Rooted in Christ

Sermon Summary:

As we embark on a new year, we’re invited to explore the concept of ‘flourishing together, rooted in Christ.’ This journey calls us to dive deep into our faith, moving beyond surface-level Christianity. The passage from 1 Corinthians 2 reminds us that true wisdom comes not from human understanding, but from God’s Spirit. We’re challenged to overcome our core human challenges – managing our appetites, confronting our inner emptiness, and expanding our limited horizons. This isn’t just about personal growth; it’s about allowing God’s wisdom to transform us so profoundly that we begin to see the world through the mind of Christ. As we dedicate ourselves to this journey, we’re encouraged to let Christ shape our desires, behavior, and entire lives, leading us to experience the fullness of life as God intended.

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Sermon Points:

CORE CHALLENGES
-Managing Appetites
-Encountering Emptiness
-Limited Horizons

CALLING OF GOD
-An Invitation to Deep
-Wisdom of God
-Spirit of God
-Mind of Christ

Key Takeaways:

• Introduction of the church’s new theme: “Flourishing Together, Rooted in Christ”
• Overview of the Global Flourishing Study and its six domains of human flourishing
• The importance of managing appetites, encountering emptiness, and expanding limited horizons in spiritual growth
• The calling of God as an invitation to go deeper in faith
• The necessity of God’s wisdom, revealed through Christ and accessed through the Holy Spirit
• The ultimate goal of having the mind of Christ and living life as God intended

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Scripture References:

• 1 Corinthians 2:6-16
• Jeremiah 31:31-33 (mentioned in the context of the Lord’s Supper)

Stories:

• Calvin Miller’s experience at the Great Barrier Reef, comparing snorkelers to scuba divers as an analogy for spiritual depth
• The sinkhole that appeared in a soccer field in Alton, Illinois, used as a metaphor for lives that appear stable but are hollow inside
• Stephen Covey’s subway encounter with a grieving father and children, illustrating the importance of perspective
• The Inuit method of hunting wolves using a knife coated in frozen blood, demonstrating the danger of uncontrolled appetites

Transcript

Well today, we turn a page on our calendar as a church. And we begin this new year together. And as you know, we have become accustomed as a church to adopting and embracing themes to guide us in our journey. This year will be no different. Our theme for this year is flourishing together, rooted in Christ. And I’m truly looking forward to beginning this journey with you.

It’s going to be at least a three -year journey, these next three years. We’re going to be connected and build on each other. And I’ll talk a little bit about that here in just a minute. But we’re going to learn more about what it means as a follower of Jesus to flourish in every season of life. Because flourishing looks different, if you will, in different seasons. It shows up differently. But it’s possible. And we’re going to also discuss what it means to be a flourishing church, and how that can spill over and affect our community.

And so each week during this journey, I’m going to be providing you with a weekly passage of Scripture, a weekly reading. Instead of a daily reading, we’re going to give you a weekly reading to ask you to explore these texts a little more deeply. Now, I want you all to know, if you want to know, is it okay to read your Bible every day?

Yes. Okay? And there are many, many daily Bible reading guides that you can find, and I would encourage you to do just that. The one we’re going to give you is a weekly guide. And it is going to encourage you, challenge you, to go a little bit deeper with these texts. And I will try to help you do that as we make our way through this year. And we have eight liturgical seasons that we have identified as a church, that just guide us through our year. And so we’re beginning our new one today. It’s the winter of 2025. And our theme for this winter is going to be, Happiness Is. And I’ll explain that a little bit more here in just a minute.

But we’re going to learn together about happiness from a Biblical perspective. Now here’s what I would tell you. Most everybody wants to be happy. In fact, I’ve bought a book I’ve been reading through. It’s this book by Stephanie Harrison. She is an expert in the science of happiness.

Did y ‘all even know there was a science of happiness? Well, she’s written this book. And in fact, it’s the title of her entire life now. Her life work is called, The New Happy. And she has a website. You can Google it and read about her. And basically what she says is, is that everything that you’ve been told by the American culture about happiness is a lie. That’s what she says. And in this book, as well as all the resources she has, she has artwork, all kinds of things to supplement her point. But I found it quite fascinating. The point is, people generally want to be happy. So we’re going to talk about that this winter.

