Mike Novotny - The Blessings
Did you know our church leadership was kind of panicking when we pushed the button to start the second morning service? It’s just that we had some amazing volunteers, but we didn’t have enough volunteers, and we thought we needed new ushers, new greeters, new people at the cafe, core kids, technology, sound, and lights. We didn’t know if we could pull it off.
So about six or seven weeks ago, we had this big call to action in a sermon, and I’m not sure if you’ve heard what’s happened since then, but today, just today at the core—not Saint Peter, but just this Sunday at the core—we have 17 brand new people who are serving with their «You First» t-shirts on. So yeah, we need to thank them; that is such a huge gift to our church, to our leaders, and to our volunteers. I know last week we had 12 people serving new, so that’s double-digit people who are serving new. That’s really made this possible, and we are so grateful for it.
I’m not so grateful for that last song, though; that just thumped me right in the heart. It was so beautiful that I told Jordan after the last service, «You can’t do that to me before I preach! I’m in this headspace getting ready,» and then just the goodness of God, thinking about His mercy for us. So we’re going to celebrate that today as we kick off this brand new sermon series called «Screens and Souls.»
Six o’clock AM, my old-school alarm clock rings right next to my head, and without opening my eyes, I slam the snooze bar and go back to sleep. Six-oh-nine AM, the same alarm clock rings; my eyes also don’t open, and my hand knows exactly where to go. I hit the snooze for a second time. Six-eighteen AM, the alarm clock rings; it wins again, and I stumble out of bed. I shuffle my way with bare feet over to the bathroom, and that’s where, as I grab my toothbrush with my right hand, I grab my phone with my left. That’s the first time my hands touch a screen, and it will definitely not be the last.
What my brain and thumbs are able to do in the next 90 seconds is either incredibly impressive or on the verge of addiction, because I can check my email, my calendar, the weather, soccer scores like all good Christians do, the local news, and everything my brain can process. I can look, I can scroll, I put the phone down for a second. On a good day, I change into my running clothes to hit the streets for a few miles, and I strap my music device to my arm where I will pump some of my favorite running music or a podcast running at double speed. It might be the Biebs, it might be Metallica, it could be Foo Fighters, or the Astronomers. Whatever I’m feeling like on that very day, I will try to run as fast as this old body can until I get back and jump in the shower, where the phone will then stream through the Bluetooth speaker, pumping some of my favorite music or podcasts.
I’ll listen to sermons while I shave. I’ll listen to sermons on this device while I eat breakfast. I’ll listen to sermons on my way to church. And then for the first time since I’ve woken up, I will put this phone in a drawer and open another screen on my laptop where I’ll work, and I’ll study, and I’ll write, and I’ll edit until about nine o’clock. Nine-oh-five, nature will call, and I’ll go to the bathroom, but because I’m a good modern American, I will not go to the bathroom alone. I will bring my screen. My thumbs repeat the exact same thing they did about three hours earlier: I’ll check my work email even though I was just on my work email, which is confusing to me. I’ll check the weather again just in case the storm has rolled in. I’ll check the news in case something is breaking.
I get back to the office; the phone goes back in the drawer. I keep working until noon comes, and I can’t just eat my lunch by myself. Of course, I have to bring this, so I’ll listen to podcasts while I’m eating lunch. My wife will text me on her lunch break to send me a GIF from the office or one of those cute bitmojis of us together. It’s pretty sweet. I’ll text her back something funny, a crazy meme, and then it’ll be back to the office. For the rest of the day, pretty much the same thing will happen. Whether I’m in my office or the bathroom, whether I’m at home or at work, whether I’m running on the streets or in my car, this device will not be far away.
I will use it to talk; I’ll use it to text. Occasionally, I will actually use it as a phone. Did you know I can do that and make some calls? But my life is lived in almost constant connection to this device. Here’s the crazy thing: statistically, I am way less connected to it than most of you. I checked the data on my screen time. I currently use my phone apart from my work laptop about two hours every day. It’s on do not disturb 24/7, which means it never rings, it never dings, it never pings, and that is not the normal American. According to a 2022 study by The New York Times, the average 8 to 12-year-old, apart from school, is looking at a screen for 5.5 hours a day. Jump to the teenage years, and the number skyrockets.
