Matt Chandler - Hearts of Generosity

Well, good afternoon! If you have your Bibles, let’s go ahead and dive in. We’ll be in Matthew chapter 6. I want to remind you, because I think it’s really important, as we dive into this last practice. This will be the last practice that we talk about next week, and we’ll close out the fall series on how to put all this together in a way that we can live by it. It’s hard to believe, but then we’re basically at Thanksgiving, and we’ll kick off Advent. I mean, that’s just kind of where we are, which is still messing with my brain a little bit. But for today, we said at the very beginning of this series that there were two ways to think about our faith, and we call them lenses. There were two lenses by which we could think about Christianity. We can consider our Christian faith from, and we said the first is a moral lens—that when we think about what it means to be a Christian, we think about what God has come to do in moral terms. Here’s what it means to be a Christian: I do these things and I don’t do these things. What God has come to do is present a moral vision for how things should work, and so He’s putting that moral vision on us and saying, «Live into that moral vision.» The longer you’ve been in church, the more apt you probably are to lean that way. Or if you’ve never been in church and have always avoided church because you’ve felt like church folks are judgmental, then you probably lean that way. Here’s the great news: that is not Christianity, but it’s just not. Now, I’m not saying that God doesn’t have a moral vision for His people—because He absolutely does. It’s just that you cannot reach that moral vision without the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit and a relationship with Jesus. We have said since day one that you cannot do life for Jesus without doing life with Jesus. If all you know is right and wrong, and you try to do what is right and avoid what is wrong, at best you’ll be self-righteous, and at worst you’ll fail and pretend not to fail, going underground with your struggles. Does anybody want to testify? That’s exactly what happens! I’ll testify; that’s exactly what happens. So you only feel shame. «I can’t figure this out; I don’t know why I can’t do this right.» But let me just learn the language of my church. When do we raise our hands? When do we say «Hallelujah»? Oh, we don’t? Okay, so let me know. When do I take notes? Do I take notes? How do I pick up the language of this particular local church? And then you hide, or you’re nailing it. I don’t know why you can’t figure it out; I’m not struggling with those things. I can’t believe you struggle with those things. Then you become self-righteous. So what I said is no, no: the lens by which we understand our faith is through the lens of redemption—the lens of redemption—not the limbs. Here’s what we see: God has moved toward us in Christ. God has saved us from sin and death, and the Holy Spirit indwells us and transforms us over a period of time by His steadfast love. Once you have those lenses, things begin to change. You can’t just say, «Here’s the moral vision; let me try to do it, ” or one of those two things happens. If you can say, „I just want to be with Him, ” then things start to move. I just want to be with Him. Here’s what’s hard for us. Where we excel as Western, linear, predominantly educated men and women is, „Tell me what to do and I’ll do it.“ Give me the instructions, and God’s going, „Well, okay, but I want to give you a relationship, and that relationship will be the transforming force, not a list of what you know you should and shouldn’t do. It will be the relationship.“ So we said this actually changes everything, especially when it comes to these practices by which we position ourselves for witness or being with Him—not just trying to do life for Him. Think about all the practices we’ve talked аbout: from rest or Sabbath, from prayer to inviting others in, celebrating, studying, fasting—prayer. All these things we do not so that we might be loved by God, but because we are loved by God. In fact, I think I could highlight off where we taught last week, where in the Old Testament there was a purpose for fasting: to consecrate ourselves, to ask for the favor of God, to seek the forgiveness of God. But new fasting is because we do have those things. So we’re not fasting for them, but from them. Are you tracking with me? We’re praying not so that we might have a relationship with God, but because we do have a relationship with God. So we pray. There are times in my marriage with Lauren when I’ve got a ton to say and there are times when it’s just kind of great that we’re together, and she’s not saying a lot and I’m not saying much at all.