What You NEED to Hear
This week we continue in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles as we see how sometimes bad associations will cause us to compromise our beliefs.
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good morning welcome you made it you braved the rain here in southwest florida you came even though there's something going on this evening not sure what it is i don't care about it you're gonna come to the six o'clock service tonight there is no six o'clock sir maybe we should make one on super bowl sunday if you're new do not if you're new here among us my name is gene i serve here at c3 church as your lead pastor and if you are new here in town you've been here for a little while you may have discovered something that if you want to go out at prime time like dinner time to a really nice restaurant or a popular restaurant you should probably get a reservation it's kind of important a lot of our favorite places kind of a love-hate relationship that we have with season a lot of our favorite places we can't always get in so you gotta make a reservation and on that point i heard a story about a spoiled girl not really a girl young lady they're girls as you get old like me she was in her mid-20s those are kids kind of spoiled and she had a group of cronies that followed her around everywhere just telling her everything she wants to hear so she kept them around her parents were wealthy so she used daddy's credit card a lot she liked to show off they decided to go out to a nice restaurant prime time she gets to the host podium or desk or whatever and he asks the question do you have a reservation they ask that for a reason by the way she says no i don't well i'm sorry we're booked now here's the thing you may have done this so i don't feel too bad but don't be that girl because here's what she does she points out the obvious fact that there are a couple of empty tables have you ever been that girl or that guy hey but i noticed in your book i noticed there's a couple empty tables there like the host doesn't know this fact so you're kind of calling him stupid already so he has a couple of choices he can give like the snarky answer to this whole thing or you can do the other you know he decides to pass on this but i'll just share what's going on in his mind with you yes there are empty tables there because they're reserved for people smart enough to make reservations not going to say that we vent those things in our head so he says listen it's not about the tables we're short staffed and so a good restaurant won't book up a restaurant beyond its capacity or ability to serve you well plus i know that the person who points out the empty tables is also the person that's going to give me a really bad review on google if the service is slow so we're not going to give you that table well here's what she does next and you shouldn't be that girl i know the owner so the house decides to get a little creative he says you know what let's have a little fun this evening we have a table perfect for you there's five of them perfect for you in our vip section but here's the thing two drink minimum in there so i'm gonna need to see your ids and i'm gonna hold on to them well they don't think anything of it says yeah fine that's great now on the way there he's explaining gonna be a little slow your food service is going to be slow or low on staff you understand yeah yeah yeah whatever so she goes back there to the vip area and they go right past their two-drink minimum real quick really really fast and of course the service is slow so they're not doing any defensive eating so sooner or later quickly they get drunk so they're all drunk in there now they're being rude to the servers and everything and i'm sure you've seen this nowadays if they're short on help the host will start helping serving the manager will come over and do things so that's what's happening the host jumps in now this vip area is one of these areas and maybe you've been in them where the menu doesn't have any prices that's interesting if you find yourself at one of those in naples it's okay to ask how much things cost but they don't they don't care so they're ordering caviar oysters lobster everything it's going crazy all this continues on and on until they're ready to close so the host says hey i got to settle the tap time to close up whatever you know so she gives him the credit card practically throws it on me takes it a few minutes goes by and he comes back and he says discreetly he's trying to be polite ma'am i'm sorry but the card declined what that can't be now she wants to see the bill so he brings the bill over she opens it up and her eyes just about pop out of her head this bill is for five thousand dollars are you kidding me now she wants to see the owner get me the owner the host says i am the owner and you're going to have to figure out how to pay for that because i have your driver's licenses you're not going to dine in ditch right so he goes away and the girl she's looking at the bill and she just starts crying into it just crying and crying crying her friends say what's the matter she says well that's my dad's credit card and it has a thousand dollar limit so by hanging out with this girl it cost her friends one thousand dollars each for dinner today we'll be talking about listening what you to what you want to hear versus what you need to hear and the kind of associations you have or the company you keep we find ourselves in the rest of the story last week we looked at where elijah and ahab intersected we saw the famous story about the contest on mount carmel and i took it all the way to kind of the end of that thought we're doing this