Apart From Me, You Can Do Nothing
First B Jackson
2023-01-08

Automatically transcribed. Where this and the recording disagree, the recording is the record.

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Alright. Good morning, everyone. How are you? Morning. Let me say we we begin my worshiping in song.

It's a great way to start a Sunday morning. Victory in Jesus, would you stand and sing with us? From first Corinthians fifteen fifty seven, he gives us the victory through Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's sing of it.

Yeah. And they overcame by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony. Let's sing. There's power in the blood. We can all have a seat here for a moment.

Got a few announcements to bring to your attention.

First one's Monday night. That's coming up here. Carl, what's on tomorrow?

Yeah. So we're in Mark five right now. And, tomorrow, we get to see two extraordinary miracles of Jesus, but they're brought about by the faith of the recipients. The faith of it. So it's it's very, very wonderful.

And I would love to share it with you if you're here tomorrow, Monday night, 06:00, meal, music, message.

And if you haven't been in a while or you've never been before, it's a great place to go. There's a conversation afterwards, a gospel conversation where everybody can participate. It's worth coming. Connect hour two. It's a great chance to connect with everybody, down the hall.

Come a little bit early for the second service and stay, and we do need volunteers to, provide the, the the snacks down there and also for the Monday night service. That would be great. The word retreat is coming up. For all the men who are out there, you don't have to go to the church. You don't have to go to any church.

Just bring them along. There's information on our website. You can contact Mac Litzelman. And they're also looking for people who will be willing to provide meals for that so that the guys don't have to cook while they're on the retreat for February 23 and '20 through twenty sixth. And there are scholarships available too if you know somebody who can't afford to go.

That's a great one. There's also a men's retreat before that, January 2020 through twenty second. Best weekend of the year. It's a super great time, and checks are due if you can sooner rather than later, and you can sign up online. It's a great time.

If you don't like to, ride snowmobiles, can also cross country ski, hike, or just play games. It's a super good time. Congregational meeting. It's between services on January twenty ninth twenty ninth. Only members can vote, but everybody should come.

It's a great way to get to know the church. We're actually having a bunch of different ministries and things speak to kind of giving an up to date look at what the health of the church is and what's going on. I'll be speaking about the benevolence fund that day. There's a whole bunch of other things going on. So so come by the twenty ninth.

There's a new the women's community Bible study is starting back up on Wednesday, this Wednesday at 10AM through, to 12PM. It's down the hall in the Fellowship hall. If you can RSVP, that'd be great. Just let them know you're coming ahead of time. It's on the website as well.

Feel free to let me know if you need anything. It's also on the website how to get the books too that go along with that. Young adult Bible study. If anybody in this room is myself included. I'm not invited anymore.

I've I've entered a whole new league. But if you know of anybody, tell tell your friends' neighbors. It's great. Aaron Anderson is is throwing this at 06:30PM on Sunday nights. Oh, you guys are agent appropriate.

Nice. Okay. Great. Feel free to to come by. They're also looking for people to host them too.

They'd like to get to know some families. So if you just like to host some of the young folks, maybe cook them a meal or just have them over your house. You can talk to Erin Anderson too, and she'll have you there. And the congregational meeting's on there a second time because we wanna remind you again that we'd love to have you. Up next is my brother, Chris.

Let's give it up for Chris. Thank

you, Richard. So I'm here to talk to you about sponsoring me as a digital missionary. And through this time, I'm going to explain what that means. There's gonna be a lot of technical terms. Let's go on a journey together.

First of all, before Nick and I moved to Jackson, Wyoming well, excuse me. I'll get to that. Who I am now? School bus driver, thirty to fifty hours per week. So I work a full time job.

I'm doing all that. I'm also an improv comedian, which believe it or not, is also a job. Takes a lot of time. I've lived in Jackson for thirteen years, and by the grace of God, been going to First Baptist that whole time. Been a member of First Baptist, and I am best known as Nick Stern's twin brother.

Before we moved to Jackson, Nick and I made two independent Christian feature length films. That's a mouthful. We made two gospel films essentially. The between the walls and bringing out Bobby, and believe it or not, bringing out Bobby had its first premier screening in this very room thirteen years ago. Pretty exciting.

It then went on to be sold on DVD. It was in Hollywood video and a blockbuster, if you remember those things, just before they went bankrupt. We lost we're not we're not better. We're not better. But but then it went on to stream on Netflix, on Amazon Prime, and now it's on YouTube where it's been seen they've been seen over a 143,000 times.

And also on television across the world that we don't have any way to tell you the numbers, but by the grace of God, hundreds of thousands of people have heard the gospel through these films. But Nick and I oh, I went too early. Nick and I burned out making those movies because we didn't have any financial support. We were doing this trying to work full time jobs and make the movies at the same time. And so it just got too be too much to do.

So we stopped making movies. And since then, I have been working on writing novels, but I've also been working the last five years on a thing called a podcast. And so that's gonna be our next big technical term. What is a podcast? It is a radio show that is always on.

