Mindset: B'hor

Hi family. How are you? I missed you guys. I gotta be honest. I missed you guys. I heard that double Chris did awesome. Chris Bullard and then Chris Lanier, I heard they just killed it and did a great job. Yeah. So glad -- people were like, Hey, be careful. You may not need to preach as much. And I was like, Oh, bummer. I preached 49 out of 52 weeks last year. I'm okay with stepping back for a bit. So that was exciting that they did so well. I watched their sermons and I was thrilled with what they did and thankful to be able to be a part of that.

I have a couple of things that I need to run at you before we get rolling on our sermon series. First one is this -- prayer is like one of them. It's one of the most important things that we do is that we would go before the Lord and pour our cares out to him and make our heart like God's heart. And prayer is really, really important. It's important to invite the presence of God into our hearts and into the space, into the community around us. And so,  I just want to say this -- this Saturday, we're having an all day prayer event. Let me tell you a little bit about that. That's not just about coming and seeking the Lord. This is going to be a simulcast. It's actually broadcasted out from Washington DC, and we are going to come together as a family and join the people there and literally people all over the country and around the world. Just getting on our faces before God and repenting for where we've let our country get to. I think it's high time for us. You guys know the verse in Chronicles. It says my people called by my name will humble themselves and pray. Right, right, right. The verse right before that says, when I send the fire and when I send the epidemic, if my people who are called by my name. Now, I don't know that fires and epidemics in the world that we're in for sure was caused by God. But I can tell you this, there's one way for us to find out and that's to get on our faces and repent. And so we're going to do it. Saturday, there's going to be speakers and worship and different sessions, and it's going to go and you can find all that information out on our website.

Here's the other thing about prayer? One of the things that I've been so frustrated with, uh, in this process of social distancing is that we have a hard time praying with people. And so, we feel like we're in a position now where we can actually start having prayer partners back. And I'm really excited about that. So we're going to have prayer partners at the end of every service starting today. We're going to have prayer partners that will be down here in the front, they'll have masks on, but they will be  -- one of the things that we tried to do when we first reopened was to have masks and socially distance. And that's a great idea, except that when somebody's praying with you from six feet away, you can't hear them. You know, so we're gonna have masks on all of our prayer partners, but they are going to be available here for you to pray with. And that's going to be a part of what we do from now going forward. And I'm excited to have prayer, more, we want prayer to be more a part of our world, not less a part of our world. And so we're going to start moving forward in that. Okay. So, that being said, we're going to do that.

And I just want to continue to remind you guys we're in this incredibly unstable time. And it feels like information, even still, is changing week to week. So, that being said, please, please, please just remain flexible with us as we reopen our children's programming and student ministry. And, we're going to be, we're going to get this figured out. Just about the time we get it figured out, they're going to be like, okay, we don't need masks anymore, which I don't care how we solve it. I just want to be, if it's by figuring it out needing or not needing masks, I'm happy either way. I just want us to get settled. So, please give us grace, please be flexible with us as we move forward and we'll figure this out together.

Okay. You guys ready to go to work? We're going to talk about something today that I think is really, really important because I think, unintentionally, what we do as followers of Jesus is that we start to kind of develop this mindset. And it's a subtle trap that we start following God for the purpose of making our life better. Like, I follow God because when I follow God, life is better. Now here's the deal. That's true. When I follow God, life is in fact better, but I follow God because he's God and I'm not. And I follow God. And I do the things that he asks me to do because he's God. And I'm not. Because he's the one who actually understands how the world is supposed to function and I don't. And because of that, the invitation of following God, isn't about doing things so that God will bless my life. What that means is, it kind of puts us in the position of, like God is a bull with a ring in his nose and we're leading him around a leash. Like, I'm the one in charge and I do the right things so that I can obligate God to do what I want him to do. God is God and I am not. And that's really important for us to, to come to terms with, because the goal of this whole Christian life isn’t to live a better life or even to get saved one day it's to submit myself to the Lordship of God so that the world can function properly as God created it to function. Now, if we do that, salvation is absolutely part of the picture. Praise God for that. I'm looking forward to heaven, but I don't say yes to Jesus to get to heaven, only. I say yes to Jesus so that the kingdom can take root more and more and more on this planet here. And I know that there's a big debate about, how do, like, why would you care about bringing the kingdom here? This is all going to burn, like use it all up. It's going to be destroyed one day when God, maybe, maybe that's true. But from that day, from now, until that day, we have a mission. And here's the mission. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, just like it is in heaven. That's the mission. And so today I want to talk about a major piece of that and how we can function in that world. 