We’re going to use primarily the Gospel of Matthew. And we’re going to eventually get to it. I promise you. In fact, in our pastor’s Bible study that’s going to begin on January the 15th, we’re going to study the Book of Matthew. And we will eventually get to the Beatitudes. And we’ll talk about those on Sunday morning. But I want to set the context for the entire year, maybe the entire journey this morning, before we get to the Gospel of Matthew. And I want to use the foundational text for the entire year this morning to guide us. And it’s your weekly reading assignment this morning. This week. And it’s found in 1 Corinthians 2.

So if you’ve got your copy of the New Testament, let’s look at that. I’ve entitled today’s message, Flourishing Together Rooted in Christ. That’s our theme for the year. And I want you to look with me at this text. Where Paul, in 1 Corinthians 2, he tells the Corinthians, When I came to you, I came with trembling and fear. He said, I didn’t come with the wisdom of men. I didn’t try to impress you with all of my knowledge. He said, in fact, I just came preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified. For there Paul finds the wisdom of God.

Then you come to verse 6 of chapter 2. And Paul says this, We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing. No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that’s been hidden and that God has destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written, and here’s an allusion to the book of Isaiah, What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived, the things God has prepared for those who love Him.

These are the things God has revealed to us by His Spirit. There’s that new covenant. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we’ve received is not the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who’s from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.

This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom, but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit -taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things. But such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, for who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ, so this morning as we begin this three -year journey, I want to invite you to come along and for us to experience a journey into the depths of what it really means to know the Lord and to follow Him and to experience Him most fully in your everyday life, because that’s what God intends for us to experience.

Now, I want to go ahead and say, though, that for us as human beings, a journey into truly knowing the Lord and experiencing the depths of who He is is always going to be difficult because we’re broken people and we have some challenges we have to deal with as human beings. In fact, I will just refer to them this morning as core challenges. These are the roadblocks that stand in the way. These are the things that are hard for us as human beings, okay?

Calvin Miller, years ago, some of y ‘all were here, when Calvin came and spoke at our church. Calvin was one of my favorite pastor theologians, and he has written this book, Into the Depths of God. Calvin was an incredibly creative person. When I was pastoring in Huntsville, Alabama, I had Calvin come and speak, and he came here and spoke as well. And we were sitting on the platform in our church in Huntsville, and Calvin leaned over to me and he said, Do y ‘all have a children’s sermon? And I said, No, we typically don’t. Sometimes we do. We don’t always. And he said, There’s so much fun. We’re in the service.

You remember the days when everybody sat on the platform? Some of y ‘all are old enough to remember those days. He said, Well, let’s just have one. Call them up. I’ll do it. And I said, What do you want to do? He said, I don’t know. We’ll figure something out. So we called the children up. Calvin sat down, and he just said, Boys and girls, do you know how valuable you are? I hope you do. He said, How many of you can name all the letters of the alphabet? And all the boys and girls raised their hands. He said, What if we no longer had the letter B?

And he said, The letter B is not very important. You don’t use it all that much. And then he told this story about a little baby who was in a red baby carriage with a blue baby bumper. And he told the story without using the letter B. And I just sat there and marveled. So when he came back to sit next to me, I said, Why don’t you ever tell another children’s sermon in this church? And again, somebody like you. Because the kids were just mesmerized. Because he ended it by saying, If you think you’re not all that important, you’re just like the letter B. Actually, turns out, without you, something’s missing. Well, so I love Calvin. That’s just an aside. But Calvin is a thoughtful guy.

And in this book, he addresses these challenges. And he just says, If you want to go into the depths with God, you’re going to have to overcome some things. So let me just list them for you real quickly. First of all, we have to manage appetites. You know that God has designed every human being with drives, with appetites, with needs. And they are of value. They’re necessary. But you and I can be overwhelmed by them if we’re not careful.

In fact, let me just read you a quote from Calvin’s book. He says, Appetite is a life sign. Healthy people get hungry. Our appetites can at last define us. Christians are to be people who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Matthew 5, verse 6. In other words, Christians are to be defined as people who are hungry for God. They are hungry to please Christ. Martyrs are not necessarily those who are hungry to die. They are merely souls with an excessive appetite to please Christ. They would rather please Him by having to die than disappoint Him by selling out on key issues of obedience.

Most of us don’t hunger to this extent. We are perhaps a trifle hungry. But we more often pursue the ordinary Maslowian values shelter, food, safety, power, and sexual fulfillment. These are all perfectly normal human appetites. But they can become truly dangerous when we lose our mastery over them and allow them to overtake our lives. And so as human beings, we have to learn how to manage our appetites because our appetites can be our undoing.

