Slide 1
2 Tim. 4:11 “Luke alone is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry.”

Slide 2
Colossians 3:8-10
“But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. ”

Slide 3
Jesus: “I am the way and the TRUTH and the life” John 14:6
Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44)

Slide 4
Colossians 3:12
“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.”

Slide 5
Compassion

Slide 6
Romans 13:1-2 “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authorities is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.”

Slide 7
1 Timothy 5:17 “Elders who lead effectively are worthy of double honor”

Slide 8
Humility
“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight.” James 4:1-2

Slide 9
Every church will have a “Mark Moment”
What keeps us together is not agreeing about Mark, but agreeing about Jesus

Slides 10
If you stay at CHCC only as long as you agree with 100% of what we do, you won’t be here very long
Disagreement can become Satan’s WEAPON to divide us, or God’s TOOL to GROW us and deepen our relationships and commitment to each other

Slides 11
Anne Kennedy
“Good Shepherd has been, over the years, a healthy place where people who vigorously disagree with each other politically and theologically sit side by side in the pew and take communion together. Some people are stressed by how vigorous debate becomes in the Christian Education hour because Matt lets people say what they think and engages them with his own beliefs.

“The fruit of that amicable disagreement meant that when covid came around, we did not feel we had to take a firm position about something so personal. To the best of our ability we accommodated everyone’s conscience. Those who were anxious about getting sick were made to feel comfortable in our building if they wanted to come in person. Those who had no anxiety at all mingled freely. The only thing we tried really really really—my gosh we tried so hard—to do was to encourage everyone to be gracious, forgiving, and loving about other people’s feelings and beliefs.

“What was so awful is that the whole thing was moral at its core. While we were trying to keep everyone walking toward the cross, [two New York politicians] were out there explaining every single day what it meant to be a good person. And I’m sorry, those two people don’t know what it means to be a good person because they don’t believe in Jesus. They were—and are—so far out of their lane it drives me batty.

“So yes, covid was a great sifting of the church. A lot of people washed up to our doors because their former churches either shut down and never reopened, or spent more time talking about masks and vaccines and racism than they did about the Bible. At the same time, a few people were so angry—and finally left—because we would not morally judge the issue. And this was a great tragedy to me, for the people who left were on opposite sides from each other, and so they would have left regardless. And I don’t know if they ended up going anywhere else. They may have become numbered among the 40 million de-churched.”

Slide 12
We don’t join around our opinions; we join around Jesus

Slide 13
Jesus
“But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire” (Matt. 5:22)

Slide 14
Message and method both matter to God

Slide 15
Colossians 3:8-10, 12-15
“But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. 9 Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator…Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.15 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace.”

Can we celebrate those? Who did that? Thank you.

Colorado State University broke Mandy Harvey’s heart when they kicked her out of their musical education program. Mandy grew up loving music. Her dream was to teach others to play music. But when she was in her late teens, she contracted a virus that slowly began to erode her hearing and she realized that had become catastrophic. When she was in a piano dictation test, what happens is a penis plays music and the students have to dictate on paper what the notes are. Mandy was eager to do well and she was waiting for the music to start. And when she looked around her, she realized all of her fellow students were already dictating it. The music had started, but Mandy couldn’t hear it. A couple days later she got the letter from the university saying, you’re done. This program isn’t gonna work. She felt like her dreams were being shattered.

She’s kind of walking numbly toward her dorm with the letter telling her that she was out in her hand and a biker came up behind her and was screaming at her to move. But of course she couldn’t hear him and he collided with her. And so he’s yelling at her, how could you be so stupid? And she sat there on the ground with the letter rejecting her from the program. And ironically, some broken hearing aids in the other hand. And she goes, this is when I knew it was real and my dream had begun to die. The biker took what was already a really bad day for Mandy and he made it worse. And isn’t that what being mean always does. We don’t know the person who’s frustrated. We don’t know where they’re coming from or what they’re dealing with, but Mandy is a resilient person.