So if you're listening to KHOL here in town, you have to listen to a certain time and you have to be on a certain frequency or else you miss it. But a podcast is a show that is always on. So you can access it on your phone. The episodes get automatically downloaded to your phone if you subscribe for free, and it's there. You can listen at night.

You can listen at day. You can share it with your friends. When we made the movies, you had to give a physical DVD to somebody and share it with somebody that way. The beauty of doing ministry on the Internet is you can, for free, just send somebody a link. You don't have to go buy a $15 DVD.

It's for free. So it's a free online radio show that is always on. So why do ministry on the Internet? First of all, it's cheap, which is awesome. Because, again, distributing those films was very expensive and cumbersome.

But doing this on the Internet, it's very easy for people to share it. It's far reaching. So my podcast, which we'll get to in a minute, Truce, is heard all over The United States. You can get it. And most of my listeners are here, but you can also hear people are also listening in Canada, in The UK, in India.

Actually, India was one of the largest downloading countries for a while on the podcast. South Africa, Kenya, all over the world people are listening. Taiwan, I was surprised to see that one. People are listening all over the world. So it is an international ministry that we can do from Jackson, which is pretty incredible.

And like I said, it's available 20 fourseven. So my particular show is called Truths. So what is Truths? It is a history podcast that looks inside the Christian church. The tagline is, we use journalistic tools to look inside the Christian church.

We press pause in the culture wars in order to understand how we got here and how we can do better. Now that's a lot of terms. Essentially, using history to give us context to where we are in this present moment where it seems like our legacy to the world is Christians, we are angry. That seems to be our legacy. And the hope with this show is to understand how we got to this moment, calm us down, and focus us back on the gospel.

And Brad's gonna talk a bit more about what the gospel is, but my hope with this show is to bump people back onto our dual missions, to love the Lord and to love our neighbors. And doing that, trying to help people get context to where we are today. Yeah. So that's from the drugstore. Yeah.

And the the table's pretty small. It seems like for such a big plan, you'd want a larger This is from the show. It's about the size of a large pizza. Yeah. A very large pizza.

Very large. A table. Not that big, but it came from the drugstore that a hundred years ago hosted a meeting that kicked off the whole brouhaha that put Dayton on the map.

That was owned by the chairman of the school board.

The drugstore sold ice cream and drinks, but also stuff you probably wouldn't expect, like textbooks, including the one that would become central to this battle over evolution. Dayton is a charming quintessential small town, a square, statues, its own brewery. But in the nineteen twenties, it seemed like Dayton was on the way out.

Actually, reducing in size as the old blast furnace had closed. Ray County was a farming community, strawberries, shipped by rail up to the cities in the North.

By the way, the voice you hear is the ever interesting Edward Larson. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his excellent book on the trial and teaches at Pepperdine University. This piece of Tennessee was different than the rest of the state. So I just played a clip a little early, but that is from the show. It's from an episode that's coming out in a few weeks about the scopes monkey trial, which in 1925 was a trial to decide whether or not evolution could be taught in public schools in the state of Tennessee.

You've probably heard about it in your history books when you were in school, when you were learning. It's a very famous trial. This whole season of the show has been about the history of Christian fundamentalism, and this trial is sort of a peak moment in that history. And so I actually went to Dayton, Tennessee where this trial took place. You heard me interviewing a guy about the table the size of a large pizza.

But then also I interviewed a guy who won the Pulitzer Prize for his research on this particular event. So this is a show that has music, it has lots of edits, it has expert guests, Pulitzer Prize winning expert guests. This is not a rinky ding show. I'm trying to put out a very high quality show, but that does take time. So if you remember at the beginning, I'm working thirty to fifty hours per week driving a school bus.

It takes twenty to forty hours to make each episode of the podcast. So I'm working a lot of hours. So the reason I'm here is that I am approaching you all for some help. I would like to do the podcast full time and stop driving the school bus, but that takes a fair bit of economic means. I want to reemphasize podcasting is a mission field.

We are so good at sending people out to the farthest reaches of the world and that is awesome. That's amazing. But we can do that as well from here. Anybody with a cell phone or computer can listen to this podcast. And as I said, people all over the world are listening.

So here are a few stats. In 2022 alone, there were over 143,000 downloads of the podcast. I've been doing this for five years, so there's 160 different episodes that are available to the audience. Over 2,000 people listen per episode. And that's kind of hard to picture, isn't it?

2,000 people? Well, if you took the main theater at the Center for the Arts and filled it up four times over, you'd have the listening audience of the podcast. If it were a church, it would be by far the largest church in Jackson, Wyoming running off of the budget of a school bus driver's salary. So it's a very effective and cheap ministry, but over 9,000 different devices accessed it in 2022 alone. So I'm coming to you for help.

First of all, I'm looking for you for to you for prayer for me, but also for the audience. A lot of my listeners write to me and tell me about how this show gives them hope. Again, I've said our legacy at this moment seems to be that Christians, we are a people of anger. And there are a lot of people who want to know Jesus, who wanna understand him, or else who have a faith in him and who are thinking about walking away because they can't understand how we got to this present moment. And so this show is designed to reach out to people who want some context, who want understanding, and who need to be bumped back into love the Lord your God and love your neighbor.