Our goal at Southeast Christian Church, isn't to build a great big church. I hope we have a great big church, but that's not our goal. Our goal is to have the kingdom of God take root in the world more and more and more so that the presence of God can be experienced here more and more and more. And this is going to be a really important topic in helping us understand that. I want to begin with Exodus 22. And I want to establish a principle from scripture that I think is actually really significant. Exodus 22 says this: “You shall not delay to offer from the fullness of your harvest and from the outflow of your presses, the firstborn of your sons, you shall give to me.” Now, here's the principle that I want to illustrate for us. God has a super high value on number one: us being generous to him, which raises a question. Well, God doesn't need it. So why do I have to be generous to him? Here's why, because it reminds me that the stuff I have, isn't mine. It’s all his. So it's super significant for us to be generous to him. This is why we teach the principle of tithing. Like, it's not -- tithing is not optional. It's not negotiable for the Christian. It's us saying yes to the things that God's already commanded us to do. And we have 1,000,001 reasons why I don't, well, I don't really care for that. Um, so …… yeah, like if, if this was your problem, you could get over it. Like God commands it. And it's not, it's not, I'm not trying to be snarky about that. Like if God commands something, then what I have to understand is that in God's kingdom, the way that it functions, God is teaching me a lesson through -- like, he doesn't just command things just so that he can have control over us. God commands us things so that we can learn more and more and more who he is and who I am and how the world is supposed to function and how I can become the fullness of what God made me to be in the beginning. So there's all these things about how important it is for us to be generous to God. Like it's not negotiable. It's not a, well, you know, if I feel like it. Or, well, you know, I just don't really like how the church uses the money. That's not, that's not what the Bible says. The Bible doesn't say, you know, uh, first a tie of all your income you give to the Lord, unless you're not approving of the church's annual budget. That's not what the scripture says. But here's the other part about it. That's actually really significant is that God not only has a value for us being generous to him. He also has a value for what we're generous to him with.

There is a principle of the first fruits that is so significant in scripture. And if we don't get this right, then what we can do is even being giving to God, we're not experiencing the blessing that God wants to give us through our giving because we're doing the right thing, but the wrong way. And so, if you remember the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4, Abel, it says brought some of the fat portions of the firstborn of his flock. And God looked on his sacrifice with, pleasure with, with favor. My watch keeps beeping. So I'm gonna turn it on do not disturb. Get that -- miracles of modern technology. God looks on Abel’s sacrifice with favor. Cain, it says in the course of time, he just brought some stuff, not the first or the best, just some stuff, God doesn't accept his sacrifice. He accepts Abel’s sacrifice because it's the first and the best. He doesn't accept Cain’s sacrifice because it's part of the leftovers. There's a principle in generosity to God that says that the first of everything belongs to him. Why does he care so much about that? Because it reminds you and I who he is. And that's such an important principle for us to recognize, because what we can do is fall into this trap of making God less. We kind of have two kind of major flaws in our relationship with the Lord. The first one is that we try to make man way too much like God. But the second one is that we try to make God way too much like man. God is God and I am not. And we can't get those confused because when he gives me a command, my obligation is to follow it. And what I can tell you is it's always better, not just for me, but for the world around me. So God has this principle of us being generous back to him. But he also has this principle of the things that we are generous back to him with is the first and the best, which is why when we tithe, the scripture says that we give the first 10th, you don't give the leftovers to God. That's, that's a particular statement about how we feel about God. Leviticus 27 it says this: “But a firstborn of animals, which is a as a firstborn belongs to the Lord, a firstborn of the animals, which as a firstborn, belongs to the Lord, no man may dedicate; whether ox or sheep, it is the Lord’s.” What part is the Lord’s? The firstborn of everything.

Now, this is also true of our children. The firstborn belongs to the Lord and in the patriarchal world of the Old Testament, this actually is super important because the first born child becomes the one -- and we've talked about this already. The firstborn child becomes the one who, when the patriarch dies, they inherit all the resources so that they can carry on the legacy of the father. Now, the goal of the firstborn isn't to assess and, and decide like, well, here's what we really loved about dad, but here's the things that we're going to change when I'm in charge. That's not how the B’Hor works. The B’Hor is the Hebrew word for firstborn. The B’Hor works this way. When your father dies and you receive all the resources, your number one goal is to carry on the legacy that dad left behind. Yeah, our number one goal, if we're the B’Hor, is to become what dad was so that we can administer the resources, the inheritance, the way that dad would have done it. Now, we can say, I will not do that. But what that immediately means is that we're going to get kicked out of the family. If ,as the first born, you refuse to do with the resources, what the father wants you to do, then you are stating plainly that you do not want to be part of the family, which is huge shame. It's a huge shame. Like no one would ever do that, but you do have that option. You're like, I don't want to, I don't want to do what dad wanted me to do. Okay. Then you're not part of the family. Don't call yourself part of the family without taking on the responsibility of what it means to be part of the family. That's just the nature of family. And the B’Hor is the carrier of all of that. 