We’re not talking school laptop; the average teenager in America now stares at a screen for 8.5 hours a day. That’s not school. I don’t even know how you find enough time for that—eight and a half hours every single day is the average. And some of you know it’s not just the kids these days; Grandma gets lost in Facebook, your middle-aged man keeps clicking the recommended YouTube videos, village women tend to love Instagram, my kids find themselves on TikTok and Snapchat. You might have a smart TV, a smart device, an Alexa, and Amazon. Some of us talk to Siri and Google more than we do our own children. Right? Your preferred platform might be different, but it’s pretty rare that any of us in this room are Amish. All right, we’re connected constantly.
Who can go a church service or a family meal without the ding or the ping or the ring? We live in a digital age, and it doesn’t look like there’s any going back. Here’s the big question: is that a blessing, or is that a bad thing? Like, if you think about life, family, friends, and faith, are the constant connections— the TVs and the tablets— a blessing, or are they a bad thing? Let’s take a quick vote. Put down your pens, your programs. Best blessing ever or the worst curse upon humanity? I’m not sure; pretty good, pretty bad. On the count of three, let’s all vote. Ready? One, two, three, go.
I see one thumbs up, but she’s hesitant. A lot of this— we’re not so sure just yet. Let me put it another way: if Jesus appeared on the stage and with His divine fingers snapped and created a time machine and set it to the year 522 A.D., would you step inside? No online bullying, no gaming addiction, no families fighting to stay focused on each other. If you could go back 1500 years, would you step inside? I don’t know. I like to shower, have air conditioning, and oh, we feel torn, don’t we? We live in this modern age; there are so many beautiful things about it, and there are so many things that break our hearts. I want you to pick up your pen now and write this down because here’s what I’ve come to realize: technology is attention.
Right? Someone wants to say, are these phones a good thing? Uh, yeah. Are they a bad thing? Yeah, they’re both of those things. All this technology is attention. I bet you felt it before, right? Families feel this tension all the time. My two daughters only have two total cousins; they live a few states away. But instead of just those one or two times a year when we can physically be in the same place, they have the gift of FaceTime and streaming video. They can share jokes; they can stay connected. They love their cousins probably more than I ever loved my cousins who lived much closer a generation ago. And families feel that tension when the family all is in the same room, and yet we’re lost in our digital spaces. When short bathroom breaks take way longer than they should, where did so-and-so go? I’ll give you one guess.
Friends feel this tension, man. You can do amazing things to stay connected to your friends when you’re all on the same thread. Sometimes when you’re apart, it keeps you connected. And yet, you ever seen that group of friends all around the table at a restaurant? They’re physically in the same place, and yet their spirits aren’t there. I think parents feel this; I mean, parents with young children. When you can put a tablet in the hands of a toddler, that makes the long drive to Grandma’s house a slightly less traumatic experience. And yet when those same little hands grip the tablet because their brain is so used to constant stimulation, what parent doesn’t wonder?
Drivers feel this. I mean, do you want to go back to 1980s driving? Do any of you remember paper maps? You thought job had it bad, I mean, I remember trying to fold it. I remember stopping at a payphone, punching in the calling card number like, dude, I don’t know where I’m going! It’s so great to have the navigation; it makes life so much easier. It reroutes you before you hit that accident that you never would have seen in the old world. And yeah, you’ve seen that person not just at the stoplight but flying past at 80, like worse than drunk driving, and yet we can’t seem to put it down. It’s a tension, and it’s attention for a Christian too.
The modern age and Christian people are constantly connected. Churches like ours have a screen here and a huge booth back there with technology and a giant screen behind me. We have digital lights; we have speakers; we have tiny microphones. Is all this technology good for us spiritually? If the goal is to believe the right things that Jesus taught and behave in the loving ways that Jesus wanted, do you think that you and I today, as the average Christian, are closer to that ideal than our ancestors were? Have we avoided the lies of the internet and discovered the truth in it? Have we used our devices to love better? Do they make us more patient, kind, and gentle, or are we a step away from how Jesus would want us to live because of all this attention?
