He Learned Obedience

We are Laying out FOUR Action Terms to set the tone for 2021:

1) GIVING (getting ready to share)
2) TEACHING (sharing the Gospel)

Today we add another:  3) LEARNING.   The only way to get better is to learn better. If we don't have new revelation, information, or perspective, how can we actually live better lives? Sadly, there are many people who refuse to learn. Pride keeps them locked into their old, and dated, ways. How can God shape those people for His work?  

But some of us thing we are learning new things, when really we are just recognizing old truths. We can do better.  We can actually allow experiences to reveal things we didn't know. Maybe things about ourselves. Maybe things about others, or God, or our purpose. 

Let's look at how EVEN JESUS "learned" obedience through His experiences. He became something more after the event of His suffering and death. If He can learn and change and become more valuable to people, can't we?  Let's dig in on that and build a better 2021!

- Is it important to learn new things as we live?

- What did you learn about yourself, God and others, in 2020?

- Did you learn new things, or just realize the same old things?

- How does the example of Jesus learning encourage us to grow?

- How will you apply new information as you build your best year ever?

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello, and welcome to the third season of the Excel Still More podcast. I am your host, Chris Emerson, and I'm here to encourage you with tips and strategies to help you deepen your faith, build stronger relationships, and do the most with your life in Christ. Thank you for joining. Let's get started. Welcome back to the third episode of 2021. I certainly hope it's going well for you. The truth is, as we look around the nation, not much has changed for the better. The virus, the politics, all of it. In a world that doesn't center on Jesus, there's only one direction it can go. So in that sense, I'm not surprised. But when I ask you if your year has started well, please understand I'm not referencing politics or the world. I'm asking about your connection to Christ, the way that you have evaluated last year and the plans and intentionality that you've laid out for this one. Many of us start with great clarity and resolution, and as we get to the end of January into February, this life stops us. Listen, if our passion for growth is susceptible to the natural world, to what is going on around us, we will always get stopped. Because I'm telling you, we do not live in a Jesus centric society, but we are Jesus centric people, eccentric in that way, to the glory of his name. Today we'll get a chance to look at his life a little, notice something very specific that he was able to do that most people are not, and maybe it will give you one more thing to think about as you go about building what very well could be your best year ever. And look, it's not a hundred different things, it's a few things that are pursued well. We've talked about that in previous episodes. By the time January is completed, you will have listened to four ESM episodes, and I want you to take with you four simple growth action terms. So far, we've discussed two of them giving and teaching. In the first episode of the year, titled The Math Problem, we talked about how Jesus said to sell your possessions if you need to in order to give to charity. How the Apostle Paul taught Timothy to teach the Christians that we are rich in Christ. And when it comes to our monetary gain, we need to become ready to share. So we spent an episode talking about preparing ourselves, preparing our budget, setting aside funds so that we can be better givers to the needs around us than we've ever been before. In the second episode, we took that production mentality, that less of me, more about others mantra, and we applied it to the teaching of the gospel. The episode was titled Real Spiritual Growth. And if you heard that, you know why I chose that title. There is a very fake idea in the church of what spiritual growth is. We champion people becoming faithful, vigilant consumers. Just come to church and listen and be good. And while reading the word and applying the word is so important, it is not the end game here. Every single Christian should lay out a plan in 2021 to grow or continue to grow towards teaching. The Hebrew writer said, by this time, you ought to be teachers, and that's true of a lot of us. Remember, it doesn't have to be pulpit presentations or leading ladies' classes. It can be those things. But in some way get so excited about what you're learning about Jesus that you begin to speak the truth in love. Share what you're learning about Jesus with your family. Have conversations about the word with God's people. And maybe the topic of the word will become central even when we meet new people in our lives. So look, both of those are about production. They're about getting past just personal development, though, as you'll see today, that is really important. But moving past that to how can I use this personal development to create a better, more beautiful, more Christ-like impact on the people that God puts in my life, whether it's giving of my goods for their benefit or the teaching of the truth to change their lives? So today we add a third word, and this one allows you to come back to self-evaluation and change. We have giving and teaching, and today I want you to