The Simple Man (Ep. #8, The C3 Man)

We conclude the four values of the C3 Man today, with Simple. When you squeeze a biblical man what comes out? We don't have to guess. Because manhood is theology, we look to Jesus - and from Him came love. What does that mean for us today, setting our face like flint, to love - to truly love?

Christ Community Church Little Rock
A community transformed by grace sent to transform the world for the glory of God.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well good morning, man.

unknown 0:01

Morning.

SPEAKER_00 0:02

It's great to see you guys. It's great. It was great seeing you guys uh on Saturday. So a lot of you out there with fishing poles, with little little kiddos, and uh that was a ton of fun for y'all. Uh I got to just be there and eat burgers and I just made, I think, three laps around the pond talking to people. That's all I was interested in. Uh no, it really was a great time, and uh I'm really excited about just like what Toby was saying, where where this church is headed. It's a special thing what God is doing right now at Christ Communion Church. Um as we move into our teaching this morning, I've got to bring up uh I've got to bring up Hitler. Okay. Just want to set the stage. We're gonna start intensely this morning, okay? We're gonna talk Hitler and Germany. There was a time in World War II during Hitler's Third Reich where the to like totally get control of Germany, Hitler needed to go after the churches. And he wanted complete control and unity. He wanted them to give their allegiance, not to Jesus, not the biblical God, but to him. And so, if you know anything about the history of this, uh the the churches there in Germany, kind of like they had this split where you had a bunch of churches say, Yeah, Adolph, we're gonna give you our allegiance. And there's a picture of it here, and it makes you kind of sick. I know it's a small screen, man. Again, we look forward to the day when we have our big screens up here. It was supposed to be, but it has not yet been. And uh in a few weeks, maybe months, maybe by 2031, we will have the big screens. But this this type of picture makes you sick. All denominations of Germany, several of them, most of them, giving their allegiance over to Hitler. And then you had a bunch who refused. Godly pastors who said no. Churches, men, women who said no. And there was not a family untouched by concentration camps for the German Christians who did not give their allegiance over to Hitler. It was uh, I mean, how how how would you feel? What would you do? You have this kind of rise to power, this type of depravity, this type of pressure, these type of consequences. It's easy to sit around a table like this with coffee in our hands and say, oh no, never. But that's a really hard thing. And I hope it would be never. Then the war ends and Hitler dies, and elders from these different groups come together. And this church is gonna kind of come back together. And you have groups of those who refused, who are scarred, who did not have a I mean, nobody was spared. I mean, imagine having a kid, a grandma, a wife taken off, a fellow pastor taken off and killed in a concentration camp, and now you have this just the emotional tension of joining in with these other believers who didn't stick their neck out for Jesus, but instead tucked under the safety of moving along with Hitler. How would that moment go? When these elders came together, this church came together. What would you do? How would you feel towards these other believers? You know, there's a powerful verse that we read in Luke chapter 9, verse 51. And it describes Jesus like this when the days drew near for him, Jesus, to be taken up, that means killed, crucified, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. So there comes this very human moment in Jesus' life where he turns his face like flint towards Jerusalem, which is where he's gonna die. And he goes. And he still does all kinds of meals with people, he has conversations with people, he does signs, he does all sorts of teachings, but his eyes are on the cross. From after Luke chapter 9, verse 51 to the end. The verb that's used here it means to render constant one's mind. Jesus had one thing on his mind, constantly on his mind, and that was the cross. That was his quest. Capital Q. That was the thing that he thought about nonstop. Everything else around it fell into place. Everything he did. It's like, I'm sure doctors have an actual name for the front part of your brain, but it's like this verb just says like the cross was on the front of Jesus' mind, and it just pulled him forward. His forehead was just down. He was on his way to the cross. That's what it means to set your face on something. Everything else crystallized, it became very simple. Jesus' life became very simple from this verse on. I'm going to Jerusalem. My eyes are on my death. My question is, what is that for us? What's