Based on the almost silence in this space right now, I’m guessing you’ve felt that tension too, and that’s why I’m so glad you’re here, because for the next few weeks, we’re going to talk about these screens and your souls. We’re going to talk about the blessings, and we’re going to talk candidly about the bad things. We’re going to talk about the boundaries. All right, we’re not going to have a bonfire where we all throw in our devices, those instruments of the devil. There’s a kid last week after he saw the preview for the sermon series said, «Sick, Pastor, my mom’s going to take away my phone!» Like, no, no, we’re going to talk about the good things, the blessings. We’re going to try to leverage as much as we can and, to be honest, talk about as many of the bad things as we can in order to minimize them.
To get there, we’re going to talk about the boundaries that your brain and my heart both desperately need— the blessings, the bad things, the boundaries. That’s where we’re going for screens and souls. So let’s start on a positive note. I’ll pray that you’ll come back; I’ll let you know what next week will be аbout: the blessings. How do we maximize the blessings of modern technology for the sake of your soul? Well, it might seem like the Bible doesn’t have much to say about that. I mean, the Bible’s an old-school paper book; Apple and Google didn’t exist when the Old and New Testament were written. But let’s just remember that even though they didn’t have modern technology, did they have inventions and advances? For sure! Did you know that the book, the book was at one time a technological advance? To take multiple sheets of paper and bind them together? Do you know what the Greek word for book is? Biblia! Isn’t that insane? I could speak Spanish, «la biblioteca, ” where all the books are, right? Biblia simply meant „book.“
When they put all these pages together, what should we call this thing? The book! Right? So the scriptures, when they were written, yeah, it’s not a digital hologram, but this was an invention. Before there were screens, there were scrolls. Before there were DMs, there were scribes with pens. Before there was 5G internet to take a message from here to there, the Romans built advanced roads so the horses could run faster and the carts could carry people further than they had ever done before. The Bible itself was a technological advance, and here’s what we know. We know that the early Christians leveraged it for the good of people’s spiritual lives. Even though every technology had its dangers, the early Christians didn’t say, „Whoa, whoa, whoa! That could go bad!“ Instead, they leaned in and leveraged the latest technology for the good of the church.
Let me give you one example. Today, the Book of Romans in the year 57 A.D., the Apostle Paul—he’s the guy that wrote about half the New Testament—was in the Greek city of Corinth, and he was about 750 miles away from Rome. He’d never been there before. There were a bunch of people who didn’t really know the basics about God and humanity, about sin and salvation. He desperately wanted to get to Italy, but he couldn’t—at least not yet. He was in the exact opposite direction; way over in Jerusalem, there was a bunch of early Christians who were hungry and starving because of a first-century famine. Paul had gone from church to church to collect money to help them and feed them, and he needed to bring that offering to them, but he couldn’t go this way and that way at the same time.
So do you know what he did? Technology! Paul couldn’t get to Rome and be there physically, so he used the technology of his day—papyrus scrolls, scribes, and ink. He used those fast-moving Roman roads, and he sent those Christians that he had never met face to face a letter, and it’s brilliantly called „Romans.“ Maybe you never thought of that—the book of Romans, this epic New Testament depiction of Christianity, was a technological advance. It was like an ancient email, a YouTube video that the Apostle Paul could upload, and someone could watch it even if they had never seen him face to face.