So I got a little emotional in the first talk today, so I'm gonna try not to. But by the grace of God, I've been given the gift to talk to 2,000 people every two weeks. And it's gotten very difficult. Like I said, Nick and I burned out making the the films because we didn't have support. And by my brother's urging, I'm up here today asking for your support to make this my full time job.

You are joined, by the way, by over a 100 listeners who gave in just 2022. People I don't know, people from all over the world who are giving money to help this show. But I still am falling short and would love your help. You can do that by check. You can give to me or you can also talk to my brother if you have questions.

Most of you know him better than you know me. But you can also hit me up on Venmo at trucepodcast. You can pledge online or in person. If you don't want it, like, you don't have the money with you today, I can also talk to you. Just take your information down.

Or you can go to the website at trucepodcast.com. There you can listen to every episode that's been put out or on any podcasting app. Nick and I can also help you figure out how to listen if you need it. You can use that QR code. But the last thing I want to say is when Nick and I finished making those movies, we were pretty hurt and wounded.

And this church, this group of people, a lot of these people in this room brought us back to life. And I just want to say thank you for being a part of our lives. Thank you for your prayers and for your support, and thanks for this opportunity. God bless you all. Oh, One more thing.

I have all these papers. There's a lot of information. I have papers in the back that spell all this out, and I'll be in the back after the service if you want to chat. Thanks.

Thank you, Chris. Would you stand with me? I'd love to just take a moment to pray as well. Lord, for the various ways that the gospel is communicated, this being a very, very important one, we thank you. And we ask you blessing on this podcast and on Chris as he communicates, as he works hard, as he studies, as he digs deep, as as this goes out, as it's clearly communicated, the gospel's clearly communicated, how we got to where we are, how we can go forward, how it's drawing in those who have been hurt or disconnected from the church, but drying them back to Jesus.

We thank you for all these things, ask your blessing, and also, Lord, how you would use us, our church, to be a blessing as well. In Jesus' name, amen. Would you sing with us again? Worthy of worthy of worship. The longer a servant, the sweeter he grows.

Amen. You can have a seat here for a moment. This is the worship through giving, part of the service. I'll invite the ushers to come forward and Steve Baldock to come come on and, pray and give thanks, as well.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, you are worthy and we take time in the service now. We wanna give you an offering. We want to put in this basket here, this plate, what this world holds most dearly. We hold you most dearly.

You're worthy of it and we ask you to use this little bit of money we put in these plates to do your will in this world. Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you, Judy. Can we thank Judy again just for the way that she steps in? This part of the service where you just played is one of my favorite parts of of the 11 because it's played so beautifully, but also because it's so contemplative and worshipful. And I just so appreciate this part of the service, and I wanted to say that. So thank you, Judy, for allowing us to be able to worship through listening.

It's just it really is a beautiful thing. Brad, would you come on forward? Brad Yates, he is a candidate for Elder right now. If you haven't met Brad and Natalie and their two children, please come up afterwards and and introduce yourself. But I so appreciate being able to get to know Brad late Brad lately and how just how Brad and Natalie have jumped into FirstFeet with with both feet, with abandon to serve and see areas of ministry here and just attack them to go for them.

It is so refreshing. So thank you, Brad. And may I pray for you Please. As well before you bring the word. Lord, I thank you for I thank you for Brad.

I thank you for your servant. I thank you for every servant in this room. Lord, I thank you for your way, your word conveyed through personality. Lord, would you use Brad's personality, his study, his time with you in the word, but most of our Lord, would you use the word and Holy Spirit, would you speak to us as we hear the word? May it hit us in a new way today.

Maybe there's something that we hadn't caught before. And, Holy Spirit, you want to reveal something that that we just weren't paying attention to before. I think of your words in Mark where you say the closer that we pay attention, the more understanding that will be given. Lord, that we would, be paying attention, leaning in, listening to what you have to say, and that you would bring more understanding, bring glory to yourself through this. And Lord, would we be edified through it.

In Jesus' name. Amen.

Thanks, Carl, for that overly kind introduction. Part of what I'm gonna talk about is like just the kindness of first be and things like that. And I think Carl's so much a big part of that. And so thank you for everything you do here. As Carl mentioned, my name is Brad Yates.

We're going talk about John fifteen:five primarily, but we're going to kind of set a bigger table before we dine into that specific dish. If This is my family. That is my son, Jack, who is expertly taught by Mrs. Feasor here at classical. And then that is my wife, Natalie, and my daughter, Abby.

And if you hear a big ruckus in the back of the room, it's probably because they're going to come in and see because they don't get to see daddy teach very often. So just show them the same grace you show me, please. But I've had the privilege of being editor of the First Bee Reading Plan for the last year or so. So if any of you guys receive that, it has been a huge blessing for me to be working on that as editor. We're always looking for new writers.

