Bayside Baptist Church

Jason King: NFL lineman Jim Marshall was a part of the revered Purple People Eaters Minnesota Vikings defensive line many years ago. For 20 seasons, he played game after game and never missed a game, earning a reputation for toughness and reliability. He was just a man's man on that defensive line. But on October 24th, 1964, they were playing against the San Francisco 49ers, and he recovered a fumble in the fourth quarter and he ran untouched 66 yards to the end zone. After he crossed the goal line, tossed the ball away, and began to celebrate, he was quite surprised when a person from the other team walked up and patted him on the shoulder and said, "Thanks, man. Appreciate that."

In that moment, he realized that he was standing in the wrong end zone. He had run 66 yards the wrong way, scoring a safety, giving two points to the other team as a result of that. Now, the Vikings went on to win that game, but in that moment, he was so embarrassed that he got confused and he didn't realize what was taking place in that moment. In football, as in life, it doesn't matter that you're doing something earnestly if you are not doing the right thing. Howard Hendricks, one of my professors in seminary at Dallas Seminary, said, "My fear is not that you would fail, but that you would succeed in doing the wrong thing."

We've been talking the last few weeks that God wants to bless your life. That's the message of Scripture, that God sent Jesus to bless you, to redeem you, to call you and me to a life that we could never achieve on our own. But he wants to work in your life. He wants to bless your life now, and he wants you to impact other people as he works in and through your life. How do you get there? We've been talking the last few weeks about Ezra and we've been learning from his story how he listened to God, what he was speaking into his life, and then he responded to God's word applied to his life.

He did what he was learning. He wasn't just accumulating information; he was allowing the Spirit of God to apply the word to his life. And that's a calling for you and for me. Not to just gain information, not to just come to church and do our thing, but to allow God's word to shape our hearts and our minds and our hands. In "21 Days in the Word," that's what we're talking about. That's what we're journeying towards together. We're learning that what we're gathering, what we're gaining from Scripture, leads to how we live and that there's not a gap between what we're learning or what we know and what we're doing. We're choosing to say yes to God and choosing to live under the word.

Yes, we all struggle with sin, but we're choosing to follow the word of God, to obey. The last couple of weeks we've talked about learning from God and listening and hearing the word come alive in us as God speaks. Last week we talked about learning to do the word, to obey, to follow through on what we're learning and what God's speaking into our lives. Today we're going to talk about the third piece that in Ezra's life, in this passage we've been studying, really began to unlock the favor and the blessing of God in his life. It's the final piece for you and for me today. If you want to see the supernatural power and presence of God unleashed in you, this step is an important part of seeing that become reality.

Ezra 7:9 says, "For the gracious hand of his God was on him." Him is Ezra. Verse 10 says, "This was because Ezra had determined to study and obey the law of the Lord and to teach those decrees and regulations to the people of Israel." If you remember Ezra's story, he's an Israelite. He's a priest, he's a member of the people of God. His forefathers, his ancestors had ministered to the people at the temple and they taught God's word to the people. But God's people walked away from that. They broke the covenant. The temple was destroyed and ultimately the people were exiled to Babylon. It's a problem because God's people needed to be set free. They needed to walk in the power and presence of God, the walk in the faith that he called them to.

They thought that they needed military support and planning and execution. They needed leadership and they needed force to be able to gain freedom. But instead of gathering an army and building a war machine or navigating the political climates of that day, the text says Ezra simply set his heart, he determined in his heart that he was going to study the word, do what it said, and then invite others to do the same. God blessed him. The hand of God was on his life. Instead of practicing the American faith, which is we walk with Jesus by ourself, we're on our horse riding off into the sunset alone, believing that it's an individualistic faith, God was blessing Ezra's life because not only was he learning and growing in his faith and doing what God was revealing to him, he was bringing other people with him, imparting what God was doing in his life to other people.