Just so you don’t miss this: I’m not sure if you’ve ever read Romans, but it is an epic letter that teaches us so many essential things about God. Let me give you a five-point quick overview of what the Apostle Paul covered in this book. He said in this letter that he wrote in Romans chapter 3, verse 20, to these Christians he had never met, „Hey, no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law.“ That’s a fancy way of saying if you want to be righteous or right with God—if you don’t want to be far away from Him, if you want to get to heaven and be part of His family—guess what? No one is good enough to do enough good things to get to God. So if you thought that being a decent human being—being nice, helping little old ladies across the street, donating to nonprofits—were all good things, do you think that makes you good enough to get to the presence of God Himself? Paul says, „No, no, no! No one will be declared righteous by doing good works.“
The fact is, if you haven’t done all the good things, you can’t reach high enough to a God who is altogether good. In fact, Paul would say you and I and all humanity have a huge problem. He went on to write in Romans chapter 6, „For the wages of sin is death.“ Have you sinned? Have you been unkind? Have you lashed out? Have you lost your cool? Have you not been gentle? Have you looked at something on your screen you shouldn’t have? If you’ve had one too many, do you know what you get if you do that? Death—separation from a God who is love and light and life. That’s what you earn; that’s what you deserve. The Romans might not have guessed that based on their pagan religion.
Paul said, „God is so good, He’s so amazing, He’s so holy, that if you sin just once, what you deserve is to not be with Him.“ But Paul said in that same verse, „But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.“ No, you don’t deserve to be with God. None of us are good enough to climb our way up to heaven. That’s why God decided to give you a gift—His only Son, Jesus Christ. And if you trust in Jesus, if you come to Him and just say, „I can’t go back; I can’t fix it, ” if you believe in what He did at the cross, guess what? You don’t die. Instead, you get the gift of God: eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The Romans wouldn’t have guessed that. Paul had to teach it. And then Paul said something that I love. In fact, if you’d see the Bible that’s in my office that I’ve had for about 20 years, there’s one page that is more worn out than all the others; it’s the one where Paul wrote this in Romans 7, verse 15: „I do not understand what I do, for what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate, I do.“ Paul’s saying, „Hey, Romans, you might believe in Jesus and have the gift of eternal life, but guess what? I bet you’re still going to do things you don’t want to do. You’re going to know that you should put God first; you should be patient; you should just forgive your parents; you should be okay letting it go at work. And there are going to be moments when you don’t, when you slip, you screw up, you sin. Paul said, „Me too.“
But before the Romans could panic, a paragraph or two later, he said this in chapter 8, verse 1: „But there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.“ Like Jesus didn’t just forgive you and give you the gift at the start and then you had to earn it afterward. No! From the start to the finish, it’s all Jesus. There’s no condemnation if you have Jesus. You mess up for the millionth time, you come back to Jesus, and you get more Jesus, forgiveness, mercy, and love. There is no condemnation for every single Christian. And before the chapter is over, then Paul said this: „And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.“
In all the things! Like, life in Rome might be hard—maybe your parents’ relationship is a mess, maybe you lost your job, maybe they found a lump, maybe you’re battling stuff in your own brain, maybe you’re anxious, depressed, maybe your brother took his own life. Whatever you’re going through, Paul says in all the things, the God who sent His Son for you is sending His Spirit to remind you that He still has good plans for you. Don’t panic; don’t give in; don’t give up! And all of that I just shared are five of the 433 verses that Paul wrote to the Romans. Paul used that old school papyrus and those smooth Roman roads. He used ancient technology to bring this timeless message of sin and salvation, our struggle, God’s patience, His plans that give us so much peace.
If I had to summarize it, grab your pen: I would say that through all these verses and in all of these chapters, Paul accomplished three big things. First of all, he helped the ancient Romans to group right. This was like a mass email that Paul sent; they would all read this letter in their church at the same time. And as they would do it, they would start to do life together. In fact, the phrase „one another“ like „teach one another, ” „love one another, ” shows up nine times in the Book of Romans. This letter—this technology—would be Paul’s way of bringing the church together.
