Transcript

Shelby Abbott [00:00:00]: Welcome to The Connecting Podcast with Paul Tripp. My name is Shelby Abbott and our podcast exists to connect the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life right here, right now. So we're here with this new format in The Connecting Podcast. Paul, I'm excited to dive in to this with you.

Paul Tripp [00:00:21]: Yes, I love twenty focused minutes looking at one particular thing and in the first episode, we've said that our whole subject this time is how to live as a vibrant, confident, courageous, hopeful Christian in a world that's just gone insane and we're going to root that conversation in Christ's lengthiest teaching, The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7; and we talked about how sweet and tender this portion of scripture is.

[00:00:59] Well, if I could title this episode, I would title it "Character Counts" because the foundation of Christ's teaching is character, character, character. He gives character the priority of His teaching. Think of all the things that Jesus could have talked about.

[00:01:30] Think of all the things that would have been in the disciples' minds, all the questions they could possibly have. What He starts with is an awesome character portrait. We call that The Beatitudes and what we need to do as we look at this is not look at The Beatitudes as a list. It's not a list. It's a portrait.

SA [00:02:00]: What do you mean by that?

PT [00:02:01]: Well, it's got to be taken as a whole. This is a portrait of what it looks like to be my disciple versus this is a checklist.

SA [00:02:16]: A checklist to run down and make sure you get all these right?

PT [00:02:19]: Yes, for example, if I'm looking at a painting, you could take a detail out of that painting and it would be interesting but all of a sudden, you connect that with every other detail and it takes on a beauty that's just different.

[00:02:33] The other thing a portrait means is these don't exist alone. They are interdependent and interconnected. You know, "If you're this kind of person, you're probably going to be this kind of person, you're probably going to be this kind of person."

[00:02:49] And you know, if you look at The Sermon the Mount, The Sermon of the Mount contains moral teaching and missional teaching. It contains devotional teaching, but it begins with character. Jesus has a lot to say, and the approach is going to change and the topics are going to change, but it begins with this foundational portrait that He wants us to get. Now, that leads me to ask the question: why start here? What is it about character that needs to be addressed first before you get to all the other things?

SA [00:03:35]: Yes, it's very clear in scripture that God cares about the heart. Everything flows from your heart and so, you can do all the right things, but if you have... and as we'll see when Jesus starts talking about anger and lust is that you can commit those sins in your heart if you're doing all the right things on the outside, but your heart is bad on the inside. It's one of those things that Christ counts against us because it's all about your heart. It's all about what's going on in the inside.

PT [00:04:18]: Yes, the members of your body only ever go where your heart has already gone. That's so important to understand. You can't be a follower of Christ, you can't be a hopeful, vibrant, courageous Christian in this broken world without addressing character. You can't deal with suffering without addressing character.

[00:04:50] Let me say this. Suffering is never neutral because you bring things to your suffering. If you're a self-centered, entitled person, you won't suffer well because life is all about you. It's all about your comfort. It's all about your happiness and so, when you suffer, you don't just suffer the thing that you suffer. You suffer the way that you're suffering the thing that you're suffering.

[00:05:17] So the heart is very, very important. Character is very important. It is foundational. If all of a sudden, the person in your marriage changes and starts mistreating you, you can't deal with that without character.

[00:05:38] You can't deal with a four-year-old who acts like they know more than you without dealing with character. You can't have a mean boss without character. You can't deal with the news that's pushed at us everyday of this world that's just a mess without character. It is incredibly important and it's almost impossible to overstate the importance of the way Jesus begins the sermon on the mount.

SA [00:06:22]: Yes, and character is one of those things that you can see pop out of someone's life, whether they have it or not, when suffering comes, when trials come. You could see someone maybe have a calm demeanor, but then one thing goes wrong and they lose it. They freak out and that's a testament to their character and God cares about what's going on in the heart. He wants to address those things.

PT [00:06:49]: So person at Starbucks... we'll take two people here. A person at Starbucks, they order their venti caramel mochaccito...

SA [00:07:04]: Mochaccito. That's not a thing, but it sounds like it is.

PT [00:07:07]: Mochaccito with Oreos and it comes out with hazelnut and no Oreos, and they start screaming and everybody can see them. The barista is trying to calm them down, but they're off. Same scene, same order.

[00:07:39] The person says, "I'm sorry, but this is not what I ordered. I know you make a lot of orders and it's easy to make this mistake, but if I could have what I ordered, that would really be great." That person says, "Oh, yes, I'd love to do that for you. Just hang on. Would you like this one anyway? You can just take it with you." What's the difference in those two scenes? It's easy to answer. It's character. It's not what happened in Starbucks. It's what the person brought to the moment there in Starbucks.

SA [00:08:13]: Yes, and the circumstances reveal what's actually going on in the heart. I think that one of the things that we want a lot — and that's why I'm so glad that Jesus starts with character — one of the things that we want as human beings is like, "Hey, just give me the playbook. Tell me exactly what you want me to do and I'll do it."

[00:08:31] And Jesus backs up from there and says, "No, t's not just about the things that you need to do. It's about who you are as a person," and when you get that right, the foundation, as you said, then you start to build your actions in your life on top of that; but if the foundation is rotten, everything else is going to crumble.

PT [00:08:50]: So, I want to talk about two things that won't seem like they're on our topic, but they are. I want to talk about escape and fantasy. Often when we're faced with the unexpected, the unwanted, the hard, the difficult, what we pray for and what we want from God is escape. "Just get me out of this," and we judge His faithfulness by whether He will provide that for us. "Get me out."

[00:09:31] And it's very interesting in The Sermon on the Mount, that's not what Jesus promises. He actually promises something better. He promises the transformation of our inner man, so that we can live with joy and courage and hope in situations that would have once crushed us. And that promise of transformation is actually a promise of Himself because He's the transformer.

