WEBVTT 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:19.000 We say all the time, growth happens in the questions, I want that to be who we are. 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:30.240 What I'm about to tell you today, I think he's going to reframe not just how you think 00:00:30.240 --> 00:00:34.000 about sin, but how you think about yourself. 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:40.600 And some of you have heard this a little bit of this, but I think it's going to help us 00:00:40.600 --> 00:00:41.600 change some of that mindset. 00:00:41.600 --> 00:00:46.960 How you think about God's posture towards you, how you understand what Jesus was actually 00:00:46.960 --> 00:00:50.800 doing every time he walked into a room with a broken person? 00:00:50.800 --> 00:00:55.160 All right, so let's go, here we go. 00:00:55.160 --> 00:01:03.880 I cut this down, usually my sermons are a 15 page paper, literally. 00:01:03.880 --> 00:01:07.520 This one's 11, so we'll see what we can do. 00:01:07.520 --> 00:01:24.440 It's 11 whole pages guys, single spaced 12 point font, so we're in, it's Georgia for 00:01:24.440 --> 00:01:28.440 some reason had just the default of this. 00:01:28.440 --> 00:01:31.080 All right, here we go, here we go, huh? 00:01:31.080 --> 00:01:41.940 Yeah, it was for me, it was for, yeah, for those who don't know, Georgia be a young woman 00:01:41.940 --> 00:01:50.000 softball this week in the SEC tournament and Nate waited a couple hours and then he text 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:51.000 me. 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:52.000 Did they lose to Texas? 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:53.000 Yeah. 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:59.200 Then they lost to tech, Georgia lost to Texas, so, has somebody won the SEC, I stopped watching 00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:00.200 Alabama one. 00:02:00.200 --> 00:02:06.000 The Texas didn't win either, oh well, all right, here we go, we got a lot, guys, it's 00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:09.240 11 pages, single spaced, all right. 00:02:09.240 --> 00:02:15.840 Quick catch up for anyone who is just joining us for the past four weeks, we've been tracing 00:02:15.840 --> 00:02:19.800 where our picture of God came from. 00:02:19.800 --> 00:02:25.680 We landed last week naming this framework, most of us grew up in, penal substitutionary 00:02:25.680 --> 00:02:26.680 atonement. 00:02:26.680 --> 00:02:34.200 The idea that sin is primarily a legal problem, God is primarily a judge, and Jesus steps 00:02:34.200 --> 00:02:39.800 in to absorb the punishment that we owe God, and we trace that framework all the way back 00:02:39.800 --> 00:02:47.160 to an 11th century feudal court in a theologian named Ansem, for though I can't go into all 00:02:47.160 --> 00:02:52.520 of it, but if you want, the video is on our YouTube, so you can go back and watch that. 00:02:52.520 --> 00:02:57.120 Then I asked you a question at the end of service that I left you hanging on, and I said, 00:02:57.120 --> 00:03:02.760 so what does Jesus actually say about the human problem? 00:03:02.760 --> 00:03:03.760 What is it? 00:03:03.760 --> 00:03:08.880 If it's not this, then what does Jesus actually say about the human problem, and that's what 00:03:08.880 --> 00:03:11.600 we're going to get into today? 00:03:11.600 --> 00:03:15.920 So PSA, penal substitutionary atonement that we looked at last week tells you that the 00:03:15.920 --> 00:03:21.860 human problem is legal, you violated a law, penalty is owed, this is what happened in 00:03:21.860 --> 00:03:28.200 the garden, and then every sin that you commit, the action that you commit is a breaking of 00:03:28.200 --> 00:03:32.240 the law, and that you owe a penalty to God. 00:03:32.240 --> 00:03:36.400 And until that penalty is satisfied, the relationship between God and humanity cannot be restored, 00:03:36.400 --> 00:03:42.080 there's a separation, like this is what most of us grew up with, right? 00:03:42.080 --> 00:03:49.960 But I want to suggest that Jesus actually operates from an entirely different diagnosis 00:03:49.960 --> 00:03:57.660 of the human problem, not like softer, not just like nicer version of God, like completely 00:03:57.660 --> 00:04:01.000 different than the idea of a legal framework. 00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:10.200 Like think about the way that a doctor and a judge would approach the same person differently. 00:04:10.200 --> 00:04:17.080 A judge looks at what you did, the action, what law was broken, is a penalty owed, the 00:04:17.080 --> 00:04:23.200 judges not primarily interested in your condition, some are really caring people, like we have 00:04:23.200 --> 00:04:26.920 some judges that come to church here, they're great people. 00:04:26.920 --> 00:04:31.720 But they're focusing on the law, like what does the law say, did you break the law? 00:04:31.720 --> 00:04:37.880 So the judge is interested in your record, like your actions, what you have done. 00:04:37.880 --> 00:04:43.920 Now a doctor, a doctor looks at what's wrong with you, what's causing this, what has been 00:04:43.920 --> 00:04:49.120 damaged, what needs to be healed in order for you to live healthy. 