Steven Furtick - The Hidden Side of Comparison
This is an excerpt from: Copy That
The challenge for a lot of people I'm preaching to is that sometimes you have to be something you've never seen before. When I read my Scripture, "Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you…" Remember your leaders who spoke the Word of God to you; who told you, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me"; who told you God's hand is on you; who told you there's nothing more important than God; who told you that if Christ isn't at the center of your life, the whole thing will fall apart; who told you and taught you, who preached to you and taught to you that you are who God says you are. But in reading this, I realized a lot of the people I preach to never really had someone to speak this Word over their lives.
So they went with what the world told them because they didn't know what the Word said about them. That's what I was going to tell you about my dad. One time my mom… My mom was so good at this. She would cover for his crazy. She'd pull me to the side and say, "You know he's doing really good". I'd say, "He's not doing really good. He's crazy. I can't stand him". And he was doing good. He was coaching my teams. He was doing all this stuff. One day she said, "Did you know he didn't have a dad growing up"? I didn't know that. I knew he didn't have his dad long, but I didn't know his dad had killed himself. I didn't know my dad had found his dad dead on his own birthday when he was 8. I didn't know that. I didn't know he was making everything up.
So, even that one time when I said I hated him and I wanted to kill him when I was a teenager, and he picked me up from school early and told me we were going out to the national forest, and he had two guns in the back of the truck and one of us was going to kill the other one… Even though that isn't necessarily the best parenting tactic and it's not Dr. Phil approved… He didn't have Focus on the Family growing up. All right? "I did the best I could". He's doing really good if you saw what he never got to see. So, when the author of Hebrews is saying, "Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you," he's not so much talking about the words they spoke, but then he says something really powerful.
This is what I want to teach on today. Somebody shout, "Copy that". That's what they say on a walkie-talkie. "Copy that". It means, "I heard it. I got it. I'm on it". Do you see these security people around our church keeping you safe? Thank God for them. If you knew how crazy some Christians are, you'd be clapping better than that for the security team. But they say it all the time. I'll walk by them… "Copy that". "Row 4. Copy that". I wanted to call the sermon that, because that which you copy is that which you become. That which you believe is that which you become.
So, when he says, "Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you…" There are a lot of words that were spoken to you and over you and about you that have to be uprooted before the word God spoke about you can be planted. Now, remember, the Hebrews have not been a part of Christianity for two millennia like we have, so they haven't had 2,000 years to get used to the idea that we are justified by faith, not works. It's all new to them. They have not had 2,000 years to get used to the fact that it is by grace you have been saved through faith, that it's not the blood a high priest takes… Remember I talked about this last week, that they serve in a tabernacle that is an earthly copy of a heavenly reality. Even Moses… As holy as he was, as important as he was, as amazing as he was, Moses could only lead them so far. In the middle of this he gives them an instruction as he concludes his letter. He says, "Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith". Or in other words, copy that.
The Lord said to me, first of all, "Consider the outcome". Isn't that hard to do? What you're seeing all day long in people's lives is just, what I called it last week, a snapshot. "Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith". So, a question I've been thinking about…Is the way of life I am choosing producing the outcome I desire? We need more leaders in the world today, fewer opinions. We need more leaders, fewer influencers. Oh yeah. This is the part of my sermon where I am a crotchety old man telling you that what you are seeing on your Reels is not real. This is the God's honest truth. The writer of Hebrews said, "Imitate their faith," but we live in a time where we are imitating their fake. So, consider the outcome.
I wonder what happened five minutes after they took that picture. I wonder what happened five minutes after they posted that. I mean, just five minutes. Not five years. Let's talk about five minutes after. One day in church I was so sick of preachers always trying to be perfect. "My family and I wake up every morning, quote Ephesians, pray, and sing the Beatitudes". I said, "Let me show you what this family is really like," and I showed one of our Christmas videos. It was so beautiful. "Welcome to Elevation. 'Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.'"
Then I showed the outtakes. Holly Furtick was one step short of having to be bleeped. What she was saying to those kids in those outtakes… Watch this. Outcome, outtakes. Nobody is showing you their outtakes. I have to get this across. I don't care if I have to say it every week. I'll be up here 75 years old, dragging my right leg behind me, talking about… What you're copying is cropped. It is only showing you so much.
A lot of the people we are emulating and imitating and talking like and captioning like… Do you know what's the weirdest thing? I thought we, as parents, were supposed to set an example for our kids, but now I see grown men and women trying to talk like a kid. It's cringey, y'all. It's cringey when you're a dad of three and you're still trying to show you've got it, you've got game. Do you know what you've got? You've got dependents. You've got bills to pay. You've got a mortgage. Grow up, man! That's over. "When I became a man, I put away childish things". I'm not talking about not having fun. I'm the goofiest dude in the world. But what I'm saying is a lot of times… Romans 12:2 is my favorite verse to explain this. It says, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind".
A lot of people will make the distinction between the pattern of this world and the renewing of your mind, but really, in the text, the juice of it is in two different words. It's conform and transform. Conform is something you can change. It's like an attitude or a posture. Transform is different. Transform is something that has to happen because of what's on the inside.
Since you have Christ inside of you now… Remember, you're not serving at a tabernacle built with human hands. You don't have a high priest who was selected from among men. You are not serving a shadow or a copy. You have a risen Savior who set an example for you so you can copy that. Since that is in you… The Spirit of God is in you, not the spirit of the world, not the spirit of worry. You get to reproduce that because it's on the inside. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So, what's in you has to come out, and that's why the writer of Hebrews says, "Remember the word of God that was spoken to you, and copy that in your heart. Copy that in your life". Oh, I forgot to read you the verse after that. Verse 8 says, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever".