More Like Jesus

Like Jesus is the name of the brand new series that we launched today. Good morning everybody. My name is René, another one of the pastors here at TLC. It is a gorgeous morning today here along the California coast, but I hope wherever you are you have a happy Valentine's Day today.

Valentine's is always a special day for me and my wife Lori because it happens to be the day we got married. Lori chose that day so that I would never forget that important romantic holiday—our anniversary—and today's a special one for us. It happens to be our 34th wedding anniversary. I can't believe it's been that long. We're looking forward to having a great day together today. I hope you have a wonderful day wherever you are.

As I said, Like Jesus is the name of our brand new series we start today. I want to encourage you to go to TLC.org/notes, download the message notes. They will not only help you follow along with my meanderings this morning, but also we put some extras in there that I'm going to be talking about a little bit later on.

Sneak preview: next weekend we have a special guest speaker, Ricky Jenkins, who is going to be here. Ricky is a phenomenal pastor down at Southwest Church in Palm Springs, and he's going to be bringing us week two in this series. Ricky's going to be talking about the little-studied first recorded public words of Jesus Christ when he was just 12 years old. It's going to be a great message. Hope you can join us.

As I said, Like Jesus is the name of this brand new series, and today I'm going to give you kind of an overview of this series. We are doing this for Lent. Lent is the 40 days leading up to Easter. It starts this Wednesday, and traditionally most churches during Lent study the life of Christ from the start of his ministry to the crucifixion and resurrection. That's what we're going to do in this series.

It kind of gets you emotionally prepared for the joy of Easter morning, and Lent also is traditionally a time that Christians allow themselves to be personally challenged to grow in Christ-likeness, to grow in self-control, to say, you know what, I don't want to just be a Christian in name only. I want to take my faith seriously. I want to dig deeper.

So with that in mind, here's what I want to ask you. Are you willing to go on this Lent journey with me this year? Are you willing to consider how Jesus may want you to change? That's what Lent is all about. Are you open, really open to Jesus Christ showing you where you need to repent? That is the spirit of the 40 days leading up to Easter Lent.

If you are open, if you are, then I invite you to join me in a word of prayer as we launch this series. Let's pray together. Lord, help me, help us to be more like Jesus. Help me to let down my defenses. Help me, help all of us to have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church today, and it's in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

So last year I picked up an amazing book. Scott Sauls is the author. It's called A Gentle Answer, Our Secret Weapon in an Age of Us Against Them. This book just came out last year, just in the nick of time. It is so timely, but watch this. He starts one chapter with this statement. Do you agree with this? Even sincere believers are starting to disassociate themselves from labels such as evangelical and Christian.

Then he dives further into that in this chapter of his book. One example he gives: Rolling Stone magazine did an interview with Marcus Mumford. He's one of the leads of the famous band Mumford and Sons, and they were interviewing him about one of their recent album releases. In this interview, Marcus Mumford, who not only is the lead singer of the band but he's also a pastor's son, says, "I don't really like the word Christian. It comes with so much baggage. So now I wouldn't call myself a Christian. I think the word just conjures up all these religious images that I don't really like. I have my personal views about Jesus and who he was, but I've kind of separated myself from the culture of Christianity."

Maybe you know somebody who feels like that. Maybe you feel like that today. Interestingly, Cara Powell, who's a professor down in Los Angeles, says half of all Christian young people who were raised in church will leave church by the time they're done with college. Now let that stat sink in. Half of all Christian young people. Picture everybody you know right now who's in their teens and 20s who grew up in church. Maybe people in your own family. Now line them all up in your imagination. Have them count off one, two, one, two, one, two, one, two. Are you picturing this? Now imagine all the twos leaving the faith.

I hope this breaks your heart. I hope if you love Jesus and you love people, you are willing to do anything, anything to keep this from happening. The question I've got as I look at the statistic is why? Why are they leaving? What are the people who are leaving? Or what are the people who say I can no longer call myself a Christian? What are the reasons they are giving for the shift?

Interestingly, none of the top three reasons that they give for leaving the church or leaving the faith are theological. In other words, nobody's saying, you know, I just don't believe in Jesus Christ anymore. At least that's not one of the top three answers, or I don't believe the Bible anymore. I don't believe in God anymore. So what are the reasons that people don't want to call themselves Christians anymore? Well, I want to give you the top three reasons that Scott Sauls gives in his book based on a ton of surveys.

First, hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of Christians. People talk about both the hypocrisy of church leaders—famous pastors or local priests or whoever who got embroiled in sex abuse scandals and other scandals—and also private negative encounters with hypocritical Christians. Second, politics, and this is huge. The idea that being a Christian equals exactly is exactly equivalent to being the supporter of that candidate or this political platform, and if you disagree, then the implication is that you are clearly out of the will of God and you may not even be a Christian, and that's turning a lot of these people away.

And then third, arrogance. They talk about a cockiness, a meanness that they perceive in Christians, and they say, listen, I understand that you disagree; you have another worldview, but do you have to be so unempathetic toward people who disagree with you?

Now let's pause just a minute because you might look at these three answers and feel a little bit defensive and frankly go, you know what, excuse me, I don't think that's true of me. I'm not a hypocrite, and I'm not arrogant, and I'm not overly political. Or you might feel frankly a little dismissive and kind of go, you know, that's not really the reason. The reason that they're leaving the church is because they just don't want to hear the truth, and they don't want to have the Holy Spirit convict them of sin and how they should change.

So you might feel defensive, you might feel dismissive, or frankly, you might look at these reasons and feel a little bit judgmental and say, René, you're exactly right. Those bad Christians who act in these ways are exactly the reason that I don't feel comfortable calling myself a Christian anymore. Okay, stop just a second because those understandable reactions—defensiveness, dismissiveness, judgmentalism—I get why you might respond to these reasons that way. The problem is those reasons are unproductive because they're all what psychologists call deflection.

It's identifying a problem but deflecting all responsibility away from me, and so nothing ever changes. Just like any other problem in life, to solve this problem, we all need to be open to correction here, right? Me included. We need to hear this and ask why it is that we Christians, as a group, do sometimes at least come across like this. Why?

Well, I believe that we Christians, at least here in America, have an underlying problem. It's a problem that's underneath us. I believe these things are really only symptoms of a deeper problem. It's a problem the Bible warns against repeatedly. It's a subtle and sneaky problem that you almost never see coming. It's a problem that the children of Israel fell into in the Bible. It's a problem early Christians fell into in the Bible. It's a problem that may be sabotaging your own spiritual life, and yet it's invisible to you. And here it is: are you ready to hear this? Are you ready to be challenged?

I believe the root issue is this: are we as Christians shaped more by culture or by Christ? Now let that sink in a minute. Are we shaped more by culture or by Christ? Now most people, most Christians, probably when they hear the word culture, think, I'm not shaped by my culture, that worldly culture out there. I'm not immoral. I watch my cues and tees. I'm a good person. But the difficulty, of course, is that we are all shaped, of course, by our culture, me included, in ways much greater than we ever realized.

Because we're like fish, and the culture is like the water that we swim in. We're not even aware of how the culture affects us. And don't get me wrong, I love our culture. I love so many things about our American culture. I really do. I mean, Baby Yoda, you know, the Muppets, In-N-Out Burger—I love our culture, seriously. But every culture has a shadow side, and so what I want to do is compare some parts of our culture and Christ.

For example, part of our American culture undeniably is being assertive in the sense of being aggressive, almost overbearing, looking out for number one, and being combative, right? Fighting and battling. And if somebody shoves you, you shove them back and win at all costs. I mean, think of so many of our cultural heroes, right? You know, Bruce Willis in Die Hard or Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible or a young Steve Jobs. We love somebody who kicks tails and takes names, right?

And of course, this isn't just in our culture. If you want a biblical example, think of Samson. Remember all those stories about Samson? Super strong. His people, the Israelites, were under the brutal oppression of the Philistines, and so Samson's solution to that problem every time was like, go kill a bunch of Philistines with a bone or set all their fields on fire. Right? Now, you ever ask what did Samson accomplish with all that? At the end of his life, the Israelites were just as oppressed as before. All that muscle, all that bravado, and it didn't change a thing.

That's why Christ taught us a different way. Our culture is self-assertive; Christ was selfless. Our culture is combative; Christ was sacrificial. Of course, our culture is win at all costs; Christ was about serving at all costs. And so I gotta ask myself, are we Christians, and specifically is our church culture formed, shaped, discipled, taking on the characteristics of our assertive, combative, win-at-all-cost culture or our selfless, sacrificial, serve-at-all-costs Christ?

Can I just be very vulnerable with you right now, church? I want to reveal my heart to you. Several times in the last year, I've literally found myself weeping as I feel like I'm seeing Christians reflecting their culture. I'm not talking about their content. Christians might be saying the right things; they're quoting Bible verses and so on, but in tone, in attitude, in posture, I feel like we're reflecting our culture so often more than Christ.