00:04:49.120 --> 00:04:53.320 The doctor's job is not to evaluate the action but to understand the condition underneath 00:04:53.320 --> 00:04:54.320 it. 00:04:54.320 --> 00:05:02.320 PSA handed us a judge, Jesus shows up as something much closer to a doctor. 00:05:02.320 --> 00:05:07.240 Before I give you the definition that I'm going to work with today, I want to back up 00:05:07.240 --> 00:05:15.240 even further, then Ansem was 11th century, the framework that led PSA, led to PSA in the 00:05:15.240 --> 00:05:20.280 11th century, it started with a word, and the word, when we've talked about this before, 00:05:20.280 --> 00:05:28.680 it's an original Greek, it's mostly translated as sin, in the New Testament it's hamartia, 00:05:28.680 --> 00:05:33.960 and it's, in its origins it is not a legal word at all. 00:05:33.960 --> 00:05:41.560 Hamartia, it's actually like an archery term, means to miss the mark, to aim at a target 00:05:41.560 --> 00:05:48.800 and to fall short, not to violate a law, not to incur a debt, but to aim at something, 00:05:48.800 --> 00:05:57.320 to aim at life, to aim at wholeness, at things you were created for him to miss it. 00:05:57.320 --> 00:06:06.080 Prince Audotwah, in his mirror translation, puts it this way, in its singular form, Hamartia 00:06:06.080 --> 00:06:14.240 points to a state of mind, a distorted condition, rather than individual, sinful acts. 00:06:14.240 --> 00:06:19.000 Sin is not something we do, he says, it is a condition of living out of harmony with 00:06:19.000 --> 00:06:26.880 our divine design, it's a very different view, it's a directional word, a purposeful 00:06:26.880 --> 00:06:34.640 word, it describes a failure of aim, not a criminal offense, and it fits exactly with 00:06:34.640 --> 00:06:41.160 what we see Jesus actually doing when he encounters broken people in the New Testament, he doesn't 00:06:41.160 --> 00:06:57.520 issue a verdict, he restores direction for them, so let me grab this, hang on, speaking 00:06:57.520 --> 00:07:08.440 of doctors, got neuropathy in my feet from military and it's killing me, all right, what 00:07:08.440 --> 00:07:16.800 was I, so where the legal framework come from on all this, there's a man named Augustine 00:07:16.800 --> 00:07:24.280 of Hippo, and he's a fourth century theologian, brilliant theologian, has enormous influence 00:07:24.280 --> 00:07:34.360 on the Western Christianity, he's a man who shaped a doctrine called original sin, in 00:07:34.360 --> 00:07:41.360 a way that would run through everything that came after him, and has anybody heard of original 00:07:41.360 --> 00:07:47.920 sin, we've heard of this, this site, okay, we've got some people, cool, not cool, but, 00:07:47.920 --> 00:07:55.480 so here's the key moment, I guess in his reading Romans 5, 12, what Paul writes about how sin 00:07:55.480 --> 00:08:03.000 entered the world through Adam, in the original Greek, the phrase reads as that, I'm not going 00:08:03.000 --> 00:08:12.480 to try and read it, so in the Greek it reads as this, which means because all sinned or 00:08:12.480 --> 00:08:18.880 in that all sinned, it's describing the condition that spread, a corruption that entered and 00:08:18.880 --> 00:08:25.800 affected everyone, so when Adam sinned, this becomes the framework of what that looks like 00:08:25.800 --> 00:08:32.800 in the Greek, when it's translated to Greek, from the Greek, which is originally written, 00:08:32.800 --> 00:08:39.200 so a corruption enters and affects everyone, but Augustine was reading in the Latin translation, 00:08:39.200 --> 00:08:47.520 and in that text the phrase has been rendered as the bottom one, in whom all sin, in Adam, 00:08:47.520 --> 00:08:55.400 all of humanity, literally present in Adam, literally sharing in his guilt, so because, 00:08:55.400 --> 00:09:02.040 sometimes in whom, in his translation, and there's a shift that happens in this preposition 00:09:02.040 --> 00:09:10.400 that leads Augustine of Hippo to create this idea of original sin being passed down to 00:09:10.400 --> 00:09:18.600 us, because, becomes in whom we're in Adam, and so when we all sinned, we literally share 00:09:18.600 --> 00:09:24.880 in the guilt of this, and this shift moved an entire theological framework from corruption, 00:09:24.880 --> 00:09:30.640 entered humanity, and all have sinned to all of humanity was present in Adam, and therefore 00:09:30.640 --> 00:09:38.160 share in his guilt. Does this make sense? A little different. So we inherited corruption, 00:09:38.160 --> 00:09:46.200 or the inherited corruption, became inherited guilt, and inherited like sickness was no 00:09:46.200 --> 00:09:52.800 longer a sickness, it was a guilt that it changes into where we go in the legal framework, 00:09:52.800 --> 00:10:00.080 and specifically the Western church that, where this Latin phrasing developed, the Greek-speaking 00:10:00.080 --> 00:10:06.920 Eastern church that is still around today reads the same passage in the original language, 00:10:06.920 --> 00:10:15.600 and never arrived at inherited guilt, ever. They held that death and corruption entered 00:10:15.600 --> 00:10:22.120 the human condition, but they did not conclude that every person born is guilty before they 00:10:22.120 --> 00:10:32.880 have done anything. I know this is messing people up. I get it. Let's look at this. There's 00:10:32.880 --> 00:10:37.680 a three line that runs directly into what we were talking about last week that we were 00:10:37.680 --> 00:10:47.720 handed. Augustine's inherited guilt, this we were born sinful, leads to Anson's satisfaction 00:10:47.720 --> 00:10:53.960 theory, which leads to Calvin's penal substitution, PSA then leads to the altar calls, the gospel 00:10:53.960 --> 00:11:02.680 tracks that told you you are guilty, and you need to accept Jesus to avoid hell. Here's 00:11:02.680 --> 00:11:08.720 the summary of what that shift produced. By redefining sin as inherent guilt, the doctrine 00:11:08.720 --> 00:11:15.400 took Jesus' empowering, healing, restorative message, and turned it into a tool of shame 00:11:15.400 --> 00:11:24.880 and disconnection. That's not a small thing. This is the entire emotional center of what 00:11:24.880 --> 00:11:34.000 most of us in the Western Christian church inherited. You were handed a doctrine of guilt. 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:39.240 We were handed a doctrine of guilt that was built on a mistranslation of one preposition 00:11:39.240 --> 00:11:48.280 in Latin text in the 4th century. The word that Jesus actually used, "hamartia," was 00:11:48.280 --> 00:11:54.120 never a legal word to begin with. It's that archery term that describes missing the mark. 00:11:54.120 --> 00:11:58.880 If that is what sin actually is, missing the mark of what you were created for, falling 00:11:58.880 --> 00:12:03.000 short of the fullness of life and love you were made to live, then the solution is not 00:12:03.000 --> 00:12:15.080 a legal transaction. The solution is restored aim, recovered vision, a changed mind about 00:12:15.080 --> 00:12:22.840 what you are worth and where you're headed, what purpose is. Here's the definition I'm 00:12:22.840 --> 00:12:30.880 going to give you today for sin. Sin is a corrupted mindset that causes human beings 00:12:30.880 --> 00:12:39.440 to see themselves and others as worthless than how God actually sees them. It's a mindset 00:12:39.440 --> 00:12:53.600 shift. Sin is a corrupted mindset. That's not a legal language. This is perceptual language. 00:12:53.600 --> 00:13:03.240 How am I perceiving who I am and who you are? Something went wrong with the way that we assess 00:13:03.240 --> 00:13:07.720 worth. This is what sin did. Our own worth, the worth of the person next to us, the worth 00:13:07.720 --> 00:13:12.720 of the stranger, the person who fails, the person who is different from us, the problem 00:13:12.720 --> 00:13:22.000 is in the perception, not just behavior. Once you see this, take this framework, this 00:13:22.000 --> 00:13:28.600 idea, this understanding of sin. Let's go back to Genesis 3 and you think through the 00:13:28.600 --> 00:13:33.200 conversations we had. You watch what happens in slow motion. The serpent doesn't approach 00:13:33.200 --> 00:13:41.520 Eve with a temptation first. The serpent approaches with a question. Did God really say? Underneath 00:13:41.520 --> 00:13:49.240 that question is a distortion. Is God really good? Is God lying to you? Did you actually 00:13:49.240 --> 00:13:56.960 hear? Are you sure? Are you really loved and provided for by God? Or is God withholding 00:13:56.960 --> 00:14:06.400 something? Even in those verses in Genesis 3, the serpent says, "Oh, when Eve says, 00:14:06.400 --> 00:14:10.400 we're not supposed to eat of this tree because we'll become like God." The serpent says, 00:14:10.400 --> 00:14:15.960 "Oh, God knows what's going to happen. That's why he doesn't want you to do this." There's 00:14:15.960 --> 00:14:22.040 a distorted view of who God is. Are you really worth what God says you're worth? Can you 00:14:22.040 --> 00:14:31.520 trust God? That's the move in Genesis 3 that happens. Then Eve grabs the fruit and eats 00:14:31.520 --> 00:14:39.160 it. But before all of that, this was not primarily about the fruit. It's about a corrupted perception 00:14:39.160 --> 00:14:45.680 of God, which then gives us a corrupted perception of self, of what's actually true. And then 00:14:45.680 --> 00:14:51.400 the behavior follows the perception. The corrupted mindset comes first and then the corrupted 00:14:51.400 --> 00:15:02.440 action is downstream of it. And you can watch that same sequence play out in every form 00:15:02.440 --> 00:15:15.760 of human darkness. Racism is a corrupted mindset about the value of another human being made 00:15:15.760 --> 00:15:23.080 in God's image. And what doesn't get said enough is the person doing the devaluing is 00:15:23.080 --> 00:15:30.560 almost always operating from a place of broken self perception themselves. If you look at 00:15:30.560 --> 00:15:35.120 the research, the psychological research on prejudice and aggression, it's consistently 00:15:35.120 --> 00:15:40.160 shows that contempt for others is rarely a sign of someone who feels secure in their 00:15:40.160 --> 00:15:50.600 own worth. It is almost always a sign of someone who doesn't. Roy Baumeister, like his decades 00:15:50.600 --> 00:15:54.960 of research on violence and aggression, found that the most dangerous people are not those 00:15:54.960 --> 00:16:02.560 with low self esteem. There are people with deeply fragile, threatened self self worth, 00:16:02.560 --> 00:16:09.880 who cannot tolerate anything that destabilizes it. They need someone beneath them because 00:16:09.880 --> 00:16:17.600 they're