Reset Button - Gods of the No Testament - Week 2

Good evening ladies and gentlemen of the the internet!

My name is Charlie Kae and I’m the lead pastor at Grace Empire in Wesley Chapel, Florida and I would like to welcome everyone to Grace Empire online.

Our vision is help restore hurt people through an intimate relationship with Jesus X.

Everyone is welcome at Grace Empire, but if you were to ask us what our focus is, we started Grace Empire to reach the non-affiliated, gnostics, and non-believers. If you or someone you know has been hurt by religion or has been burned out by doing church, Grace Empire fits a unique role for those that are looking to reengage their faith or find an accepting community.

As a church, we try to keep Jesus at the center of everything we do, so we are praying that you encounter and experience our living God tonight.

We love interaction. So feel free to comment, ask questions, and ask for prayer while you’re watching and the admins will address them ASAP. If you have a prayer that is more personal in nature, you can email us at [e-mail] and our prayer team will begin praying for you immediately.

But before we continue, our online disclaimer.

Grace Empire Online focus on giving you sermons - so without a doubt - this is an incomplete version of church.

As we move forward with this online church thing, I wanted to urge you and remind you that online church should never replace the community you get from your local church.

We love and are so very honored that you tuned in with us today and by no means am I saying this to guilt trip you, hurt you or make you feel inadequate in anyway. We know everyone is on a different journey with God and the fact that some of you are watching is a huge step and I applaud you for that.

At Grace Empire, our goal is to keep Jesus at the center of everything we do and a big part of that is understanding our place within the church. It’s not just that you need people (which you do); but it’s that people need you.

But as I said, the online church is an incomplete version of what God intended the church to be. The local church also gives you a place to:

Worship / Praise / Sing

Met with other believers in Fellowship and discipleship

To serve our community through social action

Fulfill the Sacraments of the church - Which for us is baptism and communion.

And lastly, gives our tithes and offering

At GXE we teach that we give to give, not give to get. We give our tithes and offerings because we are thankful to God for providing for our needs. It is also to acknowledge that we live, work, and are sustained because He allows us to be. And because of the advancements in technology giving is an easy one.

You can give online through our website www.graceempire.com, or via text by texting the words GraceEmpire to the number 77977 and then follow the link texted to you.

You can either do that now, or at the end of the message.

Alright with all that out the way…lets get to Jesus shall we?

Pray

We are in week 2 of our brand new series titled Reset Button where we recalibrate or reset what we think we know about religion and Christianity.

We opened the conversation last week by identifying a group of people that believe in God but do not connect faith and church together. We call these people the Nones.

The nones would say:

We aren’t hostile towards religion, we’re just not affiliated with it.

This leads them to a new question, “do we need God anymore?” And as they wrestle with this question, many are deconverting from Christianity as they deconstruct their faith.

As I listen and research deconversion stories, I have found that many of those stories share a similar thread that can be broken into two main categories.

The first is a “somebody told me so Jesus.” If you have ever wondered why your good god didn’t protect you from something bad happening and that made you question your faith in him, you would be in this category. If you have ever wondered why god didn’t answer your prayers in a quick and timely manner, and thus you have surmised that god probably isn’t even listening, than you might fall into this category.

Or maybe you fall into the second category; the bible-tells-me-so-god. The bible-tells me-so-god sounds like this: you went off to college and learned all sorts of interesting things about the universe, about science, about other religions and the things that you learned began to grind on the faith of your childhood, and you needed answers so you went back to your home church and/or your childhood pastor and they told you anything that contradicts the bible is false and when you asked, “but how can this be?” You were told to stop doubting and believe because the bible tells us so. That didn’t sit well with you and your faith house began to come tumbling down.

If either of these categories resonated with you, great, because we are going to be talking about that for the next 2 weeks. Today we will focus on category 1, the “somebody told me so Jesus.”

