Ready for the Distractions

Well good morning and happy new year everybody! My name is René, I'm one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church and I want to invite you to grab the message notes that you got when you came in today or if you're joining us on the live stream you can access those at TLC.org/notes. Ready for the ride. Let's say that together. Ready for the ride. That is what we call our new year series for the whole month of January.

Why did we come up with this name? Well, it's because when I look ahead at 2024, what I see is this. I see a set of one massive wave after another headed our way. What I see are election waves and culture war waves and pickleball waves and Taylor Swift waves. There's all kinds of waves that are headed our way, and you and I can either be surprised by them and just rolled by them or we can be prepared. We can be ready for the ride, and that's what this series is all about.

Now this weekend what I want to focus on as we get this kicked off is being ready for the distraction. If you have your Bibles or Bible apps, you could turn to 2 Corinthians. We're gonna be in one verse in chapter 3 and then several in chapter 11 today because one of the primary things that's coming our way, in fact, really you could characterize all the waves that are coming our way culturally, politically, and so on as big distractions potentially from what God wants us to focus on and from our mission as Christians.

Would you agree with me on this one? I think we are living right now in a cultural moment and in a society where culturally and technologically we have more opportunities to be distracted than human beings have ever had in our history. Ever! Would you agree with that? There was an interesting article in The Guardian just a few days ago called Reclaim Your Brain. Why it's time to stop scrolling our lives away, and this was all about the distractions that you and I all face technologically.

I love the illustrations for this article by a cartoonist named Edward Sneed because here are some of them. There was a phone filled with anger and another phone full of alarm and another one that was full of anxiety and another one that was full of temptation. When I look at these cartoons—anger and temptation and alarm and anxiety—these are the things that we are facing in 2024, and let me just tell you all of these things are gonna be more intense this year than last. Why? It's an election year, and all the candidates on both sides, with very few exceptions, are gonna try to leverage especially these three things to try to get you to pay attention, to try to get you to click, to try to get you to vote.

We're all facing this. It's interesting in this article they asked the readers, are you happy with how much time you're spending on your phone? They got hundreds of responses and they were all similar to these three. I feel addicted. My ability to concentrate seems to have vanished. Can you relate to that? Somebody else said, I can't just sit and be anymore. I automatically reach for my phone if there's a moment of downtime. My brain struggles to settle and to focus. Somebody else said, I stress about the time I've already lost to mindless scrolling.

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that any time spent on your phone or on your computer or on TV is wasted time, but what I am saying is that I agree with Time magazine when they said distraction is the preeminent condition of our age. Distraction is a problem for everybody because of the short attention span that it produces, the lowered IQ it produces, the anxiety it produces, but it's a special problem for Christians because it sabotages the very engine of our faith. It undermines the core of what we're supposed to be all about.

So let's talk about distractions today. To keep my faith undistracted and uncomplicated in a distracting world, three very simple but powerful points. Number one, I need to realize the power of beauty. Realize the power of beauty. Now what do I mean by this? Let me explain it this way. A thousand years ago, Prince Vladimir the Great, the ruler of Kiev, was looking for a religion to unify his people. They worshiped pagan gods and every little village had its own little spirit or god that it worshiped.

He's thinking to himself, and by the way, I was looking at Prince Vladimir here and I thought he looks almost exactly like Kyle Pitchford who did announcements for us today. It's an exact match, but I'm getting distracted in my message on distraction. Here's what I'm talking about. He decides, I want to find a religion that is going to unify my people, and so he sends his agents out to investigate neighboring faiths. This is true a thousand years ago, and after several months all of his agents come back to report on what they found.

Some of them found faiths that were too strict. Others found faiths that they felt were too abstract. Then those who went down to Constantinople to investigate Christianity come forth with their report, and here is part of what they said. They said, the Christians led us to the place where they worship their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for on earth there is no such vision nor beauty, and we do not know how to describe it. We only know that God dwells among men.

We cannot forget that beauty, and they ended up persuading Prince Vladimir to adopt Christianity as the faith of his people. But what persuaded them was it somebody's brilliant argument? Not really. Was it that the astonishing warriors and engines of war? Definitely not. It was one thing—it was beauty.

