Fire and Fruit

Hi, I'm Jonathan Pennington, and this is the Human Flourishing Podcast. This podcast is a repository of a wide variety of sermons, lectures, interviews, and other resources that I've recorded over the years. Today's episode is a sermon I preached at Sojourn East in Louisville, Kentucky. Our scripture this morning comes from Luke 3, 1 through 6, and if you're able, would you please stand for the reading of God's Word. In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod Tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip Tetrarch of Ateria and Trachonitis, and Lysanius Tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annus and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zachariah, in the wilderness. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, a voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth, and all people will see God's salvation. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Lindsay and I are such good friends, and what do friends do more than have them stand in front of several hundred people and pronounce Latin geographical names? That's what friends do, but anyways, thank you, good to be with you. Back in 2015, a group of French physicists studied and released a really important article on what happens when a balloon pops. Basically, they did the scientific research and found that for the most part, when a balloon pops, when a balloon meets up against a blade, it pops along one or two seams. But they found that there was a direct correlation between the amount of pressure that's in the balloon and actually what happens, that once you reach the certain curve of the amount of pressure, instead of just splitting along one or two seams, a balloon actually ends up having cracks, up to 40 cracks, and just completely destroys the material. That's the image. Once you have in mind as we think about the story that we have before us today, because in a very real sense, Jesus, the Son of God, becoming a human, which is what we talked about a few years here last week, it's like God piercing the balloon of the world. That is that Jesus enters the world at a very high-pressured time, a very pressurized time, and in fact, His coming into the world increases that pressure greatly. And you see, because Jesus is not just a prophet, He's not just another prophet sent by God, He's got Himself incarnate. What's going to happen is that the world itself is going to burst open in a thousand directions. And in fact, the result of that bursting, for some, is going to be like a water balloon on a parched day. It'll be refreshing for others. It's going to result in their lives really being torn to shreds. And so today, we're actually going to cover Luke 3 verses 1 to 20. And I'll tell you right here at the beginning that there are so many great things happening in this text. I have a version of the sermon. If you want to come over this afternoon to hear it, that's about 50 percent longer than this, that I had to cut a ton of it out, because there's so much good, so many good things, but I wanted to keep it, you know, sinked. And so the good news is, we're just really at the beginning of Luke, and so we are, you know, continuing all along and we'll have other opportunities to run into some of these great ideas. But to understand what I think God wants to say to us today, first I want to talk briefly, and we're talking about John the Baptist, but I want to talk briefly about John's place in God's kingdom. And then more importantly, John's preaching about God's kingdom. So it's place, and then it's preaching and we'll start with his place. If you have a Bible, you can follow along with me. I think if you want to use a puboggle, I think it's page 833, or we'll put the words on the screen as well. So John's place in God's coming kingdom. Well, in our story for today, we are jumping 20 or 30 years ahead of where we were in the first two chapters of Luke, and we meet the adult version of John, the son of Zechariah, the guy whose miraculous sort of conception and birth we heard about earlier. We know him today by his more famous name, not John and son of Zechariah, but what the other gospels call him, John the Baptist. Let me show you verses one and two again. Let's look there. In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor, Judea, here at Tetrake of Galilee, his brother Philip, Tetrake of Eteria, Antachonitis, Lycanus, Tetrake of Abelene, during the high priesthood of Anus and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. Now what I want you to see here is that Luke wants us to understand that the story he's going to be telling, not only about John, but, of course, ultimately about Jesus, fits into another couple of stories, the story of the Roman Empire, that's why we have reference to these very specific people and time, and also the story of the nation of Israel, the people of Israel. In fact, it's this really high-pressured crossroads moment of these two cultures that are in conflict with each other that are intersecting, get the exact high-pressure point that Jesus enters into the world. And for the Jewish people, this is not a good story because for about 100 years, they have been heavily oppressed by the Roman Empire, and even that reference to the high priesthood of Anus and Caiaphas, that's not really particularly good news for most Jewish people, either of these. The high priesthood in this day was pretty much in connection with the Roman Empire, and so for the average Jewish person, all of that setup is pretty negative. And so as a result, God's people were longing for God to show up and rescue them from this oppressive place. And all throughout the Old Testament prophets, that's exactly what God promises He's going to do. He's going to send, finally, a king and a Messiah to rescue His people, and one of the prophets that talks about that the most is Isaiah, and that's why in chapter 3, verses 4 to 6, the quote for Isaiah is applied to John the Baptist because now is the time. This is the moment. You see, in the midst of all this tension, this pressure of Roman