If you want to do that, come see me, please. Or also you can use that QR code to do cheap for the sign up or as like in all things, you can bother Nick or Ray or me personally, and we'll get you taken care of on that. So I've taught a few times on Monday nights, and I've had the privilege recently of doing a few weddings. But this is my first time teaching on a Sunday. Something that has weighed pretty heavy on me this week as I was preparing my message is James three:one, in which he says, Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.

And that's just something that's been on my heart as I've been studying God's word and and and kind of preparing to come before the church body today. And so I just wanna be really transparent about that, and also to kind of show you that everything I'm I'm talking about today, I'm trying to foot in scripture. So my friend Pat, who's heard me teach a couple of times, calls these my disclaimers. But I've kinda got a few notes before we kick off, which is one, please give me feedback as we go. This is kind of, frankly, an intimidating place to be, and your smiles and nods are really encouraging, not just for me, but also for Carl, for Ray, for anybody that's teaching.

So do me a favor and like, if you feel like a slight nod, like make it a little bit bigger. And we're going to do great. And also I would love your feedback. Oh, we're running. There we go.

Okay. I would love your feedback. So if want to take down my email address and tell me what worked for you, what didn't, where you know, if you want clarification on a point, if I went too quickly, whatever it is, I would just love to hear from you. This is an odd position for me in just kind of doing a monologue, and and I wanna create that capacity for back and forth where it makes sense. Or of course, you can always just bother Ray.

In all of this, I want to remind you guys that I'm just one beggar telling another beggar where I have found bread. That is my heart behind this. I get really excited about God's word, so if my voice picks up in cadence and I'm doing some arm waving or things like that, that's a lot of me preaching to myself. The things that we're going to talk about today are things that blessed me tremendously and and that I just wanna share with you. So I'm really preaching into myself.

With that said, I've I've given Steve Baldock about four minutes of prep for this, but he's gonna read today's text so that you get a little bit of a break from hearing my voice, and I get a moment to pray for us. Yellow one.

Now it is. It's good to be in church today, isn't it? Yeah. I just before I read the scripture for you, I just wanted to say ditto to what Carl said with Judy's plan. I don't know if any of you know that song, It is Well With My Soul, but that was written by a guy that just lost just about everything that he held precious in his life.

And he's looking in the waters where his family had drowned, saying it did well with my soul. And that's what the power of the gospel that Brad's gonna be talking about today does to people. So let's see what God has to say for us today in John fifteen one through four. Jesus says, I am the true vine and my father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away.

And every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. If anyone does not abide I am the vine. Thank you.

We didn't rehearse this.

No. Obviously. I am the vine. You are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.

For apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers. And the branches are gathered up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. By this my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to my disciples, to be my disciples.

So this text, contextually, is in the middle of what is referred to as the farewell discourse or the upper room discourse. This is Jesus and his disciples gathered in the upper room, and Judas has actually already left the room to go and betray Jesus to a conspiracy of religious leaders and Roman rulers so that Jesus may be murdered. These are four of the richest chapters in all of scripture. I would encourage all of us just to go back and read John 13 through 17. It takes about fifteen minutes, and it just reminds you of some of the most core truths of the gospel.

So earlier in John 14 so we're gonna talk about that yellow bit there, but I'm coming back to it. John 14, we've got four key texts. And John's or Jesus says in verse six, I'm the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. A few verses later, he says, truly truly I say to you, the one who believes in me, the works that I do, he will also do.

And greater works than these will he do because I am going to the father. Continues on, he says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Then, but the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and remind you of all that I said to you. So in these four quick verses, Jesus has made clear that one, he is the only path to salvation. Two, the expectation is that you will, once saved, do the works that he does in bringing others to salvation.

Three, that we will keep his commandments. And I know it's not something that we talk about a lot that Jesus made commandments. We like to think of him as kind of stripping away the commandments. It's sort of the the easy thought around it, but Jesus gave us commandments. Sermon for another day, but and then fourth, that he promises to seal us as believers with the gift and the person of the Holy Spirit in order to achieve those goals.

So given that context, Jesus has been talking chapter 13, some big claims in chapter 14. He's about to launch into a long and pretty detailed analogy about the vine, the vine dresser, and the branches in order to elaborate on kind of the deeper truths, the same way that we use stories or myths or Jesus used parables often to help uncover a deeper truth. Our focus text for today is John fifteen:five, and I'll read it once more. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.

For apart from me, you can do nothing. So one of the reasons why I picked this as just kind of a standalone sermon, it was not part of a series or anything, is that this breaks out really nicely into its own outline. One is that Jesus is the vine, not us. Two, we abide. That's both he in us and we in him.

It works both ways. Third, as branches, we are expected to bear fruit. And fourth, as a sort of tidy summary of this, of the prior three, he says, apart from me, you can do nothing. So that brings me to my first point. Who is the vine?

The vine is Jesus. It's not you. It's not me. Jesus makes it clear. He says, I am the vine.