That is what God desires for every single one of us. The faith, the truths of the faith, and a vibrant spirit-led life in faith is passed down by you and I choosing to lead others in the overflow of what God is already doing in our hearts and in our lives. So how do you do that? It's such a clear picture from Ezra's life that he was learning and doing and then teaching others. What does it look like for you and me to lead other people from the overflow of our lives? The first thing that I believe that you have to start with that Ezra models for us is you have to start with yourself. You need to pull out a spiritual mirror and start with your own heart and with your own life. Ezra set his heart. He determined that he would study, that he would obey, and that he would teach others what God was teaching him.

So far in "21 Days in the Word," that's what we're talking about. If you want to see God's blessing and favor on you, this is where you find it. You're learning, you grow by doing what you're learning, and then you lead others in the overflow of what God's doing in your life. It simply spills out on other people. But you have to start with yourself. Make no mistake, it begins in your life, it begins in my life, how you are responding, how I'm responding to what God is doing in me. There has to be an authenticity, a genuineness about you. It may surprise you, but my prayer is that you would be able to look at my life and see the work of God so evident and real in me that you would think, "I can follow Christ as I follow him."

That's what the Apostle Paul said, and I think that's what God's calling all of us to. This is not just for the pastors and the missionaries and the people that are vocational ministers. I think that's what God's calling all of us to, to have a real work of God taking place in our lives that we could confidently say, "I'm not perfect. I got my stuff. I got my issues. I got my sin. But I want you to know that if you want to grow in Christ, just stay a step behind me." You're not simply telling people that something they should do, you're a living picture of what God can do. Howard Hendricks used to say, "You cannot impart what you do not possess." That means if you're sharing things with people, trying to impart spiritual truth to other people that you haven't already learned and lived, it's going to fall short.

When I was growing up, we'd call somebody that did that a poser. Now somebody would be a wannabe or a try-hard. It's just not real in them. You're missing the spiritual power and authority that comes when you're living in what you're talking about. Otherwise, you're just another talking head, talking about what people should do. I can't tell you about trusting God or having faith in your adversity without having walked through some adversity and found faith growing in me first. I can't talk to you about tithing and financial stewardship unless I've settled in my heart that the first 10 percent of what I earn goes right back to the Lord and I'm doing it. I can't talk to you about hearing the Lord speak through his word to your life unless that's happening in my life first.

Do you ever hear anybody say when you're growing up, "Do what I say, not what I do"? I know sometimes as a parent or even as a leader or maybe a teacher that you feel that way. You're like, "I don't care. Just do what I say, not what I do. I need you to do that." But can I say this? If that's you when it comes to your faith, especially if you're a parent or a grandparent, that is the quickest way to send your kids down the path of not just walking but running away from the faith and the church, and they never look back. Come on. The people closest to us don't deserve that. We make it extremely difficult for them to have a vibrant faith if our model of faith is "do what I say, not what I do."

The Scripture says to look in the mirror at your life and begin with yourself. You don't have to be perfect, but you need to be consistent. You need to be faithful. You need to be real. When you mess up, own it. Don't rationalize it, don't spiritualize it, don't excuse it, don't blame somebody else for it. Own it, confess it, repent, and move on. I read a quote this past week and it said, "If you're trying to impart something that you do not possess, it turns to poison unless you've tasted of it yourself." One of the most destructive things that you can do, especially for those in your own home, is to live in duplicity, to claim something publicly and then to have a different life privately, to wear a mask or as the Bible describes it, to be a hypocrite.

Do you remember what Paul said in Romans 2:21? He says, "Well then, if you teach others, why don't you teach yourself?" The same principle Ezra is telling us here: you've got to start with your own heart and with your own life. He says, "You tell others not to steal, but do you steal? Are you taking a little extra stuff from work or you taking a little extra something from school or did you pull something out of somebody's locker?" He says, "You say it's wrong to commit adultery, but do you commit adultery?" Even Jesus defined adultery as just having lust in our heart. So you say don't do it, but is that going on in your heart? "You condemn idolatry, but do you use items that are stolen from temples? You're so proud of knowing the law," he says, "but you dishonor God by breaking it."

He says, "No wonder the Scriptures say the Gentiles blaspheme the name of God because of you." As I was thinking about that verse, it occurs to me that those Gentiles he's talking about, they may be living in your house. They may be people that you work with or you go to the gym with or you play golf with or you travel on the girl's trip with. And not intentionally, but it could be that they're blaspheming the name of the Lord because of you and the duplicity, if that's where you're living. Start with yourself. Nobody's telling you to be perfect. That is not the journey of faith to act like you're perfect and try to have it all together. Nobody's saying that. But just be real.