Second, through that same letter, he would help them grow. So maybe the Romans didn’t know. Maybe they thought, „I thought I had to be a good person to get to heaven.“ They would grow in their understanding. Maybe they thought, „I’m struggling so badly, God’s never going to accept me; He’s going to condemn me.“ Nope! They would grow in their knowledge of salvation. You teach about conversion, election, baptism; I mean, you want to know what baptism means? Romans 6, verse 4. You want to know about the struggle that Christians have in their hearts? Romans 7. Do you want to know how to get through pain in this broken world? Romans chapter 8. Do you want to know what to do if the government’s all jacked up? Romans chapter 13. I don’t know if the culture is all jacked up? Romans chapter 12! What if Christians disagree on things that are in the Bible? Romans chapters 14 and 15. Wait, how should people interact with each other when we believe different things? Romans 16. In this letter, he’s going to help them grow in really practical Christian living.
And finally, number three: go. So while the Apostle Paul was going over to Jerusalem, his words and his faith could go all the way over to Rome, 750 miles, and share the most important message in all of human history. So in summary, Paul used ancient technology to help early Christians group, grow, and go in their faith. And it would not be the last time. Fast forward about 1500 years from the days of the Apostle Paul, and you get to a university professor, slash priest, slash monk named Martin Luther. Martin Luther had grown up in the church. He’d actually taken his vows to serve in the ministry of the church, but it wasn’t until he was lecturing through the book of Romans as a university professor that Martin Luther really understood who Jesus was.
He was in the very first chapter of this ancient letter from Paul and he stumbled across these words in chapter 1, verse 17: „For in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last.“ Martin Luther thought about those words: wait, righteousness is like getting right with God, and it’s revealed in the gospel—like what Jesus did at the cross. That’s how I get it! It’s not in the law, the works that I do, and all that righteousness is just by faith; it’s by believing in Jesus, not by doing things for Jesus, from first to last. Like the whole thing of salvation, getting to heaven, is 100 percent Jesus and 0 percent me. He had no idea. If you know his story, Martin Luther used to starve himself and whip himself when he had sinned. He tried so hard to be good enough for God, and he still did the things he hated. He always wondered, „Am I ever going to get there?“
So when he discovered Romans 1, verse 17, he said the scales fell from his eyes. The weight of guilt and shame was lifted off his shoulders, and he got it. For the first time in his whole life, he got it! So guess what he did? He used the ancient internet of his day to tell the world about it. I’ll show you a picture. Just before Martin Luther was born, the printing press was brought to Europe. Ever heard of Johannes Gutenberg or a Gutenberg Bible? Before Gutenberg’s invention, monks and scribes used to copy verse by verse, chapter by chapter, the whole Bible. It would take them years to make one copy. But after the printing press came to Europe, it was like running coffee after coffee; Bibles were being spit out.
Martin Luther leaned into that hard. By the year 1519, Martin Luther was the most published author in all of Europe, and his discovery about righteousness—that you, despite all of your sins, can be right with God, not 10 years from now if you try hard but right now, simply through trust in Jesus—set the world on fire, and it changed the course of human history. In fact, our church today might not be here if it wasn’t for what happened then. If Luther had discovered it and had to handwrite it to everyone, who knows what would have happened? Instead, he put it in the ancient copy machine, and the world heard about it and was turned upside down.
So what about you today? You and I aren’t living in 57 A.D. when Romans was written or 1519 at the printing press. In our basement, we live in a world of Pinterest and Instagram posts. What are you supposed to take away? What’s the blessing of being a Christian in a digital age? All right, let me warn you: what I’m about to do is get out my sermon fire hose. I’m gonna blast you with like 22 separate ideas that you could do to lean into being a digital Christian. I don’t expect you to do all of them or most of them or some of them. My goal is when you walk out of here, just to take one of them if you want to group better or to grow in your faith better or to go and share your faith more. What’s one thing that you can do? That’s your goal, ready?