oppression and Jewish hope, did you see that in verse 2, what it said? In the midst of this, the word of the Lord came to John in the wilderness. If you've read much in the Old Testament, you know that's exactly the language that's used whenever God begins to do a new work. That's the kind of language you see whenever a prophet is called by God, whether it's Moses, or Samuel, or Elijah, or Elisha, God is on the move because the word of the Lord is now going forth. And so John's place, we'll see as we keep reading in Luke, is as this great, final prophet before God Himself returns to establish His reign on the earth. And we're going to look more closely at His message, but I want you to let your eyes jump down to verse 15, and how the story ends because this is also part of what John's place is in the kingdom that's important for us to stand. Let me start in verse 15. It says, the people were waiting expectantly, and we're all wondering in their hearts if John might be the possibly the Messiah, the one that got it promised. But John answered them all and said, I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals are not worthy to untie, he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor, to gather the wheat into his barn, but he'll burn up the chaff and with unquenchable fire. And with many other words, John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them, but when John rebuked here, the tetraarch, the guy we just read about in the first couple of verses because of his marriage to Herodias, his brother's wife, and all the other things he had done. Herod added this to them all. He locked John up in prison. Okay, we're going to see the rest of John's stories, we keep going through Luke and see what happens to him. But the point for us now is that John is really, really important, Jesus is going to say he's the greatest of all the prophets, but he's not actually the point of the story. He is the usher to Jesus' bridegroom. He is the narrator to Jesus, the lead character. He's just the servant to Jesus who's really the mastermind behind it all. And the one coming after John, Jesus, John himself says, is so much more powerful and he's going to do a far greater work. He's, John's offering a baptism, which is a symbol of God's work and God coming to save his people. Jesus is going to baptize John, says, with the Holy Spirit and fire, and it's a little mysterious at this point what that means. But if you keep reading through Luke, especially in the book of Acts, what you'll see is that this is exactly what happens. With this image of fire, the Holy Spirit actually comes upon all of Jesus' followers at Pentecost, and this becomes what it means to be a Christian, that you are actually filled with the Spirit and you have this kind of fire power. So that's John's place in God's kingdom, and there's a lot more we could say about it. But what I really want to concentrate on today is what I think the heart of this message is, and that is John's preaching about what God's came to. So what is that word of the Lord that John got that then he proclaimed? What is John's preaching? Look with me at verse seven. So John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, maybe surprisingly, you brewed a viper's who warns you to flee from the coming wrath, produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and to not begin to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our Father, for I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The Acts is already through to the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. Pretty unexpected, maybe, what you might think. I think the question that I feel that I think probably most of us would feel when we read these verses is, what is going on with all this like intense, very negative language of viper's and wrath and an Acts about to cut the roots out of the tree, not just limbs being lopped off, but actually the idea of roots being cut out and burned with fire? And what does that have to do with this kind of children of Abraham? What's going on here? Remember, the back in verse three, if you look there, John's whole message was summarized as proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and I think what's happening in these verses, in verses seven and nine, as he's proclaiming this, he's perceiving and he's anticipating what the improper response on the part of some people is. And he knows humanity and he's anticipating, and I think these verses reflect that, what some people, especially the Jewish leaders response, is going to be to this message of repentance for the baptism, and baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Because I think a lot of people, especially the religious leaders in John's audience, they actually, when they heard that message, they would have felt like it was a bit extra, as you might say, and really even offensive. I think with me about this, baptism, and Jewish people in a lot of people throughout the world have used water in various symbolic ways, but baptism was something that a Gentile, a non-Jewish person, would have to go through if they wanted to be connected to the Jewish people. It's called being a proselyte, so in the first century and other times, we'll see a lot of them in Luke and Acts. You have Gentiles who are actually very attracted to the way of Judaism, very attractive to the morality and the traditions of it, and so a lot of people were very interested and would enter in a kind of a second class adjacent way to the Jewish community, and one of the things that they had to do to do so would be baptized in water. And so probably what's going on here is that for a lot of Jewish people to be hearing this call, especially the religious leaders, it's kind of offensive to them to communicate that they have to also go through this ritual that is something that only like a lowly outsider would have to do. So I think it's probably a little offensive, and I think that's what's going on, and you see John anticipates the response of saying we have Abraham as our father, in other words, I think what a lot of the