Robert Coleman says this in his book "The Master Plan of Evangelism": "It is not better methods, but better men and women who know their Redeemer from personal experience. Not looking for more information, not looking for the latest fad or trend about how to share the gospel in 40 seconds or with this cube or that toy or this video or whatever. It's not better methods, but it's better men and women who know their Redeemer from personal experience, who see his vision, they feel his passion for the world, and who are willing to be nothing." They're not putting on a front, they're not trying to act a certain way, they're not trying to give off a vibe or convince people of something that they want people to perceive about them that's not true. No, they are willing to be nothing so that he might be everything.

What about you? What about your life right now? Are you walking with the Lord as a way of life? I'm not talking about what other people think or what you've led other people to believe or what you posted last week or what you read or what books you have. I'm talking about your life. Are you walking with the Lord as a way of life? Are you listening to what he's speaking into your life right now and are you acting on that? For example, if you hear the Holy Spirit convicting you of sin, what do you do? If you're in that moment where the Spirit speaks conviction, do you go ahead and quickly send that bet on in or do you stop and say, "The Spirit's convicting me of this right now. I'm not going to place a bet on that game"?

Do you look at that image or watch that movie that you know you shouldn't be looking at, or do you as soon as you realize the conviction, slam that computer, turn off that phone, or unplug the TV? Do you criticize or complain because maybe something feels difficult or change has been tough for you, or do you catch yourself and stop and use your words for life and not death? Do you lie because it's easier in the moment to get out of that little pickle right there, or are you completely honest about what happened? Is your faith a living and active faith or is it a shell game, is it the appearance of something? You've got to start with yourself. And when you start with yourself, it unlocks and opens up a world of faith.

I heard about a young couple that moved into a new neighborhood. The first morning they were in their house, they were eating breakfast together. As she looked out the window, she saw their neighbor hanging clothes on a clothesline to dry. She looked out there and she goes, "That laundry is not very clean. This lady just must not know how to wash her laundry correctly. Maybe she needs some better laundry soap." Her husband was there and he just kind of looked on and remained quiet. Every time over the next few days the neighbor hung the clothes on the line, his wife said the same thing. "Good grief. Does she not know how to wash clothes? Who in the world taught her how to wash clothes?"

Well, one day, about a month later, she came downstairs and she was eating breakfast and she was so surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line. She even told her husband, "Do you see that? Oh my goodness. She figured out how to wash clothes. She must have gotten some new detergent. I wonder where she figured this out." Her husband looked at her and he said, "Babe, I got up early this morning and I cleaned the window." Start with yourself. Sometimes when we begin to try to walk in a picture of faith that's not real in us, it fogs the view of everything else in our lives and we miss the power and the presence of God. Start with the lenses of your heart and your life that God wants to clean first and listen to what he's saying and give him your "yes" right now.

The second thing that we learn from this passage is that not only are we walking in this journey of where we're allowing the Lord to work in us, starting with us, but you also need to stay focused on the goal. Ezra, it said, not only studied and obeyed the word, he taught it to other people. When it says that he taught the decrees and the regulations of Israel, please don't think that he's teaching the legal code for the state of Tennessee or running over the organization's constitution and bylaws and policies and that's what he's teaching everybody. No, he's not saying don't do this, do this, act this way, don't act that way. He's showing them, "Hey, if you're in the faith, here's what it looks like to live by faith." If you're a part of the people of God, the laws and the decrees, the regulations, that means this is the picture of faith that God calls you towards. And it says that Ezra was teaching others this reality.

What's the goal of teaching other people? It's not simply to transfer information or even share a bunch of information and to sound really smart or appear smart. I would say for us today, it's not to attend church a number of times and talk about truth a number of times or even create lists of expectations or things that people are supposed to say or do so they can look like Christians to everybody around them. The goal of teaching, the goal that God has called us to, is to simply help other people first hear God and then obey him, just like it is for you and me. We have to start in our own life and then what we're helping other people do is to hear God speak and then obey and then continue to do it.