And so she taught herself to sing by trying to remember where it should feel, what it should feel like in her vocal cord. She used tuners and she would take her shoes off and stand on the stage so she could feel the vibrations and the percussion. And she got so accomplished at it that she actually was able to go onto America’s Got Talent in 2017 and she made it to the finals. If you’re into that sort of thing, a whole nation was transfixed by this woman who had overcome overwhelming odds to succeed at that level. But after the competition, Mandy told A BBC reporter that she’d begun receiving death threats from people catches in the deaf community. They attacked her for practicing Oralism. Oralism is the practice of teaching deaf people to learn how to speak and to use lip reading instead of sign language.

And for them, that’s selling out. Now look, I I’m not familiar with this debate in the deaf community is the first time I’d ever heard the word oralism. But death threats turning someone who could be a hero in your community into a villain. It’s not wrong to have opinions and to advocate for them to deal with legitimate disagreements, but God has something to say about the way we handle those disagreements. And as we wrap up this series on message messy, we’re gonna talk about how we honor God. We, while we disagree with each other, ’cause disagreements are gonna be a fact of life even in the church. I think the most famous one is when Paul disagreed with Barnabas. Barnabas was a spiritual giant in the early church, doesn’t get the attention he really deserved. He was filled with the spirit. He worked with Paul tirelessly to plant churches all over in places that had never heard the gospel.

But as they prepared to leave for another missionary journey, Barnabas wanted to take along John, mark and Paul refused because John Mark had deserted them on an earlier journey and they couldn’t come to terms. It got so heated they decided just to go their own way. So Barnabas took John Mark, Paul took Silas and they went their own way. Now I want you to think about this. These are not immature people. These are two of perhaps the Godliest Christians, whoever lived Barnabas was amazing, filled with the spirit, Paul next to Jesus what Christian has ever existed like Paul. And yet these two spiritual giants came to such a sharp disagreement. They said, well we just can’t work together anymore. But you fast forward a couple years and Paul’s writing to Timothy and he says to him in two Timothy four 11, Luke alone is with me.

Get mark and bring him with you. That’s the same John Mark for he is very useful to me for ministry. Imagine the joy that Mark felt. He knew he had let Paul down. And now Paul said, but you get to come back in. Imagine the validation that Barnabas felt. I told Paul, if you just give him another chance, it would work out. And so he did. They had such a sharp disagreement, but they honored God with the way they overcame that disagreement. And it’s not the only one that Paul had. If you remember, he confronted Peter very publicly when Peter had begun eating with the Gentiles. But some Jewish believers came into town and Peter was afraid of them and stopped eating with the Gentile believers. And Paul was really upset and he confronted Peter in public. Now we often don’t realize this, but, but Peter was really the rock star of the early church.

We don’t read about as as much about him because Paul wrote all of these letters. But Peter was the one that God chose to use with so many miraculous signs. He was revered and to be attacked publicly. The the natural man in him was gonna be defensive and he’s gonna go after Paul and try to attack Paul. But in his second epistle in two Peter three 15 through 16, Peter describes Paul’s words and letters as scripture. Rather than trying to cancel someone who was disagreeing with him, he revered Paul and he admitted that God’s hand was on Paul, Paul and Peter and Barnabas and Mark revealed their spiritual maturity by how they handled their disagreements in ministry. Disagreements are also gonna be a fact of life in our families. Look, I, I’ve been married 41 years. I cherish my wife, I adore my wife. But there are some things we’re just never gonna agree on.

And if you’ve been here, you know Lisa’s naturopathic holistic whole food ways just don’t always fit well with me. ’cause I told her one thing, I go, can we have one thing normal in our house? We can’t use normal deodorant ’cause it’s got bad stuff in it. We can’t use normal dish soap or laundry soap. It’s really weird things that we have. We have an organic bed, I don’t even know what that is. We have organic sheets. It could be dried kale for all I know and I go along with all that, but I’m holding the line at my beloved Colgate Total toothpaste. I love that toothpaste. Lisa points out it’s got these chemical toxins in it. I said, we’re the most minty tasting delicious toxins I’ve ever known. And you gotta give me my Colgate total toothpaste and I’m sticking with it. It’s also outside of our house.