in the series i'm showing you guys sections of scripture not just like one chapter at a time but wherever the application lands you can see that the stories connect to one another for a very specific reason god talks to us often in whispers as great as that contest was in the fire from heaven god teaches elijah something so we need to listen to when god whispers to us so we're dealing with israel in the north and if you're new here and you don't understand you can always go back and watch the messages but if you don't want to do that i'll explain it to you briefly we're dealing with a split kingdom you have israel on the north judah and the south so we're dealing mostly in the north today they're going to intersect a little bit here so i made you a chart no i did not draw that again it would have bigger biceps if i drew it but i did but i did make you make the chart for you here so you can see we've been talking about now here's a point we're trying to do this somewhat chronologically but you can't unless you want to melt your mind because if you do sometimes even within one book of the bible it'll jump around a little bit it'll go in and out of time kind of like our movies do sometimes they'll do a flashback to the past or something like that so to attempt to put it together is extremely difficult but we've seen that certain books of the bible it's made up of many books they go in parallel detailing the same account so that's what i'm putting in parallel for you so you can see but you'll see here one account may detail other things that another doesn't so that's why we're going to hop around today so the chart people have told me it's helpful they say the cartoon looks like me i do this with my arms all the time so it's kind of funny the artist picked up on that we'll keep it i guess until someone complains about it then we'll keep it on purpose so if you remember first kings 15. if we go back and think because like i said we've deviated from that gone into the elijah thing for a little while right but we were talking about asa abaja and asa in first kings 15 and you have this guy ben haydat who is employed now because israel and jude are often at war here so king baisha he's attacking so asa instead of doing what he did in the beginning instead of trusting the lord he employs this guy ben haydad and that's not a great thing king of aram instead of trusting the lord and now we're going to see that it causes other kings some problems no bueno and the chart by the way um you can download our app if you don't know about the app c3 naples you can log in to our wi-fi for free and the chart should be in there bible study always follows the message so we dig deeper on wednesday nights but you can look at the questions anyway even if you can't come and if you're not going to come well maybe we need to make a new rule if you're not going to come you can't look at the questions so we left off where elijah anoints eli shah gets confusing for people but elijah eli he's his successor if we turn the page first kings 20 starting at verse one about that time king ben haydad of aram mobilized his army supported by the chariots and horses of 32 allied kings major force here they went to besieged samaria the capital of israel and launched attacks against it ben haydad sent messages into the city to relay this message to king ahab of israel this is what ben hadad says your silver and gold are mine and so are your wives and the best of your children all right my lord the king israel's king replied that's ahab all that i have is yours that was easy so what do you think he does sends the messengers back okay well you know what now everything you have i'm going to send people in there to check your homes i'm going to take everything well i guess that's just crossing the line so his elders say no no given to the first demand but not the second demand well ben hayd he gets angry so the backdrop here is you have to picture he's in his tent right he's got all these military people around him his advisors and stuff and there's all the troops camped out there and it says he's getting drunk in his tent so he's a little rowdy and he threatens ahab now he says by the time i'm done with you essentially there won't even be enough dust in samaria to give each one of your soldiers a handful i'm going to pummel you i am taking everything ahab responds a soldier putting his sword on going out for war shouldn't boast like a soldier who's already won well now he's really mad so there's a certain prophet that comes by to ahab this is the king of israel he says this is what the lord says do you see these enemy forces today i will hand them over to you then you'll know that i'm the lord so ahab's like how well 232 provincial field commanders and seven thousand men he's going to send them out but the lord will hand you the victory don't worry remember ben haydad he's getting drunk with his officers so scouts come in and they say hey this army is coming out to fight but probably underestimates them so they attack the lord hands them the victory but ben haydad escapes flashes to another conversation with ben haydad's officers we have two different conversations so the officers are like this is why we didn't win their gods getting it wrong are gods of the hills our gods are gods of the plains essentially so that's why we'll draw them out onto the plains we'll have the battle there and we'll be successful just give us the same amount of troops again and we'll go for it we'll replace the kings with basically officers real military people and he'll hand us the victory now flash to ahab's camp man of god says to him get ready don't just rest on your laurels get ready because