Lesson 13 - How People See You

Lesson 13 - How People See You

Introduction

Hopefully you were able to have some good thoughts on relationships through this week. Interesting issues with friendships, relationships, and communication primarily!

If you want to dig into some more good great articles and thoughts, a great resource for you is www.boundless.org - Boundless is a ministry focused on teens and young adults and relationships.
They have a lot of fantastic articles about friendships, guy/girl interactions, relationships, how to get married, what boundaries to have, how to relate to parents, etc.
Lot of good resources and highly recommend it - they are very balanced.

This week we’re digging into the concept of how people see you and what that actually looks like.

Then on Wednesday, we’re going to break out for some real practical discussions which I’ll talk about in a few minutes here.

God’s Design for the Life of the Church

We’re going to start with the idea of how God designed the life of the church to function.
Think back to our lessons about living in gospel community as a church.

We do life together, we live together as a community so that we can:

Affirm each other in our spiritual walks and are growth in other areas of life, affirming our equal importance in Christ, affirming our affection for each other.
Share life together by sharing time, goods, space; we share each other’s needs and problems; and we share a common belief system of teaching and doctrine.
And we serve each other through accountability relationships, serving through forgiveness and reconciliation, serve each other’s interests rather than our own.

We live together as a gospel community and the idea is that we all have relationships that allow this affirming, sharing, and serving to happen.

So transparency and honesty runs through this and into all the different relationships.

We have to relate to each other, be involved in the life of each other, and really dig into what this means to live together as a community.

One complicating factor that comes up when we’re dealing with y’all as teens is that a lot of times you tend to feel like you’re kind of like associate members of the gospel community here.

A lot of times you can feel like as long as you’re single, as long as you’re a teenager, you can definitely attend here, but we’re not really interested in your perspective or anything else.
But let me be clear - you are a member of the body of Christ - not a half member.
God has called you to involvement in the life of the church whether you feel like there’s a place for you or not.

There are no associate members at our church, and you are not a half-member.

Even if it may not seem like it right away, there are so many opportunities to minister through the church even where you are right now.
You should be involved in the lives of others, and not just the people who are you own age, but with many different kinds of people from the church - that’s the beauty of the gospel.
And there are lots of ministries at this church beyond the visible ones like the music ministry that need help and involvement.

It’s a good thing to take a look at what you’re interested in, where you think God is calling you to minister and see if there is already something available to serve here.

So if God is calling you toward ministry to the immediate community, there are ministries in schools, ministries to neighborhoods around us.
If God is calling you toward service to our membership, there are ministries to widows and those in need within our church body.
There are lots of young families that would love to have some additional babysitting help, and you could minister to help strengthen marriages by giving husbands and wives some time together.
There are ministries in jails, ministries in nursing homes.
And then if you see a need no one is addressing, God can use you to begin that ministry that is missing right now.

You have the opportunity to be involved in the life of others, participate in the life of the church, and serve as a member of the body of Christ.

Mentorship Relationships

Another big part of how God has designed churches to function is the idea of mentoring relationships.

What I mean by that is this. If you go to a church where everyone is 25 and under, something is not right. If you go to a church where everyone is 65 and over, something is wrong.
God designed the church as kind of a mountain-climbing expedition where each person in the next stage of life helps those in preceding stage of life.
So 65 year old men are to be mentoring and teaching the younger fathers at the church. Younger fathers at the church are to be teaching the single, older guys. Single, older guys are supposed to be teaching teens and other young adults. Teens should be helping out those in the stages before them.

And the same thing happens for women in the church - everyone is pouring their life into someone else so that we’re doing life together and learning from those who have walked where we’re about to be walking.

Is this just something I’ve made up? Nope, it’s actually God’s Scriptural design for a church.

In Titus chapter 2, Paul is writing to a young pastor and is talking about what things he should be doing that are based on sound doctrine, not just cultural positions.
What is Titus to have the church doing? Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, love. Older women are to be reverent and not drinking too much.

Then Paul explains that the older women are to be teaching the younger women what it means to love their husbands.

Not necessarily an easy thing, but the older women know what that looks like, so they teach the younger women.

The younger men are to be taught what it means to have self-control.

All of this happens within the context of the church - each person is helping teach someone else. We all have things we understand and know that we can help communicate.

This is something that we have to be intentional about working towards.