terrified of what it means if there's no one beneath them. This, this is, this is 00:16:17.600 --> 00:16:22.640 what is happening right now. And this is what happened to Tennessee this last week, when 00:16:22.640 --> 00:16:29.840 they kicked out the only black constituents or black representatives out of their house 00:16:29.840 --> 00:16:36.480 so that they could vote in order to change, redraw lines around Memphis in order to remove 00:16:36.480 --> 00:16:46.480 any black representation in the state of Tennessee. Why? Because they were afraid. And when you 00:16:46.480 --> 00:16:56.000 see this too, what it does for me is it shifts my view of people. So a representative who 00:16:56.000 --> 00:16:59.960 is making these decisions in the house in Tennessee who is saying, yeah, we're going 00:16:59.960 --> 00:17:10.280 to do this, but like they're afraid. Why? Because they have a broken mindset. So it can 00:17:10.280 --> 00:17:18.200 shift. There's anger because justice needs to be served. But also I'm just sad for them. 00:17:18.200 --> 00:17:24.120 They don't know who they are. If they only knew how loved and valued they are without 00:17:24.120 --> 00:17:31.960 anything else, then maybe things will change. It's, it's the thing that Jesus says when 00:17:31.960 --> 00:17:40.840 he says to love your enemy, it's to see the enemy as human and understand that there's 00:17:40.840 --> 00:17:46.720 a, I think, I'm not a psychologist, but I think the therapist that my therapist is 00:17:46.720 --> 00:17:52.880 so many, like I, we talk about like little Chad, and like there's like a, there's a little 00:17:52.880 --> 00:18:01.840 person, their little child inside of them that is still hurting. That they have not addressed. 00:18:01.840 --> 00:18:06.360 So it's racism. You look at abuse. Abuse works the same way a person who degrades, controls 00:18:06.360 --> 00:18:10.840 or harms someone they claim to love is not doing it from a place of security. They're 00:18:10.840 --> 00:18:15.560 doing it from a place of profound internal poverty. The devaluing of the other person 00:18:15.560 --> 00:18:23.400 is always downstream of a corrupted perception of self. I mean, you just keep going. Addiction 00:18:23.400 --> 00:18:27.760 often a corrupted sense of one's self worth or value. It's a slow agreement with the lie 00:18:27.760 --> 00:18:32.320 that you're not worth the life that you were made for, that you need this thing to be okay, 00:18:32.320 --> 00:18:39.080 that without it, you're not enough. Or you just need to forget about it. 00:18:39.080 --> 00:18:42.880 And here's the one I think lives probably closest to home for a lot of people in this 00:18:42.880 --> 00:18:54.640 room, including myself, people pleasing, performing, shrinking, over apologizing, saying yes when 00:18:54.640 --> 00:19:02.920 you mean no, working twice is hard to prove something you can never quite prove. Never 00:19:02.920 --> 00:19:08.160 feeling like enough, no matter how much you produce, how well you behave, or how much 00:19:08.160 --> 00:19:18.440 you give. That's a corrupted mindset. It's a distorted perception of your own worth, of 00:19:18.440 --> 00:19:28.960 our own worth. But we go one step further, because that same corrupted mindset that operates 00:19:28.960 --> 00:19:40.560 in individuals also builds systems. Patriarchy is not built by men who are deeply secure in 00:19:40.560 --> 00:19:48.720 their sense of worth and identity. No, I'm not telling you that you don't know. Maybe 00:19:48.720 --> 00:19:58.760 they need to hear that. It's built by men who need control because they're afraid of 00:19:58.760 --> 00:20:05.440 what happens without it. White supremacy is a theology of people who feel genuinely confident 00:20:05.440 --> 00:20:12.720 in what they are. Psychologists who study authoritarianism like Robert Altmeyer spent decades on this 00:20:12.720 --> 00:20:18.280 consistently find that the need to dominate, exclude, and rank human beings by value is 00:20:18.280 --> 00:20:25.720 correlated, not with confidence, shocking, but with fear, with shame, with a fragile identity 00:20:25.720 --> 00:20:34.720 that needs an enemy to hold itself together. There's a theory in psychology called terror 00:20:34.720 --> 00:20:41.680 management theory. It describes how human beings, when they feel their identity or sense of 00:20:41.680 --> 00:20:47.000 meaning is threatened, often respond by clinging more tightly to their end group, the group 00:20:47.000 --> 00:20:54.480 that they are part of, and becoming more hostile toward anyone they perceive as other. We don't 00:20:54.480 --> 00:21:02.280 see this very often around here. The ugliest expressions of nationalism, tribalism, religious 00:21:02.280 --> 00:21:07.600 supremacy are not the products of people who feel whole, they are the products of people 00:21:07.600 --> 00:21:17.880 who are terrified. Systems of oppression are downstream of a corrupted mindset about human 00:21:17.880 --> 00:21:27.800 earth. It is all part of this corrupted mindset. Their sin, in the truest, deepest sense of 00:21:27.800 --> 00:21:38.440 what sin actually is, operating at a collective scale. A shared lie about whose image matters, 00:21:38.440 --> 00:21:48.200 whose life has value, and who belongs. Jesus didn't come to negotiate a legal settlement 00:21:48.200 --> 00:21:58.680 with those systems. He