they're going to come back in the spring i'll hand you the victory again then you'll know i'm the lord so that's what happens at a place called afic and just to make it shorter they're camped out for seven days right so they're getting ready for the battle and it says that israel's troops look like a couple of little flacks of goats two little flaks of goats compared to like this huge army that's against them so they attack after seven days israel that is and they kill one hundred thousand men they retreat then hey dad and his guys into aphec a wall falls on them it says killing 27 000 more men so here's what ben haidat's people say they're like well i heard that the kings of israel are merciful so we'll go and surrender so they put on like burlap or sackcloth and ropes around their head i don't even know what that's all about but they go and they surrender and it's kind of interesting because when the messengers go to surrender you know it talks about ben hayden and ahab says oh ben he's still alive he's my brother and they pick up on it they say yeah yeah yeah he's your brother that's great can we surrender and he ends up making terms with him it says he invites him up into his chariot right so he makes good terms with him which is kind of crazy then it flashes to a different scene it's kind of funny there's a prophet among his kinsmen or men around him he walks up to one of the other men and he says hit me so the guy doesn't no because you didn't obey a command from the lord a lion will come out and kill you and it does it's very quick kind of weird so he goes up to another prophet and goes hit me well that guy's like sure i don't get killed by a lion hits him says it wounds him badly and he bandages himself up well prophets often do illustrations so what he does is he waits on the side of the road for ahab to come by and when he does he makes up a story says i was in the midst of the battle and here's what happened i was given a prisoner to watch after and told that if i don't guard this prisoner if i lose him i'm going to die or have to pay 75 pounds of silver one talent we've talked about that in the series so your bible might say 75 pounds it might say one talent but i lost him well ahab jumps on it and says well that's your fault the prophet then takes off the bandit jahab sees this is a prophet of the lord he says this is what the lord says because you have spared the man i said must be destroyed now you must die in his place and your people will die instead of his people so the king it says went home angry and sullen the bible says sullen it's kind of a cool word so if we turn the page we get another account first kings 21 1. now there was a man named naboth from jezreel who owned a vineyard in jezreel beside the palace of king ahab and samaria one day ahab said to naboth since your vineyard is so convenient to my palace i would like to buy it to use as a vegetable garden i will give you a better vineyard in exchange or if you prefer i'll pay you for it but naboth replied the lord forbid that i should give you the inheritance that was passed down by my ancestors so ahab went home angry and sullen because of nabal's answer the king went to bed with his face to the wall and refused to eat howdy guy he didn't like what he wanted he didn't get what he wanted to hear didn't like what he heard there so jezebel his wife what's the matter he explains what the matter is she's like don't worry about it remember jezebel the wicked queen i'll get you i'll get you the vineyard so here's what she does she calls for a time of fasting and prayer not feasting fasting and prayer and she sends messengers out invites everybody she invites neboth gives him the place of honor she also invites two scoundrels it says who are supposed to sit across from him and accuse him of something and so they do they say this man cursed god and the king and so they take him out and stone naboth to death he dies jezebel comes back remember that vineyard you wanted i got it for you at a great price so ahab is happy now elijah enters back into the account first kings 21 17 but the lord said to elijah go down to meet king ahab of israel who rules in samaria he will be at naba's vineyard in jezreel claiming it for himself give him this message this is what the lord says wasn't enough that you killed naboth unless you rob him too because you have done this dogs will lick your blood at the very place where they licked the blood of naba off he also goes on to say that he's going to destroy his dynasty at that point in his lifetime jezebel too dogs will lick her blood horrible prophecy for them so now ahab has like this brief time of repentance he's sorry for a little while he does what ben hadad's messengers do and so then another message came from the lord to elijah do you see how ahab humbled himself before me because he has done this i will not do what i promised during his lifetime it will happen to his sons i will destroy his dynasty but the blood still there so if we hop to second chronicles we get more information remember they're running in parables so parallel so meanwhile in the south we have jehoshaphat so this is ace's son so we kind of jump five chapters here second chronicles 17 1 then jehoshaphat ace's son became the next king this is of judah he strengthened judah to stand against any attack from israel he stationed troops in all the fortified towns of judea judah and he assigned additional garrisons to the land of judah and to the towns of ephraim that his brother asa had captured the lord was with jehoshaphat because he followed the example of his father's early years and did not worship the images of baal he sought his father's god and obeyed his