May 8, 2010

Don’t Be a Fool Series #1


When I told my wife what I was planning to preach on, she had a hard time keeping back her laughter. She wasn’t trying to be contentious or discouraging. It’s just that, she saw the irony in the fact that I would teach on THIS.

You see on Monday, God willing, we will have been married for 13 years and at the end of this month, we will have been a couple for 17 years.

Now, as husbands go, I think I’m a pretty good catch. That wasn’t always true, but God has been at work in my heart and I am quite a bit better than I was.
I’m not husband of the year, but I do all right.

All that said, tonight we are going to talk about the importance of listening and watching what we say until we have heard everything out.

When I read the verses to Monica, the verses that we just read together, God opened my eyes in a split second. He does that at times. I’ve read theses verses before. They weren’t new. But as I read them aloud, to Monica and I saw the glimmer in her eye – before the laughter – it dawned on me…

I am the FOOL! Let’s read it again
My name might as well be written there. Not in every circumstance, but with my wife and I, in a lot of our talks, this absolutely applies.

I don’t know how it happened, but I’m that guy, who never waits for her to finish her sentence. I think I know where she’s going to go so I just try to show her a shortcut.

But, time and again, when I finish the sentence, it doesn’t go where she was heading. I goes something like:
Today I had to go to the—
Doctor?
No. I had to go to the grocery store because we needed some—
Soda.
No. We needed some bread and some milk. Dominic didn’t have enough for his—
Breakfast this morning?
NO! For his lunches this week.

Now, that might sound funny to some of you, but to me it was heartbreaking. You see I don’t do that to everyone. Least I don’t think I do, but to the people I love the most, the people that I’ve been close to for the longest, I’m so quick to interrupt. And the Bible says that is FOOLISH. It is to my shame, to speak without hearing my wife or others out.
But, enough about me for now, let me turn this around and let me tell you where we are going for the next few weeks.

We normally preach through a book of the Bible or at least a very large chunk of Scripture. We just finished the letter to the Philippians and before that, we went through the Sermon on the Mount.

Soon we will dig into the Gospel of Mark, the second book in the New Testament.

But before we do that, I wanted to take some time out for a series that I have had on my heart because I believe that for the regular, daily-living-it-out Christian, this will hit home.

For you, one week may touch you more than others in this series, but I think this is going to be very practical teaching, firmly rooted in the Scriptures.

At times, I hope that it will convict your heart of areas that you have been blind to, like I was toward my interrupting ways, and with that conviction, I pray your heart will then be healed by the very same word of God, namely, by the Gospel.

The series is called “Don’t be a Fool”. This week’s message is titled, “Listen Up and Watch Your Mouth”. As I’ve introduced it, we are going to talk about listening before we speak or act.

Next week we’ll continue to talk about our words, specifically dealing with gossip, slander and cursing others.

Then we’ll talk about watching our anger; then watching our eyes to avoid temptations of sex, and other sin that robs us of our fellowship with — and joy in — God; then we’ll talk about watching our wealth and possessions.

And we are tackling these issues because the Scriptures deal with them all in the context that we will be considered wise or foolish, biblically wise or foolish, based on how we navigate our lives in these areas.

So with listening before we speak or act, where do you stand? We’re going to look at this question horizontally, in the way we deal with each other and vertically, the way we interact with God.

This is so convicting because I had to ask “why do I do this, why do WE do this to one another.”

One of the key reasons for me is familiarity, but the other source is pride or arrogance.

With my wife, I think that we have somehow developed a shorthand communication. After all these years, we’ve had almost every kind of talk there is: romantic talks, debates, consoling talks, encouragement talks, business of the day talks, parenting talks, dealing with our parents talks, and the list goes on.

So in that familiarity, it’s like I have just begun to categorize what our conversations will include and I start filing before I’ve really read the words.

I start jumping ahead and trying to finish her sentences and completing her thoughts, all the time forgetting that, while the category of the conversation may fit something familiar, the content is different. Are you tracking with that?

Her day today is not the same as last week, or two years ago. Her joys or frustrations with family or coworkers may be familiar, but they affect her heart differently each time.

To put myself into these proverbs:
(Ken’s the) fool who finds no pleasure in understanding (what’s new in other people’s lives)
but (Ken) delights in airing his own opinions…
(Ken) answers before listening —
that is his folly and his shame…

Am I the only one here? I know that some of you don’t do this as noticeably, some of you simply disengage completely and just stop listening and stop giving feedback at all.