Last weekend my wife went up to do a baby shower for our niece up in Washington State. I had the weekend alone. So I went up to Breckenridge for sort of a personal retreat and I went down Aspen Alley. I’ve got a picture here going out. It’s just beautiful. Don’t you think that Aspen’s in Colorado, especially if like among the most beautiful trees in the world and and they speak of Colorado? Well, I was thrilled when we bought our house three and a half years ago that we had aspens in the front yard. That was a big draw to me. But my wife wants to murder them. She said, Gary, they’re not meant for centennial. We’re not high enough up in the air, they’re going to die anyway. And I said, well technically I’m going to die and I don’t want you to murder me.

Can’t we just let God take ’em out first? But I’ve won so far, but I don’t give them more than another year before the aspens are gone. But here’s the thing, you can build a marriage, a family, a team, and a church while disagreeing with each other if you learn how to disagree in a healthy way. And Paul gives us some great guidelines in the book of Colossians chapter three. Here’s what he says beginning with verse eight. But now you, what’s that fourth word must. Paul is writing to a young church and he’s telling this isn’t an option If you are a believer, if you’re calling Jesus Lord, this is something you must adopt for yourself. It’s a must. What must you do rid yourselves of, what’s the next word? All such things as these not I, I don’t want you to see have very many of these try to get rid of at least half or preferably 90%.

Paul said, none of these things properly understood are appropriate for God’s people and he lists them. Anger, rage, malice. That’s ill will. Slander and filthy language from your lips do not lie to each other since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its creator. I taped a couple television shows in Baltimore this past week and there was another woman that was a guest with me, she’s also written on marriage and she’s talking to me about another author we knew who didn’t get a lot of attention till she started attacking other marriage authors. And this woman told me, you know Gary, I like some of the points she was making. But when I would pull a book off the shelf of somebody she was attacking, I’d read what they said and it was the exact opposite of what she was accusing them of saying.

And and Paul would say, it’s fine to disagree about issues but to lie about what people say that’s entirely inappropriate. Paul would say that’s evil. And any public figure we know who puts the himself out there will be lied about. And we’ve seen that recently, haven’t we? People we might revere and honor and and people just completely misrepresent things that they have said and done. But it is a lie to think that we can lie in God’s service. Jesus said in John 14, six, I am the way and the truth and the life. He said in John 8 44, Satan is the father of lies. And here’s the thing, if I harbor malice in my heart and I hear a lie about someone I disagree with, could be a politician, could be a famous person. I kind of wanna believe the lie. I don’t like that about myself.

But Paul says that’s the kind of thing you have to take off. But what we must definitely take off is that we don’t spread lies. Disagreements are one thing, lying is something else. So one of the first rules of disagreement according to Paul, we must be wedded to the truth regardless of what we think about the person that we’re talking about. Then Paul says in verse 12, therefore as God’s chosen people holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. If we could leave the verse up there, I particularly love the phrase, as God’s chosen people holy and dearly loved, before Paul tells us what to do, he tells us who we are. This is so important for everything that follows. If there’s one thing that I know is true of just about everybody in this room and everybody watching online, you probably don’t realize the depth of God’s love for you.

What he sacrificed to call you, to choose you, how much he is for you. Once you are in Christ and the wrath of God has been removed by the death and resurrection of Christ, God is a hundred percent for you in every way. And the reason I need to know that, the reason you need to know that is when we feel overwhelmingly loved, we don’t need to attack people. I don’t try to validate myself by tearing someone else down so I could be lifted up. People can disagree with me. I don’t have to take it personally. If God is good with me, what do I care what you think about me? It’s often when we forget how loved we are, that we attack others. When we realize how loved we are by God, we wanna show kindness and compassion to others the same kindness and compassion that God has shown us.

Now the phrase clothe yourselves is a fair translation in Greek, but it doesn’t have the emphasis that Paul writes with in the Greek. Clothe yourselves is an imperative. Aris tense meaning get this done now. And when we think of clothe ourselves, you might be thinking of sort of a creative type of kid. You say, go get dressed and they take 30 minutes and they still aren’t dressed. Paul said it’s a little more urgent than that. Get this done now. So let me give an analogy of kind of has the emphasis that Paul was taking. Let’s say you sleep naked. Don’t wanna know, you don’t have to explain it. Let’s just say for the sake of argument that you sleep naked, there’s a knock on the door in the middle of the night. What’s the first thing you do? Now the really vein is gonna put on makeup, but for 90% of us we’re gonna put on clothes.