came to heal the perception that created them. Because sin is not first 00:21:58.680 --> 00:22:09.200 a rule broken. Sin is first believed about worth, and the lie that then always spreads 00:22:09.200 --> 00:22:21.000 outward, and creates systems that harm. Jesus names this problem, and he demonstrates what 00:22:21.000 --> 00:22:29.120 it looks like. Watch Jesus work, because it is not just theology. This is Jesus in a room 00:22:29.120 --> 00:22:35.120 with real people, a real person. We are going to look at just a couple real quick. Watch 00:22:35.120 --> 00:22:42.720 what he does, and does not do. John chapter 8, women caught in adultery. We talked about 00:22:42.720 --> 00:22:46.560 this message a lot, the story, the religious leaders that dragged her into public space, 00:22:46.560 --> 00:22:52.320 they bring her in front of Jesus, they ask a legal question. The law of Moses says to 00:22:52.320 --> 00:22:59.000 stone her, what do you say? They want to verdict. They are operating entirely inside 00:22:59.000 --> 00:23:03.360 of this legal framework, and they are using her body as a prop and a theological argument 00:23:03.360 --> 00:23:10.880 that she didn't ask to be a part of. Jesus bends down, and he starts writing in the dirt. 00:23:10.880 --> 00:23:17.240 We don't know what he wrote, and I think the not knowing is part of the point, because 00:23:17.240 --> 00:23:23.520 what he's doing by bending down is refusing to enter their courtroom. He's not engaging 00:23:23.520 --> 00:23:32.760 with legal framing. He's doing something entirely different. He stands up and he says, "Let 00:23:32.760 --> 00:23:40.480 any one of you, who is without sin, be the first to throw a stone at her." Jesus made 00:23:40.480 --> 00:23:46.960 one simple observation in this room with these men. Everyone in this crowd is guilty 00:23:46.960 --> 00:23:54.000 under the same system that they're using against her. The legal framework condemns the accusers 00:23:54.000 --> 00:24:00.160 too, and one by one, beginning with the oldest, the ones with the longest record, they all 00:24:00.160 --> 00:24:07.240 leave. They drop their rocks and they leave, which is exactly what Paul says the law written 00:24:07.240 --> 00:24:13.760 on stone tablets is about. It is a ministry of death and condemnation. We talked about 00:24:13.760 --> 00:24:21.200 this last week. Not because the law is evil, but because the law applied as legal measuring 00:24:21.200 --> 00:24:28.360 stick doesn't heal anyone. It just tells everyone that they're not enough, including the people 00:24:28.360 --> 00:24:37.120 holding it so the accusers leave the room, because Jesus wouldn't enter the courtroom. 00:24:37.120 --> 00:24:40.880 Then Jesus looks at this woman, and I want you to think about it for a second, not just 00:24:40.880 --> 00:24:47.280 about the people who walked out. Maybe there's still people that are watching things happening. 00:24:47.280 --> 00:24:52.640 I think something deeper is happening this moment, because Jesus asks, "Where are your 00:24:52.640 --> 00:25:02.160 children?" Has no one condemned you? I think the interesting thing when I look at this 00:25:02.160 --> 00:25:10.800 story is that we all have accusers. Most of ours, they don't show up holding rocks. They 00:25:10.800 --> 00:25:18.800 show up in the middle of the night. They sound like our own voice. They say, "You are what 00:25:18.800 --> 00:25:28.360 they said you were. You are what you did. You're broken. You're not enough. You never 00:25:28.360 --> 00:25:39.000 were." It sounds like me. Those voices, they in this question that Jesus asked have also 00:25:39.000 --> 00:25:44.320 been indicted in the same question, because those voices are working under a framework 00:25:44.320 --> 00:25:49.960 that says, "I've got to do something to earn worth and to show you my value." They're 00:25:49.960 --> 00:25:56.040 indicted in the same question when Jesus says, "Has no one condemned you?" Jesus says, "Neither 00:25:56.040 --> 00:26:03.400 do I." Feel the weight of who's saying that to this woman. This is not a peer giving 00:26:03.400 --> 00:26:09.920 her a pass. This is the only person in the room who actually had the standing to condemn 00:26:09.920 --> 00:26:18.200 her, and he doesn't. Then we love this. The church loves this next section where it says, 00:26:18.200 --> 00:26:25.200 "Go and send no more." I don't read that as legal instruction anymore, because if Jesus 00:26:25.200 --> 00:26:28.560 doesn't operate in the legal framework, then he wouldn't be saying something in a legal 00:26:28.560 --> 00:26:33.020 system and in a legal way. I read it through a lens of everything this series has been 00:26:33.020 --> 00:26:40.580 building on. I would like to propose that this means go and send no more means go and believe 00:26:40.580 --> 00:26:49.520 differently about yourself. Go and stop agreeing with the corrupted mindset. Go and live from 00:26:49.520 --> 00:26:55.360 what I just told you is true about your worth. Stop letting the lie run the show. They don't 00:26:55.360 --> 00:26:59.720 define you and neither do your thoughts about yourself. The one that defines you is the one 00:26:59.720 --> 00:27:03.940 that's not condemning you, the one that's telling you that you are worth it, that stood 00:27:03.940 --> 00:27:16.640 in this temple with you in front of your accusers and showed you that no one can condemn you. 00:27:16.640 --> 00:27:25.640 Now, go and believe that you are worth more than you've been told or that you tell yourself. 