Later is Greater

Morning. My name is David Sorn. I’m the Lead Pastor here at Renovation Church. Morning to you. Before we get started this morning, I want to let you know that two weeks from today, on October 22 nd , we want every single person who calls Renovation home, to be in the room that morning. As you can see on the screen, we will be revealing the plans for our future building that day! This is a day we’ve been looking forward to…for years…literally! And it’s going to be super fun and exciting!On the 22 nd , we’ll show you the layout of our future building and talk about its features… We’ll talk timeline…and, how in the world we’re going to be able to build this building in the first place! As I look back on the history of our church, there are a number of really important Sundays… Our Grand Opening (Oct 4 th , 2009) When we first announced we were going to start looking for land… (October 19 th , 2014) When we revealed to all of you that we had bought land and where it was (February 19 th , 2017)… Those were special days… And the 22 nd will be no different. So do whatever it takes to be here that Sunday As we gear up to see amazing things happen at Renovation Church through our future building, I also want to bring you some news about what I believe could be a greater legacy of this church than even work that’s done at our future building. Back in 2012, we set a goal to start 10 new churches out of Renovation Church in 10 years…by 202 We’ve planted 3 so far…with 2 more in the hopper for the coming year or two. But why plant these new autonomous churches? Because it’s the most effective, exponential way to change the world. If you have 10 churches that average even just 200 people, that’s 2,000 people (out of our network), hearing about Jesus every week. That’s amazing! And so this morning, I want to let you know about an incredible hire we just made I’d like to welcome Pastor Dave Reno to the stage Dave has been a mentor of mine for the past 8 years or so as he just finished 30 years as the Senior Pastor of Grace Fellowship. In fact, Grace Fellowship was our parent church that helped us get started. We were their 18 th church plant, out of 26 churches that Dave has helped get started. And so, we’re excited to announce that Dave will be coming on part time as our Pastor of Church Planting and is going to help us make sure we reach our goal of 10 churches in 10 years. He’ll be recruiting church planters, training, and helping to send them out. We’re so excited and honored that Dave is working with us! I asked Dave to greet you and say a few words! (Dave Speaks) I SIN LOOKS GOOD UP CLOSE This morning, we are continuing in our Nearsighted series. We’ve been talking about how often we only trust what we can see at close range…and in doing so…we miss what would be best for us in the long rang And this morning, I want to talk about a choice we face every day…multiple times throughout the day… Do I obey God or do I do what my flesh wants to do, and sin Sin is a loaded word. The Bible describes sin this way: It’s any failure to follow the law/ways of God…in action or in thought. All day long we face choices like this. Some of them minute and some of them massiv Should I gossip or should I not? Should I let that person go in front of me or should I cut them off on the way to the door? Should I be generous with my money or should I be selfish? The average person makes (depending on what study you read) somewhere between 30 70 conscious decisions a day. Not all are good vs evil choices (Lucky Charms or Cookie Crisp) Some of you health nuts just went, “That’s evil vs. evil!” But we do face plenty of real choices that obey God or sin…every day. So why would we even choose sin over following God? Our nearsightedness plays a huge role in this. We want what will make us feel better…RIGHT NOW. Not 10 minutes from now…not 10 years from now…RIGHT NOW. I sometimes think of sin this way: It’s kind of like looking at a poisonous berry, that you’re not completely sure is poisonous. And you think, “Oh man, this looks delicious! I want it right now! “I suppose it could be bad for me…BUT…BUT…it looks soooo delicious! I’m sure it couldn’t really be that bad” And so you bite into the berry, and it IS delicious! Sometimes Christians say, sin is never pleasurabl I’ve never understood that. Of course, it’s pleasurable! That’s why we do it! In the moment (for a second), it almost always feels better to: Be lazy, be gluttonous, yell out your rage, lust, tell a lie that helps you out, brag about how awesome you are rather than be humble… The poisonous berry does taste good when you bite into it! But sin…is like a delayed poison to your spirit. And this theme is all over the pages of the Bible From Judas who chose 30 pieces of silver over betraying the Son of God To Esau, in Genesis 25, who traded his birthright to his younger twin brother…all for a pot of stew when he was famished…To all the way back to Adam and Eve Who chose eating the fruit of the forbidden tree…over trusting in God. WE REAP WHAT WE SOW There’s a principle in the Bible related to this age old choice and its consequences, and it’s this: You reap what you sow. If you’ve never been to a farm, which is more and more plausible these days, sowing is planting the seed, and reaping is to gather your crops at harvest times Let’s take a look at God’s Word (Page 946) (Renovation App) Also, you can take notes if you go to today’s message (on the message tab) and tap “take a note” Here’s what the Apostle Paul has to say about this principle of sowing and reaping when he writes to one of the early churches in the Bible (Galatians 6:7 10) NIV 7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal lif 9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. If we sow to please our flesh (that is we keep choosing sin)…we reap destruction (havoc on our lives). You keep eating poisonous berries (because you like how they taste…) Eventually, the poison is going to start to eat you