You wouldn’t even think about going downstairs without putting on a robe, putting on a shirt or pants or something. There is no chance, no universe that you go to the door start naked. And Paul is saying, for Christians who are dearly loved by God, it should be just as unthinkable that you would go out that front door without first putting on compassion toward others. Gentleness, kindness, not malice. Patience and love that you become for everyone. You might disagree with people but you’re not trying to cancel them or attack them. And I would stress it’s not just in the morning, it’s particularly in the afternoon or evening if you’re going to watch your kids play sports, how many of you have kids who are still actively playing sports and you go, or grandkids that you go out and watch ’em? Can we please say this is particularly true for disagreements over kids’ sports?

When I was in Breckenridge, I slipped into the ice arena and they had this sign that just made me laugh. And I thought, okay, I could imagine what’s happened here. Here’s what the poster says Outside the arena, please remember these are kids. This is a game. The coaches are volunteers. The referees are human. And my favorite, this is not the Stanley Cup <laugh>. Alright, can we be different watching our kids play? We’re gonna disagree with the ref or the coach or who’s playing this or that, but can we do it in a way that shows we’re dearly loved by God? Now I wanna focus on two of the things that Paul says we clothe ourselves with. We don’t have time to go into all of them. I wanna particularly focus on compassion and humility. And when I talk about compassion, I wanna apply it to church leadership.

Kurtin Lauren talked last week about conflict resolution. But we’re gonna have a lot of disagreements. And as a church, how do we do it in a way that honors God? There’s a lot of church hatred out there and some of it probably be deserved. Some churches have really messed some people over and some leaders in the church have brought disrepute to the name of Christ. But a lot of what’s fueling some church hatred is really kind of a Marxist line of thinking that divides the world into the oppressed and the oppressor. And if you are not oppressed, you are the oppressor. And so they resist any form of authority. They suspect they have no compassion going upwards, no compassion toward the challenges of those who are called to lead, whether it’s a parent, whether it’s government, whether it’s a senior pastor.

But I’m not a Marxist, I’m a Christian. And the Bible I read, the Christian Bible I read tells me that I shouldn’t resist authority because it exists. But I’m to honor authority because God created it. Romans 13, one through two, let everyone be subject to the governing a authorities for there is no authority except that which God has established, the authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authorities is rebelling against what God has instituted. And those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. And then when writing to Timothy, Paul applies us to church leadership and authority, five 17 elders who lead effectively are worthy of double honor. I wanna apply this here to Cherry Hills Community Church. Without apology, I came here three and a half years ago. Lisa and I had a number of different options, but I told the elders if I came here, one of my missions, one of my agendas was to support Kurt Taylor as a senior pastor here.

I believe so much in God’s call on his life and his giftings. I had high expectations. Frankly, Kurt has exceeded them. But I also knew that I’d seen so many people start out so strongly and literally be chewed up by the almost impossible job of being a senior pastor of a church this size. The elders that may not have experienced probably a lot of you as as members have an experienced how impossible it is. A senior pastor has to be a creative on Sunday morning and then Monday through Saturday he’s an administrator. An entirely different skillset. He will be the focus of intense spiritual warfare. And then because usually we want him to be younger as Kurt is, they’ve got a young family with young kids, they want to keep their marriages together. It is almost impossible. And I’ve seen well-meaning men chewed up by accepting this responsibility.

I said I wanted to come here and and and be a support. And one of the things that makes it so difficult is that every Sunday onto this campus, between three and 4,000 people will visit. And when three or 4,000 people visit this campus, that means there are 10,000 opinions, right? ’cause We all have three or four of ’em on our own of everything. Should we have the shades up during worship? I’m not even gonna go there. How hot is it in the sanctuary? What kind of music is the choir ever coming back? I mean all of these things that everybody wants. And here’s the thing that I ask. Here’s why I have compassion toward Kurt. What’s it like when there are 10,000 opinions having to tell more people no than yes it would rip me up. I’m a people pleaser. I’m glad I don’t have to do it.