My goal every Sunday is not to simply give you something to think about or talk about at lunch. It's not to give you a headache because you feel like you're in a class or to present information to you. My goal is not for you to walk away thinking, "That dude is so smart, he's so clever." No, I want you to walk away thinking, "This is the one step I need to take today to go closer to the Lord in my life." Whether it's for the first time, for the 50th time, or the 10,000th time, to take a step towards him, to hear God speak into your life and then to obey him. Do you remember what Jesus said in Matthew 28:19 and 20? It says, "Therefore, I want you to go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands that I've given you and be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

This is called the Great Commission. It's a commission that Jesus gives to his disciples, to his followers, to you and to me. It's not the "great suggestion." It's not the great add-on for normal folks but required activity for church staff. It's not the great plan for missionaries and other super spiritual people. It's called the Great Commission and it's for all who believe in the name of Jesus Christ. This is what you and I are commissioned to do. In other words, it's what's spoken into our lives over our lives and it is the focal point for our lives. When we call upon the name of Christ, this is our goal, this is our purpose. But did you notice in that passage how spiritual power accompanies you and me when we walk in this purpose? God's not with you just because you come to church every now and then or because you prayed a prayer once upon a time or you try to be a good person and you're better than the next person. God's promising his never-ending, unchanging, powerful presence as you do what he's commissioned you to do.

What does that look like practically speaking? What does it mean for you and me today? Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 2, "Timothy, my dear son, be strong through the grace that God gives you in Christ Jesus." That's what we just talked about: start with yourself. Be strong in that grace, receive that grace, walk in that grace. He says, "You've heard me teach things that have been confirmed by many reliable witnesses." He says, "Here's the key: now teach these truths to other trustworthy people who will be able to pass them on to others." First you live, you are strong in the grace, then you teach.

The goal is to hear God speak and obey his voice. You start with yourself, you let the word have its way in you. And then as it does, to teach others means that you and I simply help other people to discover the same thing that we've discovered. You're simply imparting what you've learned and what you've known through practice into the lives of other people. As a parent, your goal and your role is to help your kids hear God and learn to obey him. You help guide them in that. You're not helping guide them to just make sure they wear the right clothes to look good at school or church on Sunday or that they present themselves in a certain way in certain situations so people will think well of them. It's to let the word of God have its way in you and from the overflow of that to help your kids discover that life is found when they hear God speak and then obey him.

To my parents in the room, your goal is not to protect your kids from every pitfall, scraped knee, and hurt feeling. Yes, there are times when you've got to step in and protect your kids. But our goals as parents is not just to get them to a good college or a good job or give them some money to start out with. Your goal as a parent is to help them learn to hear God and obey him. I appreciate the fact that you may have invested a lot of money and time in lessons and teams and tournaments and equipment, musical instruments, clubs. Your kid can hit a curveball, play any position on the field, your child is best in whatever sport or whatever activity that they're playing or they love their instrument or whatever it is. But what are you investing in their spiritual life?

There's nothing wrong with you helping your child grow in something they enjoy. I get it, we've done it too. But if all that we're doing is helping them succeed in some activity, we've missed the goal. I love sports. I played sports, I follow sports. So did Christy. All of our kids play sports. But here's the reality: an injury can end a career very quickly. And at some point, some coach, some somebody is going to tell you that your athletic career is over. But the most important and significant spiritual investment you can make in your child's life is your spiritual life being real in you, it's your influence, your example, because as a parent, you shape your child more than any other voice in this world. And what you do speaks so much louder even than what you say.

The goal is for your kids, for your grandkids, to learn to hear God and to obey him. Start at home. How are you leading the folks in your home out of the overflow of your life? That's one of the things that I absolutely love about all of us doing the Life Journal together. Now we have a common conversation point amongst all of us. It makes it extremely easy to talk with your family about the Life Journal because we as a faith family have a simple way to be able to lead and to encourage one another out of the overflow of what God is doing in our lives. If you're in that moment with a child or with your spouse or with a friend, all you need to do is simply open up the Life Journal, read that day's reading or a couple of days ago, whatever it is that you wrote, and have a conversation. Connect the dots of conversation in that moment.