evaluate your commitment to learning. Are you someone who can learn? Are you genuinely learning new things in the experiences that you're having in your life? We talk about 2020 and all of the stuff that went along with that. What did you learn last year? What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about the presence of God? What did you learn about God's people? What did you learn about this country in which we live? What did you learn about why you're here? And perhaps most importantly, what did you learn about where you're going from here? Look, when it comes to learning new things and genuinely admitting, hey, I didn't understand that before. I didn't know that. I'm ready to make changes relative to it. Maybe you could say there are three kinds of people in the world. The first are those who simply refuse to do it. No matter what new information is given, they already knew that. No matter what ideas are presented or what someone else has to say, yeah, they'd already considered that before. When changes, genuine directional changes are suggested for their lives, they would say, I don't need to do that. I've already considered it, and I know that I am currently doing the best that I can. Well, listen, I think I'm doing the best that I can at the moment based on what I presently know. But I am excited by the prospect that some book I might read or some email that might come in or some experience that hits me this week can teach me something new, something about myself, something about why I'm here, or what's the right thing to do next. Category one represents people who are really hard to help, and chances are you're not one of them, or you probably wouldn't be listening to this podcast. Now, the second category is more where I have fallen in years past, where I would be willing to tell you that look, the things that have happened to me have caused me to learn things. But when you actually asked me to list the things that I had learned, the list would not be very impressive. It wouldn't be newly discovered things that genuinely changed my direction. Instead, it would be things that I already knew, have known for years, that just got reiterated or emphasized. And I really want you to understand specifically what I'm saying here, because I think a lot of us, even with good intentions, fall into this category. On New Year's Eve, several of us were at a friend's house. We got there pretty early, like 6 30, and we were eating dinner, and the host said, Okay, guys, just before midnight, I'm going to ask everyone this question. What did you learn in 2020? And I would love for you all to share at least one thing. I think what hit most of us in that moment is we all thought we were going to go home at around nine o'clock or something like that, eat dinner, hang out, and go. And he was saying, No, you're going to be here till midnight. You have six hours to come up with an answer. And we did. We hung out together for six hours. We grazed on snacks and drank coffee and played nerts or pounce or whatever you call it. And just before midnight, we went around the room and said, What did you learn from all of the experiences that we had last year? And look, I think all of the answers were good, but none of them are going to surprise you. You probably would have said the exact same things. People said, I learned to be more patient. I learned that I don't have control over what happens around me. I learned that things can change in a moment. I learned how much I needed God's people. I learned to cherish family members in the short time that we have together. We all said things like that, and that is an important list, but didn't we know all of that already? We were just reminded of things that we've always believed about ourselves and about our family and about the church. And it just kind of got brought back up again, which is good and can spur a change in behavior, but it probably won't be transformational. It's not like I came through 2020 and I thought, wow, I really don't have control. And so I completely transform what I'm going to do this year to reflect this powerful revelation. I pretty much knew that already. And it was built into the way that I was living. It just got some extra attention through the events of 2020. You're probably just like me, just like all of us that night. If I asked you what you learned about yourself and God and people and your mission in 2020, you could easily make a list like the one that we made. But I want to talk to you about category three, truly transformational, personal revelation. I want to know what did you learn about yourself last year that you did not realize that is basically new information for you? Something you read in a book that was this eureka moment, like the whole world was in black and white, and now all of a sudden there's color everywhere and it's vibrant in a new way. How have your experiences helped you learn obedience to God in a new way? You see things clearly now that you did not see before, and it's going to change the way you behave in your home with your family. You're different now. It will change the way that you interact with Christians when you see them, the way you post political junk or don't post it on social media. The things that you have experienced or even suffered that God allowed to happen in your life. What has He shown you? Not things you already knew and you looked at again. What has He shown you that you did