Kurt has the ability and the character to do that. And everybody wants ’em to focus on their issue. And these are good issues in Colorado with the government and whatnot. There are so many issues that we would support. People are wanting to vote for this candidate or wanting to pass this petition or whatnot. And Kurt and the elders have decided we’re not gonna do petitions here. We got a bigger picture. Sometimes it comes up in sermons. He doesn’t want to greet people coming in with petitions or have them going out or whatnot. Some people legitimately disagree with that. And there are churches that do that. We don’t attack churches that do. We don’t say everybody should do as we do. But Kurt and the elders discerning our mission have said this is what’s gonna happen. The problem is when people don’t do, when we don’t do what people don’t want us to do, you see this online, people will ascribe ill motives.

Well you are afraid or it’s all about losing your power. Can I just say I know Kurt, he is not afraid. He does not make decisions based on fear and it is not about amassing power. I have met literally hundreds of senior pastors. I don’t know that I’ve ever met one that cares less about power than Kurt. I’ve watched him present himself as a servant of Jesus and a servant of this church, focused on this church. What I’m trying to say is that we can disagree about what should be done without assuming ill motives of the person who’s making that decision. And it’s not just what’s happening outside, it’s what’s happening inside. Every ministry here wants their stage time. They wanna be one of the people that are in the announcements. These are phenomenal ministries. I don’t know of a church. It’s so much. We’ve we’ve, we’ve got manna, you’ve got rescue America, we’ve got mission trips going on, men’s ministries, women’s ministries.

I mean it is overwhelming. And they all say we could do so much better if you just let us make an announcement. Or maybe one of us could preach the sermon or whatnot. If Kurt never said no announcements would be longer than the sermon, right? But what that means is every week dozens of people are frustrated and three people are happy. Three people get their thing mentioned and they’re like, yes. Finally we get some support. And probably 30 are about bitter saying, man, we’re not mentioning it. Maybe we need to go to another church that will really support what we’re doing. Look, it is legitimate to disagree with Kurt and the elders. If you have half a brain, you’re going to disagree with Kurt and the elders. All right? But it’s different to disagree with bitterness and malice and slander and lying or to disagree with compassion.

It’s really hard what they’re trying to do leading this church and not just with compassion but to disagree with humility. That’s the second virtue I wanna focus on that. Paul mentions in Colossians three. I want to add to it James four, one through two. What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires, that battle within you you desire but do not have. So you kill, cancel, attack, fire, you covet but you cannot get what you want. So you quarrel and fight. Now here’s the thing, you can desire good things, but go about it in the wrong way. I wanna make this clear. I don’t wanna muffle a single vision God has given to anyone in this church or watching online. If God has put fire in your belly over a cause, over a stand, it could be political, it could be a ministry thing.

Advocate for it, fight for it. Work yourself tired, putting that forward. That’s the vision that God has given you. That’s a holy and sacred calling. But what are you going to do if you ever hear a no that we can’t do it this way at this time? That’s where humility comes in. Kurt’s told me many times, Gary, I don’t want to be surrounded by yes men. It’s one of the reasons he brought me in. And I want you to know he’s made it clear. He opens it up just two weeks ago. He, he, he, well he’s seen what happens when pastors become blinded by yes men two weeks ago we’re out at lunch. He says, so what are you thinking? And I looked at him, I said, you really want me to go there? He goes, yeah, that’s why we’re meeting. So I raised two issues. I’m like, Kurt agreed with both of ’em. In fact, he had already recognized it. He was already working on it. I was like, wow, this is incredible. It is so fun to be a part of a church when it agrees with you.