But before we begin to unpack that, lets play a little game as a way of prefacing the idea for today. The game is called 2 Lies and a Truth.

Game: 2 Lies and a Truth - 6 through 10

And just like the game, finding the truth about Jesus can feel confusing sometimes. Sometimes the things that seem obviously true about Jesus just so happen to be false. As Christians we collect lots of erroneous ideas and spiritual platitudes and it’s important to go through them once in a while, remove the thoughts that are false, and hold on to the ones that are true.

Why are we talking about this?

Because you can exist as a Christian, go to church, have Christian friends and listen to Christian podcasts and listen to Christian radio, but still loss sight of the real Jesus.

Matthew 7:21–23 NIV84

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

Expectation Betrayal - Judas Iscariot

Judas Iscariot is infamously known as the disciple that betrayed Jesus, which lead to Jesus arrest, which ultimately lead to his crucifixion.

After Jesus triumphant entry into Jerusalem, Judas betrays Jesus to the religious leaders of this time for 30 pieces of silver ($600). Jesus is then sentenced to death and Judas out of guilt (we presume), decides to commit suicide by hanging himself.

But why would he do that? Why betray someone only to be feel the burden of it? Why would Judas Iscariot do that?

Scholars believe that Judas didn’t betray Jesus for the money, or because he thought Jesus a fraud but because he believed Jesus would be the next freedom fighter to deliver the Israelites from the religious tyranny of the Roman Empire.

Judas wanted to force Jesus hand to act, to become the person that Judas believed Jesus was or be the person Judas wanted Jesus to be.

See Judas wanted Jesus to be the version Judas saw Jesus to be. This ever happen to you? Maybe it was your mother or father, that put pressure on you to be the person THEY wanted you to be rather then let you be the person that you are. Maybe it was an ex-girlfriend or boyfriend. Maybe it was an ex-spouse that tried to change you into the person they wanted you to be rather than just love you for who you are.

Some of ya’ll are like going through PTSD right now. I’m sorry to trigger you. LOL

Scholars believe that is what Judas did. Judas Iscariot wanted Jesus to be as he wanted him to be, not as Jesus really was.

We need to be mindful that we do not do the same when it comes to Jesus because we have inadvertently been expecting Jesus to act and behave a certain way and because he has not met our expectations, we feel hurt and betrayed. And that may have lead you to walk away from God and as we said last week, to move away from something always moves you to something else.

And that’s my agenda tonight. My agenda is to dispel some false ideas of Jesus and to correct six erroneous ideas about Jesus that we may have picked up along the way. And if any of these six ideas were a reason that you left faith, than maybe you left faith unnecessarily.

So let’s dive right into it.

1. Bodyguard God

I call number 1 the bodyguard God. In this view of God, God is supposed to protect you from all pain and harm. Many, many Christians end up leaving the faith because they see so much hurt and pain in the world. The pain and the evil that some have to endure and the fact that God is all good, all powerful, and all present, don’t work well together.

This is the standard problem of evil argument. How could a good God allow bad things to happen? If you have ever thought, why isn’t God protecting me? Why would God allow this terrible thing to happen to me? And since this terrible thing happened to me, God must not love me, he must not care for me, or he must not exist.

But this problem assumes a position that just isn’t true.

#Myth 1 - Nobody has ever made the argument FOR/PRO the existence of God…by saying that: a good God would not allow bad things to happen to good people. And since bad things NEVER happen to good people, there must be a good God.

No one has ever made an argument for God from this position. Why? Because we know it simply isn’t true. Bad things happen to good people and bad people.

So if we know that is true, then why do we hold onto this idea that God should not allow bad things to ever happen to me. Who told us this? Who told us that bad things never happen? Who told us that because Jesus was in our lives, that we would never face anything hard, tragic, or sad? Who told us that because God doesn’t function as a perfect bodyguard, we needed to fire Him from that job?

I mean think about it, Christianity begins with a very bad thing, happening to a very good person (Jesus).