All right, let’s talk about how we can group. If God doesn’t want you to be this solo spiritual Christian—just you and your relationship with Jesus—if He cares about „one another, ” how could you use this to do that? Here’s what I do: I have a group of friends that know me, love me, and I know and love them right back. When I’m going through something in life—something good, something bad—when I’m tempted, when I’m struggling, I text them. Am I in a funk with my wife? Are we fighting and we’re both in our corners ready for round two? I grab my phone and say, „Guys, I need you right now! I’m acting a fool, and I just want to win this. I want to be right; I don’t care if I’m righteous!“
I’ve had friends who are traveling for work, going to be in a hotel room alone for a while, and that’s tempting for me, so I pray. When I have friends who are celebrating something big, a spiritual victory, they text me! We don’t have to wait until the next time we’re physically together in the same room. We can make preemptive confessions; we can escape guilt and shame after we’ve messed up! These little devices keep us connected, not just to each other, but to each other’s faith. We can make fun of each other often, frequently. We can send dumb memes; we can bond and make jokes together. There are so many things we can do to be closer like this because of this.
So how could you keep the Christians in your life closely connected so you don’t have to wait until the next time you’re at the same service in the same room? Your faith can go further and faster through this device! The second thing about growing: when I talk about grow, I’m talking about the day-to-day connection you have with the Bible. I’m talking about your prayer life; I’m talking about Christian music.
I just— forgive me if you’re watching this on TV, I’m not sure if they’re going to bleep this part out. I think if the Apostle Paul could see the opportunities you have to connect to the Bible, he would pee his own pants. Do they have pants in the first century? I’m not sure. The opportunities you and I have! Like back in the day when people had a Bible—like for our grandparents and you know they were going through something. They were angry; they couldn’t forgive someone they loved. You know what most of them did, who weren’t schooled in the Bible? Have you ever done that before? Like, „God, I need help! I don’t know where this is in the book!“ Do you know what you can do today? Just Google it! Bible passage on fill in the blank!
There are whole Bible apps you could type in: anxiety, forgiveness, salvation, Jesus. And it would sort through this book for you in less than nanoseconds and give you every single thing your heavenly Father has ever said about that! Like, you don’t have to guess; you don’t have to stumble your way through it. Technology makes it so easy! I think of the amazing songs we sing in church. We just sang one before the sermon. I don’t have to wait for the next time I’m at the service when the band plays that song. I’m going to go home, pull it up on YouTube, and I’m going to worship Jesus through it all week long.
There are so many ways that you and I can— my mom, my mother-in-law, and my wife and my daughters all did a Bible plan together on the Bible app—literally three generations passing the Christian faith of Jesus because they’re not in the same room. They have different schedules, different times; they probably couldn’t make a Bible study work every day, every week, but through the app, they can! Oh my goodness! Honestly, there are so many things that you can do! Whatever you want to do to grow in your faith as a couple, as a parent, as a person—whatever you’re struggling with, anger, mental health, whatever it is—there’s never been a better time to be a Christian than now, where in five seconds we can find the most powerful things that God has ever said.
Grow! And finally, go! So I am 41 and 51-50-seconds years old. That’s my shameless way of telling you it’s my birthday on Friday. All right? And even though I’ve been a Christian for almost all of that, I have honestly found it very difficult to share my faith with other people. Not because I don’t know all the things to say, but you just never know how someone’s going to react, right? We start talking about Jesus, and you move to a spiritual spot for some people; it feels pushy, it feels like pressure. That’s always been a complicated thing for me as a Christian, and I bet that the people that you know who don’t go to church feel that barrier too.
Yeah, talk about politics or religion, and things get tense! Or you invite them to church, and they’re thinking, „I bet it’s a cult. I bet they’re going to say a bunch of stuff about God and open a book, and then they’re going to ask me for a bunch of money.“ Right? There are all these reasons it’s hard for us, and maybe it’s hard for them. But you know what? I’ve seen that the device makes it so much easier! When you’re sitting here in church, and you’re thinking, „Oh man, my friend needs this so bad!“ In 30 seconds, you can pull up the live stream link, send it to him, and say, „I thought of you!“
And that friend who’s maybe too intimidated by organized religion to show up on his own time— it’s not like he’s out of town with the kids. Whenever he has time, he can sit down. Who wouldn’t be curious enough to say, „I wonder what he was thinking about, ” right? Sometimes we think we have to bring our loved ones to the church to get to Jesus, but what if devices allowed us to bring the Jesus of the church to them? All right? What simple way could you take the things you learn, like, „Oh man, my brother needs this! Oh man, my friends are going through something; they needed that last sermon series!“
It is so easy as a Christian to be an evangelist with a few clicks! The awkwardness of the face-to-face, you and I can lean into that like Paul did with his letter to the Romans. So, fire hose off!