00:27:25.640 --> 00:27:35.880 But that sin, that this change of mindset, is metanoia. He didn't clear the accusers 00:27:35.880 --> 00:27:41.200 so that he could walk her away like unchanged, right? He was like, "Okay, they're gone now. 00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:47.240 You can sneak out." He cleared the accusers so that she could finally see herself the 00:27:47.240 --> 00:28:00.960 way the he saw her and live from that. Jesus has a word for the solution and we've buried 00:28:00.960 --> 00:28:06.280 it in so much legal and emotional freight that it barely resembles what it originally 00:28:06.280 --> 00:28:13.480 meant. It's that word metanoia. We translated it as repentance, but what it actually means 00:28:13.480 --> 00:28:25.840 is something much more alive than what most of us were handed. Meta means change or shift, 00:28:25.840 --> 00:28:37.440 a movement. Noya, it comes from noise. It means mind or perception or the way you see. 00:28:37.440 --> 00:28:43.800 So we look at this word and the build up of it and how it's put together, metanoia means 00:28:43.800 --> 00:28:54.560 change your mind. Turn around, see differently. Come back to what is true. It's not primarily 00:28:54.560 --> 00:29:02.520 a guilt word. It's a directional word. It's not describing a transaction to make with 00:29:02.520 --> 00:29:07.440 God. It is describing a movement, a shift in perception, a return to who you are, your 00:29:07.440 --> 00:29:14.940 original design, the understanding of your value. So when Jesus opens his ministry, the 00:29:14.940 --> 00:29:21.240 first thing he does in Mark 115, his very first public words are, "The kingdom of God 00:29:21.240 --> 00:29:29.040 has come near, repent, and believe the good news." And inside of the framework, the PSA 00:29:29.040 --> 00:29:32.960 framework that most of us grew up in, the church heard that as field guilty because judgment 00:29:32.960 --> 00:29:43.440 is coming. But what if it's closer to change the way you see? Come back to reality. What 00:29:43.440 --> 00:29:48.480 you've been looking for, what you were actually made for is right here, right now, closer than 00:29:48.480 --> 00:29:56.520 you think. This is the good news. It's not a courtroom summons. It's someone who loves 00:29:56.520 --> 00:30:01.640 you calling you home. I think about a friend sitting you down and being like, "Hey, this 00:30:01.640 --> 00:30:11.400 isn't you. I don't care what they said or did. That is not who you are. Jesus, come back. 00:30:11.400 --> 00:30:17.560 Come back home. I hear something I want you to notice. When you take this framework and 00:30:17.560 --> 00:30:24.040 you look at it, Scripture is saturated with this language of mind, of perception, thinking, 00:30:24.040 --> 00:30:32.800 not guilt management, but mindset transformation. Look at consistently the Bible points at the 00:30:32.800 --> 00:30:37.360 way that you see as the thing that needs to change. Paul writes to the Romans, "Do not 00:30:37.360 --> 00:30:42.840 conform to the pattern in this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. 00:30:42.840 --> 00:30:49.800 Transform." The Greek word is metamorphol. Same root as metanoia. Change at the level 00:30:49.800 --> 00:30:57.560 of form. Change the perception. It happens through the renewing of your mind, not the 00:30:57.560 --> 00:31:04.040 clearing of your record. To the Corinthians, he says, "We take captive every thought to 00:31:04.040 --> 00:31:13.080 make it obedient to Christ. Every thought, not every action, every thought. The battle 00:31:13.080 --> 00:31:21.080 is happening at the level of perception before it ever reaches behavior." Romans 8, "The 00:31:21.080 --> 00:31:31.520 mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. Life and peace, not compliance and acquittal." 00:31:31.520 --> 00:31:41.680 It comes from what the mind is set on. Jesus himself, Matthew 6, isn't giving legal ruling. 00:31:41.680 --> 00:31:47.680 He addresses the way his listeners are seeing their own lives. He says, "Don't worry about 00:31:47.680 --> 00:31:57.800 tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to worry about itself." As he tells him, he's asking to change 00:31:57.800 --> 00:32:05.880 how you see your circumstances. Stop focusing on that. I want you to see yourselves as held 00:32:05.880 --> 00:32:11.000 by the Father who knows what you need. If he feeds the birds, then he's going to take 00:32:11.000 --> 00:32:22.560 care of you. This is a perceptual transformation. Metanoia in real time. If you want to go back 00:32:22.560 --> 00:32:28.920 to the Old Testament, Solomon, the wisest man, right? He says, "As plainly as it can 00:32:28.920 --> 00:32:38.720 be said, as a man thinks in his heart so he is." So he is. Not so does he. Your perception 00:32:38.720 --> 00:32:45.000 of yourself is producing you. The person you are becoming is downstream of what you believe 00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:52.660 is true about who you are. The Bible is not primarily a book about 00:32:52.660 --> 00:32:58.760 the energy guilt. It is a book about transforming perception, minds being renewed, aim being 00:32:58.760 --> 00:33:04.080 