A lot of times, no one is going to come to you and say hey, do you want me to be your mentor?
It’s something we need to be intentional about finding - looking for someone you want to emulate and going to them and saying hey, can you help me learn what it means to walk as a Christian?
Be looking for those kinds of people and try to seek them out - it’s a great chance to grow on an individual level.

This is part of what I love about learning the things in the class with all of you.

Y’all have a perspective on things that is amazing and valuable and waaaay ahead of where I was when I was a teenager.

God has given y’all a lot of wisdom, and I have learned so much from you about walking and living as a Christian.
We’ve been able to do just a a little bit of doing life together and I’m thrilled at where God has you.
I can’t tell you how encouraged I am by all of you and how you’re living life and following the Lord.

So whether you realize it or not, you’re doing part of this, and you have a beautiful opportunity to be involved in the life of the church.

And you should be involved as part of being the body of Christ.

The Place of Young People

But that leads us to a challenge that you’ll often run into if you try to minister - people will tell you that you can’t minister until you’re at a particular place.

So sometimes people who are in the next stage of life will tell you that you can’t minister there until you’ve reached that point.

So some people will tell you that you can’t minister to married people unless you’re married, when in actuality you can have a massive impact on marriages right where you are by freeing up husbands and wives to invest in each other by giving them some time to themselves. That’s ministry!

Or that one we heard at one point - you can’t minister to teens and young people unless you have teens of your own.

Or the people who asked Pastor Doug when he first came here whether he could minister to young men because he had all daughters.
As Doug pointed out, he once was a teenage boy, so he did have some experience in that arena.
And similarly, Shelley and I were once teenagers, so we do have a little experience in this area.

But a lot of times, people will assume you have nothing to offer and it can get discouraging.

But you’re not the first people to face this problem. No less a guy than the Apostle Paul talked to Titus and Timothy, two young pastors who were ministering to much older congregations as part of the New Testament.

What I want us to do is look at what Paul told these young guys who were trying to minister and then learn some lessons from them about what it means to be seen by people in the church.

So the instructions to Timothy appear in 1 Timothy 4:12:

“Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.”
Let me read a better way to understand this: “Let no one despise you [look down on you] for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.”

Paul is telling Timothy don’t let anyone look down their nose at you just because you are younger. Instead of letting that happen, Paul encourages Timothy to not just play defense, but take the offense and be the one who is setting the example in five different areas of life - how you talk, how you conduct yourselves, how you love other believers, how you walk in your faith, how you walk in purity.
We’ll talk about those things in just a minute.

Then Paul addressed Titus in 2:7-8, which I’ll just paraphrase for us:

“Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.”

Here Paul again urges Titus to be a model, to be an example, of good works. He talks about what Titus as a young pastor should be teaching - things with integrity, dignity, and sound speech.
Why is this important? So that those who oppose the gospel will have nothing evil to say about us, because they’ll see how we’re doing life and what that looks like.

So let’s dig into these things and see what it looks like to be a younger Christian and how we can serve and minister without letting people look down on us.

Instructions to Timothy

The first instruction to Timothy is to be an Example in Speech.

Speech refers to the words we use - if we’re going to be an example of how a Christian should talk, what does that include?
Paul talked about our speech in Ephesians 5:25-32. In those verses he gives us some things that should mark how we talk as Christians.

First, we should speak truthfully. People who hear us speak as Christians should be able to trust that what we say will be truthful.

People get marked by whether or not they tell the truth.
In almost any field where you work, you know the people who will give things to you straight and you know the people that you can’t really trust.
As Christians, we should be people who are marked by truthful speaking. We should be the most honest people that anyone else knows - we have a responsibility to speak truthfully.

Second, Paul talks about not having corrupting talk come out of our mouths.

The things we say should not be things that tear down other people that we know, whether they are Christians or not.
Tearing people down is far too common in our world today. You only have to listen to any conversation between two guys and you’ll hear things that are aimed at tearing each other down.
We as Christians should be marked by not tearing people down, however, in part because of our duty to affirm each other.

That leads us to the third thing Paul says - instead of tearing people down, we should instead be building people up by what we say.

Affirming each other’s strengths and abilities is part of building people up by what we say.
We should be encouraging other believers to walk closer with the Lord, building them up.
Think about the people that motivate you the most to be a better person - they are the people who are encouraging you. They’re the ones who are pushing you forward into a deeper life with the Lord.

Fourth thing is that we should be speaking things that show grace to people around us.