from the inside out But, Paul says, “If you sow to please the Spirit (God), eventually you reap life…eternal lif Verse 9 tells us that “at the proper time…we will reap a harvest of good” By the way, just to clarify, this is not the concept of Karma Karma is a “locked in system” in Eastern religion. Especially in Hinduism. In Karma, if you’ve sinned, then the forces of the divine will bring a CORRESPONDING retribution to you. Whereas, Paul is speaking of a general principle of “cause & effect” that I think most people understand if we stop and think about it If you keep gossiping for years and years…eventually you won’t have friends. People will like your insider knowledge at first, but eventually, they’ll start to question what you tell other people about them! If you sow sin, eventually you reap destruction. Sin…always comes with a pric One of my questions for you is: What sorts of seeds are you planting in your life right now? Even if they are just tiny? The majority of the people in this room aren’t, this upcoming week, going to plant colossal Godly seeds or enormous seeds of sin. Statistically, very few of you are going to make one amazing or one devastating choice over the next 7 days that will change the course of your life However, at some point in your life…you probably will make 1 or 2 decisions like that. You may have made some already (good or bad) And those decisions…were simply a reaping of many little seeds that were previously planted. Like the ones you’re going to lay down this week It reminds me of an explanation I heard once about the cuckoo bird…who apparently is now useful beyond just inspiring the cuckoo clock. The cuckoo is a common bird in England that never builds its own nest. When it feels an egg coming on, it finds another nest with eggs and no mama bird The cuckoo lands, hurriedly lays its egg, and takes off again. Often, it’ll lay eggs in the nest of a Thrush. When the Thrush bird comes back, she’s usually not very good at math, so she gets right to work hatching the eggs. Four little thrushes and one large cuckoo eventually hatch. The cuckoo is two or three times the size of the thrushes. Mrs. Thrush, having hatched the five little birds, goes off early in the morning to get the worm. She comes back, circles the nest to see four petite thrush mouths and one cavernous cuckoo mouth. Guess who gets the worm? The cuckoo. And so the cuckoo gets bigger and bigger; the thrushes get smaller and smaller. To find a baby cuckoo in a nest in England, simply walk along a hedge row until you find little dead thrushes. The cuckoo throws them out one at a tim And the moral of the story is this: you have two natures in one nest (your sinful nature and, if you’re a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit inside of you) and the nature you go on feeding w/ your daily choices will be the one that grows THE DELAY OF THE HARVEST I mentioned earlier to you that one of the reasons we keep choosing to eat poisonous berries, even though we know they will be bad for us…is because sin is the type of poison, that tends to have a delayed release In the mid 1900’s, when little kids used to eat “paint chips” because they somehow looked delicious to them… Part of the problem was that the effects of lead poisoning wouldn’t show up until months later And so you could eat a whole lot of paint chips before you knew it was a problem And we can see this principle in Galatians 6 as well It’s another principle of farming. Sowing and reaping always implies a wait. Nothing grows overnight. Good or bad. Even the prodigal son of Luke 15, who ran away from his father and spent his inheritance in wild living… He reveled in all of his sin, until his money ran out and the sin got old. No one is miserable at first. Not the person who just is beginning to binge drink Not the person just starting to really chase money Not the person who’s flirting with someone outside their marriage It takes time…to reap what you sow. It takes time for the bitter aftertaste of sin to show up And then, our responsibility is to learn from that aftertast One of my hobbies is trying new pops. I know…daring. Anyone been to the Blue Sun Soda Shop in Spring Lake Park?? They have 1,300 different pop flavors in glass bottles. Life changing experience But I recently bought a bottle of Passion Fruit pop ther And at my first drink, for the 1 st second I thought, “Not bad…” And then the aftertaste came…and I thought, “Oh, that’s terrible!” But what I did I do (what do you think??)…I took another sip…just to make sure! And guess what, “Still terrible!” This perhaps what is most depressing about us as human beings We seem to have incredibly short memories about two things in which we should never have a short memory about The pain of sin and the goodness of God. There’s another principle of farming in here Often tiny seeds produce much more when it’s times for the reaping. One grain of wheat…can produce a whole head of grain. This principle is true in both the positive and negative sense Look at the advice of one Jesus’ disciples, Peter: (1 Peter 2:11) NIV Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. It’s been a difficult year to read or watch the News. So much tragedy…so much evil. You think of the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas a week ago today. Although we don’t know all of the murderer’s motives yet, I can guarantee you that he didn’t just wake up one day and say, “I guess I’ll do this.” Even in the last year, there were 11 months of stockpiling ammo and weapons…one by on The effects of sin snowball with each choice we mak Nobody says, “I think I want to stop talking to my own mother…5 years from now OR I think I want to end my marriage 5 years from now…” No, as Peter says, sin, wages war (slowly & covertly) against our soul… And your battle….is in the little choices every day. I know this is a bit heavy. But the Christian church of the last 25 years has mostly treated sin like an inconvenience rather than what it really is, something that wants to rip your heart out and wage war against your soul (like the Bible says) TRUST HIS VISION The good news is, these farming principles are just as true in the positive sens If you can trust that God’s ways, that righteousness, leads to life…you will find life We want everything now, but trust me friends, later is greater…especially in the positive sens The Godly choice doesn’t always pay dividends as quickly as sin does, but it always pays out much higher in the end. Even Moses, whom we’ve spent much of the year studying, is a great example of this (Hebrews 11:24 26) NIV 24 By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. 