commands instead of following the evil practices of the kingdom of israel i will summarize this for you he mostly gets rid of the idol worship that we've been talking about he sends officials out to teach all the people the law and then we get a summary of hundreds of thousands of troops that he has so what we have going on here is the north and the south you can click the chart back up and we'll see where now they're going to intersect again here so we have jehoshaphat making an alliance with ahab so the north and the south they're going to come together second chronicles 18 1 we're staying there because it gives us a little more information jehoshaphat enjoyed great riches and high esteem and he made an alliance with ahab of israel by having his son mary ahab's daughter a few years later he went to samaria to visit ahab who prepared a great banquet for him and his officials they butchered great numbers of sheep goats and cattle for the feast then ahab enticed jehoshaphat to join forces with him to recover ramath gilead will you go with me to ramoth gilead king ahab of israel asked king jehoshaphat of judah he says of course my troops are your troops my horses are your horses we are as one lenny says shouldn't we see what the lord says about this well remember the contest on mount carmel 450 prophets of baal they had 400 prophets of asherah but they kind of disappeared off the scene we didn't hear about them so ahab has these 400 prophets these are probably those prophets and they're prophesying before him and they're saying yeah you're going to win go out you're going to have victory joseph probably knows they're false prophets so he says isn't there a prophet of the lord here that we can consult with ahab goes there's one his name is michaela and he never has anything good to say about me jehoshaphat says that's no way a king should talk go get him so they send messengers to go get him in the meantime it says they're sitting on their thrones and their royal robes and these prophets are prophesying there's a guy named zedekiah and he made these iron horns and he's saying then this way you'll gore the arameans go out to fight meanwhile the messenger's getting michael and he says listen they're saying that they're going to win this is good stuff just go along with it i can't do that i'm only going to prophesy what the lord says but when he gets there he's really sarcastic ahab asked him what's going to happen what's the lord say oh of course go out and you'll have victory and then ahab yells at him didn't i tell you when you prophesy only say what the lord says okay i'll give you the real prophecy he says in a vision i saw all israel scattered on the mountains like sheep without a shepherd and the lord said their master has been killed send them home in peace ahab turns to jehoshaphat didn't i tell you he never has anything good to say about me so then michaela continues he tells a story of a lying spirit he said i saw god in his throne room in the heavens with all the armies of heaven at his right and in his left and he's saying how or who can i go out and entice ahab to go to ramoth gilead and get himself killed one spirit after some deliberation lots of people have answers but one spirit came up to him and said i can do it god says how will you do it he goes i'll convince him i'll put a lying spirit into his prophets to tell him to go out and get killed now zedekiah the guy with the horns comes up to my k and slaps him since when as the spirit of the lord left me to go to you you'll find out when you're hiding out in some room somewhere and so he goes away mark my words he's taken away into jail given only bread and water while he waits there second chronicles 18 28 says so king ahab of israel and king jehoshaphat of judah led their armies against ramos gilead the king of israel said to jehoshaphat as we go into battle i'll disguise myself so no one will recognize me but you wear your royal robes so the king of israel disguised himself and they went into battle meanwhile ben hadad the king of abraham had issued these orders attack only the king of israel nobody else so they're in the battle in jehoshaphat he's dressed like a king and he's trying to get away but he cries out they realize it's not who they're looking for they're looking for king ahab so they leave him alone the story is a little strange it says that an aramian archer randomly shoots an arrow in the air and it finds a spot between ahab's armor space in his armor and kills him but before he dies i'm wounded so charioteer takes him away and there's a scene where he's propped up in the chariot arrows in him he's bleeding out but he's watching the battle and then he dies then it says when they take the chariot away to clean it you have to jump back to first kings to get this part that when they're cleaning the chariot dogs came and licked up his blood thereby fulfilling the prophecy summarize the next couple chapters for you and we'll get to the application second chronicles 19 when king jehoshaphat of judah arrived safely at home in jerusalem jehu son of hananiah the seer went out to meet him why should you help the wicked and love those who hate the lord he asked the king because of what you've done the lord is very angry with you even so there is some good in you for have you removed you have removed the asherah poles throughout the land and you have committed yourself to seeking god you should not have made that alliance michael was right so when we are in friendship with the wicked we are bound in their sins so he does some reforms he appoints levites tells him judge cases fairly if we turn the page just overview a lot of this what happens is the moabites the