Referring to this story about 900 years later, the Russian writer Dostoyevsky, who was himself a devout Christian, said beauty will save the world. He was talking about the beauty of Jesus Christ, and this is a very biblical concept. Look at our verse today, 2 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 18. Man, I love this verse so much. It's one of my favorite verses in the Bible. I know I say that probably every single week, but this really is one of my favorites, and it sounds a little bit esoteric at first, but let's really dig into it. Let's read it together. Are you ready? Here we go.

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory. All right, that's a lot of words. What does it mean? Very simple. When you let yourself be drawn in by the beauty of Jesus Christ—just think about Jesus—that's gonna change you. Not to be irreverent, but it's kind of like how when you see those photos of how dogs and dog owners begin to look alike. This is a real thing. You just kind of become like whoever or whatever you hang around.

Well, the more I contemplate Jesus, the more I'm being transformed into his image. That meaning my character becomes like Jesus. So that's a big picture of this verse, but this is so rich. Let's dig into it a little bit deeper. Are you ready to really go deep this morning, church? All right, 'cause here we go. Paul here is actually referring in a literary way to something that happened 1,400 years before he wrote this. So for Paul, it was already ancient history.

He's talking about the time when Moses is about to be given the Ten Commandments by God, but first he has a request of God. He says, Lord, show me your glory. What he's saying is, you know, who are you? You reached out to me in the burning bush, and now you're about to deliver me these tablets of stone with your laws on them, but what kind of a God are you? Show me your essence. Show me your glory. I want to see it of the white-hot heart of your star.

God says, well, you can't really see my face and live, but I'll give you a little hint. So Moses just gets to see like a little shimmer of God's glory. The Lord explains himself like this: this is the kind of God I am. This is my glory—compassion and grace and love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. So look, this is how God characterizes himself. He says, well, here's my glory—compassion and grace and love and faithfulness and love again and forgiveness. That's who I am.

Moses is blown away by this, and when God speaks to him, a little bit of like the radiance of God shines on him so much so that it affects him, and Moses has to, the Bible says, wear a veil over his face because of how just being that close to God makes him glow. People can't even look on the reflection of the glory of God. The kind of the radiation of God affects Moses so much. So that's kind of a weird story, isn't it? And that's what Paul is referring to in this verse because he's saying now we all—not just one guy, not just Moses—who with unveiled faces, Moses had to wear a veil. We don't. We could come right into the presence of God now.

We get to contemplate the Lord's glory in Jesus because in Jesus Christ I see all those things that God mentioned as his glory, right? Do you remember compassion, grace, love, faithfulness, forgiveness? I see that. I see the face of God in Jesus Christ, and when I look at Jesus, when I just think about that kind of the radiation of it affects me too. I'm being transformed into his image. I think about what Jesus did. I start to love like Jesus. I start to look at people like Jesus. I start to think of God as my father like Jesus. I become more like Jesus with ever-increasing glory. Incrementally, it doesn't happen overnight, bit by bit, but inexorably, inevitably, when I contemplate the glory of Jesus, I become more like him.

Basically, he's saying Christianity seems complicated, but it's very simple—it's Jesus. There's power in just thinking about Jesus. One of my favorite pictures of Jesus, and this is one of the ways that I think about Jesus, is Rembrandt's etching Jesus healing the people. Several times I've shown this church this picture, and one year someone gave me a copy of it. There it is, and we hang this up in our house, and I love to just look at it, and I love to just contemplate it because this is just a summary of the gospel, I think.

On one side, on the left side, you've got sort of the rich elite people, and you can tell just by kind of like looking at their faces they kind of have it all together. They're wearing nice clothes, they're super smart, and they're considering what Jesus has to say, and they're riveted and they're compelled by Jesus. But then on the other side, you get the people who are clearly poor, and they're weak and they're sick, and in fact, you've even got some people on the far side who are even afraid to come out of the shadows. You can barely see them in the shadows, but they're compelled and they're drawn to Jesus.

In the middle of those two groups, there stands Jesus, and he's touching and he's healing and he's ministering to every single one of them. The power of this to me is that that is actually the picture of Jesus in the Gospels—that the one who made the whole universe loves you so much that he wades right down into our world to touch us and heal us and forgive us and save us and rose again to give us hope. The Christian life is just about Jesus, period—getting intrigued by Jesus, saved by Jesus, changed by Jesus, fascinated by Jesus, loving Jesus because he first loved us. I'm changed by his beauty.