As John Perkins, the great civil rights leader, said about a year and a half ago at a conference, he said, "I feel like we are making hate into a virtue." And this is true on every political side, he said. That's true. This is not about politics; this is for everybody—left, right, or middle. Would you agree with this? People on any side of any issue can become self-righteous and harsh, right? Belittling their opponents. But as Christians, we are called higher.

So here's what I want to do to kind of explain this to you. Let's play a game. Let's call it Christ or Culture. I'm going to read you three or four quotes, and you tell me whether the spirit of these quotes reflects our culture more or Christ more. These are all quotes from Christians. I won't name names because I don't want to be personally judgmental, but these are actual quotations, and they're from all sides of the political spectrum. I'm divorcing them from their political context so that we can just see them objectively.

Here's one example: I'm watching a church service online. Throughout the message, the pastor says things like this, and this is an actual quote: "Anyone who does not agree with me must not have a fully functioning frontal lobe." And he was talking about who to vote for in the election. Now, is that the spirit of our culture or the spirit of Christ? I'd say it's our culture.

Here's another example: Santa's new Mercury News just last week, a reporter went to church and he wrote about his experience there, and here's a quote from the sermon he heard. He said, "In the whole sermon, the pastor was railing against the government," and here's the quote: "I warned the people of this County, you cannot raise your hand against this church and get away with it." Now, I understand the frustration, but is the tone, the attitude there more culture or more Christ? Well, it's more culture, right?

Here's another one: somebody was actually defending Christian violence, and they said, quote, "Christians can only be stopped on so long before we stomp back." Christ or culture? I think it's pretty clear that's culture because what does the Bible say? 1 Peter 2 says, "Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example. When he was maligned, he made no threats and he did not retaliate." You know, we are not called to be Samsonians; we are called to be Christians, not influenced by Samson and his like, but influenced by Jesus Christ.

Okay, here's the final quote I want you to identify. This is from a pastor I know named Dawit. Dawit is from Eritrea, which is the African country that is unfortunately infamous for being the country where Christians are most brutally and regularly persecuted. Dawit's brother is in an underground prison—like literally, this whole prison is underground—to punish the prisoners so that they never see the light of day. Can you imagine the psychological trauma of that? Why is Dawit's brother in prison? For one reason and one reason only: he's a Christian.

Dawit went over about a year and a half ago for a week just to take his brother communion, which his brother hadn't received in over a year. So I talked to Dawit after he got back from Eritrea, and I said, man, I bet you really struggle with anger, right? I was trying to be empathetic, and here was his response: "Anger? No, I pray for my brother's jailers and for the authorities in my country, for the president." And then Dawit started to cry for them, his brother's jailers, and he said, "René, I love them. I don't want them to be judged by God for this. I want them to repent and know the love of Jesus." Okay, is that culture or Christ? That's Christ.

This has been kind of pretty intense, so let's just kind of take a little bit of a break. There's a story that took the internet by storm this past week: the lawyer in Texas who, during a Zoom court proceeding, got his laptop camera stuck on a video filter that made his head look like a kitten. You probably saw this, but it's worth watching again, and it actually relates to what we're talking about. Watch this.

Mr. Ponton, I believe you have a filter turned on in the video settings. You might want to—

Which—can you hear me, Judge?

I can hear you. I think it's a filter.

It is, and I don't know how to remove it. I've got my assistant here; she's trying to, but ah, I'm prepared to go forward with it. That's—I'm here live. That's not—that I'm not a cat.

I can see that.

I love how Jerry Phillips, whoever he is, is just trying his hardest to keep a straight face. But I saw that, and I thought that is so often what we are doing as Christians in our society. Now follow me here. This lawyer was saying the words of a lawyer that he learned in law school, but he looked like a kitten, so nobody was taking him seriously. Right?

Well, so often we as Christians are saying the words of the Bible, the words of Jesus, but we look and act like Bruce Willis in Die Hard, right? Both guns blazing, so no one takes the words we say seriously because we look the opposite of our content. We need to look more like Jesus, and that's what this series is all about.

In this series, we're going to see three attitudes that Jesus consistently modeled. First, not hostility but humility. Not hostility but humility. Check this out: did you know that there's only one place in the Bible where Jesus describes his own personality, where Jesus says, you know what I'm like? I'm kind of like this. It's in Matthew 11, where he says, "Take my yoke upon you," my yoke—that's a metaphor for his teaching—and what's our teacher like? "Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." Those are two words that aren't exactly trending right now: gentleness and humility.