But what do you do when it disagrees? Lemme go back a year and a half. We’re starting the search for a key position here. Somebody will head up marriage and family ministries. And I thought I’d identified the perfect guy. Now he’s a longtime friend of mine. His, his gifts as a counselor, his understanding of what churches need and don’t need his vision for cradle to grave. I thought this would be incredible if we could get him here, this would be amazing. This could become a ministry that could transform the nation’s approach to marriage and family ministry. And so on. My recommendation, Kurt brings him in and members of the team meet with them and they decide, Hmm, we don’t think he’s the guy. How it it hurt But we move on. And then I think it’s like a couple months ago I was meeting with another guy, good friend of mine, also a counselor. I don’t know what it says about me that I have so many friends who are counselors. But these are great guys and he knows me. And this just came up. I don’t even remember how it was just in passing. And he looks at me ’cause he knows me and he has this way of stopping. He says, Gary, that broke your heart. I’m like, Mike, come on. I’m not a junior high girl, girl, let’s not, let’s not emphasize this too much. He goes, Gary, be honest with yourself.

That broke your heart. And I thought about it. I said, well maybe. I mean it was a passion. I could see it. I thought, why couldn’t they see it? But here’s the thing, maybe they saw something I didn’t see. That’s where humility comes in. It’s easy to be excited when everybody’s agreeing with you. Wouldn’t they say No, we see this but we’re not in agreement. And here’s the thing. Every church will have a mark moment. We’re gonna disagree about John Mark. What keeps the team together is not agreeing about Mark but agreeing about Jesus. That’s what ministry is all about. Do we stay committed only when there’s perfect agreement? I have to in humility, recognize I’m nearsighted. I see this. I see what would be good for me. I think it’s here. Kurt’s job isn’t to do what pleases me. And the elder’s job isn’t to do.

What pleases me is say, what do we think is best for the team? This past off season, my beloved Seattle Seahawks frustrated me when they traded away DK Metcalf, he’s a beast of a wide receiver. Why would you let a guy go like that? I thought they’re crazy that the the team is just gonna tank this season. I also heard he’s a beast out saw off the field, but that’s a whole different issue. But then because they traded away DK Metcalf, they got Cooper Cup who’s phenomenal. In fact he was MVP of the Super Bowl a few years back. And because all the teams are focusing on Cooper Cup, a receiver that already had Jackson and Figma Smith is having one of the five best, he’s one of the five best wide receivers in the league right now. He seems unstoppable. So maybe the general manager and the coach of the Seahawks had to say, our job isn’t to choose the player and keep the player that Gary Thomas likes.

Maybe we have to look at what we think builds the team to take us to the Super Bowl. And we all have our opinions about what should be done here at Cherry Hills. But the elders and Kurt’s job isn’t to do always what we want them to do, but as they prayerfully seek the will of God lead our church under Christ. Here’s the thing, if you stay at Cherry Hills Community Church only as long as you agree with 100% of what we do, you won’t be here very long. But there’s another reality. Disagreement can become Satan’s weapon to divide us or God’s tool to grow us and help us become more mature. Teaching us how to be compassionate and humble to key virtues for being a believer. Look, if somebody gave you a pill and said, swallow this and you’ll be become more compassionate and humble, wouldn’t you wanna take it?

I would. Those are great things to be. There’s a spiritual pill that can build compassion and humility and that’s disagreement. One like Barnabas and Paul and Peter. I can learn how to disagree in a way that honors God. I’m gonna become more compassionate and I’m gonna become more humble. And Kennedy writes on Substack I, it’s fun to read. Her husband Matt is the pastor of Good Shepherd in Binghamton, New York. And one column caught my eye ’cause she talked about how it ripped them up to see what COVID did to their community. It’s a long quote, but I think it’s worth reading. Good Shepherd has been over the years a healthy place where people who vigorously disagree with each other politically and theologically, sit side by side in the pew and take communion together. Some people are stressed by how vigorous debate becomes in the Christian education hour because Matt lets people say what they think, but he also engages them with his own beliefs.

The fruit of that amicable disagreement meant that when COVID came around, we did not feel we had to take a position about something so personal to the best of our ability. We accommodated everyone’s conscience. Those who are anxious about GA getting sick, were made to feel comfortable in our building. They wanted to come in person, but you know, they kind of hide away those who had no anxiety at all mingled freely. The only thing we tried really, really, really, my gosh, we tried so hard to do, was to encourage everyone to be gracious, forgiving and loving about other people’s feelings and beliefs. What was so awful is that the whole thing was moral at its core. What we were trying to keep everyone walking toward the cross. Two New York politicians were out there explaining every single day what it meant to be a good person.