You are the branches. And as we've been reading together in the first Be in the Bible program as we're we're starting through Genesis, it's really obvious that we're not the creator, That God is the creator and sustainer of the universe. God created everything by his word. He created us out of the dust, and he put his breath into our nostrils primarily for the purpose of doing the work that he would have us do. It elaborates on this in Genesis two fifteen, the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to take care of it.

But Adam did what each of us, myself included, continue to do. We disobeyed God. We don't trust that God has our best interests at heart. So we tend to either hedge our bets, and we say, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna adopt the name of Jesus, but I'm I'm gonna hold back 50%. I'm gonna hold back 10%.

I'm gonna hold back 1%. Whatever it is, any of you that that have been in relationships, you know that if you hold back any aspect of yourself, if you're not fully known, you're not fully known. And so we don't wanna hedge. The other alternative that we try to do in our sinful nature is that we try to just disobey or disregard God altogether. In either case, what we're tending to do there is we're either trying to take a different role or we're disconnecting ourselves from the vine.

And so we can think about this through a few practical statements of what this might look like in our lives today. We might say things like, Okay, God. I'll attend church, but I'm definitely not going to confess that sin or that temptation that's eaten my lunch because I'm afraid of the what people will think of me. Or we'll say, okay God, I'll acknowledge you quietly behind closed doors, but I'm not gonna share my faith because in this modern world, they say that that makes me closed minded or bigoted. Okay, God.

I'll give some money to the church, but I'm gonna manage the majority of my resources and my time the way that the world says that I should or the way that I want, and not in accordance with biblical standards. Or, okay, God, I'll acknowledge you in my heart, but I'm gonna do this by myself. Just Jesus and me. Not being united to the local bride of Christ. And this is basically what happened when we read in Genesis three at the fall.

The serpent convinced Eve to be discontent with the fact that God said, eat from any tree in the garden, except for the the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And Eve, in that moment, didn't trust it. Didn't trust that the boundary lines, to to paraphrase Psalm 16 from David, that the boundary lines had not been put in pleasant places. We tend to think, God doesn't have our best interest at heart. He's not looking for our best.

He's looking to rip us off. And personally, that's part of my story. I held back for a long time. I'd I've considered myself a Christian for the entirety of my life because I grew up in Texas, and I wasn't a communist. It was just something that happened.

But but we went we went to church on Sunday the same way that we went to football games on Friday night. And it frankly had about the same amount of impact on my life. And just because the the fundamental problem for me was that I could not articulate the gospel, and it had not rooted itself in me. So in case that's any of you here, I'm gonna take a quick sidebar and just remind all of us. And I reminding myself of this on a regular basis is healthy too.

What is the gospel? What does that mean when we say that? Fundamentally, that means that God, the creator and sustainer of the universe, is so good and holy and perfect and love, he is love, That he created us to have communion communion with him. But then in our sinful nature, we cannot have communion with God or we will be destroyed by his holiness. But God forever has had a plan for that.

And he took his perfect and eternal son, and his son set aside glory out of love for us, and took on flesh, lived the most in the most humble of circumstances, fulfilled all the prophecy, told everybody what he was there to do, and because of that, we killed him for it. And on the cross, when he's crying his last, he yells out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? So that not a single one of us in this room will ever have to say that. And then on the third day, he walked out of that grave to show that this had been a divine conspiracy all along. That this was part of God's plan, that this was ordained, and that everything had changed.

That death had been defeated. And when he walked out of that grave, our sin, our shame, our guilt, all walked out with him. And then the gospel says that if we would but believe that, that simple narrative that is easy enough for my five and six year old kids to understand. That we would have not only eternal life and salvation afterwards, but that we would have a deep rooted unshakable joy that is regardless of any circumstances that take place in life. Romans 10 summarizes this really well.

It says, if you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and you believe, truly believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. But that doesn't stand alone. There's the rest of scripture as well. And we see this in James two, when he continues and he says, what good is it my brothers and sisters? If someone claims to have faith but has no deeds, can such faith save them?

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. So we are not saved by our works. As branches, we are not saved by our fruit. But if we are healthy, we cannot help but produce fruit. Does that make sense?

Let's try the nods. Great. We can compare that, I think, to the modern ethos, or fleshly ethos. It's contrasted really well by the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley that says, I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.

As a man, that phrase still cries out to me. I want that in some ways to be true, and yet it's disastrous, and it's also false. That temptation for us has always been true. We see it in Genesis three at the fall, and we see it now. Pretty much every sociological study that's conducted agrees that the modern Western culture and particularly the American West is the most individualistic culture in society that's ever existed.

I'm saying that value neutral, the way that somebody that studies it would. I. E, we elevate the rights and priorities of the individual over the the many. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that that's altogether bad. If that's what you think I'm saying, just email Ray.

He'd love it. But what I am saying is that it's come at a cost. And that cost is, I mean, you guys have read the news. Look at the data behind antidepressant use, drug use, deaths of despair. We are terrible masters of our own fate.