So, they get to receive all the inheritance, but they carry this weighted responsibility. And so one of the themes that we see in the book of Genesis is this question -- now remember the children of Israel had been slaves in Egypt 480 years. They have no sense of themselves. And God brings them out of Egypt, out to the desert and he does this through this beautiful picture of birth. Think about it. They paint their doors with blood, and then they take the sacrificial sheep or ram or goat and they take it and they tuck the head in behind and the rear legs, like the fetal position. And they cook it that way. Well, where else do you have bloody doorways and the fetal position connected together? It's birth. And what God says is, you're coming out as my firstborn among all creation as the B’Hor, my B’Hor. You’re the ones that are going to be my instrument of letting the world know what I'm like, but they don't have any sense of themselves. They don't know how to do it. They don't know what that means. They don't know how to even begin to put God on display well. So, what they do is, God brings them to Sinai and he gives them all of this information about what he's like and about what they're supposed to be like. And he gives them all these stories about their history and what we can learn from them. So one of the themes of the book of Genesis and helping them understand what it means to be the B’Hor, to be the first born, is that he helps them see two really interesting examples of firstborns. Ok -- ones who became the, B’Hor.

The first one is Jacob. And you say, Jacob is not the first born Esau was the first one. Yeah, but Jacob stole the blessing of the firstborn and became the one. Genesis 27, here's what we see about the kind of B’Hor Jacob is, okay? This is right before Isaac is going to die, he comes in and Isaac is going to bestow the family blessing, he's going to pass on the mantle. This is what it says: Then his father Isaac said to him, come near me and kiss me, my son. So he came near and kissed him. And Isaac smelled the smell of his garments and blessed him and said, see, the smell of my son is as the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed. (I don't ever want to say that to my children, but apparently for Esau, that was supposed to be a compliment. And Jacob stole it) that the Lord has blessed! May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine. Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you. Be Lord over your brothers, and may your mother's sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you and blessed be everyone who blesses you! As soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, when Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, Esau his brother came in from his hunting. Jacob stole the family blessing. He stole the position of B’Hor. And it's an indicator that probably he's not going to be a great example of a B’Hor.

And so, one of the themes that we see in the book of Jacob or book of Genesis is what kind of a B’Hor are you going to be? This message from God, to his people at Mount Sinai is in the telling of the story of Jacob, what kind of a B’Hor are you going to be? What kind of a firstborn are you going to be in the world? Which is a great question for you and I. If we're going to be part of the firstborn, we'll talk about this in just a second, then the question that we have to wrestle is with is what kind of B’Hor are we going to be? What kind of a B’Hor are we going to be? Jacob? Here's his story, he manipulates his brother. He deceives his father. And then he goes, and he manipulates his uncle. And then he sacrifices his family for his own protection. When he sees Esau is coming back to get reunited with him, he sends all of his wives and kids out before him to, before he shows up to make sure that Esau doesn't want to do any damage to him! What a jerk, right? Like that's not, there's no B’Hor in that. There's no firstborn. There's no protecting the family. There's no protecting the legacy. And yet he's carrying the mantle of the B’Hor. 

Another B’Hor that we see, who's also not supposed to be the B’Hor, but he does wind up being the B’Hor and that's Joseph. And so this juxtaposition between Jacob as this manipulator, liar, deceiver, and Joseph becomes a really important theme for us to wrestle with. Genesis 45, it says this about Joseph: Then Joseph could not control himself. (Remember he goes off to Egypt because he was sold in slavery. And his brothers come back to Egypt because of the famine. And he's been kind of playing games with them. And finally, it's this time for him to reveal himself. And he has all the power to do anything that he wants to them. I was the younger kid in my house. And I can tell you this, you give me that kind of power. I have some things that I want my brother and sister to pay for. I'm just that whole spit yo-yo game. Remember that? Where they would spit and suck it back up. And then about the third or fourth time, they just wouldn't. They would just spit. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm in therapy for that. I have some things I want my older brother and sister to pay for. Right? Joseph is not that guy. Look at what he does. He has all the power. He has all the authority. He can make them pay. Here's what it says.) Then Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him. He cried, make everyone go out from me. So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud, so that the Egyptians heard it, and the whole household of Pharaoh heard it. And Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph! Is my father still alive? But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence. What a vanilla way to say -- hey're like, oh no, right? Because they know as well as I do, any normal person, having this opportunity for vindication, any normal person is going to go, and now, you just this! So Joseph said to his brothers, come near me, please. And they came near. And he said, I'm your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. (What an awesome perspective) For the famine has been in the land for these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. 