I think y ‘all are familiar with how the Inuit people sometimes will hunt wolves. We’ve talked about this before,

I think. But oftentimes what they will do is they will take a very sharp, large knife and they will coat the blade with the blood of a rabbit. And then they will cover it in ice and they will take the handle of the knife and place it in the snow. And then they will leave to set the trap. And a wolf will come and will smell, catch the scent of the blood of a rabbit, and begin to lick the blade of the knife to get to the blood of the rabbit. And eventually it will nick its own tongue. And then once it does that, it begins to taste fresh blood and then it really begins to attack that knife blade. Are y ‘all with me? And y ‘all know what happens. Eventually that wolf’s undoing is its own appetite. It’s its own hunger. It’s kind of a graphic illustration for a Sunday morning at 9 .30 or so, right? But I think the point’s well taken. Human beings are like that. We can be undone by the pursuit of our own appetites, our own needs as we believe we have them. And we can try to fill those needs in erroneous ways and it can be very destructive. So we have to learn to manage them. Second, we have to encounter emptiness. Calvin says in his book, emptiness is the central neurosis that sires so many smaller addictions. In fact, that’s the point of this book as I’m just now reading it from Stephanie Harrison. She says, I was very successful. I had a great job. I graduated from school. I think she was living in New York. Everything was great. And she said, I was empty on the inside and I couldn’t figure out why. Well, there’s just something that happens to people sometimes as they get disconnected from their Creator as we start pursuing things at a level that we never were intended to pursue them. If we’re not careful, our lives can give way. I don’t know if y ‘all, were following the news back in the summer of this year, I was kind of intrigued by it in Alton, Illinois. There was a park there in Alton, Illinois that had soccer fields normally filled with children. And one morning, there’s a video of it, you can actually watch it, where right in the middle of the soccer field, it just gave way. And a hundred foot wide, 30 -something foot sinkhole just happened just like that. There was actually a light pole that was standing in between the two soccer fields and there’s a video of it just disappearing. And so you can imagine the people in that community were trying to figure out what in the world has happened? Well, sometimes people’s lives look good and then they just give way. There’s just a hollowness on the inside. There’s an emptiness. And sooner or later, it becomes evident. And so we have to make sure as human beings, if we try to live our lives in our own strength and our own power and only attend to our own needs and our own desires, ultimately what’s going to happen to us is going to create a certain hollow feeling on the inside of us. And our lives can give way because of that emptiness. And then I would say also another challenge we face are limited horizons. It’s so easy to live our lives and face the temptation as if this world is all there is. We can get drawn into that because so many people around us live their lives as if this world is all there is. It’s a limited perspective. We need our perspective to be adjusted. We need to be able to see with the eyes of faith. Y ‘all remember that story that Stephen Covey tells about when he was on that subway in that large metropolitan city on a Sunday morning and he got on the subway and a dad got on the subway with four children and the children were just running wild up and down the subway car. And Covey said, at first it was a little cute because the kids were cute. He said, but eventually it got to be annoying and people kind of began muttering to themselves. And this dad’s just sitting there. And finally he went over to the dad. And the dad said, sir, I just want to tell you we’re kind of a little bit of annoyed here. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bother you. But you know, your kids are just running crazy up and down this train and you’re just sitting here. And Covey said, the man looked at him and said, huh, yeah, we just came from the hospital and my wife just died. So their mom died and they don’t really know what to do. And to be honest with you, I don’t really know what to do. Covey said his perspective changed just like that. All of a sudden he saw the world as it really is. Well, you and I need that perspective change. This world is not all there is. We need that eternal perspective. We need for God to show us sometimes what’s actually really going on so that we can live our lives appropriately and live into what the Lord has for us. So all that to say, here’s what I believe this text is challenging us to do. I’m just going to call it the calling of God. I believe that God has called us as his people to live differently. And so here’s the invitation from him. It’s an invitation to deep. Deep. That’s what’s in this text to me. He says in this text that the Spirit of God searches, I would say reveals, the deep things of God. That’s what I want to invite you to. How deeply do you and I really love the Lord and follow him daily? In this book, Calvin Miller talks about taking a trip to the Great Barrier Reef with his wife and son. His son was a scuba diver and he took his parents on the trip because he wanted to explore the barrier reef. Calvin Miller says he and his wife were snorkelers. He said, so we saw the reef and when we talk about it, we talk about it as snorkelers. He said, but the unfortunate thing is we act like we’re scuba divers when we’re not really scuba divers. Our son saw a whole different side of the Great Barrier Reef. Wouldn’t you all agree it takes a little more training and discipline to be a scuba diver