But don't stop there. Another simple way that you can help teach and to lead other people, to help other people to learn to obey and then to follow as they hear from God, is through a Life Journal group. It's where a group of people get together and do the Life Journal together. Our staff does this each week. We gather together and we encourage each other as we share what God is doing in our lives. We pray for one another. It's a powerful time. But so many of you are already doing that. I know that there are Life Journal groups in guard units. There have been Life Journal groups at basic training, at your schools, at multiple schools in our city, with your sports team. Some of you are doing it with your kids at home or with your spouse or even at work. It doesn't even have to be through Bayside. Start a Life Journal group with the people that are around you. Maybe it's somebody at the gym or at the golf course. Maybe it's somebody that you hang out with or group of girls that you get coffee with or you meet up with or you travel with.

Don't be scared of it, but step into the opportunity with the people that God has given you in your life. Your goal is not to prepare a lesson and teach a class. It's to help people learn how to hear God and to obey him. Your role as a business leader is not just to make more money. You can guide your employees, you can guide your customers, your co-workers, through conversation and relationship to help them hear God and obey him. As a coach or a teacher, the opportunities are endless to influence and to help teach, to help them learn to hear God and obey. Throughout the Scriptures, it's a clear calling that you and I have given the Great Commission to reproduce ourselves. It's called discipleship. That's the calling of your life and of mine. It's not to simply ride off in the sunset on our own on our own horse as the Lone Ranger in our faith. It's to invest our lives in helping other people hear from God and obey him. Don't believe for a second that you can't do it or that you shouldn't do it or you're not capable or you don't have the ability. When you're walking with God, what spills over out of the overflow of your life are the opportunities that you have if you will remember the goal. The goal is to hear God and obey him in your own life and then to help other people do the same.

And that really leads us into the last truth from this passage. If you want to invest through the overflow of your life, you've got to invite other people into your life. Like most things with our faith, we've made this way too complicated over the years. We've created classes and programs and trinkets and toys to help, and most of that stuff is way too complicated to remember, let alone to do it or repeat it intuitively. You don't have to memorize a program or recite some plan or finish a master's degree to disciple somebody else. All you need to do is simply walk with the Lord, let it flow over from your life, and the influence you have with other people gives you the opportunity to share the love and the hope of Christ from what God's already doing in your life. Now, for that to take place, you've got to let people in your life.

That's one of the major purposes of "21 Days in the Word." It's why all of our small groups are doing the Life Journal together. It's easy to just think, "Well, it's just me and Jesus, it's just me and the Lord," but we need one another. If you're going to be faithful to this calling and experience the blessing of God on your life like Ezra is modeling for us, there have to be other people in your life. You can teach what you know, but you reproduce what you are. And if you have a faith that is growing and genuine in your life, God will give you the opportunities as you invite people in your life to make disciples, to do exactly what Jesus said in the Great Commission, to invest your life in other people to help them grow in their faith. I'm not talking about a class to teach, I'm not talking about a lecture to prepare. I'm talking about your life and the overflow of your life.

If you let people in and you're not bashful about that, and if you're walking with Christ, trust me, listen to me real careful: you have something to impart to other people. Even if you can't remember all 66 books of the Bible in order or backward, even if you don't know the Hebrew word for whatever or what the Greek word of this might mean or that. If you are walking in the Lord, obeying what you're hearing and walking in that truth, the overflow of that is influence in the lives of other people. Now, I do think the influence that you have needs to be built on the word of God. That's what Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 4 verse 2. He says, "Preach the word of God." And before you think, "Oh yeah, that's for preachers," we'll get to what the word preach means in just a minute.

Preach the word of God. Be prepared whether the time is favorable or not. You know what that means? Whether it's convenient or inconvenient. Patiently correct and rebuke and encourage your people with good teaching. Now, Timothy was a young pastor, a young teacher. But the word preach literally means to make known, to publicly, to aloud make it known. Now, I appreciate for all of you that would say, "You know what? My actions are my witness. I don't even need to use my words." And yeah, your character and consistency can help, but you need to use your words too. Don't let that mantra or that belief that your actions are your witness alone become a cop-out for actually talking about the truth of God and his love. You can't use a hope that your actions will somehow speak loudly and somehow the dots will connect for people without words.