Now, gentleness and humility does not mean you cannot be passionate. It doesn't mean you can't be passionate about justice. It doesn't mean you can't be passionate about politics. But I love what Eugene, a pastor in Seattle, says: there is a difference between being passionate and being mean-spirited. Right? I mean, you see this in Jesus. Jesus was passionate but also compassionate, and the crowds saw this in Jesus, and they were drawn to him.

Like in Luke 15:1, it says, "Now all the tax collectors and sinners"—and there's other verses where we find out who was in that group. That meant prostitutes; it meant Roman collaborators; it meant idol worshipers—all kinds of folks. The tax collectors and sinners were gathering around to listen to Jesus, and so the Pharisees and scribes began to grumble, "This man welcomes sinners and eats with them." They were amazed at who was listening to Jesus Christ.

But what's fascinating to me really about the Gospels is that Jesus actually had a stricter interpretation in many ways of the Torah, of the Jewish law, than the Pharisees and scribes did. You could say Jesus' teaching was narrow, but his welcome was wide. Right? How in the world do you pull that off? Stay doctrinally conservative yet wildly liberally welcoming? I don't know, but Jesus did. Jesus' love included everyone, and I am convinced this means if we want to be like Jesus, if we want to follow Jesus, we have to follow him into the world and build friendships with as many people as we can who do not believe like us and who do not behave like us.

Now, does that mean we just should be silent about error when we see it and when friends go astray? We should not say anything? Of course not! But the Bible says restore gently and humbly like Jesus. Now this probably raises a ton of questions, and we're going to get into that more in this series.

Then second, Jesus modeled not dominant leadership but servant leadership. And by dominant leadership, of course, what I mean is bossiness, being overbearing, dictatorial, tyrannical. I'll never forget several years ago going to a pastor's conference, and it seemed that more pastors had the thick best-selling Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs under their arms than were carrying the Bible. And I'll especially never forget that one of them, a pastor friend of mine, came up to me very enthusiastically, and he said, "René, every pastor should read this book because we need to show this kind of leadership." And then he said, "Take no prisoners."

I love this guy; he's a friend of mine, and I had to laugh at him, and I just kind of said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa! Is that our culture or is that Christ?" Listen, I can get wrapped up in this too; everybody can. This is why Jesus warned his disciples. He knew this would be a temptation. Watch what he said: "You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you! Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man, even the Messiah, even Jesus, did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."

This is so important. I don't know if you agree with this, but it seems to me like so many Christians—and I think this applies equally to Christians no matter where they are politically right now—somehow think that the indispensable way to usher in the kingdom of God is by getting earthly power, earthly political power. Now listen, I think it's great if Christians go into politics, absolutely! But nothing in the Bible or in human history supports the idea that earthly political power is the indispensable key to bringing God's kingdom to earth.

Satan tempted Jesus with earthly power, and Jesus said no. The people tried to make Jesus king by force one time, and Jesus slipped away. Jesus said to Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world." He told his disciple Peter, "Put away that sword." The Apostle Paul said we fight not with weapons of this world. And we're going to be looking at all of that in this series. The idea that the kingdom of God doesn't look like tanks and armies and soldiers; the kingdom of God looks like our people's pantry, our drive-through food ministry every Wednesday. By the way, if you need food, just come on by. We are here every Wednesday afternoon.

Being ambassadors for the kingdom of God looks like this: feeding the hungry, advocating for the poor and marginalized, loving our neighbors. Because it's through servant leadership that Christianity has actually always gained the most ground. We don't look for power to seize; we look for people to serve.

I know our society is messed up. I know that you look at people and your hearts go out to them because they're ruining their lives. I know it seems like our world is headed full steam in the wrong direction; that's not even up for debate. The question is, what can we do about it? What's the best strategy? Well, biblically, according to Christ, you want to improve the reputation of the church in the community? Serve the community, don't scold the community. You want to reach your neighbors for Jesus? Serve your neighbors. You want our society to change? Serve society.

Very early days of the church, Christians got this. They were opposed by the Roman government, but the average Roman really held Christians in high regard. Why? The Roman people knew if you were sick or poor or marginalized or a widow or hungry, the churches are where you could go for help. And over time, it was the service of the Christians that changed society because no-strings-attached giving is an outward model of the heart of the gospel.

