and Even each brought an offering to God, like dropping a check in the plate.
The fruit of their labor.
Abel was a shepherd. Cain a farmer.
Abel brought an animal.
Cain brought produce.
God accepted Abel’s offering but rejected Cain’s.
There was nothing wrong with the amount or the content or the offering at all.
The problem was w/ Cain’s heart, his motivation.
Abel was righteous. That means he had a good rel w/ God. Cain did not.
As a result of Abel’s relationship w/ God, he would have exhibited much of the same fruit that we can when we are close to God.
Peace, joy, patience, self-control, wisdom, power, etc.
Cain was jealous of the relationship Abel had that he didn’t and envious of the fruit Abel had that he didn’t.
Cain gave his offering to God hoping to get what Abel had.
Abel gave his offering just b/c he loved God, expecting nothing in return.
Cain couldn’t get what Abel had by giving what he gave.
So, he thought, by taking Abel out he’d get what he wanted b/c Abel wouldn’t be there in his way.
You can’t give something to God in order to get something from Him.
Cain was emotionally and spiritually empty wanting to be filled up.
B/C Cain was empty, he made a horrible decision that led to a horrible action.
He killed his brother.
Rather than going about getting what Abel had the right way and rising up to his level of righteousness, he brought Abel down to his level of pain and emptiness, or so he thought.
Abel went to heaven. Cain struggled in life.
There are ppl around you who will look at you and see the fruit you have b/c of the rel you have w/ God.
Same; peace, joy, patience, self-control, wisdom, power, etc.
There are ppl around us right here in MP who are empty and want to be fulfilled just like those of us who know Jesus and are close to Him.
They want what you have w/out the relationship w/ God.
And, it’s only getting worse.
The harder this season gets, the more intense all this will be.
The virus is not going away any time soon. In fact, it’s making a pretty big comeback.
Our friend who is a PA in an ER in Midland, TX says there are more COVID patients in their hospital than there ever has been before.
It was bad in the spring, it’s getting bad again.
Here we go.
The stress, the fear, the grief the anxiety are going to empty us even more.
Where are you going to go, what are you going to do to get filled up. B/C, empty ppl tend to make bad decisions.
Even Christians who are empty.
We can be like Cain even if we are saved, but not abiding close to Christ.
John says, no murderer has eternal life residing in him.
Same language as the vine and the branches. Residing in, Remaining close to. Living in.
W/out a good connection to the vine we don’t get all that’s available for us to get and we empty ourselves out.
Empty ppl make bad decisions and do bad things even if sometimes they are saved ppl.
David did this. He was in the wrong place relative to his army and in the wrong place relative to God. He should have been closer to both.
But, since he wasn’t, in that moment he was more like Cain, than he was like Abel.
How can we live our lives and not be like Cain? How can we avoid the bad actions that Cain is known for?
His actions were born of his emptiness. How can we remain filled up and do better?
Don’t live like Cain, live like Jesus.
How’s that?
Live like Jesus and give like Jesus.
Give Like Jesus
Give Like Jesus
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
He started out in v.11, you’ve heard this from the beginning, love each other.
Love is more about what we do than what we feel and say.
Do not act like Cain. But, like Jesus. This is how we know what love is.
Like John, Paul wrote in Philippians to do what Jesus did for each other.
What did Jesus do?
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,
There was nothing that Jesus did that was for his benefit. Beginning leaving heaven in the first place.
Do nothing out of selfishness. Don’t do anything for the purpose of, or expecting to get anything for yourself.
Like Jesus’s death on the cross was good for Him.
Don’t use ppl for your own benefit.
Don’t manipulate them to get what you want out of them.
Be humble. Value them and what they want above what you want.
IOW, give them what they want w/out expecting back what you want. Just do that.
If we all do that, then everybody gets what they want b/c everybody else is doing it for us.
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
Jesus did not use His position for his own advantage.
If anybody had an advantageous position to use it was Jesus.
He could drop names w/ anybody.
I was hanging w/ Habakkuk the other day...
I don’t even know if this is possible for a politician. I would hope so. But, it would challenge the most spiritually mature member of congress to not use his position for his own advantage.
Whatever position you have, as a parent, grandparent, member of a board here in this community, as a friend, elder, pastor, member of this church, etc.
Whatever positions you occupy, do not use them for your advantage, use them for the advantage of those you serve.
Don’t serve in public office or in private ministry to get what you want from the ppl you serve.
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
Jesus emptied Himself. He showed up empty. He was full of God in heaven, fully God on earth, but empty as He got started.
He gave it all up to come to earth.
He started empty so by the time He was finished he was on fumes. Then gave what little he had left and spent them on us.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
He died a horrible, painful, cursed death.
There was nothing in this experience for Him.
He did it for you and me, expecting nothing in return.
He did it for His Father b/c He loved Him, and us.
He expected nothing, then got everything.
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
He became the most authoritative, most powerful, most deserving of respect and reverence, in Creation and He got us.
He gave everything to God even when he had so little left in His tank to give and in return He got an abundance.
Cain was empty and tried to take what he could from Abel and gave what he thought he could give to get what he thought he wanted from God.
And he lost everything.
Jesus was empty. And, he gave God what little he had left expecting nothing in return and got everything.
If you are sitting here this morning and you are empty, in that sense you are just like Cain and Jesus.
But, if you want to leave here filled up, don’t do what Cain did, do what Jesus.
Empty ppl can make bad decisions.
Make a good decision right now, and every day after.
How?
With what little emotional strength you have left, give it to God.
As you sing w/ Linda, mean what the words mean as they roll off your lips.
Surrender your life, give it up.
Stop making to getting your priority. Start emphasizing giving. .
If you will give to God what He wants from you w/out expecting anything in return you will get what you want from Him.
But, if you give expecting to get, all you are going to get is disappointed and disillusioned in Him.
If you walk in here on Sundays and you are empty, trust me, you are not alone. We all feel it.
We’re not the first generation to feel so empty. We won’t be the last. This is not the first pandemic man has faced.
The c.1 church was forced to run for their lives. Many didn’t survive Nero’s pursuit for his own pleasure.
The fear of the unknown, grief, anxiety, everything was turned upside down and everyone was emptied out.
That’s about where we are right now.
Applications
Applications
Don’t wait till Sunday
Don’t wait till Sunday
Alter your expectations
Alter your expectations
Give whatever you have left
Give whatever you have left
If you will give to God what He wants from you w/out expecting anything in return you will get what you want from Him.
But, if you give expecting to get, all you are going to get is disappointed and disillusioned in Him.