We should say things that fit the occasion, and that demonstrate grace.
What is grace? Remember our discussions of the gospel - we have been shown grace because Jesus loved us when we were still his enemies. He showed grace to us before we got ourselves cleaned up.
In the same way, we should be showing grace to people that we run into - those who hate us, those who aren’t nice to us, those who aren’t lovely people.
Showing grace in what we say.

So being an example in speech involves speaking properly - speaking truthfully, speaking with grace and building people up.
That is our first indicator of what it means to be an example of the believers.

The second thing Paul tells Timothy is to be an Example in Conduct.

Conduct involves the way we carry ourselves and how we live.
Proper Christian conduct is primarily marked by conduct that looks like Jesus acts toward other people.

We should be marked as people who seek to meet the needs of people around us.
Think of what Jesus did when he was on the earth here - he met the needs of people, whether that was people who needed physical healing, people who were having serious problems.
Jesus was right in the middle of all of that, meeting those needs and alleviating suffering.

So as we’re being examples in conduct, it means that we’re examples of what it means to meet needs of people around us.

For those in the church, that can be needs for widows that need houses cleaned or just need company since they’re so lonely.
For our pastor and elders, that means prayer and encouragement as they seek to lead us in a Biblical manner.
For other people our age, that means seeking to build intentional relationships that drive all of us along to know Jesus better, and encouraging each other.
For those younger than us, that means encouraging the kiddos to grow and learn what is really important in life.

Living as an example in conduct also means acting the age that you want to be treated.

So honestly, if you’re 16 and you’re acting like a 7 year old, don’t be surprised if people treat you that way.
Now, that doesn’t mean you have to be all crazy uptight and super-professional. You can have a good time and still act appropriately.
But if you’re acting so young, don’t expect to be treated as really involved in the life of the church - you’re not being an example.

Third thing Paul talks about is being an Example in Love.

Now, following up on a relationship week, I know all of y’all are probably like, seriously, loving people?
We’re not talking relationship love - what we’re talking about here is unconditional love for the people around you.
This follows up on the concept of grace we were talking about a few minutes ago - we’ve received so much love from the Lord Jesus. We should be showing that to people around us.
You as young people have a chance to show that love to the people you meet, primarily because you will come in contact with all kinds of people.

People the world would consider unlovely or even that other Christians try to run away from can be people that we show the love of Jesus to.
When we truly understand the gospel, we understand that Jesus loved us while we were still in our sin.

He didn’t wait until we were cleaned up to extend love for us.
He’s not shocked by the sins we have committed.
It’s not like God ever said - whoa, after seeing Bryan’s life down there, I really wish I hadn’t sent Jesus to die.
He knew it all, and yet still extended his love to us in Jesus.

And so because we were loved while we were still in our sin, we should be extending love to those people around us who are still in their sin.

It doesn’t mean that we accept their sin - far from it. Jesus never leaves us in our sin.
But it does mean we accept them as people and love them for who they are. They are people who have needs just like us and we get the chance to show real love to them.

So as an example in love, we’re living out the gospel to people inside the church who are un-lovely and people outside the church who are un-lovely.
We’re demonstrating, setting the example, of the gospel for all the believers by the love that we show.

The fourth thing Paul mentions is being an Example in Faith.

Pastor has been talking to us recently about the idea of contending for the faith.
What is the faith?

It’s the truth that has been delivered to us in the Word of God.

So what does being an example in faith mean?

It means we need to know the faith that we’re defending. We should know the truth that’s in the Word of God.

Although I know the term “doctrine” sounds boring, it’s really a very important thing.
And we’ve actually been talking about a lot of doctrine in here in class in case you didn’t realize that.
We’ve talked about the gospel (which is a critical doctrine)
We’ve talked about the doctrine of the church and why we come here.
We’ve talked about the accuracy of the Bible and how we study it.
We’ve talked about how Christians should relate to the political world.
So you may actually know more doctrine than you realize.

Once we know what the faith is, then we should be people who defend it at the appropriate time.

So when there’s this pull by postmodernism in the direction of saying that there is no truth, we stand against that.
We do it in the right spirit (with grace), but we do stand for what is really true.

And we defend what is actually in Scripture, not the rules that we all tend to add to Scripture.

So we defend the faith that is actually and completely true from the Word of God.
We don’t defend the things conservative churches do just because conservative churches do them. We instead defend the truth that we can identify and point to in Scripture.
So for example, we don’t try to defend one way of doing relationships against another way unless there is something clearly unbiblical.
If someone is staying in the boundaries provided by Scripture, God is going to direct them in a number of different ways. If we get outside the Scriptural boundaries, then that’s what we need to step into and address with fellow believers.

