Matt Chandler - Enter the Story of Jesus

Good morning! I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab those. Ephesians chapter 2 is where we’re going to camp out during our time together. Last weekend, I was in New York City with a group of Lauren and my closest friends, celebrating a friend’s 40th birthday—a friend who will remain unnamed due to my fear of her. Everyone saved up their miles, we cashed them in, and we spent the weekend just having fun. That’s what we did. On Sunday afternoon, we all headed down to Broadway, and depending on what you were willing to pay and how you were willing to operate while in New York, we ended up all seeing different shows. One couple was willing to get up at 5:00 a.m. and stand out in 30- to 40-degree weather in line, hoping to score Hamilton tickets. I don’t care that much, so I wasn’t about to get up at 5:00 in the morning and stand out in the freezing cold just to see Hamilton. I’ll watch it like the rest of us when they finally make a movie. I also know that another couple went to see Wicked. We’ve seen Wicked a couple of times, so I didn’t feel the need to see it again. That left me and two other couples seeing the Broadway play Cats. I never thought I would say that sentence, but here I am, trusting you with my heart. For two and a half hours, I watched grown human beings dressed as cats sing and dance. A couple of things struck me while I was watching this: one, I can’t do what they do. Had I given my entire life to dressing up like a cat and dancing, I still lack the coordination, ability, and desire to do so. Lauren and I took a couple hundred bucks and contributed to a pool of $957 million spent every year by Americans on Broadway shows—not just going to Broadway but also watching those shows as they travel across the United States. That $957 million spent on Broadway shows, whether in New York or by traveling troops, pales compared to the $490 billion we spent watching movies last year. So if you saw Justice League or Wonder Woman during the break, what you did was throw some cash into this massive pile of money we’re spending to be entertained by stories. Then if we get into TV, the average American watches five hours and four minutes daily. I don’t know what kind of algorithm they used to arrive at that last four minutes; it seems simpler to just round it to five hours. But five hours and four minutes daily watching television—that number actually increases if you have a streaming service like Hulu, Netflix, or Amazon Prime and watch on your tablet or phone. So let me just start by asking: How many of you have a streaming service and tend to watch some of your favorite shows on your phone or tablet? It’s okay; I’m not going to judge! I have some concerns, but that’s a different sermon for a different day. What I think you’re seeing in our willingness to throw that kind of money and time into being entertained by stories—either ones we can relate to or ones from which we want to escape—is that we are, in a way, hardwired by our Creator to be drawn into stories, to enjoy them, and in a real sense, to need them. Before it was movies, it was plays; before plays, it was stories shared around a campfire or dinner table; and before those stories, it was symbols and stories written on cave walls. We can’t escape this need for story. In fact, we were created in a story and for a story. Now, the problem with our consumption of these stories—which JT English touched on in his teaching on the inerrancy of scripture—is that the profound impact stories have on us is that they disciple us. They shape us and give us a worldview or a way of seeing the world around us. So there are five predominant false narratives that you and I are consuming on a daily basis. If you’re in the average category—though I don’t know anyone I’m friends with who watches five hours of TV a day; most of my crew doesn’t have five hours to give to those things—the average American has five hours and four minutes to engage in these false narratives. I’m going to walk through them very quickly. The first false narrative would be consumerism. It’s the story that the good life means having the kind of stuff that others would look at and say, «This person has value.»