What happens sometimes in life is we get distracted from the simplicity of it and the power of it and the beauty of it. That's why, anticipating all those waves in 2024, I got to tell you this true. I talked about this last weekend, but maybe you weren't here because it was New Year's weekend. I'm calling this year the year of living Jesusly because Jesus is gonna be our lighthouse in all the fog that is headed our way.

Nearly every single message and series as a sermon this year is going to be about Jesus—who Jesus is, or what Jesus taught, or how Jesus can be reflected in us, or how we can be like Jesus in the community. There's a pastor named Brian Zond who has what I love. I think it's a great quote. Our task, he says, is not to protest the world into a certain moral conformity but to attract the world to the saving beauty of Christ. We do this best not by protest or political action but by enacting a beautiful presence within the world.

So if that is the power of our faith—simply Jesus—then the one thing that can undermine our faith more than anything else is getting distracted in any way from that. And that's point two: I need to resist any distractions. Resist any distractions from Jesus. And here's where Paul goes a few chapters later, chapter 11, verse 3, 2 Corinthians. I'm afraid, however, that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your simple and pure devotion to Christ.

I love that phrase—simple and pure devotion to Christ. Would you say that out loud with me? Simple and pure devotion to Christ. One more time because this is the point of this whole message. Here we go: simple and pure devotion to Christ. The whole message can be summarized in the song that started our worship set today: turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and his grace.

So Paul says, I'm worried that you're gonna be led astray from that. Now I gotta address something here. I've heard some people say they're kind of disturbed by the fact that Paul only mentions Eve like Eve was like the bad person, and he never even mentions Adam here, who's clearly just as culpable. Let me just point out that in the book of Romans, Paul makes a similar point, and in the book of Romans he only mentions Adam and not Eve. So to Paul, clearly Adam and Eve are sort of interchangeable to make his point, which is this: he says just as they were deceived—do you remember what happened there in the story of the Garden of Eden?

Michelangelo famously painted on the Sistine ceiling God reaching down to Adam at the creation of human beings, right? Well, a lot of people know this—it's iconic—but people sometimes miss that he painted a very similar pattern: Adam and Eve reaching out to the serpent at the first temptation. That was a very deliberate clever echo of that first image because in Genesis, the serpent does not say to them, eat of this forbidden fruit so that you can be evil like me. No, what the serpent says is, you'll be like God. So, you know, the distraction sounded so good. They weren't tempted to be devils; they were tempted to be gods.

So when Paul says just as they were deceived, what leads you and I astray commonly from a simple and pure devotion to Christ, if we're being tempted just as they were, are things that sound so good, so godly, so churchy. Verse 4, you happily put up, he says, with whatever anybody tells you, even if they preach a different Jesus than the one we preach. So a different Jesus—the Jesus in the Gospels. Remember, he's in the midst of the poor and the meek and the elite, and he's compassionate, he's forgiving, and all those things that God said were his glory, right? He's gracious and he's kind and he's loving.

If I'm very honest with you right here, the Jesus that I see some Christians following right now is an aggressive take-no-prisoners warrior Jesus. That's a different Jesus. Or, he says, a different kind of spirit than the one you received. What's the spirit that we are receiving from Jesus Christ? Well, what's the fruit of the Holy Spirit? Love and peace and joy and patience and kindness and gentleness. What I'm seeing from many Christians and even Christian leaders today is a spirit of arrogance and hatred and division and kind of this pugilistic combative attitude, or a different kind of gospel than the one you believed—a legalistic gospel, not a gospel of grace, or a political gospel. Any of that causes us to lose our focus, to lose the plot, to lose the beauty.

I mean, let me just give you one example. I'll never forget when years ago Paul Spurlock took me up to the De La Viega disc golf course to play disc golf for the very first time. I don't know if you know this; it's world-renowned for its beauty. It was a beautiful day, as you could see, beautiful view of the bay shimmering in the distance. Now admittedly, I am NOT the most coordinated person in the world, but I figured how hard could this possibly be? It is frisbee! Well, I soon learned calling it frisbee is a big no-no; it is disc golf, thank you very much.

But you know, I always like to prepare, and so I looked up some tips online for the beginner, and here is what I got: look back away from your target, allowing your shoulders to turn, reach back away from your body for a consistent release point, lock hips, start to reach back until the hip point of the front flat foot hits the ground with the reach back fully. I was like, what does this even mean? I don't know, and this was for the beginner. This was the easiest thing I could find, and so I really tried to do this, and at every tee, I looked exactly like this every single time. Why is it not going the right direction?