And I’m sorry, those two people don’t know what it means to be a good person because they don’t believe in Jesus. They were in our so far out of their lane. It drives me batty. She writes with a little bit of attitude, but it keeps it interesting. So yes, COVID was a great sifting of the church. A lot of people washed up to our doors because our former churches either shut down and never reopened or spent more time talking about mass and vaccines and racism than they did about the Bible. At the same time, a few people were so angry and finally left because we would not morally judge the issue. And this was a great tragedy to me. Now here’s the thing. COVID is history, but it’s gonna come again and again and again. I’m not talking about a pandemic. There will always be a COVID like issue.

How many of us saw about a month ago online, everybody saying, if your pastor is not preaching about Charlie Kirk this weekend, you are in the wrong church. Well, Kirk didn’t. He mentioned him, we prayed. But Kurt already had a sermon planned to preach the gospel and 84 people were baptized. I never met Charlie Kirk, but I think he would be good with that. And it never lets up. People now say, well, are you gonna tell pregnant women not to take Tylenol? Nope. We’re not going there. We’re not doctors. You could do your own research. Here’s the thing, this is so key. We don’t join around our opinions. We join around Jesus. And that’s what we’re going to keep as our focus.

I want you to look around you and, and I mean that look left, right behind forward. Just just humor me and do it. If you’re online, just look in really closely <laugh>. Satan doesn’t care what issues divide us. As long as they take us away from each other, we can’t let that happen. We show our faith by how we handle disagreements, especially when we’re right. I wouldn’t normally quote Frederick Nietzsche and atheist, but he has a great line when he says, whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. You might be convinced you’re right and you might be, but how are you going to disagree with people? And whenever anger is present or in danger of becoming a monster, Jesus said in Matthew 5 22, but I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you’ll be liable to judgment.

You’re very vulnerable. And if you insult a brother or sister, you’re gonna be liable to the counsel. Now you’ve actively sinned. And if you say you fool, you’ll be liable to the hell of fire. You can be right in the wrong way because in biblical terms, message and method matter. We will disagree truth, we should not compromise. But the way we respond, is it with compassion and kindness? Or is it with malor, malice, slander and lying. What God did for Mandy, taking a woman who had overwhelming physical challenges to be a musical performer and then creating something so beautiful, I believe is what he wants to do to this community. Take a messy community with different opinions and show the world what it means. The beauty of a church gathered around Christ that might disagree in America’s got talent. If you’ve never watched it, every judge gets one.

It’s called a golden buzzer a season. Now you only get one a season. So judges don’t like to use it ’cause they wanna hold it back. And what happens if a golden buzzer is hit is that you get to skip the elimination rounds and you go straight to the live rounds. And so Mandy, after all of this rejection gathers the courage to go before the meanest judge in the history of television. Simon Cowell, the entertaining, I like him, but he is mean. Mercy is not his middle name. She performs an original song, which is doubly dangerous. And here’s what happened.

I

Mandy, I don’t think you are going to need a translator for this.

We’re gonna disagree with a lot of people going forward. We’re gonna be like the biker who screams and makes a bad day. Worse are we’re gonna be people with a golden buzzer. We’re loved by God. God loves you. There’s another way to live and encourage them with compassion, kindness, and love. Can we please read this section from Colossians three together? This is what we must clothe ourselves with before we even leave this building. Please read with me beginning at verse eight. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips do not lie to each other since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge, in the image of its creator. Therefore, keep going. As God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.

Bear with each other and forgive one another. If any of you has a grievance against someone, forgive as the Lord, Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love which binds them all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. Since as members of one body, you are called to peace. Father, I thank you that you are more beautiful than we could imagine. That you are a God of compassion and kindness and gentleness, patience and love. And it is our desire that we could reflect that, that you would fill us with your spirit, that we would go forth and even in our disagreements, in this messy world, we could show the power of Jesus in our lives. In Jesus name, amen.