We are terrible captains of our own soul. And we have to know that as we go through life, this individualism, these are the waters that we're swimming in. This is the gravitational pull that we experience every day when we interface with the culture. And let's be honest, like I said, we're terrible at it. Interesting seasonal example, roughly 40 of Americans set New Year's resolutions every year.

Of those that set goals, twenty three percent quit in the first week. It's the eighth. How are doing church? Sixty percent quit in the first month and ninety one percent don't make it through the year. And let's think about that as a microcosm of our ability to be our own captains, to be our own masters.

So you sit down and you're setting goals, having decades of experience with yourself, knowing what you do, knowing how you do it. There are no external barriers to success, and nobody is pre is pre imposing this upon you. And you go, I'm gonna get abs this year. A quarter of us don't make it through the week. Only forty percent make it through the first month.

Right? And then these these can be spiritual goals. These can be physical goals. These can be financial goals. We don't make it.

And I'm not dumping on setting goals. I think having it is some sort of periodic time of reflection and goal setting, I think that's incredibly healthy. But at the same time, when we're doing that based on our own based on our own wisdom or when we're doing that as as affected by the culture, we fail miserably at it. And this is just a microcosm of of the the greater point that I'm making here. And so what happens when we're the masters of our own fate is every outcome in life feels like the sole determinant of our value.

Or we pin our perceived worth on the people and things around us. And Ray doesn't lean much on this for pretty good reason as I figured out in the nine. But if I put all of my weight on this, this is not designed to hold two hundred pounds. If I put my weight on this, it will crash and the results will be disastrous. And we do the same thing.

When we look at job, at investments, at security, at family, spouse, kids. If we put our identity, if we pin our identity on the success or failure of any of those things, even if they're successful in the ways of the world, that that weight will not hold. It will crumble. It will fail us every single time. Now, addition to that list that I just mentioned, there's one more that I want to talk about real quick, which is politics.

This is a new venue that that has come about for us creating our own identity. And you guys can shift in your seats and you can get as uncomfortable as you want, but I've got the microphone, so we're gonna do this. Here's a fun test. Would you rather convert somebody to your politics or to your Christ? Now, as you think about that, think through the last two months of what you've spent your time on.

Which have you spent more time discussing of those two in intentional conversation? Politics or Christ? Which of those two have you spent more time consuming media or reading about? Politics or Christ? Because if Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity, if they get more of your time in any given week than the word of God and the people of God and intentionality, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

Going away from this individualism or considering this individualism can have large implications for us as a church corporate as well. Our branch, this church at Firstbeat, whether it's the eleven, whether it's the broader Firstbeat, whether it's the church of Jackson Hole, church in America, whatever, we are irrevocably connected to God's mechanism for interfacing with the world. Paul calls it being grafted in in Romans 11. This means that the gospel truth that we hold so dear, we cannot compromise on it. It is it is unchanging, that gospel truth.

And if we temper anything written by the 40 or so spirit inspired authors in the 66 books of the Old and New Testament, if we temper that in the slightest, we are in error. And God has really strong words for us in the in the Bible about that. So we cannot drift towards complacency and call it love and acceptance. We cannot water it down in the slightest. So it's long been said that the church is God's plan a for working in the world and that there is no plan b.

God does not need us, but he wants to use us We should want to be used by him because that is our purpose in life. That is what we were built for. The way that we can do that is by being branches, which requires us to abide. The branch has to be connected. So what does it mean to abide?

Well, I'm gonna do my best Ray impersonation. I'm not gonna touch any musical instruments, don't worry. But this is this is what it means to abide. I'll summarize for you. Continue, dwell, endure, be present, remain, stand, tarry, to wait for.

These are all the biblical uses according to Strong's Concordance throughout our Bible. The clear connotation is that there's a stillness or a waiting. It's like actively choosing to be firmly put. I love the example in, excuse me, first Corinthians 16, Paul talks about stand firm in the faith. It's that same idea.

It goes, I'm here. I'm spending time with Jesus, and I'm not going anywhere else. So Jesus here is telling us to do these things, the the that abiding in him. And I, for one, can be so guilty of rushing through. God, don't you know I've got work to do?

I've got kids to raise. I've got ministry to work on. I've got some adventures to have. Shoot, I've got a sermon to write. God, don't you know I'm busy?

But when I really dwell, when I really root myself in the word of God or in the actions and the person of God, who he is and what he's done for me, I get frankly just as much done. But I get to do it with joy, I get to do it with peace, and I get to do it with God. So here's a very real example. When Ray and Carl asked me to preach today, I was so excited. Well, they didn't ask me today.

When they asked me last week, I was so excited about before they'd even finished the question, I was already like, oh, what am I gonna you know, what do I wanna talk to God's people about? But if I don't sit first, if I don't have my quiet time, if I don't root and slow down and pray, I'm probably preaching in sin because I'm not doing it for God, I'm doing it for me. And you think about that. Preaching in sin, it's such an odd conundrum for the way that we tend to think about what sin means. And so by way of confession, I'll tell you, I want you guys to like me.