people that are hearing John are saying is we don't need some new revelation, we don't need some new message, some new act to show that we're God's people we're good, we're fine, yes, life is a little frustrating right now if the Romans are pressing us, but it's fine, we're good people, we're good to go, we don't need any kind of over-the-top radical symbol, especially not something that is really just for outsiders, we're good. Maybe that's how you feel today when you come to church, but it's because of that attitude that I think John uses this very shocking kind of wake us up from our apathy-intense language. If you see with deep irony, he's saying, you think that because you have Abrahamic ethnic descent, you're good, but the reality is that by your actions, your words, your heart, you show yourself to be snakes instead, that's the play on words, you're actually not the children of Abraham, your children of snakes, Jesus is going to say the same thing in John chapter 8, it's not so veiled reference to Adam and Eve and the serpent that deceived them. You see, this is actually going to be the same message we're going to see throughout Luke and Jesus' ministry that because he is the final and full revelation of God into the world. Apart from him, there's no way to be in a relationship with God, no matter what your ethnic descent is, no matter what your religious heritage is, no matter what your spiritual success might have been in the past. This is the message that's consistent and this is why John uses this really strong language of an axe laid at the root of the tree. It's an image of loss, it's an image of destruction because if someone does not respond to God's final revelation in Jesus, no matter whether they are Jewish or Gentile or any, they are lost. You see, this is not, I know it sounds really harsh to us, but this is John's language is not antisemitic, it's not anti-religion, it's not mean, it's a necessary warning against stiff nakedness on the part of anyone who might hear him, including you and me. It'd be like a person back in July who can imagine someone going through Perry County and Eastern Kentucky and knocking indoors and yelling in the streets, there is a massive flash flood coming, warning people to get to safety and only the fool in that moment would dig in their heels and refuse. You see, the reason why it's important to understand it this way is because did you see in chapter three verse 18, I read it that it says, John went around preaching this good news. That doesn't sound like very good news, but the point of John's message is not mockery, he's not being mean-spirited, he's not condemning people, it's a passionate warning from a father or mother or brother or sister, it's an invitation to find life rather than destruction. In fact, the reason this is still good news is because if you look back in chapter one when John was born, the Holy Spirit comes upon Zechariah and prophesies, listen to these words from chapter one. Zechariah says, and you, my child, as we give John, will be called a prophet of the most high, for you will go on before the Lord to bear the way for him, to give his knowledge, his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death to guide our feet into the path of peace. Do you feel it? That's the heart of God. That is actually consistent with John's message. God wants us to find life, he wants us to find the path of peace. God does want and will provide, according to the promise from Jesus 12 and following, he will provide children to Abraham. Nothing has changed. The question is, what does it actually mean to be a child of Abraham? And according to the New Testament, to be a child of Abraham is not based on ethnic descent or religious heritage or spiritual success. It's based on faith in Jesus, the one who is now God revealed himself fully. So I hope that helps with some of the kind of intensity of that language, but I actually think there's something even more important going on in this text, the bigger question I really want to help us think about, and that's this. What exactly does John mean by this word repentance? What does repentance really mean? Back in July, if you were here, we were preaching through 2 Corinthians and I preached a sermon then on the difference between regret and repentance, and I won't repeat everything I said then, but I do want to say this again that I think, if you're like me, when I hear the word repentance, it mostly has negative connotations. I think of a person like a sandwich board, yelling at people on the street, the end is near, you're a horrible person, or maybe you think of repentance as just feeling really bad about the bad things we've done, like you're yelled at your kids and you just feel really bad and maybe is that what repentance is? Neither of those ideas are really what biblical repentance is. Repentance is having our eyes opened to see God clearly and to see ourselves clearly, and then turning from one way of living to another way. Repentance is taking responsibility for our actions, and our hearts, and our attitudes, our habits, and in the power of God's spirit, stepping imperfectly, but making steps and choices to walk in a different path, Jesus' path, not out of duty and that we're afraid of God in that sense, but because our eyes have been opened, we've seen Him clearly, we've seen ourselves clearly, and we realize there's only life in following in the way of Jesus, so it's turning from one way to another way. Okay, maybe you're with me so far, but I think we still need to press in, so what does that look like? What's the turning one way to another? If I were to ask you to right now, like make some bullet points, like what does repentance look like in your life? What would you say? If you're just to write down some bullet points, what does repentance look like? Maybe you'd say something like read your Bible more, pray more, maybe a 10 church, more faithfully, give more money to support the church's work. Those are all good things. Is that what John's talking about? So, while you have some people that are rejecting John's