our quest? What does it mean to be the C3 man? What is simple for us? Because we are not going to a literal cross. What is that for us? Well, we get an incredible clue, and really the answer in John 13, verse 1. And this is my this is my first, this is my favorite verse of Holy Week because it dips every event in Holy Week into something. And here's what it is this is what's said over Jesus. John 13, 1. Now, before the feast of the Passover, okay, so Passover happened on Thursday of Holy Week, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart, to die out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. Every single moment of Holy Week to the very end, it says Jesus loved them. And so as Jesus fixes it, I'm gonna put some puzzle pieces together this morning, okay, and then I'll kind of we'll kind of step back and be like, okay, that's what it that's what we're looking at. We have Jesus setting his face to Jerusalem, and it says that he loved them to the end. Every single thing Jesus did in Holy Week, there to the very end of his last breath on the cross, he did in love. In love. And that's what we mean by being a simple man. Men, when we are squeezed down to our core, what comes out? If it's not love, agape, costly, bleeding love, then we've got something wildly wrong. And so as we've talked about the C3 man this semester, and we've gone from biblical to missional, or relational to missional, and now we come to simple. Our focus this morning in our lives is on being men of love. And I want to talk more about that because we've talked so much about being in our gardens this semester, and I hope that the root of every the motivation of everything that we've been called to do is out of love. Why do we shamar? Why do we keep? Why do we kabosh? Remember cudgel, cradle, why do we take? Why do we nourish all of it? Hopefully it's not from fear. Hopefully, it's not just mere duty and loyalty. Those can be cold if not for love. Hopefully it's not people pleasing, just to make everyone happy and to kind of live life as a slave, as a doormat, but has been out of this deep-rooted love. Here we have uh, I guess I wanted to ask a question. Did Jesus ever enter a garden? He actually did on many occasions. The garden of Gethsemane was a frequent hangout for Jesus and his disciples. That's how Judas even knew to lead the Roman soldiers to Gethsemane. But we've we get this amazing picture of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane in Holy Week that I wanted to look at this morning. And Gethsemane is a it's a horrific moment. And I use that adjective on purpose. There is a horror to it because Jesus is genuinely tempted to give it all up. That's the temptation of Gethsemane, to give it all up. It's very easy for us to sprinkle like divinity dust over Jesus in Gethsemane and be like, man, he's God, he's gonna pull through. Well, yes, but we've got to think of him as a man in the garden, just reckoning with this call. He has set his face and love to Jerusalem. He's in Jerusalem at the Garden of Gethsemane. And I just want to read a couple verses, a couple passages of Gethsemane. This is Luke's account. And he withdrew from them in the garden, about a stone's throw, and he knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. He's coming to the very end of himself. So much so that the Father has to dispatch angels to minister to him. And there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. Jesus needed that in his humanity. And being in agony, he prayed more earnestly. That's fascinating to me because it means in verse 42, 43, he's not praying with full earnest. He's praying. But then it becomes in verse 44 more earnestly. Jesus comes to the very end of himself and his body starts to fall apart. And his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground. What does Jesus do in the garden? He bleeds. That's a theme, myth. It's in Genesis 2. When Adam bleeds, when his rib is extracted, the second Adam, Jesus, when he goes to the garden, he bleeds. Men, what do we do in our garden? We bleed from love. Here's another passage. Matthew 26. Then he said to them, My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. This is like the gut-wrenching. Maybe we've experienced this two times in our lives. Where it's like this just agony, emotional, almost despair, where Jesus is looking at the Father and being like, please. So he says, Remain here, watch with me. And going a little further, he fell on his face and he prayed, saying, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass for me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will. And then a couple verses later, again, for the second time, he went away and prayed, My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done. Okay, so we've got some puzzle pieces together. Let me ask a question. Anyone in here, no shame. Anyone in here ever been in the back of a police car? By show of hands. Okay. I have