If at any point in Christianity, if Christianity had taught that bad things never happen to good people than Christianity would never have made it out of the first century.

Because all the heroes of the Christian faith were treated horribly by the first century romans.

1 Peter 4:12–13 NIV84

12 Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. 13 But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.

If you lost faith in the bodyguard god, if you gave up on faith because something terrible happened to you, I empathize with you and agree that that sucks. My heart bleeds for you. But what I want you to know is that, I’m glad you lost faith in the bodyguard god, because the bodyguard Jesus, is not the Jesus of the Scriptures. The God of the New Testament let us know that we will face hardships and trials. Being a Christian does not remove difficulty in our lives, matter of fact, it’s quite the opposite. Being a believer will come with it’s own challenges and adversities, but, and it’s a big but, God will be with us through it all.

2. On Demand God

Number 2 is what we call the On Demand God. On Demand God is the god that responds to fair and selfless requests the way we would.

I mean, I would do it for them if I could.

Look, God…I’m not asking you to change the world, Im just asking you for a raise. I have worked hard and I have been with the company for years, I think I deserve a raise.

Unfortunately this isn’t how it works right? We ask for a sign and we see nothing. We ask for an answer and you hear nothing. You ask for a miracle and you get nothing.

The belief in the On Demand God is so dangerous because if we beleive in the on demand god, we can walk away with spiritual elitism, (I have all these worldly blessings because God sees that I am a good person) or a sense of spiritual abandonment (God never answers my prayers because I must be a real piece of work.)

But where did you get this notion from. Who told you that our God behaves this way? Who told you that God always answer the way you expect? Or that God is under some obligation to give you, or respond to you, or answer you the way you expect.

That god doesn’t exist. And in a lot of ways, I’m glad He doesn’t exist that way.

James 4:2–3 NIV84

2 You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

You know frankly, Im glad God didn’t give me everything I asked for…I’d be married to a different woman, and you all know Amy is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I’d be a wreck without her. And I’d be a zoologist. And I hate being outside.

3. Boyfriend God

Boyfriend god is the god that you always feel his presence. You always feel like you are being hugged in prayer. You are always one step from crying because God is about to tell you He loves you again. To be fair, boyfriend god is necessary sometimes, but it’s when you get to depend on feeling god’s presence to know he loves you, that is when it becomes a problem.

This is the story for a lot of Christians, especially those that converted to Christianity under a hyperspiritual experience. They had a radical occurence and felt this intense supernatural phenomenon. They didn’t just learn about God, they felt Him and that powerful encounter is the reason they are Christian today. I also had an experience like that. I have had quite a few experiences like that actually. And to tell you the truth, they were all incredible and I can’t wait for my next one.

But for a lot of people something starts to happen. As they get older, they stop sensing his presence. They LONG to feel something that resembles spirituality. So they read the bible, they pray, they try and have spiritual conversations, but they just don’t feel anything anymore.

And because you don’t feel anything…God must not exist.

But again, who told you that is how this works? That being a Christian means that we would “feel” God in every season of our lives?

The bible doesn’t say that.

Psalm 13 NIV84

For the director of music. A psalm of David. 1 How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? 2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? 3 Look on me and answer, O Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death; 4 my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall. 5 But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. 6 I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.

Think about this. Just cause you don’t feel God, doesn’t mean He’s not there. Just cause you don’t feel God, doesn’t mean that He isn’t constant in your life. Did you know you are least aware of things that are most constant?

How often have you said to your spouse, “isn’t the temperature just perfect right now?” You never say that. The only time you notice the thermostat is when someone has turned it up or turned it down without your permission, right?