restored, people learning to see themselves as God sees them. And the beauty of the Bible 00:33:04.080 --> 00:33:13.200 is that God allowed us to write it. It is human stories about their relationship with 00:33:13.200 --> 00:33:18.960 God. There are times in there where it's like, "What is happening right now?" And I would 00:33:18.960 --> 00:33:23.920 be like, "I don't know if you've heard people say this before. I have." Where they're like, 00:33:23.920 --> 00:33:44.320 "Well, God told me." Did he? And we get a story of the prodigal. Jesus, I told you 00:33:44.320 --> 00:33:47.840 a couple weeks ago, or the last one, I don't remember. Jesus makes this story up. This 00:33:47.840 --> 00:33:51.520 is not a real story. This is not a dad who he talked to in an interview. This is a story 00:33:51.520 --> 00:33:58.360 he makes up about a dad and two sons. He's telling a parable. Just like he probably didn't 00:33:58.360 --> 00:34:03.640 talk to a lady about her lost coin right before that. He's trying to explain something. He's 00:34:03.640 --> 00:34:11.160 given a story. The younger son doesn't just make bad choices. He comes home with a corrupted 00:34:11.160 --> 00:34:18.040 mindset about his own worth. You can hear it in the speech that he rehearses on the way 00:34:18.040 --> 00:34:24.000 back. Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I'm no longer worthy to be 00:34:24.000 --> 00:34:32.960 called your son. I'm no longer worthy. He has tied his worth to his actions. He performed 00:34:32.960 --> 00:34:40.920 badly. Therefore, he is worth less. Therefore, he's no longer a son. He has accepted the 00:34:40.920 --> 00:34:51.480 lie, not just about what he did, but about what he is. His solution is to offer himself 00:34:51.480 --> 00:35:00.280 as a servant, because servants are hired for what they produce. He's trying to trade his 00:35:00.280 --> 00:35:08.960 performance for a lower rung of belonging. The father, before the speech gets out, is 00:35:08.960 --> 00:35:18.720 already running towards him. Then watch the father does. He doesn't hand him a checklist. 00:35:18.720 --> 00:35:24.320 He doesn't put him on probation. He doesn't make him earn his way back to sonship. He 00:35:24.320 --> 00:35:32.800 puts a robe on him. In that culture, the robe is dignity, status, covering. It says that 00:35:32.800 --> 00:35:42.000 you belong here. Then he puts a ring on his finger. It's the family's signet ring. It's 00:35:42.000 --> 00:35:46.400 legal identity. It's authority. It says you have standing here. You are recognized here. 00:35:46.400 --> 00:36:00.880 You are my son. He puts sandals on his feet. Servants were barefoot. Sons were sandals. 00:36:00.880 --> 00:36:08.320 The father is drawing a line. You're not a servant. You were never just a servant. He 00:36:08.320 --> 00:36:18.480 throws a party. He calls him my son. Not my repentant employee. Not my forgiven debtor. 00:36:18.480 --> 00:36:22.120 There wasn't a conversation about, "Oh, hey, the inheritance I gave you, so we're going 00:36:22.120 --> 00:36:30.040 to work that off and you're going to pay me back." None of that. He's my son. The father 00:36:30.040 --> 00:36:34.840 doesn't restore the behavior. He restores the identity of his son because he understands 00:36:34.840 --> 00:36:43.200 something the son doesn't yet. The worth was never gone. The perception of worth was corrupted. 00:36:43.200 --> 00:36:49.800 The father uses every symbol at his disposal to say, "Change your mind about who you are." 00:36:49.800 --> 00:36:58.400 This is Metanoia, administered through a robe, a ring, and a party. In a story, the older 00:36:58.400 --> 00:37:03.680 brother who stayed, who worked, who never missed a day. He's furious. The father says 00:37:03.680 --> 00:37:08.000 to him, "Why does he get a party? I've been here the whole time. I've been doing everything 00:37:08.000 --> 00:37:14.800 you've asked me to do. I have been perfect." The father says to him, "Son, you are always 00:37:14.800 --> 00:37:24.440 with me and everything I have is yours. It was always yours. You've been standing in the 00:37:24.440 --> 00:37:31.720 inheritance refusing to enjoy it because you turned it into a transaction. Both sons had 00:37:31.720 --> 00:37:36.960 a corrupted mindset about their worth. One thought he lost it through failure. The other 00:37:36.960 --> 00:37:43.000 was white knuckling his way toward it through obedience. The father, in both cases, is saying 00:37:43.000 --> 00:37:52.560 the same thing. "You are my son. That is not contingent upon what you do. It never was." 00:37:52.560 --> 00:37:57.120 This tells this story deliberately, has a picture of what God is like, and the story Jesus 00:37:57.120 --> 00:38:04.400 chose to tell, "Nobody earns their way home. Nobody performs their way to belonging. Worth 00:38:04.400 --> 00:38:13.360 is restored. Identity is restored. Perception is restored, and no blood had to be spilled." 00:38:13.360 --> 00:38:21.840 Metanoia is the answer to what Jesus says about the human problem, that the problem is 00:38:21.840 --> 00:38:31.080 not primarily legal. It is perceptual. Something corrupted the way humans see. Humanity sees 00:38:31.080 --> 00:38:38.800 itself, sees each other, sees God. That corrupted vision produces corrupted behavior. But the 00:38:38.800 --> 00:38:47.040 behavior is always downstream of the perception. Always. The solution is not primarily legal. 