I want you guys to think that I am clever and articulate and handsome, and that I'm I'm John Calvin and John Wayne and John f Kennedy, all together here before you with a beard and in plaid. But this is my first time doing this and I frankly, in my flesh, want another I want another shot. And so I want you guys to like me. And yet that self inflicted pressure, that can create an environment where if I don't sit back there where I was and pray before I come up here, that I'm preaching from God's word in sin. And that's how ugly my heart is.

Don't do that. That's how ugly my heart is. And that doesn't even get into all the times this week while I was preparing this message that I was greedy with the resources God has allowed me to steward, that I was selfish with the way that I used my time, where I didn't take my thoughts captive. So if I don't abide even while I'm teaching, I'm probably not producing the fruit that God would have me do. So back to abiding.

What does it mean to abide? It means to root yourself in Jesus. You're gonna hear me say that. You've heard me say that phrase plenty of times. I'm gonna keep doing it.

But we don't just do that once with an emotional experience. We don't just do that once on Sunday. We do it every day, and then we do it throughout the day. I like to to think of it as meals and snacks. We got to eat two or three times a day like meals, and then we can have snacks.

But if you try to live on snacks, you'll survive, but you won't thrive. And so what does what does abiding look like? This is reading, prayer, worship, confession, discussion, meditation. So I created this in a as an acronym, which is. And just to give you guys something easy to remember, you know, as you you go on to lunch after this.

But and and also just to clarify one thing. Meditation here does not mean like the Eastern transcendental meditation where you're like clearing your mind of all thoughts. This means taking God's word and praying it into your life, making it real for you. That's an ancient Christian tradition. It's only the New Age guys since the sixties that tried to hijack it.

So I'm calling these I'm using a Tim Keller phrase here, if you guys are familiar with him. And and I'm he doesn't he's not referring to these specifically, but the general idea of disciplines of desire. John Piper teaches just a ton on this. And and it's the idea that we we use disciplines in our daily life not for like white knuckled moralism, but to change who we are at a heart level. And and so the way that we can think of all of these as being fruitful and productive for for us and growing in Jesus is is we want it to be less of us and more of God.

Now, doesn't mean in the like, oh shucks, I stink sort of way. That means in the taking the focus of our vision and taking it off of our own navels and putting it on the cross. And so I've heard it well said that it's not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less. Almost every one of these on this list can be done both formally and informally. Like I said, meals, snacks.

Prayer is a great one. I have a friend, when my mom was here, she mostly came to the nine, but my mom was diagnosed with a pretty nasty form of cancer two years ago. A buddy of mine here in town, when he heard that, he promised to start praying for my mom every time he saw a Texas license plate in town. Now you think about how redeeming that is versus our normal view of what Texas license plates mean in July here. But he could do that because he's rooted in God's word.

By God's grace, my mom actually gave her life to Christ. Some of you guys know the story. My mom gave her life to Christ this June her deathbed, basically, at St. John's. She got out of that bed.

She's doing much better. She's still got cancer. She's still sick, but we got some great news last week that her tumors are actually shrinking just a bit, which is a bigger blessing than anything we'd ask for. We're hoping to get her to move here full time here pretty soon. I think she's watching from home, so hi, mom.

That's Dallas. So so the so the same can be said for all of these other things, for reading. You know, you can spend your intentional time in God's word in the morning, and then you can just get little snippets. You can you can worship. You can confess.

I've got I've got guys in my life that are part of my community group that I text all throughout the day. Hey, here's something I thought about. Hey, here's here's some sin. Here's a thought that I didn't take take captive. Will you guys pray for me in this?

So we can do that as we're driving around. Don't text while driving. But it's similar to any relationship. We need to nurture the relationship. We need intentional dates, and we need check ins, and we need conversation throughout the day.

We are the exact same way vertically with our with our God. So what do we do with all of this abiding? We go forth and we bear fruit. This is the so what portion of today's message. This is this is the idea of a tree bringing forth or germinating.

And I know there are some here that have tended animals, but there's not a lot of orchards in Teton County, so we're going do a quick ag quiz to make sure you're keeping track. What sort of participation, just to be clear, Baptists. What sort of fruit does an apple tree produce? Apple. Good.

What sort of fruit does a fig tree produce? Fig. So what sort of fruit would a righteous tree produce? Righteousness. That's right.

And so so you guys get the idea. Campy, but it's making you participate so that you don't start jingling your keys at me. But I'm aware of the time. And but it's the idea that in our righteousness, by becoming more like Christ, we will produce Christ likeness. Paul helpfully defines this in Galatians five, but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.

We've all heard this at various times before. But what do we do with that? We don't just need to be nicer sinners. We Paul summarizes this in first Corinthians 11. He says, be imitators of me as I am imitators of Christ.

So we take that Galatians five fruit, that love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self control, faithfulness, and we we go and we go and we put it forth for the kingdom of God. Think about what Paul did, and if that's an easier hurdle or if that's an easier goal for you to run after, then run after Paul in so far as Paul ran after Christ. Does that make sense? Big nod? Great.