ammonites all these forces come against jehoshaphat now it says he's terrified he's so scared that he prays out loud he orders everyone to fast and so what happens is the spirit of the lord comes upon one of the men standing there his name was johaziel he's a levite descendant of asaf asaf also wrote a lot of the psalms like david he said listen all you people of judah and jerusalem listen king jehoshaphat this is what the lord says don't be afraid don't be discouraged by this mighty army for the battle is is not yours but god's actually hard to say so it's not yours it's god god is going to win this battle for you so jehoshaphat encourages everyone again they have singers out in front of them as they march ahead and they're pre-proclaiming this victory a common thing psalm 137 36 7 give thanks to the lord his faithful love endures forever that refrain is give thanks to the lord for he is good his faithful love endures forever so that's the refrain after every single verse in that psalm so what happens is the enemy ends up just fighting against one another they all kill one another it says there's so much plunder left over it takes them three days to pick it all up so they name the place the valley of blessing for the faithful every spiritual battle has already been won by god a summary of jehoshaphat's reign and we'll move on second chronicles 20 32 jehoshaphat was a good king following the ways of his father asa he did what was pleasing in the lord's sight during his reign however he failed to remove all the pagan shrines and the people never fully committed themselves to follow the god of their ancestors the rest of the events in jehoshaphat's reign from beginning to end are recorded in the record of jehu son of hananiah which is included in the book of the kings of israel some time later king jehoshaphat of judah made an alliance with king a heziah of israel who was very wicked together they built a fleet of trading ships at the port of izan gibra then eliezer son of duravaihu from marisha prophesied against jehoshaphat he said because you have allied yourself with king ahaziah the lord will destroy your work so the ships met with disaster and never put out to see i got dota vihu right but almost messed up alliance how did i do that we've talked about not letting our affiliations compromise our christianity throughout this series and this includes our personal relationships with people sometimes the wrong association will cause us to compromise our beliefs our morals what we know is right both jehoshaphat and ahab do this ben haydad he's the result of a bad association and then again it affects israel we'll see it's going to cause more problems down the line ahab married jezebel this leads to this worship of baal and asherah all this bad stuff it affects israel ahab foolishly be friends then hey dad come on up in my chariot we're brothers that association again will have more consequences ahab's association with jezebel continues to cause problems with naboth now this is why the dogs are going to lick up their blood no good jehoshaphat almost gets himself killed by his association with ahab joseph learns his lesson he reassociates with the lord but then what does he do he makes an alliance with ahaziah that's ahab's son we saw the evil association of prophets the deceitful spirit versus michaela so in this section we see an overlying theme bad associations and ignoring warnings from people who have really good advice just because you might not like what you hear what they're saying ahab didn't like what naboth said so jezreel gave or jezebel gave him what he wanted not what he needed michael he tells ahab exactly what he needs to hear but the spirit prompts the prophets to tell him what he wants to hear we learn that in life our real friends don't always tell us what we want to hear our real friends tell us what we need to hear often times just as in these accounts when we surround us with yes people we surround ourselves with people just telling us what we want to hear all the time it gets us into trouble i may get myself into trouble today have you ever asked someone this question do you think i need to lose some weight sounds like a trick question like how do i answer that a real friend knows exactly how to answer that if you do need to lose weight some of you do not but if you do if that would be good for your health maybe help you get a girlfriend i don't know your real friends are gonna say yeah you need to lose some weight that's a real friend now here's where i'm gonna get into trouble it may surprise you to find out that i told my wife she needed to lose weight but if you know me that probably doesn't surprise you at all you're all like totally still don't look at heather don't look at her now it may surprise you even more that this was before we got married and this was before we even got engaged why then did she marry you now you might think what was her response right did you get slapped like michaela or the prophet with the bandage right because you'd be right in thinking that because if you look at the interlinear lexicon of english translation to female and you look up why you need to lose weight if you look up that sentence it says hit me that's what it says that's that's the translation right so you'd be right to think that hit me she didn't here's the thing she was surrounding herself and not by her own fault but she had people around her who weren't her friends they were happy that she could just stay the way she was maybe they want to make themselves look better and so they just told her maybe what she wanted to hear you look fine you don't need to lose any weight you're good so kept telling her over and over