Matt Chandler - Just Men

Well, good morning! If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab those. We’re going to be in Exodus chapter six. Jamin Roller, I thought, knocked the first 13 verses out of the park, and then I’ve got the genealogy, so I’m excited about that. I know for many of you, the genealogy is actually your favorite part of the book of Exodus, and you’ve been eagerly anticipating this moment. So, away we go! One of the great delights of being the pastor of the Village Church is the men and women that God has brought onto our staff, with whom I get to collaborate in the mission of God in this location among you as the members of the Village Church. One of the things that makes it a lot of fun for me is that we genuinely enjoy one another. We spend a lot of time laughing, crying, praying, and hoping. It’s a real delight to wake up and come to work that I feel called by God to do among men and women who burn with a zeal to see you fully formed into the image of Christ. That you would be, by the grace of God, molded and shaped into all that God has for you in Jesus Christ. This plays itself out in significant ways. What I mean by that is you really are prayed for, probably more than you know. That prayer can come with tears and an immense amount of hope, and so we’re constantly evaluating, talking, trying to listen, trying to hear, to do all that we know God has called us to do. We know if we’re going to be the vibrant community of faith that God has called us to be, that salt and light to the world around us, we understand as staff members, elders, and deacons that part of that is you growing in your personal relationship with Jesus Christ—a greater understanding of who God is, what He is like, and what that means for you. But it also means that we’ve got to learn that not only has God called us to Himself, but He has also called us to one another, and we feel the weight of that. So when we’re at whiteboards, looking at budgets, or planning events, those are the things that are pulsing through our veins—a zeal to see you understand rightly this vertical relationship with God while simultaneously grasping the horizontal aspect of the Christian faith. We feel the immense weight of trying to get you to fully embrace that the church is not just an hour and 20-minute gathering; it is what it means to belong to the people of God in such a way that the rest of the week is decidedly marked by your understanding of Jesus. You aren’t to be pew dwellers, but rather understand that all that we’re discussing in the gathering has implications for what occurs outside of this gathering. We know we need to be serious about justice, serious about mercy, and serious about oppression. We feel the weight of that in a way that I think is unique for pastors, ministers, deacons, and elders because we know what we’re up against. We know the hurdles to having the accomplishment of being men and women fully formed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, if we stay at a high level, everybody knows what the hurdles are, right? To becoming a vibrant community of faith, the hurdle is sin. But for the purpose of our time, I want to nuance sin in the way the New Testament addresses it. I want to talk about the idea of strongholds and what they are. If you’ve got a background in church, particularly a charismatic one, when I say «strongholds,» you probably think about demonic strongholds. That certainly is found throughout the Scriptures, and I don’t disbelieve those things. However, if we’re going to be really honest about what the New Testament is actually discussing, it rarely refers to demonic powers when it talks about strongholds; rather, it is addressing broken mindsets. Here’s how David Wilkerson explains it: a stronghold is a mindset, value system, or thought process that hinders your growth, the growth of others, and your exalting Jesus above everything in your life. I love Wilkerson’s explanation of strongholds; it’s about believing something false. In believing that falsehood, we hinder our own personal relationship with Christ and that of others, preventing us from fully surrendering to Jesus Christ. Dr. Eric Mason further explains, saying a stronghold is an accusation firmly planted in your mind. Satan establishes strongholds in God’s people by implanting lies, falsehoods, and misconceptions—especially regarding God’s nature. What’s being described in the context of strongholds is that we believe something or see the world in such a distorted way that everything we do, even with good intent, is tainted because we are perceiving things incorrectly. The Bible calls out this stronghold because it’s hard to spot; the very lenses we wear keep us from seeing it. Are you tracking with me? We’re operating under what we think is correct, causing some carnage in our lives, and we can’t quite figure out what’s wrong because of that.