[00:10:17] No human being ever creates any change in another human being. You have no ability to change anyone. If you're in a marriage or you have friends or you have children, you know you have no ability to change anybody. You can be a tool in God's hands of change.

SA [00:10:31]: Yes, God can use you.

PT [00:10:33]: But you don't change anybody. And so, the promise of characterological transformation is God promising Himself. It's Jesus looking at His disciples and saying, "I know what you're thinking. 'Just get me out of Rome. Get me away from the Pharisees. Enough already. Restore the Jewish nation and we'll be cool with You.'"

SA [00:10:59]: "Let's take over, yes. Let's do it."

PT [00:11:01]: Yes, and He's not promising that. And they're facing political, economic, religious suffering and He's promising — this is very important — not less than that escape they would like. He's promising them more and once you get a hold of that, The Sermon on the Mount just opens up like a flower to you.

SA [00:11:31]: Yes, we can't understand suffering because we've been trained from day one to drop-kick it out of our lives. You know, if we're hot, we turn on the air conditioning. If we have a headache, we take Tylenol. If we're uncomfortable in our clothes, we change them.

[00:11:49] And there's nothing wrong with those things, but it helps us to understand that suffering always equals bad and so, when suffering comes along in our lives, we think we have to get rid of it and then, God has to get rid of it in order to make us happy, but God wants to do something better than that than just take it away. He wants to be with us in it and that is what forms character, and that's what builds a stronger relationship with Jesus as you're going through the difficult times.

PT [00:12:20]: Well, and I agree with it, what you've said completely; but I think it may be even worse than that. We are sold the lie that you can control your life enough that you can avoid these things and you can't.

[00:12:39] There are parenting books that actually give guarantees of "you do this and your children will be this". They’re just a lie. I mean, there are wonderful, godly parents who walk away from parenting with children who are unbelievers. We don't have that power and so, to think that I can control my life enough that I can create this comfortable life that never involves difficulty is just a life.

SA [00:13:10]: Yes, naive.

PT [00:13:12]: I can't control my keys, let alone life.

SA [00:13:19]: That's true. You can get an air tag on those things.

PT [00:13:21]: That's right. That's escape. The second word is fantasy. Fantasy is a very interesting thing theologically; you know, when you fantasize something in your future. Well, what we're doing in fantasy is we're rising in our imagination to the throne of God and creating a world that does our bidding.

[00:13:51] Nobody fantasizes suffering. Nobody fantasizes people saying no to you. Your fantasies are always people and the world around you doing exactly what you want them to do. And it's this delusion of sovereignty that we momentarily run through our brains, but it's a delusion because we're just never going to have that ability.

[00:14:28] I mean, I think if we would watch the video of just you - your video, me - my video, everybody that's listening or watching their video, you would be amazed at how many unexpected things you face every day. As much as you have a normal routine, you do the normal same things everyday, everyday is fraught with unexpected things.

SA [00:14:52]: Curveballs, yes. Yes, and it's one of those things that we feel good when we fantasize, too. And so, it's difficult to recognize that this might be not really glorifying to the Lord. I found that when I mow my lawn, I'm constantly in a state of dreaming about the future.

[00:15:16] I don't know why, but it's just when I mow my lawn. I'm doing the methodical cut in the grass and I immediately start to think about the future and what could be, and I've had to stop myself and say, "Even though it might feel good to think about everybody bending to my whim, wills, and all these great things happening, that's not what the Lord has for me right now, and I need to be content with where I'm at.

PT [00:15:40]: I think the jars in my kitchen that are almost impossible to open are designed by God to remind me that I'm not sovereign.

SA [00:15:54]: Something as simple as that.

PT [00:15:55]: I can't even rule a container.

SA [00:15:57]: Can't find your keys, can't open a jar.

PT [00:16:01]: Glorious reminders. So escape, that's not what God promises you. He promises something better. Fantasy, God's not going to surrender His sovereignty to your rule. He promises you something better and that is beautifully displayed in The Sermon on the Mount and in that way, it just pulls you away from thinking these are a tough set of commands.

[00:16:41] This is Jesus laying out for His disciples between the "already" of your conversion and the "not yet" of your homegoing the best life you could ever live. Why? Because it came out of the mind of God. The One who made us in His own image, the One who understands more deeply than we will ever understand the tragedy of sin and the fallen world, the One who comes near to the brokenhearted and gives strength to the weak says, "This is the way to live," and the way He begins should get our attention because when I'm struggling, I don't want you to talk to me about character. Come on.

SA [00:17:43]: "Give me a playbook. Tell me to get me out of my struggling."

PT [00:17:47]: And maybe what Jesus is saying is that's when you need it the most because who you are will drive what you're dealing with. That's always the way it works and, in that way, character is inescapable because what's inside of me will always shape everything that's outside of me. Even my physical body — the physical body is outside of the inner body and so, all of that will be shaped by what's inside of me.

SA [00:18:33]: Yes, Proverbs 27:19 says, "As in water face reflects face, so the heart of man reflects the man," like you are your heart and when you take that seriously, you'll begin to address the things that need to be addressed in your life.

[00:18:50] You'll go after those things that are not aligning with what God calls you to do. It's so important to know what Jesus says. I mean, when He was baptized, the voice from heaven was like, "This is My Son. Listen to Him. Listen to Him," so let's listen to what Jesus has to say.

PT [00:19:10]: Yes, I was thinking as you mentioned Proverbs, maybe this is the way to end this episode. Proverbs [20:9] also says, "Who is the man who can keep his heart pure?" We need help. If character is the game [and it is], if it's foundational [and it is], we need help and help is here.

SA [00:19:33]: Yes, beautiful.