again but behind her back they were happy to make fun of her i knew this was going on so i told her the truth you asked yeah yes you need to lose some weight she didn't hear hit me she can speak english it was interesting you know what her response was overall and this is a few conversations i'm shortening it but the general sentiment was this finally someone who cares enough about me to tell the truth huge no one i have a mirror she once said i know it's almost like a test i want to find out who your friends are ask him a question like that i loved her i had her best interests in mind proverbs 29 5 to flatter friends is to lay a trap for their feet you see there's what you want to hear and then there's what you need to hear jehoshaphat seemed to know this when he appointed the judges if we go into that section i overviewed it for you but if we look at some specifics second chronicles 19 5. he appointed judges throughout the nation in all the fortified towns and he said to them always think carefully before pronouncing judgment remember that you do not judge to please people but to please the lord he will be with you when you render the verdict in each case yet there are some associations that consider themselves judgment-free zones i couldn't be any more appointed i've talked about this in the past about gyms we related it to christianity the way a lot of people want to do christianity they want to check the box right so i want to go to the gym eat a box of donuts before i go but just hop on the treadmill for 30 minutes and say i work out i get the little thing for my key chain yes i go to the gym and everyone looking at you says no you do not or what are you doing there right and we talked about judgment free zones we talked about good gyms you want to go to a good gym the trainer is going to tell you the truth they're going to tell you what you need to hear right they want to get you in shape the bad gems no no no they just want to keep making you happy people pleasers tell you whatever you want oh you're doing great you smell like donuts and alcohol but whatever you know what i mean just keep giving us your money you laughed that was funny we seem to understand this telling people what we need to hear we understand this we understand this in sports culture you might get see someone like gets sacked today a quarterback he's not going to be like that's cool guys we're good no were you trying to get me killed and start yelling at the other play the coach he's gonna do a lot of yelling he's like very frustrated like they're on the verge of a heart attack they're telling the players what they need to hear if they don't do good enough get on the bench i'll send someone in who could do the job we understand that sports culture we understand that i told you i came from a martial arts background you don't coach people nicely you know you're gonna get knocked out keep your hands up you know it's not like oh and that's cool we're gonna do all right no especially professional fighters you're going to lose a lot of money your career we understand this with our worldly affiliations whether it be sports martial arts different things like that coaching that culture we understand that in sports fitness martial arts we understand that this is a part of the culture of the clubs we join we get it so the question is why don't we get it in christianity i've been told this before you want to fill up the church gene start telling everybody what they want to hear feeling nice and quick i guess that's why now here's the thing a little note and this is kind of an important one if you've been in church for a while you'll know this and i know where the laughs are going to come from my culture i don't mean the way we dress i don't mean that stuff right so by culture i'm not talking about the skinny jeans we need to wear those now and the man bun thank goodness that's gone right and beard especially like if we're calvinists we need to have the beard and the fedora right those two things are extremely important you're gonna laugh gotta grow a beard right you're not a calvinist if you don't have a beard i'm not talking about that right i've been in churches like this i've led worship in churches like this the rehearsal i wore shorts and sandals i don't dress like this all the time it's very uncomfortable the clothes are tight i'm comfortable i go to the rehearsal they freak out you're not gonna wear that on sunday are you can't do that and by the way you can only wear gray white or black you can't wear that blue shirt that matches your eyes you know what yes that's a very real conversation you got to be one of the cool kids if you want to be on stage oh and it really helps if you wear a scarf inside that's important because it might get cold i'm not talking about that and in fact to the younger people out there doing that you know what that is that's the new suit and tie that's the new big hat i knew a church lady traditional church had a room full of hats that's important the way you dress you can't come here unless you've got your suit and tie on because we're from the world so you gotta look like the world so the kids doing that that is just the new suit and tie it's just the fancy dress it's just the stained glass that's all that is people are going to look back at that in 40 30 50 years it's not going to be cool anymore no good i'm not talking about that i'm talking about the way we live i'm talking about a lifestyle actually getting rid of all that stuff and making people the greatest importance and if people are important to us we'll tell them the truth church culture it can be helpful if it's done biblically in much the same way so in church it's