Paul tries to be helpful. He's like, René, there's a lot of hazards here. Just don't—you don't want your disc to go down that ravine or get stuck in those trees or land in all the poison oak. So how do you think that all worked out? If there was a tree to hit or a ravine to roll down, I did it. At one point, Paul turned to me and said, René, it's unbelievable. You've now hit every single clump of poison oak on the course, bar none! Really? I don't know what's wrong. I'm trying my hardest. I lost discs. I got lost one time looking for discs. Did I mention when I got up there it was a stunning day? Now did I notice the beauty? Did I have a good time? No and no. The beauty of it all, the joy of the game, lost on me because suddenly all I saw were the hazards, and so consequently, that's exactly where I went.

All I thought about was my technique. So why do I bring this up? What I just described is many people's church experience. They're initially drawn to it by the beauty of Jesus and the joy, and then slowly we urge on them all sorts of different techniques. You gotta go this way, this way, and we focus on all the hazards that are all around them, and so what that happens is they get self-conscious and hazard-conscious instead of Jesus-conscious, and the stunning beauty and the fun of it is lost on them.

I mean, just consider some of the ways this happens. I can be distracted by Jesus by all kinds of things that sound initially good, like Bible study. What? Yes, Bible study! I love Bible study—like love it, love it, love it. Never get tired of it. But would you agree with this? You can get so into exact interpretations of prophecy or the dimension of the temple in the new millennium or some other Bible code that you get distracted from your pure and simple devotion to Christ. This is what Jesus said to the religious teachers of his day: you diligently study the scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life, but these are the scriptures that testify about me, and yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

The point of Bible study isn't Bible knowledge; it's Jesus knowledge, and we can lose the plot sometimes. Now listen, my nightmare is that somebody's gonna hear this message and go, René said this weekend that the Bible is evil. That's not what I am saying, of course not. I'm saying the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. Be sure to keep seeing the point, which is Jesus on every page. I can also be distracted by just life's busyness, right? You know the story of Mary and Martha. They invite Jesus to their house, and Mary sits at Jesus's feet while Martha's in the kitchen, quote, distracted by all the preparations that have to be made.

She complains, hey Jesus, tell Mary to help me. Jesus says, Martha, Martha, you're worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Let me be candid. I get to speak at different churches and conferences, and it's wonderful, but I've noticed that sometimes the church pastors and the church leaders can be the least often in the worship services, and when they're in the worship services, they're not really focused on Jesus. Why? Well, I'll speak for myself. I can be worried and upset about many things, distracted by all the preparations that have to be made—just business.

I can be distracted from Jesus by controversies, and you know they sound so urgent, so important for Christians to pay attention to, and it's always something else. I was fascinated by this was part of the church life way back in the beginning. Paul says in 2 Timothy, command certain men like Timothy, you know who these people are, not to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God's work, which is by faith. That phrase promote controversies has become like a little litmus test for me when I'm listening to preachers or podcasters or Christian writers. Are they just promoting controversy, or are they helping me maintain a simple and pure devotion to Jesus?

We can also get distracted by politics. No, yes, as incredible as that may seem. One day, some of Jesus' opponents try to draw him into the biggest political controversy of his era—basically, Jesus, Caesar or no? Take a stand, yes or no? What is your political position? But Jesus will not be drawn into this political dumpster fire that's going on. Jesus said, give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's. He's saying, listen, Caesar has his place, but it's not God's place.

Now again, don't get me wrong here. I hope you vote. I'm thankful for our democracy. I'm thankful we have a voice. I hope you pray about your vote and vote in a way that is Jesus-y, right? But I also hope you realize that some of your brothers and sisters in Christ here in this church who have also sought God's guidance through prayer and also read Scripture and also want to be Christ-like just as much as you are going to come to different conclusions than you, and you may passionately believe them to be completely wrong. Guess what? They passionately believe you're wrong. With every election, at the end of it, some of us are gonna be happy, some of us are gonna be sad.