message, if you look at verse 10, you'll see that a lot of people are listening to it and they say, so what should we do? Now, before you keep reading, if you look at verse 10, don't read verse 11 yet, here's the question. When the crowd hollers out to John and says, okay, we hear your message, the Messiah is coming, what do we do? What do you think he's going to say? It's interesting thought experiment. What do you think John's going to say? Is he going to say you should withdraw from society? Or is he going to say you should start a cultural war to protect our rights from the evil Roman Empire? Or is he going to say the opposite? Join a cause and overthrow the traditions and take down the man? Or is he going to say every one of you become missionaries and pastors now? Is he going to say you all need to go on a great spiritual pilgrimage? So you say you need to obey the Ten Commandments or maybe the opposite. Don't worry about it, whatever you do as fine as long as it's sincere. Are those what John's going to say? When I was studying this passage earlier this week, I was actually pretty shocked. I did not expect even though I've read it and thought this before. I did not remember and expect what John actually says. Look at verse 10 again. He says when the crowd calls out, what should we do then? John answered, anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same. Even some tax collectors came to be baptized and teacher they said, what should we do? Don't collect anymore than you're required to. He told them. Some soldiers came and asked them, what should we do? And he replied, don't extort money. Don't accuse, feel falsely. Be content with your pay. Is that what you expected? I didn't expect it. What struck me so much this week is I pondered this as I thought about how does he define repentance? That he doesn't say what I would have said that repentance is about me turning from my sins toward God, confessing my sins like in a Psalm 51 way, like we did there, where I go to God in humility and ask for forgiveness. Rather than this vertical kind of repentance, which is good and true, rather than this vertical where I think about repentance in my relationship to God, when John is asked what repentance is in light of Jesus coming into the world, was it look like? Do you notice he gives a horizontal answer. He describes what we should do in how we treat other people. And to explain repentance, he gives illustrations that are about our relationships. He describes repentance in really very practical, interpersonal, material terms. These are not, he does just give like spiritual ideas and practices, but he actually gives visible actions and attitudes. Did you see that in those verses? Look there again, verse 11. To the crowd, he uses this two shirts or two nicks, your translation might say, example to emphasize that Christians who have seen God and seen themselves are ones who give to others in need. Christians are ones who take out of their abundance and rather than hoarding it, we look with compassion on those less fortunate ourselves in this moment. If you look at verses 12 to 13, tax collectors. I mean, these are these notorious group of Jewish people who made their living by working for the Roman Empire, the suppressive force, they make their living by working for the Roman Empire in collecting taxes from their fellow Jews. Some of them are hearing John's message and when they ask what they should do, he doesn't say, quit your job. He says to them, John says repentance looks like not taking more than is required, which is what often happened. In other words, do the job that's before them, but don't have the numbers, don't manipulate people, don't manipulate the system for your own benefit and to their expense. Soldiers, we don't know if these were soldiers of Herod's house so they might have been Jewish or they may have been Roman soldiers because if we keep when we keep reading Luke and Acts, we're going to see a lot of soldiers get converted, Roman centurions and others get converted, so we don't know who these people are, but nonetheless, he says kingdom repentance for a soldier looks like not using their power and position for personal gain. You see soldiers in those days and today as well, really any kind of people in law enforcement, they have a lot of power because they have official power and some freedom and they're in a lot of messy situations where people are often in very vulnerable situations and so the temptation for a soldier or anybody in this kind of power position is to intimidate people, to stroke their own egos, to manipulate people, to take advantage people in vulnerable times and positions and I'm not throwing shade here, I'm saying any of us if we're honest would be tempted to do the same thing if given that power and John is saying this is not the way of Christ's repentance and so again note that all of the repentance illustrations he gives are interpersonal, they are rooted in the material physical real life relationship world and we have to think carefully about this. You hear me clear, I'm not saying that this is the only thing that repentance looks like because the Bible does regularly talk about our need to turn to God to repent in a kind of personal way like Psalm 51, the scriptures regularly speak about our inner person, our hearts really do matter and if that isn't there even if we're involved in philanthropic good or whatever we're doing then as Jesus is going to say at Matthew 23 we're really just white washed tombs full of dead men's bones we it does matter that we repent in a personal way toward God but but what we cannot miss is that when John is asked what that looks like what true repentance towards God looks like he doesn't say get right with God in your heart although it's true he tells us what the fruit of that relationship with God actually looks like and what does it look like it looks like living in loving relationships with other people and we have to let that sink in because I'm afraid in our modern kind of tradition of Christianity especially in the West we have tended to think