So my big question today is, what are you gonna do? If you want to be closer like this in a group, what could you do? If you didn’t want the Bible to be just a Sunday thing but a day-to-day thing, what could you do? If you’re thinking of someone right now that you love that doesn’t have a connection to the God of love, what could you do? How can we group? How can we grow? How can we go as we live in this blessed digital age? Because it really works.
Some of you know that about five years ago, our church was posed with a pretty big question that involved me and it involved you and it involved us. There’s a media ministry called Time of Grace that uses technology, screens, books, social media, and devices to share Jesus with people. They asked if we wanted to partner with them and if I would be the lead speaker for that ministry, which was a attention. Grace was pretty amazing; we currently connect people to God about 5 million times a month. In an average month, someone in 192 different countries will hear about Jesus Through Time of Grace. Amazing, amazing blessing! But the more I make TV shows and social media posts, the less I get to be here with you.
So before that big decision, I reached out to a bunch of people I respected, and I said, „What do you think? Is this good for us? Is this bad for us?“ And really amazing people. They told me the pros and the cons and the good and the bad—whether it was an overall win and overall loss; I got some really good advice that led me to make that decision. But there’s one conversation I remember because my friend said something that seemed so right in the moment but turned out to be so wrong.
It’s a guy who’s brilliant, amazing, and I respect him a ton. He said, „Mike, to be honest with you, I think if you’re really going to help people’s souls, if you’re gonna snatch them from the jaws of the enemy who’s lying to their hearts, I honestly think you gotta be on their couch to see their face.“ And I get why he said that. If you’ve ever done a long-distance relationship before, there’s a huge difference between a screen and Facebook. There’s just something better about it.
But I’ve got to tell you, ever since our church said yes to that opportunity, we found out that he has been so wrong. There have been so many people who come here to this place that started on a screen. How many of you here, I’m just curious, before you came live, saw us on a screen, on YouTube, on Facebook, on a television set? Dozens and dozens of people! I’ve had people send me emails of the most amazing life change that started with, „We’ve never met, but that night I was going to take my life. And then you guys came up on the TV. I thought after what I did, after my addiction, my adultery, my sexual sin, like I was never gonna make it to heaven. And then you told me righteousness is by faith from first to last. I was done with church. I was done with religion, what I had as a kid. And then I found this, and there was something different about it! There was something good!“
Because it was all about Jesus! People’s souls literally have been saved through a screen. Some of you who are watching maybe right now this very program are thinking, „I didn’t even know how to get to heaven until 10 minutes ago!“ This proof, by the grace of God, is so smart, but at this point, he was—so, so wrong! Screens can be a bad thing; screens need boundaries. But can screens be a blessing? By the grace and mercy of God? Yes! Hard stop and amen!
Let’s pray. Oh, gracious Lord, we’re so grateful for You and we’re so grateful for the righteousness that comes through Jesus. A lot of us, before we open a Bible, never really think about that—how good is good enough if I want to go to a better place but I haven’t done my best? What happens? God, we don’t have to wonder about that! We don’t have to doubt that! We don’t have to be chased by this monster of uncertainty, because in the gospel, we find a righteousness that is from You.
And whether someone told us that face to face, we read it in Your book, or we saw it online, God, we thank You for the good news of the gospel. We’re so grateful that Christians throughout the centuries have used whatever means they could, that they were all things to all people so that by all possible means they might save some. And now we’re asking a big blessing on the sermon series. Technology is tough, God—it is a real tension. Some days we wonder if it’s messing with our souls, and so we need You and Your Holy Spirit to keep our eyes fixed on what’s good and help us be aware of what’s not.