than to be a snorkeler, right? I’m a snorkeler. Cindy was a licensed scuba diver when I met her. I’m not. I’m not gonna, I’m not just afraid of heights, I’m afraid of depths, okay? I’m not gonna go down too far. I’m just not going to. But I can talk about it like I have and that’s what Miller says. He said, a lot of churches are filled with snorkelers talking like they’re scuba divers. Well, the invitation from God is to go deep with him. This journey into the depths is what I want to invite you to. So, this past July, as I was praying about our future and where we’re headed as a church, I just began to pray about how God might guide us on that journey to help us more fully understand what it is he really wants from us and how he can provide for us and so that we won’t just be shallow Christians. We won’t be a church that’s filled with shallow Christians. And I’m not saying we are. I’m just saying I don’t want that to happen to us. I want us to continue to, to go into the depths of what it means to follow him. So, as I was praying about it, I was just doing some research and I found myself reflecting upon something that happened while I was a regent at Baylor. Right at the end, toward the end of my time as a regent at Baylor, Baylor University joined with Harvard University in this massive research project known as the Global Flourishing Study. And so, I began to research this Global Flourishing Study to try to understand more fully what it was all about. Gallup organization joined with Baylor and Harvard and these three entities received this grant of almost $45 million. It’s the largest grant in the sociological sciences in history. It’s the largest grant in Baylor’s history. And it basically is an analysis of some 240 ,000 people in 22 different countries researching what does it really mean for a human being to flourish. It’s led by two very dynamic Christian men, Tyler Vanderwill and Byron Johnson. I think I have a photo of them. Tyler is on the left. He is the head of the Human Flourishing Project at Harvard. Byron is on the right. Byron is the head of the Institute for the Studies of Religion at Baylor. Two very committed Christian men who joined their scientific accomplishments and inquiries together to lead this incredible project. And I have just become incredibly interested in it and have, spent enough time with some of them for us to decide that we’re going to participate with them. Now, Tyler is an epidemiologist by training. He is a researcher at Harvard. His primary interest is public health and public policy. And Byron leads this study of religion. And here’s the basic question these researchers are exploring. What does it mean for a human being to flourish? What does that really mean? And so the core answer they’ve come up with is that you know you’re flourishing when all aspects of a person’s life are good. And their research is gaining the attention of the scientific community, the academic community. And here’s what they’ve chosen to do. They’ve chosen to explore flourishing in six different what they call domains. Six different aspects of a person’s life. Let me give them to you. Happiness and life satisfaction. Mental and physical health. Meaning and purpose. Character and virtue. Close social relationships. And material and financial stability. Now these researchers are saying this is not necessarily an exhaustive understanding of flourishing, but it’s the best we’ve been able to come up with. And they’ve put together a flourishing measure where they’re asking people to evaluate themselves. How well are you doing in the domain of happiness and life satisfaction? How well are you doing in mental and physical health? How well are you doing with your understanding of your meaning and purpose in life? And what about character and virtue? And how well are you doing in your relationships with others? Do you have meaningful, deep, close social relationships? And how well are you doing regarding material and financial stability? Now here’s what’s fascinating about this research. You may be wondering, so okay, that’s great. You’ve got these two universities, this group of researchers. They’re engaged on this sociological study. What does that mean to us? Why would we have anything to do with it? Well guess what’s happened to them? The academic community has turned to the church for help. Because they’ve realized that there’s a spiritual dimension to all of this. And so they’ve published materials like this one, Flourishing in the Church. And they’ve asked leaders of churches like us to evaluate, what does it really mean to flourish as a Christian? How does flourishing look in the Christian community? What does it look like to have congregations that are flourishing? And if you have congregations that are flourishing, how does that spill over into the community? How does that affect public policy? How does it affect the educational system? So like for example, if they can prove in their research, let me give you a simple example. If they can prove, according to their research, that being married gives you greater stability and a greater chance to experience a level of flourishing as someone who’s married with children. If you have children and you’re married, it’s potentially possible that you can flourish at a greater level than if you’re just a single person who’s married. That’s a question. What’s their response to that? If that’s true, then why does the welfare system penalize you if you are to get married as a single parent? And y ‘all know the welfare system does that, right? If you’re a single parent and you get married, you get punished financially. Tyler’s question is, well if I can prove to you that it’s actually going to help you, why would you punish a single parent for getting married? Can we change the public policy actually based on scientific research? Are y ‘all still with me?