two. Okay. There's there's several of us. I love it. Hey, you're safe here? Okay. Mine is a little bit different though. My wife and I, we were in college and we went to the Passion Conference. I don't know if y'all have heard about those. It's a big college conference. It was awesome. Got to hear John Piper. You know, it was just like a dream of mine. And we parked in this parking garage that when we went to back back to it in downtown Atlanta, um, after like a Hillsong concert and all these things, it was midnight. The parking garage was was lost. And we couldn't get in. And we're in downtown, uh, we're in downtown Atlanta. It is freezing. I mean, it's like 20 degrees, but the winds down in the downtown pouring through, it felt like we had about three minutes before we were dead. And so we just we're just there, and praise God, down drives this cop, and we just run this police car. And we're just like, we're stuck, can you please help us? He says, get the back. And so that's my that's my story of being in the back of the police car. But when I was back there, I couldn't believe how little leg space I had, which is on purpose. How there was no, you know, handle to get out of the car, which was on purpose. Uh, the seats are very hard and hard plastic, which was on purpose. It's very dirty back there. And I remember thinking, I have no control over my life right now. I hope this cop is a good guy. But it was this total, like, I have no power right now. That's what Jesus does with with the Father. He always was submitting to the Father, but this was a renewed, I give over all control to you, God. And then in Gethsemane, who shows up? Judas and the soldiers. And Jesus voluntarily gives up control to them. Remember, Thursday was a long day in Holy Week. You had Passover prep, you had finding the upper room, you had Jesus washing feet, you had Jesus announcing the betrayal, you had Judas leave, you had the Lord's Supper being commissioned, then you had the farewell discourse, you had the high priestly prayer, and then comes Gethsemane. It's a long day already. Then Judas shows up, the torches at night, the kiss, and then start the Jewish trials, and then the Roman trials all throughout the morning into early morning, then you get the scourging and the cross. It's an incredibly long day. But at that point in Gethsemane is where Jesus hands over to other humans involuntary or voluntary control over his own life. He gets arrested. And he's gonna have to do whatever they do to him on a human level. Again, I want to keep that puzzle piece there because we're gonna come back to it. But he does it in love, John 13, 1 says, to the very end. Again, what is that for us? In love, we give ourselves up to God. It is the only way. We've been talking all semester about how the most manly thing ever that was inside Jesus that compelled him to go to the cross in love. And now we know what that is. It was love. Love is what compelled Jesus to go to the cross, and that is the most manly thing that has ever existed, and that is ours as simple men. We love people by bleeding for them, we die for them. And so maybe some examples. For men in here who maybe have young kiddos or uh grandpaws who have grandchildren, how many times do we hear daddy? Daddy. Thousands of times. What does it mean to bleed in that moment is to actually listen and to pay attention and to get off the phone and to not work extra hours that a lot of us we have to work those extra hours, but sometimes we do it because work is a lot easier than home. And so we get home and we deal with the daddies. How about our wife? Our wife says, we're not emotionally connected. Then emotionally connect. That's all it is. I feel language. That's all it is. You emotionally connect. Hey, husband, I'm I'm not feeling romance from you. It's just sex. Then be romantic. Ask her, what have we done in the past five, ten years that I've done that's helped you feel romance, that's helped you feel wooed by me. And then you do it. You bleed, you love. I risk, I risk self-righteousness saying this, but I hope you hear my heart and you hear me because this has just been my experience. My wife, right now, is with some friends and they're at the beach, and they've been doing this trip for years. And I have been embarrassed. How many women have come up to me over the years and said, I can't believe your wife gets to do that. You take the kids all by yourself? Well, my husband would never do that. My husband never did that. That is embarrassing to me. That a dad can't or couldn't take care of their own kids, couldn't work things out with other people to assemble the village. For some of us, it's impossible for various things, but I doubt anyone in here is the exception. It's just hurt my heart over the years. And I hope I'm not coming across as too harsh, but it's just like a dad can't take care of their own kids. They can't have the hard conversation with the boss and just