Jacob was this deceiver, liar, manipulator distorter -- he was constantly working an angle. That's one way to be a B’Hor. That's one way to be a firstborn is to always work all the situations for your own benefit. Joseph was a different kind of firstborn. Joseph forgave, Joseph restored his family and met their needs. Joseph honored God by staying faithful in hard things. That's what he did. And one of the things that we learn in the book of Genesis is, which kind of B’Hor are you going to be? You, my firstborn, this group of people, Israel, you, my firstborn, what kind of firstborn are you going to be to the world? When you represent your father, how are you going to represent him? 

And that is a really important question. How are we, as God's family, going to represent him to the world? Because before I am anything else, I am a resident in the kingdom of God. And if I'm not a resident in the kingdom of God, before I am anything else, then I'm not a resident in the kingdom of God at all. If we're going to call ourselves part of God's family, then we have to be willing to take on the rights and roles and responsibilities that come with that. Whether that's convenient or hard. I can tell you this, for Joseph, forgiveness is hard. And when he has the authority and the power to make them pay, it would be really difficult to not do that. Now, if you're savvy, you're like, well, what does that have to do with us? Right? Here's what it has to do with us. Colossians 1:15 says this:  Jesus, He is the image of the invisible God, the B’Hor of all creation. This is who Jesus is. Jesus is the first born over all of creation. What I love about that as Jesus steps into this role of being the one who represents God to the world and you and I are part of his body. And I don't know if you know this, but the arm or the leg or the foot or the kidneys or whatever, have to do what the head tells it to. If it doesn't, then it's not a viable part of the body. We would call that crippled. If Jesus is the firstborn of all creation, and we are part of his body, then the obligation for you and I isn't to have an opinion on our own. It's not to figure out how to leverage God to get what we want out of this world. It's to figure out what God wants, because he's the father and we are here to carry out his legacy and make his legacy known to the world. We're part of the kingdom of God before we are anything else. And that's so important for us to recognize. 

I love the 10 commandments. You know, the do not list. One of the interesting things about the 10 commandments in, if you, I did, I'm probably going to do a sermon series through this one. So I won't give you too much. But if you stack them five and five on each side, what you can do is see how they line up. And it's a really fun study. The one that do not take the Lord's name in vain, right? I was always taught growing up that that means that you're not allowed to say like, Oh my God, or God or whatever. And here's the deal. Even in saying that I feel like I'm gonna get soap in my mouth, um, I'm okay. I don't think that you should ever have an irreverent use of the name of God come out of your mouth-- ever. But that's not what that verse is talking about. Here's what that verse is talking about. When you give your life to Jesus, he doesn't give you a tee shirt. He gives you his name. Don't take it in vain. Don't take his name without understanding the role and responsibility that comes with it. Because if you're going to be a resident in the kingdom of God, you are a resident in the kingdom before you are anything else. And our goal isn't to represent ourselves and our own desires and our own wants and our own agenda and our own rights. Our goal is to represent our God, as father, and who he is and what he's like. And for many of us, we represent God through the victory that he gives us over sin. And for some of us, we represent God through our faithfulness, and we don't like that. But if we're going to be God's firstborn, then we don't get to have an option about how we do that. We do it the way God tells us to. 

So I have some implications for us this morning that I really want us to wrestle with. And I hope, I hope this is a little bit unsettling, this message. Not, not to the angry, like I can't hear, but like just my, like, I feel like a good sermon should unsettle us a little bit. Like it shouldn't be, I agree with everything you said, and that was wonderful. And I'm never going to think about it again. Like a great sermon, you should go home and be like, ah, I gotta wrestle with that. I gotta, I gotta sit with that. This should unsettle us because if we really understand the role of being part of the body of Christ, it means that we legitimately have to lay our lives down for God's agenda, not our own.