I know what it feels like to WANT to feel God’s presence. I definitely echo the words of the psalmist when he says, “how long O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” I know those feelings well and there are seasons that go by where I don’t feel his presence, sometimes those seasons go on for years. Trust me. I’ve been there. When you go that long without feeling God’s presence your soul feels like an arid desert, but just cause I feel that way, doesn’t mean he isn’t with me. The psalmist closes Psalm 13 by saying, “but I trust in your unfailing love…” and how does he express this trust? “I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.” The psalmist feels abandoned, but holds on to truth and fights those feelings of abandonment by singing what his head tells him is true. God’s love does not fail. My salvation is assured. The Lord is with me and he is good to me.

4. The Anti-Science God

This is something the church has done a horrible job with.

This is the god where you are forced to choose between undeniable science and unreliable religion. This is the tension we live with.

Because science is always progressing. The things that we cannot explain are getting smaller everyday.

But religion is unreliable. Religion is always changing…religion causes so many problems in the world. And maybe you were told “stop asking questions. Stop doubting. Just believe.” And now they are asking you to choose between undeniable science and an unreliable God? And you could not continue to pretend, defend, and live with your eyes closed. So you HAD to walk away from God. If they were asking you to choose between undeniable science and unreliable religion, then how could you choose anything else?

But who told you that you had to choose? Why do so many people think that faith and science are mutually exclusive? Where did we even get that notion? Is God Anti-Science? No. Of course not.

If you where told that religion is based on just belief or that Christianity is based on just believing, that is just not true.

And if you turned away from God because you stopped believing in a just believe god…good. Cause that God never existed to begin with.

We become Christians through faith, but we are not Christian because we just believe things.

God vs Science is not a decision you have to make. That is a false alternative.

Let me give you an illustration.

Vesper’s stomach illness - When was about 4...

If they had came back to me and said, “we looked at all the results and we believe that God wants you to just pray about it...” I would have punched them in the face. I wanted science to tell me what was wrong with my daughter.

We cannot lean into science for our health and decide we want to reject everything else that science teaches us too.

And if ever you left the faith or have begun to move away from faith because someone told you that science and God could not coexist, I am so sorry cause that just isn’t true.

5. Gap God

Gap god is the god that conveniently shows up when we can’t explain something.

If we are not careful our entire faith begins to rest on the god who shows as an explanation for the unexplainable.

I was driving around and prayed that God would give me a parking spot and BAM! A spot opened right in front of my favorite Starbucks.

And in the end this doesn’t increase our faith, it actually undermines it. Why? Because the list of things we can’t explain is getting smaller. The list of things we can explain is getting longer. Don’t you wish that someday science will be able to cure EVERY disease?

So if you stopped believing in God because someone presented you with gap god…good. Because that god doesn’t exist either.

If you were introduced to a god could only exist in the mysteries of life or the unexplainable of this world then that’s a problem. Because unexplainable today, can be explainable tomorrow.

Unexplainable is not evidence for the existence of God. Unexplainable in most cases, is evidence of our ignorance.

The notion that “well, if we can explain everything, that would unmake God,” is ludicrous. No it won’t. Because God will always be God.

Matter of fact, if you believe as I do that God created everything in the world. If Genesis happened, whether you believe it literally or figuratively, that God was the creator of time, space, and matter…and we believe what science tells us that it all began with a singularity…and through that singularity all time, space, and matter begin to exist. And through this singularity we have the reality of physics, mathematics, biology, and chemistry.

And what it says in Genesis is fascinating, because it says after he did all this on the 7th day he rested…and if you believe this…what would we expect to find in the universe?

A predictable, stable, explainable universe.

Matter of fact, historically it is Christians that launched the modern science movement, because Christians believed that God stopped creating. And because creation was organized, Christians believed we could study it, that they would be repeating patterns that could be analyzed and predicted. And every discovery of the world is a study of How God did it.

6. Guilt God

Guilt god is the god we run from the quickest, but can’t seem to escape. This is the God that most adults can’t get over even though they hate it. Guilt god is incredibly problematic, especially for those that grew up under a strict religious system.

This is the reason that many people can’t seem to escape the duty and legalism of religion, even when everything in them is screaming for something different.