What our church needs this election year, what our community will need, what our nation will need, what your family will need is to see people unified in Christian love and not shattered by human politics. Amen? What we are going to need is this: we need to see people worshiping the one true Lord who rules over all human kingdoms and all presidents and all kings and all presidential candidates, and to see us praying to that one Lord, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

You know I've said this before, but I don't want to be known as a red church or a blue church. I want to be known as a church bound together not by politics but by a realization that all we are is just kind of a motley bunch of forgiven sinners, and we are unified by this one thing: we once were lost, but now are found by the amazing grace of Jesus Christ. Within all of our differences, we find ourselves unified by astonishment at Jesus Christ. That's what I long for here at TLC. Is that what you long for, church? Because that's the kind of church I hope that we build here together.

So we need to recognize the power of beauty, specifically the beauty of Jesus Christ, and then resist any distraction from our pure and simple devotion to Jesus. And then finally, we need to recognize the source of distraction. And here is where it gets tricky—really, really tricky—because often distraction can come from people who seem to be Christian leaders. Skip to verse 13. These people, these distractors, are false apostles. They're deceitful workers who disguise themselves as apostles of Christ. But I'm not surprised because even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, so it's no wonder his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.

That's pretty intense. He's saying they look like the good guys. They could be Christian pastors, bloggers, podcasters, authors. Maybe they're super popular. Maybe they're saying the very things you are eager to hear. But if they are selling distraction from a pure and simple devotion to Jesus Christ, Paul is saying they are servants of Satan in disguise. And so here's the application, and I mean this to be a filter for us to put on our eyes and minds this whole year. As you move into the new year, ask this simple question always: does this message, does this messenger distract me from Jesus? Is this keeping me from a pure and simple devotion to Christ? Stay focused. Turn your eyes on Jesus.

Now you might be going, okay, I get that, but this year when I faced all of those distractions—the anger and the alarm and the anxiety and the temptation that are just gonna be pouring out of my phone like a fire hose—you know, give me some practice. I know I'm supposed to focus on Jesus, but man, how do I break their power? Give me some practical tips. Give me some life hacks. Give me some new habits that keep me focused on Jesus Christ, right? That's a great question, and I'm gonna get very specific for you with some actionable, memorable tips for dealing with these four things starting next weekend. I hope you come back.

But today I want to lay the foundation for not just the series but for our whole year. For now, here's what I did. I put some verses on page two of your notes to help you meditate on Jesus and his beauty instead of starting the day by plunging into all those distractions. This is a way—I mean, it's kind of like this picture, right? What you see here in these verses is this picture, and so this is a way for you to focus on, contemplate the Lord's glory.

I'll close with this. Apollo 13, famous for being the moon mission that failed, right? As you might know, 46 hours into their flight, 200,000 miles from Earth, an oxygen tank exploded, rupturing one whole side of the spacecraft. The command module was now without power, without light, without water, without computers, 200,000 miles away from Earth in space. The mission had now gone from exploration to mere survival. Incredibly, they limped home. They were nearly back when the guys at mission control said, we got some bad news. We have worked out you're off course. Your angle is too shallow, and you have to do a precise 14-second long burn, a correction to get the right angle for reentry because if you come in too shallow, you're gonna bounce off the atmosphere and into space, wildly off track, or if you come in too steep, you're gonna burn up and you're gonna die, and it has to be precise.

No navigation computer, no way for some kind of remote control. How are they possibly going to get the right course? Well, the commander Jim Lovell fired the rockets. He figured out that if he kept his eyes on the Earth's horizon, on the demarcation line between darkness and light, if he kept that right in some crosshairs that he put onto one of the windows in the spacecraft, then he would be on target and come in at the right angle. And that is what got them home safely without any computers, no electricity, no remote control. But as long as they stayed focused on that line, they knew they'd stay on track.

Listen, in a year that's going to be full of as many distractions as there are stars in the sky, and if we come at the wrong angle, we're gonna spin off wildly off course or we're just gonna be burned up in anger and anxiety. The answer is to keep Jesus in the center, steer toward him, and we will stay on mission. We will stay on course, and we will get where he wants us to go. Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, help us to stay focused, to set our minds on things above and not on earthly things, to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, to contemplate your glory, to have a pure and simple devotion to Christ. And Lord, I pray that if right now somebody needs to just fully throw their trust on you as their Lord and Savior, that they would do so now, even if they don't fully understand it. But if they're drawn to your beauty and your power, I know they will be transformed. Help us to build our lives on you, Lord Jesus. It's in your holy name we pray. Amen.