And I feel so blessed to pastor a church that really does this in ways that are truly remarkable. Your response to the Love Thy Neighbor challenge has been amazing, and I love that because that is part of being like Jesus, and we're going to dig into that in this series during Lent.

And then third and finally, Jesus modeled not grudges but grace. Not grudges but grace. Look at the words of Jesus: "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor, hate your enemy.' But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." Like my pastor friend Dewey, and you know, Jesus didn't just speak those words; he became those words. The Bible says, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." While we were running from him, while we were actively opposing him, while we weren't giving him the time of day, while we weren't honoring him, while we were his enemies, Christ, out of love, died in our place while people were spitting in his face and pulling out his beard and nailing him to a cross. Jesus Christ gave himself and said, "Father, forgive them."

I mean, do we need any more reason than that to want to be more like Christ than our culture? Do we need any more inspiration to be gracious than that? Having received this kind of grace, how are all Christians not astonishingly and creatively and lavishly kind and forgiving? Because we know, we know that it was the kindness of God that drew us to him, and that is what is going to draw others to Jesus Christ too—not nagging, not scolding, not out-muscling them, but out-loving them, out-serving them.

You know, one of the people that I appreciate most in this church is a 91-year-old woman named Etta Mae Kibbe. And if you're watching this, man, I love you so much. As I said, Etta is 91, still very, very sharp, but she's been spending her time during the pandemic phoning people up to encourage them, walking around her neighborhood, greeting neighbors, offering to pray for them. Well, Etta Mae wrote me Friday excited about the new series, and she really gets this. Watch what she said in her email: "It is so abundantly clear that our focus must be on doing God's work in God's way, on the unique opportunities that we are given to show the world that we are Jesus people." I love it! To show the world that we're something different than culture—we are Jesus people. We're doing God's work in God's way. I love it! That's what it's all about.

So here's our goal in this series and really our goal as a church: Christa forma tea. That's a great little word that means to be conformed to Christ—Christa forma tea. Now I want to be clear: this does not happen, as Elizabeth said in the worship set, this doesn't just happen by pure grit and determination. I'm going to be less like me and more like Jesus. It's the work of God's Spirit in you that produces love and joy and peace and patience and gentleness and so forth. But there is something you can do to contribute to the process of Christa forma tea, of Christ-like character formation, and it's this: dwell in the word, the Bible. Don't just dwell in culture. If you're just being steeped in culture, of course you're going to be formed into the image of the culture. But gaze at the face of Christ in the Bible, and you'll become less like culture and more like Christ.

And what I've done for this Lenten series is put a daily Lent reading plan for the 40 days leading up to Easter. Each week it's going to be different, and again, that's at the end of the notes. You can get those once more at TLC.org/notes.

Now I want to close by giving you some hope. Things can change. Super Bowl last weekend, right before the game, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson was named the NFL's Walter Payton Man of the Year. That is the highest individual honor that NFL players vote on that they can give another player. Now here's why I bring this up: Russell Wilson is a committed Christian and very open about his faith without compromise. In fact, he kind of was made fun of a few years ago in an interview. He said he had a biblical view of marriage, and this came up because he was engaged, and he said, "Well, I'm going to remain a virgin until my wedding night." And you can imagine how he was widely mocked by our culture and made fun of for that.

But he has become known as a servant leader. For example, every single week he takes part of his day off and he goes to volunteer at one of Seattle's children's hospitals—not just for some 20-minute photo op, but to actually serve the kids there as a volunteer. Well, over time, the other players have seen his heart, and again this year, they gave him their highest honor. And in his acceptance speech just last Sunday, he closed with this: "Remember this one thing: love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love changes things. Thank you." That's powerful.

In our culture, are people leaving the church saying that they are alienated by Christians' behavior? Yes, but love changes things, and love can change that when we are more like Jesus. Let's pray.

Our Father in heaven, may we honor thy hallowed name. In the name of Jesus Christ, your kingdom come, your will be done in us, in our lives. Help us to find our daily bread in your word. Forgive us our sins of being hypocrites, even as we forgive others their hypocrisy. Deliver us from the evil of arrogance and spiritual pride. And Lord, I pray that if anybody in this moment wants to commit their lives to Jesus, maybe for the first time or maybe as a recommitment—not commit their lives to a church, not commit their lives to a pastor, certainly not commit their lives to a political party, but to commit their lives to Jesus Christ—I pray that now they would say, "Jesus, sometimes Christians alienate me, but I'm drawn to you. So Jesus, make me more like you. Save me and change me." And it's in your name we pray, amen.