This is the God that if anything seems pleasurable or fun, the answer is automatically no. Guilt god is the reason that I used to never wear hats in church. Guilt god is why I never went to prom. Guilt god is why many of us are so judgmental.

Guilt god is no fun and Guilt god is always judging you.

Guilt god loves you, but this god does not like you.

But who told you that Jesus is like that? Who told you because of your sin that you have to live in perpetual guilt all the time?

Guys, I know how hard this is because as a pastor, as a christian, I struggle with this concept daily. Because my guilt stems from a good place. I feel guilty that I am not doing enough for God. I feel guilty that Im not a better son to the Lord.

I say, “If only I could read the bible more. If only I could love Jesus better. If only I could just stop screwing up!”

And my intentions are good, BUT when those intentions, that desire to do good, begins to cripple and distort my true understanding of God, then that conviction transforms into an ugly, three headed monster, called guilt. And once that monster raises it’s ugly head, it’s really hard to get rid off.

And the thing about guilt…if guilt is left unchecked for too long, the line between guilt and conviction becomes so blurry that we can no longer recognize who God really is, what He has done for us, and who he wants us to be.

We lose sight of Him and thus lose sight of who we are.

There was a reason that Christ hung on a cross and screamed out with his last breathe, “it is finished!” (John 19:30)

There was a reason that Paul the apostle penned “that there is now no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)

The writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 10:11-12,

Hebrews 10:11–12 NIV84

11 Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.

Here the writer is talking about how before Jesus, we had to come to the temple and offer the same sacrifices for sins because we were always sinning, always guilty, but after Jesus, after Jesus offered himself as the ultimate sacrifice for ALL OUR SINS that there was no more work to be done, no more guilt to be had, because ALL sins were forgiven, thus making all guilt removed. That is why it says that Jesus SAT DOWN as sign that his work was finished. He sat down as a symbol to all humanity, ALL sins are forgiven. All guilt was removed.

If listening to this sermon has helped you realize that you have been loving or following a false version of Jesus, a version of Jesus of our own making, our own erroneous expectations, then it’s a good time to hit that reset button.

We want to love Jesus as HE says he is, not how we want him to be. If we have left faith or have stumbled in our walk because we expected God to protect us from all harm, if we have left God because he didn’t answer our prayers in the way that we thought he should, if we stepped away from faith because we put more stock in our feelings of God rather than trusting his word that he is with us, if we have stopped believing because someone told us it was either science or faith, or to stop asking questions and just believe in the mystery of God, or maybe we walked away from church because we no longer could handle the guilt of religion. We wanted to be free from it. We wanted to run away from it. Let me tell you, if you have left faith for any of these religions, than good, because that god is not the God of the bible.

The Jesus that we serve has let us know that life is going to be hard, that harm will come our way. That pain is an unavoidable part of life. The Jesus that we serve isn’t a genie that grants our wishes or a Santa Claus that rewards the good and punishes the bad. His goodness and salvation is constant. The Jesus of the bible builds our faith on his word and through his Holy Spirit. Feelings play a portion of that intimate relationship, not all. The Jesus that we call Lord is Lord over all the earth, and that includes the predictable, stable, explainable universe that he created. And that universe can be measured with science. And the Jesus of the Scriptures tells us he died to save us from all sin, past, present, and future, and because he has already paid for the sins that we WILL commit, Jesus says we can come to him with no condemnation. We can stand before God, guilt free, guiltless. That is the Jesus that I want you to know and that is the Jesus I want to reintroduce you too.

If you have left faith because of the Bodyguard God, On Demand God, Boyfriend God, Anti Science God, The Gap God, and or the Guilt God, I urge you to come back and reengage your faith again. If you have listened and realize that there are expectations you are putting on Jesus that Jesus’ never claimed he would do, maybe it’s time to let those go and begin learning about who the real Jesus is, but this I know for certain, you will not be disappointed.