25 He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26 He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward. It’s a great passage! Moses could have just lived it up with all the pleasures that the palace of Egypt had to offer him. But trust me, then God would have then used someone else to deliver the Israelites, and Moses would have surely died with the Egyptians But, Moses made the hard choice, trusted that God was better. And because of that hard choice…he got to see the Godly side of “later is greater” And 40 years later…in what was maybe the highlight of his life…he led his people right out of Egypt and right through the Red Sea… But was it harder for Him at first? Way harder. It’s tough because we live in an “instant society…” but the path to finding true life is trusting that “later is greater” That even though sin is right in front of you…and looks WAY better and WAY easier… That God has so much more joy in store for you if you trust that His later is always greater. It used to be that being married for 25 years was just kind of normal. Now, it’s a serious accomplishment. And a huge part of that is our oversexed, lust cultur And so even adultery has become almost normal. But as I’ve often heard Bob Lepine on the FamilyLifeToday podcast say, “No sex is that good” Meaning, no moment, no one night, will ever outweigh another 25 years of sitting across from your spouse, your kids…enjoying family dinners…family vacations… God’s later…is always greater…friends. Always. Let me ask you the question that I think is perhaps at the foundation of this issue: “Do you trust God?” That His ways are good? That His commands have been put in place, not just to dictate what we should do, but as a way to honor Him, and as guideposts to find lif That when God says, “Don’t….” It’s a sign that says, “Don’t touch the fire…because it burns” That sign is there…because He loves you! That when He says, “Do…” That it’s just a sign pointing to life…not hardship…but life! “Do you trust Him?” Sometimes I tell my kids, “You can’t just keep eating candy!” And they say, “But why?!?!?” “Because there are the consequences to that that you don’t see yet If you have teenagers, you tell your teenagers, “No, you can’t stay out to 1am on Friday. Or, no, you can’t date yet!” And they say, “But why?!?! You’re being overbearing! Ridiculous! A killer of fun!” And you say, “No, there are risks and consequences that you, in your adolescence, don’t see yet” That makes sense, right? To us as parents, absolutely. And yet, when God says, “You can’t….you shouldn’t…don’t do that…” We say, “Really?! You killjoy. Just trying to make my life boring AND difficult!” And He says, “Because there are risks and consequences that you don’t see yet” So much of the Christian life comes back to the central question of: “Is God good?” “Is God worth trusting” If God is good, if God is truly all knowledgeable, then you can trust Him. And when you feel that pull back to choosing sin again…tell yourself…later is greater. Jesus says that when we let God’s seed get planted deep down in our heart, this happens: (Luke 8:8) NIV Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.” Let it sink in. Trust Him. His later is way greater. Do not, as Paul says in our passage, become weary of “doing good” Keep trusting Him CONCLUSION Listen, maybe you’ve been coming here for a few months, and some weeks, you find yourself gripping your chair a bit as you listen…and that’s a new experience for you Let me tell you something you maybe never knew about Christianity (as it’s so often been watered down in America) God demands far more of your life than you ever imagined God knows far more of the depths of our ugly, rebellious sin than you ever imagined AND YET, God loves you more than you ever could possibly imagine And so, if you’re here this morning, and you’ve been thinking, “David, I’ve already reaped the consequences of my sin…and it hurts…it hurts bad” Know that Jesus is the great direction changer. You might look out and see sin, and behind it, see what feels like the slow destruction of your lif..as Galatians says. But friend…if you look a bit further…into the destruction…actually in the midst of it…stands Jesus. The Bible says that God, because He loves you so much, sent His son Jesus to take that destruction, death/punished, for you. Jesus died…for the penalty of your sin. That’s love! Love! And you can be forgiven. That’s not Karma Karma says, if you did it, you will suffer for it… Often for many reincarnated lifetimes over Christianity says, if you did it, yeah there are some natural consequences…but Jesus…can forgive anything. Jesus can change…anything. And so we trust that with Him, later is greater. That He is better. That even in our death, He is good. For His word tells us this. (1 Corinthians 15:42 43) NEW LIVING TRANSLATION!! 42 It is the same way with the resurrection of the dead. Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever. 43 Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory. They are buried in weakness, but they will be raised in strength. Let me pray. Copyright: David Sorn Renovation Church in Blaine, MN You may use this material all you like! We only ask that you do not charge a fee and that you quote the source and not say it is your own. DAVID SORN OCTOBER 8, 2017