00:38:47.040 --> 00:38:52.320 It is a restoration of vision, a change mind, a person who generally begins to see themselves 00:38:52.320 --> 00:38:57.240 as fully loved, not performing for love, not earning it, not managing, but simply held 00:38:57.240 --> 00:39:09.360 in it. That person becomes free. My hand says, "It is for freedom. It is for freedom." 00:39:09.360 --> 00:39:12.560 The freedom of love, without needing something back, free to be generous, free to sit with 00:39:12.560 --> 00:39:21.080 someone who is suffering. John tells us in 1 John, "We love because we first loved 00:39:21.080 --> 00:39:28.600 us. Not we love because we are supposed to. Not we love because we owe something, because 00:39:28.600 --> 00:39:34.920 we were loved first." It is the operating system that Jesus is trying to install. You 00:39:34.920 --> 00:39:42.400 are loved. Believe this. Change your mind. Metanoia. I am going to end with a question 00:39:42.400 --> 00:39:50.760 for you for this week. When you think about the worst version of yourself, the patterns 00:39:50.760 --> 00:39:57.760 that you keep returning to, the places you feel most like a failure, what is the lie 00:39:57.760 --> 00:40:10.880 underneath it? What is lying to you, telling you what your value is? Now, what did you do? 00:40:10.880 --> 00:40:20.960 What did you believe about yourself that made you feel inevitable? Because if you can find 00:40:20.960 --> 00:40:26.360 the lie, the corrupted perception underneath the behavior, I think then we are much closer 00:40:26.360 --> 00:40:33.320 to the actual healing than any amount of guilt ever got you. Jesus didn't walk into rooms 00:40:33.320 --> 00:40:38.040 and make people feel guilty. He walked into rooms and told people the truth about what 00:40:38.040 --> 00:40:45.960 they were worth, not feel worse. They would see differently, not pay more. It was come 00:40:45.960 --> 00:40:57.580 back to what is true, not try harder. It was change your mind. Metanoia. It's arsenal. 00:40:57.580 --> 00:41:07.280 As Paul prays in Ephesians, he prays that you be rooted in love. You would just find 00:41:07.280 --> 00:41:13.720 the depths of it. The prayer is that you would be rooted in love, because from there, you 00:41:13.720 --> 00:41:22.760 can begin to believe who you are. It's rooting in that love that gives us the metanoia, the 00:41:22.760 --> 00:41:29.480 change of mind. It fixes this human problem of we are broken, that we're not good enough. 00:41:29.480 --> 00:41:38.480 And just like a corrupted mindset creates corrupted systems, a healed mindset can do the same. 00:41:38.480 --> 00:41:43.280 It can enter into systems that need healing, and it can begin to tear down some walls and 00:41:43.280 --> 00:41:49.240 begin to build new ones, not new ones, but build new ways of doing things, be driven 00:41:49.240 --> 00:42:01.140 by love. So arsenal, be rooted in that love, because it's weird, loved, and then we get 00:42:01.140 --> 00:42:11.800 to go love. I'm going to pray real quick, better gotten. God, the scripture tells us 00:42:11.800 --> 00:42:21.800 is love. I thank you for that love. God, I pray for each and every mind in this room. 00:42:21.800 --> 00:42:26.320 The lies that we each believe about ourselves, about our self-worth, about our value, about 00:42:26.320 --> 00:42:32.200 what it takes for us to prove who we are. I pray that we would, as Paul says, capture 00:42:32.200 --> 00:42:38.120 those thoughts, and then run them through the filter of Jesus. Run them through the filter 00:42:38.120 --> 00:42:44.240 of love to see if this is a mindset and a thought that tells me my worth as defined 00:42:44.240 --> 00:42:57.080 by my Creator. And if it doesn't, highlight that for me so I know how to get rid of it. 00:42:57.080 --> 00:43:03.960 Spirit I ask that you would remind us who we are. As a lion, there's our mind that we 00:43:03.960 --> 00:43:11.040 would be reminded of the love that we have from you. You've got to pray for each and 00:43:11.040 --> 00:43:22.320 every mom in this room, or another figure that is attached to anyone in this room. And 00:43:22.320 --> 00:43:33.700 we're a thankless job so often. You've got to pray that today they would experience your 00:43:33.700 --> 00:43:43.960 love, even through those around them. Your love would work through the people in their 00:43:43.960 --> 00:43:47.720 lives as convicts of your love to show them what they love and their value, not because 00:43:47.720 --> 00:43:55.720 they're good moms, but because they are created in the image of God. And that the good mom 00:43:55.720 --> 00:44:00.880 part is just an outpouring of their love from the love that you've given. I think that 00:44:00.880 --> 00:44:08.960 this is the place that most of us have experienced your love in the greatest way possible. I 00:44:08.960 --> 00:44:22.120 thank you for our moms, for those that have loved us well. Change your minds. Maybe intermittent 00:44:22.120 --> 00:44:32.320 noise that we can experience love and peace and live from that place. That's in your name 00:44:32.320 --> 00:44:41.800 that we pray. The name of love. Amen. Our sleepy love this week. And then go love well, 00:44:41.800 --> 00:44:46.280 is who we want me to be. Britney's got announcements. Yes. That was amazing. Moms, do not forget