be like, hey, for the next four days, I'm gonna be a little late coming in because I'm I'm I'm keeping. I'm a shamar. I'm keeping, you probably wouldn't use that language with your boss. But you know, it's just the principle. Like, do the hard thing and take care of you can't take care of your own kids. I just I don't I don't get it. Maybe I'm being self-righteous in that. Or maybe it's just like, this is how we bleed, this is how we love. At work, what if we took blame covering someone else's faults that maybe we don't even deserve the blame, but we're gonna shoulder that blame, we're gonna take the consequences, even if it wasn't really our responsibility. What if we give credit where credit's due at work? Some of us are really, really bad at sharing credit. And at work, that's one of the best things you can do for other people is just be like, hey, you know who helped me? You know who gave me this idea? You know, you know the best person I've ever met in that? Michael Lattermill. He shares credit from the pulpit sometimes with things that he's mentioned my name before that I get about 2% credit, but he said it almost as if it was like a 50-50. It's amazing. It makes me want to be a greater worker, and you all have that power as well there at work, to share credit, to take plan. This could go for neighbors. I mean, you name every single thing, person in your side of your garden men. We bleed. But it's the little things. If anyone said, Hey, you're gonna go with Hitler, no. Hey, would you die on the cross for your kids? Yes. But would you get off your phone to look your kid in the eye? Would you take your wife out on a date and just say, hey, I feel like I have not been in tune with you at all. No, we won't do that. But that's what we're called to do. That would that's what it means to be simple. To set our face is to be men of love in all the little things. So, how I want to end is just by real quick explaining, showing that Jesus gave us a mark of how we display to the world that we belong to him. And it's not a necklace. For centuries, people have worn necklaces, rings, they've gotten monk haircuts, tattoos, okay, all kinds of things that say, Hey, I'm a Christian. Great. But Jesus gave us one. And here it is in John 13 34. A new commandment I give to you that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. Another. We all know that, but it's like we stop at verse 34. Let's look at verse 35. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Men, that's the mark. It's not church attendance. It's not men's group attendance. It's not tithing. It's not Bible study. It's not date nights with wife. It's not putting your phone down for your kids. It's you have love for each other. That's the mark. And then downstream come all the things that I just listed and a thousand things more. Love. Now you'll notice two things about this: a condition and a quality. The condition is Jesus uses the word if. If you love one another, which means it's possible to be a Christian, but in a season or in a moment, not show the mark. If, if you obey, then the world knows you follow Jesus. If you want non-Christians to know that you're a Christian, then you must show the mark. You love each other. And by the way, the emphasis here in Jesus' own words, and I could bring in other scriptures to show, is this is a love towards other Christians. Okay, that's what Jesus is getting at. Well, what about the world? Yes, there are a million verses that I could pull up that are about loving the world. But the priority, just like being in the airplane and the mass coming down, you cover yourself first. We are to be a community so marked by love towards each other that we truly look like the ecclesia, ek auta, the called out ones. We are different. Not because we're better, but because we've been saved by grace, loved by God, so that we can love each other. Our community has got to be different. It's got to be simple. Those people love each other. I went in on that. They disagree and yet they still love. Our world doesn't know how to handle that. So that's the condition. But then the quality that you love one another just as I have loved you. That word as is a grammatically that's an equal sign. I'm to love Paul Shub, how Jesus loves me. Colson Burkett, how Jesus loves me. Do you feel the quest? Do you feel the mission? The content of our mind right here on the front of our brain that drives us forward? What happens when Paul angers me? What happens when I anger Jesus? Love. It's so radical. It's so hard, but it is so simple. Loving each other. Now, check this out. John 17 in the high priest priestly prayer on the way to Gethsemane, in between the Lord's Supper, Passover, and Gethsemane. I do not ask for these only, Jesus is praying to the Father, but also for those who will believe in me. By the way, that's us. Through their word, and they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us. Get this, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. So we display this mark of being Christians, not just to show the world that we belong to Jesus, but to show the world that the Father actually sent Jesus. That's like a that's crazy. And so Francis Schaeffer, pastor, author, uh, with Jesus now, he said this: Jesus is giving a right to the world. Upon his authority, he gives the world the right to judge whether you and I are born-again Christians on the basis of our observable love toward all Christians. Now, I just want to be clear. It's not that if we don't show the mark, we're not Christians. Because we all fall short. We all need grace. But the world has this right given by Jesus to judge us as true Christians or not, based off of our observable love to one another. That is wild. And so, man, this is the simple man. And this is your quest. And I didn't put it in a slide or probably should have, but uh Francis Schaefer, a tiny little book, The Mark of the Christian. I mean, it's like 20 pages, incredibly powerful. Um, he gives three points for how we are to show love. You guys are just like, just give me a first start. Okay, here you go. First, the words, I'm sorry. Men, um, two errors with apologizing. The first, most of us, we don't apologize enough. The most three most magical words ever are I love you. The second is I'm sorry. We don't apologize enough. A lot of us have, we need to make apologies way more often than we are. Just own it. We all know, we would all say yeah, I'm a mess up, but then we don't own it in front of the people that matter the most to us. The second ditch, though, is just apologizing nonstop, like a doormat, very passive, just to appease wrath. You know that if I don't just bow here, I'm just gonna get it, I'm not in the mood, or I'm scared. No. You take the wrath, you don't apologize, and you work through it. That's what a lot of us have to do. Don't let I'm sorry be the passive card. Okay, but a lot of us need to be apologizing. Point number two, another three-word phrase, I forgive you. That's how we show love to each other. If Paul angers me, and by the way, I'm picking on Paul because he's one of my favorite people. If he angers me and we talk about it, and I tell him why he angers me, and maybe I realize why I was wrong, and he tells me how he was wrong, he says I'm sorry, I say I'm sorry, and then we say, I forgive you. You know what the world can't do right now? They can cancel, they can't forgive. There is no forgiveness on social media. There is no forgiveness in this culture. That's how we love each other. I forgive you. The third, where we differ as Christians, because a lot of times it's like doctrinal stuff within the walls of Christianity. Where we differ, the non-Christian may not understand what we're disagreeing about. Pedobaptism, Kratobaptism, you know, I could go on and on. They've got to see that how we differ is different. How we differ is just different because it's just, it oozes love. And this brings us back to Germany almost 100 years ago. The elders decide to meet and they don't talk. For a few days, they just decide we're gonna go before the Lord in prayer on our hand. And we're gonna go before the Lord and we're gonna bring all of our sin before him, both sides. And then we're gonna meet. And so for days they go before the Lord and they just pray and they just say, God, I am unhair, I am unworthy, I have failed both sides. And Francis Schaefer, who wrote The Market of Christian, had a chance to meet with some of these people. And he said, How did the conversation go when you finally met? And the answer was we were just one. We were just one. That is different. I don't think that's how I would respond. Definitely not in my flesh. That's not how the world responds. But this Christian church, absolutely ripped asunder by this terrible persecution, comes back together as one. No resentment, no fury, just before the Lord, we're all broken. We were one. That is different. That is love. That is the mark of Christianity. Those were true disciples of Jesus. True disciples. And so as we end, then what we keep constant in our mind is what Jesus kept constant in his mind, which is love. The sort of love that hurts us, the sort of love that leads us in the ordinary that we're gonna experience. Here's the fun part of today. I'm almost done. You get to do this, you're gonna have a hundred opportunities to do this today. Not in your life, today. Little cuts. But remember, Adam bled in the garden. Jesus, the second Adam, bled in the garden. What are you going to do in your life today? In your garden today? You get to bleed. It's a privilege, it's an honor. Will you die so that others might live? Will you set your face like flint on your quest to love today? Will you receive the simplicity of what it means to be a C3 man today? That's all it is. We are shamars, we are keepers. We bleed the garden for ourselves, or we bleed ourselves for the garden.