So what does this look like practically for us? Every aspect of our lives when we're rooted in Christ should be changed. The people around us should know that we are different from who we were, and we're different from the culture around us. Peter calls us to be strangers and aliens. Paul says in second Corinthians nine that we're a new creation.

Right? Like, we are different. I think Galatians two twenty is also really helpful here. When Paul is describing in in longer form in Galatians two, that there is a joy in being crucified with Christ because you're recognizing that the old is gone. He says, I have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And that's just such a helpful verse for me to have to have. I've also heard it said, I'm not yet who I wanna be, but thank God I'm not who I was. I love that. If I ever get a tattoo, that's probably it.

It's not happening. Natalie's here now. Laugh or I'll make you stand up. So anyway, but but the idea is that once you are changed, your affections will change. You will see needs in the body and in the community around you that you are capable of meeting, not necessarily comfortably, but that you are capable of meeting, and you are gonna want to meet those needs.

So we are changed, and then we see it, and then we do it. But let me be very clear, we should be doing something. Right? Our faith is not based upon the fact that we are saved by the fruit we produce. But if we are a healthy branch, we will produce fruit.

Or as Jesus would say, I don't know why I'm pointing the things back there. I knew it this. But Jesus would say through John in Revelation two that if you're not doing that, that you have abandoned the love that you had at first. Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. And I I hesitated a little bit to to quote Revelation just because of some of the connotations that can be around it, but I think this is incredibly important for us to remember.

Like I said, our faith is not based upon bearing fruit. This is not a scare tactic. I'm not talking hellfire and brimstone here. Fear is actually a really terrible motivator. But I'm just reminding you that if you've forgotten the gospel, if you've forgotten that Christ as the eternal son of God died for you as part of an eternal plan, so that you can be set free, not just for eternity, but also in here today, and that your purpose is to do work for God.

If we forget that, if I forget that in an hour, I've lost it, and I've got to reroute myself in it. Once you do that, we're looking for easy ways to bear fruit. And again, talking about all that like warning against legalism, I kinda hesitated to like produce a list, but sometimes we need help with the, you know, taking the first step. And as you serve in these ways, if you're doing so from from your heart, you will want to serve more. Again, not white knuckled moralism, but it's also not the easy believism of Jesus and me.

So if you're an evangelist, tell everybody you know. Get really good at it. Practice at it. If you don't know what to do with evangelism, just tell them your story. Tell them what you were saved from, how you came to Christ, what was the the logic or the person or the love that brought you to Christ, and then share that with people.

You don't have to be practiced in apologetics. You can serve here. Lord knows there's plenty of needs. Or you can do a Bible study on the one another's of scripture. You can grab men and women that are in Christ, and you can go, okay.

Love one another. Encourage one another. And you just start living those out. There's plenty of parachurch ministries, and, gosh, we need more small groups. We need them in this church.

We need them in this valley. We need them in this country. We need Bible studies. We need accountability where we can confess sin and pray for one another, and we certainly need prayer groups. Every revival through history has started usually with women, read into that what you will, praying for the culture around him.

It's faithful men and women praying for the culture that there would be revival. Okay. So before moving on, I wanna say, what can you do to abide more with Christ? The very first step is have a conversation with God and with the people in your life. Say, hey, wherever at whatever step in the in Christian maturity I'm at, how can I move in that next step in abiding with God?

What do you think that would look like in my life? So at your at your lunch hour, chat about that. And we'll summarize the same way that Jesus summarized. Apart from me, you can do nothing. We are neither vine nor vinedresser.

Those jobs are taken by the very qualified, and we're terrible at it. If we try for those jobs, we will fail, and the consequences are huge. So I'm just going to remind you with one more time. First, we abide, then we are changed, and then we go forth and we do the work of bearing fruit. I love you so much, First B.

Thank you so much for having me, for being patient with me. I've talked about some heavy stuff today. So I wanna leave you with Romans eight one. Because this is a reminder that regardless of everything that I'm talking about, I'm spurring you on towards love and good deeds as as the writer talks about in Hebrews 10. But Paul is also clear, therefore, there is now no condemnation at all at all for those who are in Christ Jesus.

I love you guys. Thank you so much. As a mentor of mine who has influenced this message tremendously, Todd Wagner says, have a great week of worship. Love you guys.

Thank you, Brad. Would you stand? We'll sing. We'll make this our prayer, our song when we're saying, take my life, lead me, Lord. We're saying, lead me, Lord.

Teach me, Lord. Send me, Lord. We'll make it our prayer and our song. Lord, we make that our prayer and our song this morning. Would you lead us?

Would you teach us? Would you send us as we abide in you? You are the vine. We are the branches. As we remain in you and you and us, we will bear fruit, Lord, that we would be fruit bearers, gladly bearing fruit because we have and are remaining in you.

You're doing this good work in us, Lord. Would you continue the good work? In Jesus' name, amen.