of our faith in very kind of private personal terms exclusively about our personal inner lives we may acknowledge that yes we're supposed to love other people but we often somehow that seems like that's like secondary and it's maybe an application of what it means to have faith it's not the actual having faith faith is actually about my personal relationship with God well the Bible makes clear that while that vertical aspect is essential the horizontal aspect of repentance it's not secondary it's not merely application it's actually organically inextricably linked when Jesus is asked what's the greatest commandment he does give a vertical answer but he does not stop there he communicates that these are bound together you can't have one without the other what is the what is it the greatest commandment to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength but the second deeply interwoven inextricably is to love your neighbor as yourself and I don't know that anybody says it better than the Apostle John the different John the Apostle John in his letter we call first John he says in chapter 4 dear friends let us love one another for love comes from God everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God whoever does not love does not know God because God is love and skipping down a few verses he says whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister as a liar wherever it does not love their brother and sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they've not seen and he's given us this command anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister do you understand the logic here that it's super easy for any of us to say I love the invisible God but then not do not really love other people think of this great line from CS Lewis you may recall he says it's easier to be enthusiastic about humanity with a capital age than it is to love individual men and women especially if they're annoying loving everybody in general may be an excuse for loving nobody in particular it's very challenging very challenging and this is what John is telling us John the Baptist and the Apostle John and you know if you think about it this actually makes sense because most of our sinning is actually against other people there are some things that might be a sin directly against God there are some but even most of those have under when we're seeing against God it's because we've actually sinned against another person you think about the Old Testament of the Pentateuch the first five books and all the Torah the instructions about how God's people are to relate to him most of the instructions there are plenty that relate to relating to God but most of them actually relate to how you relate to each other all the case law that's given or you think of Matthew chapter 18 when Jesus calls this group of disciples to himself and he says okay here's what our life together is going to look like it all focuses on the horizontal relationships of living in relationships of forgiveness and reconciliation and caring for the lessers you think about Paul's letters if you know anything about the Bible or Christianity Paul's letters in the New Testament are very important and you probably think of Paul as like this great theologian who's telling us all this correct doctrine and that's true but if you read Paul's letters you will see that underneath them woven through and at the the apex of each of them is an emphasis on how we relate to each other that's really what drives his letters think of Romans a super famous letter of Romans that is laying out the gospel in some sense really throughout it is the burning question of whether Jews and Gentiles if one of them superior to the other and that they shouldn't be fighting with each other the answer is no neither them are superior and then the whole final section of Romans the first the last several chapters are all about interpersonal relationships or Galatians if you know this amazing book from Paul that gives a clarity of what the gospel is how does that book come to its to its apex well 513 chapter 513 in Galatians Paul says don't use this freedom that you have from the gospel for your own flesh but serve one another and listen to this because he says the entire law is fulfilled in one word you shall love your neighbor as yourself the great book of Galatians which is teaching this clarity of the gospel brings it down to you love your neighbor as yourself and then he goes right after that into talking about the deeds of the flesh versus the fruit of the spirit notice the fruit connection there and if you pay attention to the deeds of the flesh of the fruit of the spirit most of them are interpersonal deeds of the flesh sexual morality enmity strife jealousy fits of anger rivalries dissensions divisions envy and the fruit of the spirit most again are interpersonal love patience kindness goodness faithfulness means something more like loyalty probably gentleness self-control or think of Paul's great letter to the flippians where he gives us one of the highest depictions and understandings of who Jesus is that he was fully God but he humbled himself and became a human what is Paul do with that theology flippians chapter two he says this do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit you and me rather in humility value others above yourselves not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interest of the others in your relationships with one another have the same mindset as Christ Jesus that sure sounds a lot like Luke chapter three verses 10 to 14 so what do we do with this well the word I'm about to put on the side in front of you is probably not going to win any awards it's probably not going to become the 2022 year of the war word of the year but I'm pretty proud of it and we'll call it fruit pentance that is if we want to live in this way of Christ in this repentance that is bearing fruit what does that really look like or remember there's an improper response which is I'm fine I don't need to do anything but if you have an open heart to God even mustard seed of faith