called discipleship that's what it's called discipleship and you know all about it in sports but we just have to change the words a little so i'll just use the regular words you have coaches trainers in sports that's me that's leadership people are going to tell you what you need to hear it's not always going to be nice i'm trying to be patient yes we'll read how the bible says that but at the same time you may not like it but i'm your real friend i'm telling you what you need to hear and that's what coaches do i'm like a coach that's what i do then you have training partners or teammates those are the people sitting next to you you're a team team jesus those are your teammates you train with one another and if you've ever done martial arts good martial art right you go back and forth you're trying iron sharpens iron another problem you're trying to make each other better and so this is doing life with one another christianity is for training partners teammates right and so you may have noticed we don't have a lot of those small groups that are really big groups where people get lost someone takes over they think they're a pastor they're not it all falls apart a bunch of people leave your church done with that biblical discipleship paul's not writing a timothy make sure you've got you know at least five small groups so everybody joins your church all right you've got to do a certain thing certain way no separate out the youth from this and that and the women and the men nope you're not going to find that in there they do church as a family it's a family everybody does it together the young people learn and are brought up from the old people because they have wisdom and knowledge i hope so it's a family we are a family we're a team we do it together and when we do our one-on-one we buddy up it's far more likely that someone is going to open up about what they're going through in a one-on-one setting at lunch or something like that do life together get to know one another make a friend if you don't have one i'll be your friend but you probably won't like lunch with me because i'll tell you we don't want to hear and i do yeah that's the beginning of all my counseling sessions all right do you want me to ask you a bunch of questions you already know the answer to or do you want me to just rip the band-aid off because i don't get paid by the hour that's modern counseling right do it nice and slow nope that's what you need to hear let's go move on get out of my office the buddy system we can be honest we're supposed to do that i described this maybe a couple weeks ago right paul had his timothy bringing him up paul also had a barnabas accountability they argued a little bit over mark but anyway you see call them out do life together what does jesus do he sends them in pairs right they go out in pairs it's paul in barnabas paul and silas traveling companions that's the way it's supposed to be that's family right you have the older people bringing you up vice versa and then you always have like your favorite family member uncle something like that or favorite cousin that you play with that's what the bible says that's how it works that's biblical church but unfortunately in many churches they're just telling people what they want to hear people pleasing it fills seats but that's not at all what real church is supposed to look like this is biblical church when someone's way off you need to tell them you got to bring them back in paul for example he writes to the churches in galatia where they're falling for false teachings so he says anyone who believes in a different gospel there isn't another gospel who falls for these teachings they're cursed he'll go on to call them fools there's no problem saying that don't worry he's no problem saying that fools and in the midst of it he says this galatians 1 10. obviously i'm not trying to win the approval of people but of god if pleasing people were my goal i wouldn't be a slave of christ think about those words if pleasing people were my goal i wouldn't be a slave of christ what it says in the greek clearly paul's not a people pleaser and he tells others philippians for example i'm trying to be like jesus timothy is trying to be like jesus epaphroditus they're trying to be like jesus right so be like jesus be like us no people pleasing they should use them as an example and so should leaders today we are to be faithful to the word that's my job that's it faithful to the word if that steps on your toes it's between you and the lord not me this is what paul tells his student timothy 2 timothy 4 1 i solemnly urge you in the presence of god and christ jesus who will someday judge the living and the dead when he comes to set up his kingdom preach the word of god be prepared whether the time is favorable or not patiently correct rebuke and encourage your people with good teaching for time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching they will follow their own desires and they will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear they will reject the truth and chase after myths but you should keep a clear mind in every situation don't be afraid of suffering for the lord work at telling others the good news the gospel and faithfully carry out the ministry god has given you that's my job that's it as we conclude today let's pray from the word of the lord join paul in his sentiments that hard letter to the church in galatia dear brothers and sisters if another believer is overcome by some sin you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path and be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself share each other's burdens and in this way obey the law of christ amen you