It’s something that they want to put into the real world. And they’ve turned to the church for help and said, can y ‘all help us look at flourishing from a spiritual perspective? Well, it’s a groundbreaking study. It’s still new. So the study is new, but let me tell you what’s not new. Flourishing. Human beings have been flourishing long before Baylor and Harvard started researching it. In fact, you and I, I believe, have a leg up in understanding what flourishing is all about. And so as we have been researching this, we’ve decided we’re going to participate at some level and try to figure out how we can understand this and maybe help inform the academic community along the way. That’s our plan over these next three years. So we’re going to launch it January the 24th, 25th, and 26th here at our church. And we’re calling it our Flourishing Together Launch Weekend, and I want you to come. And we want you to register. Let us know you’re coming. And so if you wouldn’t mind going online when it’s convenient for you here on our church app or on our website and register. And we’ve actually invited one of the scholars from the Flourishing Study to join us for the weekend to help explain it more fully to us. And he’s working on the church side, on the spiritual side. He’s a pastor in San Antonio. His name is Scott Hare. And you’re going to love Scott. And I want you and I together to be a part of this journey. Okay? So does that make sense to y ‘all? Trying to do this? Now let me tie it to the Scripture. The calling of God. There’s an invitation to deep. Paul also says in this text, it’s not just an invitation that you answer on your own. Paul says the wisdom of God is a part of this. You see, you and I, if we’re going to find our way to the spiritual depths, this week I want you to be reflecting on this text. I want you to notice Paul is going to say to you and to me, you can’t do this on your own. You need the wisdom of God to do this. Your own intellect, your own ingenuity is not going to guide you into the spiritual depths. Remember what this text says? No eye has seen it, no ear has heard it, no mind has conceived it. You’re not going to just come up with all this on your own. It’s not going to happen. You’ve got to have the wisdom of God because our wisdom is limited and God’s wisdom has been revealed in Christ and it leads to the restoration of God’s glory in us. Paul says it’s destined for our glory. It’s powerful. It’s holistic redemption. Now, how do we get God’s wisdom? Through the Spirit of God. He says the Spirit of God searches the things of God. The Spirit of God will guide you. The Spirit of God will enlighten you. Remember we live in the New Covenant era. We don’t have to ask where is the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God is within us. You are, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. And so you and I already have the presence of the Spirit of God. And so each day we are to surrender, engage, and invest with the Spirit of God. Now I’ll tell y ‘all when I was a kid growing up in my home church, we never talked about the Holy Spirit. We called the Holy Spirit the Holy Ghost. And we were a little bit afraid of Him because the next thing you know you might start speaking in tongues and healing people and jumping pews and staying at church way past the lunch hour. I mean all kind of stuff could happen to you. So you just needed to kind of let somebody else handle the Holy Spirit and we’d take care of Jesus. That’s kind of how it was. Well y ‘all, the Spirit of God, He’s a full member of the Trinity and He is within me and you. And He is the pathway. He’s going to guide us. He’s going to point us to Christ. As a matter of fact, so much so that Paul says if you will truly engage in this journey you can have your entire perspective so changed that you can have the mind of Christ. You can actually begin to see things the way you were intended to see them. Because when these researchers say from a secular perspective that human flourishing is when all aspects of your life are good, Tyler Vanderwill in his book Theology of Health, he tells you his real perspective as a Christian is human flourishing is living life as God intended. That’s the real definition. And so living life is God intended. That means the discipline of this life, understanding the joy and the beauty and the richness of what it means to follow Jesus. Who was the single most flourishing human being who ever lived? Jesus! And so we find our way in our journey with Him so much so that we can actually have the mind of Christ. And so it’s an invitation y ‘all to draw near to Jesus. So, 2025 here’s what I want us to do. Let’s dedicate this year to the Lord today. Let’s dedicate ourselves to this journey into the depths. And let’s commit ourselves this morning to grow deeper. To be more deeply rooted in Christ. And let’s let Him shape our desires. Let’s let Him shape our behavior. In fact, let’s let Him shape our entire life in this new year. May it be so. Let’s pray together.

Father, we thank You for Your Word today. We thank You Lord that You have provided wisdom and guidance for us and truth so that we could find our way in this old world. And we ask Lord that as we do