This is you if you never get told to stop interrupting, but you are often asked to repeat what was just said to you. I got this a lot as a kid. If I knew I was in trouble I just tuned my mom and dad out when they’d lecture me.

Listen for you it may not be in the same area. Maybe you do this at work. You know how your boss or co-worker or client is going to respond to whatever stimulus is coming down the pike, so you just push through without asking for (or listening to) their input.
Or here is a key problem that many, many, many of us deal with.

We become fools when we disregard other people’s perceived understanding our wrongs when they bring them to light and we delight in making our point, our argument known and proving them wrong.

Or we push away from people who are trying to provide correction and only hang with people who won’t confront us.

This happens in parent/child relationships, husband/wife, friend/friend, church/member, employee/employer and it can kill every one of those relationships. (Unpack if there’s time)
The Writer of Ecclesiastes said it like this:

The worst case of this that we see though is not when a person runs to another job, or church, or friend, or spouse because the old one didn’t “get them” and the new person, job, spouse or church accepts them better. Those are all terrible painful situations. But the worst is when we do this to God. When we turn away from Him.

The saddest thing that we see is when a person who was once close to the church, and seemed to be walking with God, drifts away.

A lot of times this happens as a teen grows up and moves away. They get to a new city and meet new people and they don’t stay connected to a church family that helps to encourage and equip them in the Word of God.

Eventually, one small choice to compromise on a “small” sin happens. And there is no big problem, then a few more…and the world isn’t crashing down around them.
Maybe this is your story I’m telling. One day God sends a friend from the past, who pays a visit or “happens to” run into them on the street and the changes in the person who had drifted away are becoming more and more noticeable.

So this old family friend or church friend or relative, tries to shine some light on the decisions that have been made and the defenses go up.

Who are they to judge me, the person asks, and they push away from the “judgmental, fundamental legalist” and they gravitate toward the people of like-sins or to people who are too ignorant of Scriptures or to cowardly or unloving to confront the person and the drift continues.

Many of the people that I have talked to who have fought addictions and substance abuse, or who have been trapped by sexual abuse or exploitation, they have often – NOT ALWAYS – but often told this kind of story.

What started with small decisions and what started with drifting away from people who might call them out, eventually led to the person making decisions that they would never have thought possible. And by then it literally took a miracle to escape the hell they were living in.

Now, that’s not the only case. Some off you are like me and you never grew up around the church, so it took some real work of the Spirit of God, just to get us near the Bible.

Unfortunately, there are others, maybe in this crowd, who were tormented and abused by broken and evil people in the CHURCH! And you may have written off Church all together.

I want to apologize to you for anything people in the church have done to tarnish the reputation of God. Some people may have acted out of ignorance, but I know there are some who where completely wicked.

But, PLEASE do not forsake God. Don’t turn away from Jesus, because of a wicked false ambassador. Don’t turn away from the church as a whole because of a specific church.
PLEASE go back to the Word. Back to Scriptures. God will deal with the sins of others. Don’t suffer for their sins anymore.

Listen, listen, no matter where you came from, whether you were un-churched, or de-churched, or if you simply walked away because sin looked more inviting for a time before it became destructive — God is ready to bring you to Him today.

Get to know Him and don’t be like me, thinking you know everything He has to tell you before you listen.

And don’t be like the fool who is more concerned with making your ideas and opinions known.

Hear God out. Take Him up on His promises. Promises of a healed and regenerated spirit, of redemption, of cleansing.

Hear Him out and find out what His design for living is. What His design for YOUR LIFE is. Read His Word. It will protect and heal and keep your heart better than any of the changing ideas of our culture ever can.

We’re going to end today with a reading From Psalm 119, where the palmist lays out what we need to listen to.
If you don’t want to listen to me or some other preacher – if you aren’t ready for that, but you are tired of listening to yourself and all the ideas that rattle around up in your head, then Listen to God.

Just close your eyes and listen to this passage…

I pray that God will give us this kind of love for the Bible. It will absolutely kill off any idols that get in the way of your love for God.

Do Not Be A Fool. Embrace the Word of God.

Start reading this for yourself. Don’t just think you know, read it and hear Him out.

When I listen to my wife, our relationship grows, when I wait to speak until I know where she is going, we can go further, our love can grow deeper.

The same is true between me and God – between YOU and God.

If you are tired of being stagnant in this life, and in your faith walk, if you wonder “why them and not me?” I pray that you stop looking for answers in the next promotion or the next fix, or the next drink, or the next relationship. Go to the source to feed you. Devour the Word of God. IF you do, it will give you wisdom. If you do, it will kill that old fool that used to guide you through life.

Let’s pray…
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