Paul says, "Timothy, speak it aloud. Share it with other people. Download it to other people. You be ready when it's convenient and when it's not. When you're in a hurry and somebody needs to talk to you about something. When you really have some other things that you could be doing or you might should be doing and they have something that's going on in their life," he says, "be ready. When it's convenient and when it's not. Start with the word, not your own opinion or common sense or some blog post, but with the word." He says you can correct and rebuke and encourage with great patience and careful instruction.

But it occurs to me that we can all agree on that and we can all say, "Yes, that's right. That's right." But if we don't invite people into our lives, we never get the opportunity to do any of these things. Don't wait to the back nine of your life thinking that when I retire, I'll have plenty of time and I can do all this stuff. Or maybe when the kids get a little bit older, I'll have some time to do this. Or whenever my job gets a little bit more slow and things kind of get more of a rhythm, I can do this. You may never get that chance. Right here and right now, the model is that you would invite people into your life and that you would let what God is doing in you spill over and influence them.

I want to challenge you. We're content-rich, relationship-poor. We have information overload, but often we're isolated and alone. Last week I talked about a study that said that typically speaking, when we come to church, you have consumed about 49 hours of the algorithm, of somebody feeding you information that aligns with what you already think and believe and has just fortified that even more. So I want to challenge you. I wonder if you could just take one of those 49 hours this next week. One hour of your screen time, one hour of watching the news or scrolling the feed or watching YouTube. What if you took that one hour and you just said, "You know what? I'm going to invite someone into my life for that one hour each week." Not virtually—I'm not talking about Zoom or FaceTime—but actually. Like, "Hey man, hey girl, let's grab some lunch or some coffee or let's go for a run or let's go fishing or let's go play disc golf or knit or whatever it is that you do."

What if you just said, "Instead of blowing that hour scrolling through whatever, listening to whatever the latest drama in the news is, or watching the latest hack about how you can tie your tennis shoes a different way, what if you said, 'I'm going to take an hour and I'm going to invite someone else into my life in that hour'?" You still got the 48 other hours a week to take in whatever you want. But what if in that one hour you filled that with the presence of another actual person? Robert Coleman, in that book "The Master Plan of Evangelism" that I shared earlier, said this: "The world is desperately seeking someone to follow. That they will follow someone is certain, but will that person be one who knows the way of Christ or will he or she be one like themselves leading only into greater darkness?" He said, "This is the decisive question of our plan of life."

To be intentional, to just take one hour. Start with one hour this next week and say, "Lord, who is in my life right now that I could invest my life in and let the overflow of what you're doing in my heart spill over on them?" I bet they're already in your life. You might just need to pray, "Lord, would you give me eyes to see?" If you're a dad, if you're a husband, you can start at home. If you're a mom, you can start at home. If you're a wife, you can start at home. The most important disciples that you will ever make live under your roof. You don't just raise children, you train them. They may be outside your home. It maybe somebody at work or in your neighborhood or maybe somebody at the gym or some other circle that you're in. But would you invite someone else into your life? I'm not talking about a program or a goal or a box to check. I'm talking about you opening up your life and out of the overflow of what God is doing in you, where you're hearing God and you're obeying him, that you would invite someone to come alongside you and experience the power of God like you have.

I do believe that starts today with your life, with your own heart, to make a decision for your life and say, "You know what? I am going to start with myself. Lord, I am going to turn my life over to you. I'm going to release the control and the reins of my life and I'm going to trust in Jesus Christ." That's where it can begin for you today, through faith. And you start with yourself as the word, as God speaks to you through the word, and you hear what he says, you choose to listen, to pay attention, and then to follow through to obey and then remember the goal for you to hear and to obey but then to help others learn to hear God speak to them and obey the Lord for themselves. Would you choose to not only learn from God, grow by doing what you're learning, but would you learn to lead others from the overflow of your own life? Let's pray together.