and you can say how should I respond okay God I want to know what what I believe you have the words of life how should I respond what does this look like I think the first thing to say is that repentance doesn't look like some grand new program where you're going to do great things for God for the most part repentance looks like you in the place you are in the relationships you are in the place in the space in the relationship living in the way of Christ doesn't require you go do some big pilgrimage or something repentance largely is going to look like thinking about the relationships you're in and asking what is Christ's way here I love how one pastor says it repentance is not seen and you're doing some extraordinary feat but in your living ordinary life in a transformed way that's really good living your ordinary life in a transformed way so what is this transformed way well if you look at the three examples that John gives they really paint a picture for us of what happens inside of us when we finally see ourselves clearly and see God clear when we repent because when we turn to Christ we begin to see other people as God sees them and we can begin to treat them with love and compassion not taking advantage of other people not using other people to meet our own needs and agenda when we have power not wielding it recklessly or harmfully when we have money and goods not hoarding it but giving generously to others in other words in all of our relationships not looking to take but to give my daughter-in-law Sydney and my son they go to Midtown or one of our sister churches and she works downtown and at the homeless shelter called Recenter and she's the beautiful soul who really gives her life to other people and I was talking to her about these verses this weekend and you know she sees people at one of the lowest spots a human can be homeless and broken people in great need and great brokenness and I just want to read you what she said to me because we're talking about it I just I don't think I can say any better as she's so beautiful she said when we repent we become aware of the abundance we have in Christ and we see that we can reach out to others in the love of Christ and abandon our scarcity mindset and the tendency to hold things tightly and hide from our neighbor that's really good abandoning a scarcity mindset and being becoming people that are conduits of God's grace to others because left to our own devices our natural tendency is going to be towards self-protection and manipulation of others because in our deepest hearts we're scared we're scared of not having enough we're scared of someone taking advantage of us we're scared of being shamed we're scared of not being loved and so we we wield power against others we hoard our goods like desperate squirrels so that we can feel secure for friends God is inviting us to something different something more he's inviting us to look at the relationships that are right in front of you and seek to give rather than to take not grandiose things to look at the relationships right in front of you and to seek to give rather than to take maybe for you this looks like giving money to someone in need I know many of you do that maybe for most people and anybody can do this it means giving time to look someone in the eyes and listen to them maybe it's cleaning someone's house or helping with childcare or giving a ride these things are fresh for my wife and I because we experience so many blessings from so many of you and the you know darkest days of my wife's brain tuber in the beginning of her recovery many of you have experienced as well and it's such a beautiful thing when when people give to each other it's like it multiplies the love and the joy maybe giving rather than taking looks like you give a kind word in a moment if some of you experience this maybe some of you have it maybe this is just me but you know maybe you're in a relationship with a child or friend or spouse or somebody and maybe there's been some hurt long-term or recently and and you you have a thought across your mind of some way you could bless them with a word or something and you you see a hesitancy in yourself to do that the way of Christ the invitation is to in that moment by the power of the spirit to step towards that and offer that kind word offer that service maybe giving rather than taking in a business deal for those of you who are business people maybe it means you don't have to max out your profits I think not saying you can't but maybe it means you could leave some leave some crops along the edge of the field for the less fortunate to glean maybe it's something as practical as getting involved in our affordable Christmas that we'll start talking about probably next week in the future whatever it is you see and I know many of us want a new list of rules and I'm like okay now tell me what to do question but the reality is I can't tell you what to do there's a thousand situations and many of them are not a moral issue it's not if it's a wrong thing to do don't do that but many cases I can't tell you exactly what to do because this is not about a list of things to do it's about a new posture it's a new attitude it's a new vision it's new habits that God's inviting us to I can't tell you every situation you'll be in this week but I can tell you that this kind of way this repentance of not just taking but giving it will produce in us a delicious June ripe strawberry Georgia peach juicy fruit in the lives of your relationships and the seeds that will multiply across the field of our lives you know a good question I think to ask ourselves as we go through this week because you're gonna have hundreds of interactions with other people is to respond how the crowd does and verses 10 to 14 and just say Lord what should I do and look to God and say God in this moment what should I do empower me by the spirit to walk in Christ's way of repentance which is doing good not just taking thank you for listening to the human flourishing podcast to learn more or get in touch with me visit my website Jonathan Pennington.com