Here's the first implication, the role of the firstborn is critical in carrying on the legacy of the father. This is how the patriarchal system works when it works well. The role of the firstborn is critical in carrying on the legacy of the father.

Implication number two, Jesus is the firstborn of all creation, which means that if we're Jesus followers, we have to do what he would do. We don't get to negotiate that ever at all. Period. 

Number three, as members of the family of God, we must live the way the B’Hor wants us to live. Now, you can choose not to. You're free to choose not to do that, but what you're choosing, in doing that, is you're choosing to not be part of the family. So you don't get to call yourself part of the family, but not take on the responsibility of what it means to be part of the family.

Number four, the role of God's family, the role of God in this world, is to restore, forgive, and invite. This is God's heart for the world. And if it's the Father's heart, it must be our mission to do this. We don't get to negotiate that. We don't get to guess we don't get to think, well, I know that God really cares about forgiveness, but that person really hurt my feeler and I think God understands. Two things about that. Number one, God does understand. And number two, he still says to forgive, and it doesn't mean that it's easy. We should never not be in the process of restoration and forgiveness and invitation. Now, as soon as I say that, what I know is people are like, well, you don't know that person is unsafe. And if you're telling me that, I have to just jump back into a relationship with them. And unless like it was before, no, you don't have to be a punching bag. You do get to set up healthy boundaries and you do get to say yes or no, or yes, this far and no further, but forgiveness isn't about making everything just the way it was. Forgiveness about letting go of my need for them to pay. Let God deal with them. And I promise you that he will, my God walks softly and carries a big stick. That is who he is. But if we're going to call ourselves part of God's family, and this is one of those, you know, where in Turkey, um, Turkey is a Muslim country. It's a little bit different than like the Arab countries like Syria or Saudi Arabia or something like that. It's Turkish Islam, not Arabic Islam. So it's different, but they are Muslim country. And, um, our guide GoKhan. Who's awesome. He's awesome. He is Muslim, but he's not practicing Muslim, but he calls himself a Muslim, but he's not a practicing Muslim. I feel like, in America, the same could be said for Christianity. That a lot of us are like, well, I'm American, therefore I'm Christian. 

And I would say, no, that's not how any of this actually works either. I'm a resident in the kingdom of God or I'm not. If I am a follower of Jesus, I'm a Christian. I'm not a Christian because of where I live. Geographical salvation doesn't work. And I think a lot of us have been playing games with this whole idea of, yeah, I'm a Christian, so we can leverage God to get what I want. And I would just say that number one, you're missing out on the best parts of Christianity doing that. But number two, you are not living in a way that stewards what it means to be part of the firstborn and it's time for us to put that in order.

We're going to take communion together. Every week we take communion together and we have an open table, which means anyone who's legitimately willing to celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus with us is invited to partake. But we want you to hold the elements until the end and we'll take them all together. So you can start getting those open. Here's the deal, Jesus models for us, this life of the firstborn, which is a life of consistently laying our lives down. It's not about pressing our agenda or our views or our opinions. It's about laying our lives down and letting God work his work. And I would just invite you guys to take a minute and prepare your hearts in that direction. Like where in my life am I living as, as if I am the one who gets to set the rules and where am I really letting God be God in my life? Let's think about that as we prepare our hearts for communion.

On the night Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it and he said, this is my body which is given for you. So whenever you eat this bread, do it in remembrance of me. Then after the dinner, he took a cup and he said, this cup, this is a new covenant of my blood, which is shed for you. So when you drink this cup, do it in remembrance of me. Let's pray. God, thank you for the tremendous privilege of being a part of your family. And God help us to steward the incredible responsibility well. God, convict our hearts where we're not lining up, help us to be an accurate representation of your heart for this world, help us to be people who restore and forgive and who invite. Help us to be people who fight for relationships and not against them. Help us to be people who lay down our own agenda so that we can represent you accurately. Thank you Lord, for your grace in your name. Amen. Let's stand and sing one more song.

Don't forget that there'll be prayer partners up here for you. If you'd like to come and pray with them, we'd love to have you do that. Here's the deal for this week. I really want us to consider, like, as we go out into the world, what does it mean for us to be a B’Hor like Joseph? What does it mean for us to represent the family of God correctly in our relationships with coworkers and family members and all these different people that we're going to rub shoulders with throughout the week? What does it mean for us to look like our father? Because you have been called to carry the mission of the family of God. And so may you live out that mission well. Thanks for coming. Have a great week.