So being an example of faith involves standing for the truth, which means standing for the Word of God and what God says about what really matters.

Fifth thing Paul said was to be an Example in Purity.

Now a lot of times when we hear this “purity” we immediately think, well this relates to moral purity and making sure we don’t get into sexual sin.
But really this is much broader than that.

First, it involves the idea of pure motives.

As people, it’s very easy for us to lapse into improper motives for what we do. We can try to manipulate people into giving us what we want.
We can fall into not having pure motives for what we’re doing when we’re serving other people - not being truly gospel-motivated by what we do.

Sometimes we can get so focused on trying to get people to clean up that we miss the heart issues.
We can get concerned about trying to get people to dress right, talk right, act right and miss the heart issues that are involved.

So when we are an example of right living, we’re an example of right motives - motives that are pure toward the people around us.

Second thing it involves is pure acts toward people around us.

So if we’re doing things for the right reasons, then hopefully we’ll also be doing the right things for people around us.
So we’re not going beyond and wronging our brother or sister.
We’re doing things with pure wisdom that will build people up instead of tearing them down.
So our pure heart should motivate us to pure acts.

So those are the instructions to Paul. Let’s look at two of the other instructions to Titus and then we’ll be finished.

Instructions to Titus

Paul tells Titus to show himself as an example in two areas - good works and right teaching.
First, Paul says to be a Model of Good Works.

So this really follows up on what we talked about earlier with right living - living as an example of good works involves lots of real service to people.
This involve real service to people in the church, people outside the church.
We’ll be working to alleviate suffering, like what a number of y’all are working on toward helping this little boy in Ukraine.
Being an example for good works involves serving effectively.

Second thing Paul told Titus is to teach correctly so you Don’t Give Opponents Opportunity to Speak Evil.

You know, Christians can do a lot of things that give people an opportunity to speak evil against us.

Whether that’s the Westboro Baptist Church nutcases that protest funerals of gay people, claiming God’s judgment fell on them (as an aside, they are completely wrong about that and are working to destroy the work of Christ), or the Christian who wounded your co-worker by condemning them for something that didn’t really matter, there are a lot of Christians who have given people who are unsaved the opportunity to speak evil against all of us.

So we have to be careful about how we live so that we don’t give people that chance - we work to try to live out the gospel so that people can’t say anything against us.

If people want to say something against the truth, that’s fine, but hopefully they won’t be upset with us.
As Pastor TP says, we should not be offending people, but the truth will offend people.
There’s a very big difference in us being offensive, and for that reason, giving someone an opportunity to speak evil, and us sharing the truth in a loving way, so that all that anyone can say is against the truth, not against us.

Paul talks about how teaching must show integrity, dignity, sound speech that can’t be condemned.

These three things relate to what Pastor has been talking about.
Integrity - involves a life that matches up to what you’re saying.
Dignity - is teaching that is done with grace, like we’ve discussed, recognizing the grace that we have been given in the Lord Jesus.
Sound speech - speech that is based on Scripture is sound, and all of our teaching should be solidly based on what the Bible teaches.

Conclusion

So that’s what we need to remember. You have the opportunity to be involved in the life of the church and you should be involved in the life of the church.
But in order to silence those who would oppose your efforts to live in gospel community, the way to address the problem is by setting the example as a Christian.

We live life as an example in the way we talk, the way we live, the way we love, the purity of our motives and lives, and our defense of the faith.
We model what it looks like to live a life marked by good works, and are careful so that the truth is what is offensive to people instead of us being offensive to people.

When we’re doing those things, those who oppose us have nothing to say against us, and we then adorn the gospel - we make it beautiful to both those in the church and those outside the church, and God is able to work in a mighty way.
So that concludes that I have say - any thoughts about this from y’all?
Ok, so on Wednesday what’s going to happen is this - we’re going to dig more into this idea of how we’re seen.

The ladies will be meeting in here with Shelley to talk about how to put clothes together. I have a strategy about matching my clothes - it’s called ask Shelley, and if she says it matches, then it works. She’s going to share that same wisdom with you ladies.
Guys will be meeting in the library, down below this room. We’ll be talking about what it looks like to be a man in today’s world Biblically. Hint: It doesn’t involve running through the forest and killing animals. We’ll unpack some of how we’re supposed to act like men today.

So we’ll close in prayer and see y’all on Wednesday!