not know and now you do? Because that is an exciting emotion, new perspective, new wisdom, more tools to help you build the rest of this year. You want this to be the best year ever? It's going to have to be somehow different than the one that came before it. And that means new, new knowledge, new ideas, learning. I titled this episode He Learned Obedience just to make sure that I led this direction to Jesus before we concluded. I wanted to talk about him. I was reading in Hebrews recently where it said that Jesus learned obedience through the things which he suffered. That is such a complex and amazing statement. I mean, if anybody belonged in category one where they had nothing to learn, it would be Jesus. He knew all things. He had no sin. There was nothing to fix. Maybe as a youth, when he was growing, there were some natural progressions and learning and mistakes made. But by the time he was 12 years old, he was schooling everybody in the temple. Now here he is, 33 years old, a sinless life completely devoted to the Father. And as he goes through the suffering and the death, the text says he learned obedience through the things that he suffered. I'll say it to you this way: if Jesus can learn something through experience that matters, not have an old principle reiterated, genuinely learn something, then shouldn't we be doing that? Could I ever have a level of pride to say that what just happened to me did not change me. It did not educate me. I'm the same now as before. That is a pride statement. And though Jesus could have said it, that is not what is said about him. So please listen carefully to this. The experiences of his suffering and his death were not necessary to make him right. Like he was wrong and now he learned to be right. He was always right. But they were necessary to make him better, to change him, to make him into someone different than he was before. You understand, I'm not insulting who Jesus was, but the person he became, what he learned through his suffering has made him more for us than he was before. Again, I'm not saying he became a better person because he was a worse person before. I'm saying that what he learned through that experience made him a better servant. He could now become our sympathetic high priest. You say, well, Jesus knew everything. He didn't need to live in the flesh and be tempted by sin in order to sympathize with us. Well, the text said that he did. That carnal experience connected him with us in a way where he learned about the nature of life from our perspective and is now able to be more for us and build our confidence in him more than it would have been before. In that way, Jesus learned, he experienced. And while I would always contend that Jesus is all knowing, he knew some things about life that he did not know in that way before. He was different, he was better, and now he is a king and high priest in which we can put total trust, absolute, because he learned obedience in the things that he suffered. So look, I better stop talking about that now because Jesus and what he learned and how he changed is so far beyond my pay grade. But I know what it feels like as a servant of his, as a citizen under his kingship, as an appointed priest in the family of this great, sympathetic, victorious, experienced high priest and loving Lord. So let me put this to you in two ways. I would love for you to sit down and think through 2020 and be like, what did I learn from those experiences? What do I better know about my habits and my tendencies? What do I better understand about things in the church, things that genuinely need to change? I didn't realize that before. Or things that people were going through that I now understand that I didn't understand before? Have I changed? And in what way have these experiences changed me to such an effect that I will be different? Better. Maybe for us it actually means going from doing the wrong thing to the right thing, but even more importantly than that, how am I now a better servant of others? Like I said, the best way I can illustrate how Jesus learned obedience through the things which he suffered is by speaking as a recipient of his love. I can connect with him in a special new way because he walked in flesh just like me, and he learned about that. And so I wonder about the people in your life, your family and friends, your brethren in Christ. How are they getting a better version of you? More love and understanding because you're different now. You learned some things. But listen, don't burn a whole day looking backwards. This is about building a great 2021. So what I really want you to do, in addition to giving to others and teaching the gospel, I want you to focus on learning everything that happens to you, every day, every hardship. What is it revealing about you, about your choices, about your priority that you didn't know before, or certainly you didn't realize it, even if maybe others did. There is no limit to how good things can get if we are learning along the way. And if you need motivation, just remember that even with Jesus, he learned obedience. As always, you can go to excelstillmore.life to sign up for the email, order the three-month journal, or just catch up on old episodes. And also, if you are looking for financial advice or future planning, give John Cunningham a call today, 205 913 1720. And remember this whatever you choose to do today in the name of the Lord Jesus, excel still more.