I don't think I remember a time when I've enjoyed the Olympics more. I don't know what it is. They've been so fun. It may be just because we can back things up and stream them and watch them whenever we want, but it seems like every day there's been this moment of like, wow, can you believe that? Every day there's been something that I've texted my friends about. Did you see that 200 meter? Did you see that basketball game? It's been just so fun. And I've loved every day of it. And it's made me remember, actually one of the articles that Bianca read to me about the 100-meter dash reminded me that the last time the Olympics were in Paris, that was the Olympics that Chariots of Fire was made about. I don't know if you know that. Chariots of Fire is a story of two runners, one from England, one from Scotland. The one from England is a student at Oxford. And he always kind of felt, his name was Harold Abrams. He always felt like he was kind of on the outside because he was Jewish and wasn't allowed in a lot of the clubs and things. And so running became his identity. And he was worried that not enough people were seeing his identity. So he took on the role of writing about his own running and just called himself an anonymous miscorrespondent. So every time he won a race, he'd write an article for the Oxford paper. about his winning and he was excelling and made the Olympic team. The other one was a man by the name of Eric Little. Eric was a Scotsman, he was a Presbyterian, bless his heart. was a rugby player and he was fast. He was very, very fast. And his family thought that all of his running was a waste of time and he needed to be dedicating himself to Christ more. And there's a very dramatic scene when his sister Mary comes to him and says, you know, you're just, your mind's everywhere, Eric. I'm so worried about you. And he says, Mary, I've decided I'm going to go into missions. I'm going to be a missionary to China. And she's so happy. And he says, after the Olympics. And she gets depressed again. She's worried about him. And he says, I believe God made me for a purpose, for China. But he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure. And you see these two completely different people working their way up to the Olympic Games. And in the Olympics, Harold Abrams, the day before his big 100-meter dash, says to one of his friends, I've got a 4-meter lane and a 100-meter run to justify my existence. And even if I win, I don't think I will have done it. And you have Eric who runs a completely different race and one that he's not trained for. And as he crosses the finish line, you see him in his absolute ecstasy and joy, feeling God's pleasure. And what you have there is a perfect contrast of two people doing the same thing for opposite reasons. One is running out of self-righteousness. He is trying to justify his existence. He is trying to make himself feel complete, feel important, feel safe, feel like he has a place in the world. The other one is running out of his righteousness. He knows that his righteousness comes from his position in God's family. He knows that he's God's son and he knows that God smiles at him when he runs. And he's just running to feel God's smile. And I'll go ahead and ruin this 40-year-old movie for you. They both win. and one wins in absolute ecstasy and the other wins in melancholy, wondering where his life's going to go from here. We're studying this month in a series we call Frequently Asked Questions because you have the opportunity to text in questions to me and I'll do my best to answer them. We're studying things that shipwreck the faith. things that when people start out, they seem fine on the outside, they seem like they're doing well, they're in the church, they're growing, they're involved, they're active, but for whatever reason, at some point, their ship goes into the rocks and their faith is shipwrecked, Paul says in 1 Timothy. We're looking at different reasons why that happens. Last week we looked at bitterness, and this week we're going to look at what probably is the biggest reason, self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is not hypocrisy. Most hypocrites are self-righteous, but you don't have to be a hypocrite to be self-righteous. Self-righteousness is Bianca told me to say this very slowly. Self-righteousness is a frame of spirit that does not trust God's goodness and therefore, out of fear or out of a desire to control, tries to establish its own righteousness. Self-righteousness is a frame of spirit that flows out of fear. It flows out of a desire for control. It flows out of a distrust of God's goodness and forces us to put our trust in our own righteousness, in our own rightness, in our own success, in our own abilities. in anything but Christ. Please stand as we read this parable that Jesus taught about self-righteousness. He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and they treated others with contempt. Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus, God, I thank you that I'm not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I give tithes to all that I get. But the tax collector standing far off would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exhausts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exhausted. Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked him. But Jesus called them to him, saying, Let the children come to me. Do not hinder them. For to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." Thus far the reading of God's word. Amen. Like grass and all of our glories like the flowers of the field and the grass withers and the flowers fall, but not God's word. God's word stands forever. You may be seated. Self-righteousness is a frame of spirit that flows from fear and the desire to control everything. It flows from this fear, and the fear comes from distrust of God. So we're going to take that apart for a second. What do I mean? When I say distrust of God, I mean the belief that God is withholding. that he's not good, that he doesn't enjoy giving, that somehow there's a combination lock in heaven that we have to work. We have to do all the right things to get his safe open so that his blessings will come to us. And if we don't do things just right, then he's not going to bless us. If we don't do things just right, then he's going to let terrible things happen to us. And so we live kind of driven by this fear that we're not going to get things right. And that creates all kinds of problems. And we got to kind of take it apart from the beginning. At the beginning is we don't trust God because we don't think he's good. And that is a belief that you have had since you were the smallest of child, smallest child, when you began to get taught the rights and the wrongs, the goods and the bads of Christianity, the things you are supposed to do and the things you're not supposed to do, and how disappointed God's going to be with you if you do the wrong things. And if you do the right things, how happy God's going to be and how much He's going to bless you. And you already came into the world assuming that for some reason. I don't know why. But we all come into the world assuming that, and we're all trying to get the gold stars on the chart. There's just something about it. We've got to know that God's going to bless us. And we just think He doesn't want to. Last night I had all my kids around me for the first time since my birthday, actually, because Isaac's been gone all summer, Will's been gone all summer, so we were all back together. And I started talking to them about some things, and I said, you know, what I really want to do, I've already accomplished everything I wanted to accomplish, and I've already kind of bought everything I want to buy. So the only thing I really care about doing with my money for the rest of my life, which isn't that much, don't get that excited, is I want to build memories with y'all. I want to build memories with you. And so I want to, I said, I want y'all to think of like the best vacation you can think of. And let's try to put it together. So they started talking and I was thinking they would think things like, you know, let's go to the Grand Canyon together. And they started talking about Mediterranean cruises. And it's like, one of these is not like the other. And so they all came up with this idea, let's go to the Mediterranean, we can see Rome, we can see Florence, we can see Spain, blah, blah, blah. I just went, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm not taking you there. You haven't been that good. I didn't say that, but it's true. I think we think that about God sometimes. We think He dangles things in front of us. You know, that perfect family, that perfect job, that perfect relationship, and he whispers in the back of our ear, you're just not good enough to get it. I would have given that to you if you just hadn't. What? And we make him out to be an evil genius. And all of his blessings are little more than just taunts. All of his blessings are little more than just temptations, not temptations, but tortures. Look at what you could have had if you'd just been a little bit better. And he never quite gives it. And that is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is giving. The God of the Bible is pursuing. The God of the Bible, the only God who exists, by the way, is the God who comes after us in grace, who left heaven and took on the form of man and suffered and died for us, to find us, to come and get us. He is the opposite of withholding. He's the opposite of everything we assume about him. And believing that, that's why grace is the opposite of self-righteousness. Self-righteousness puts its trust in what I'm able to do. Grace accesses God through our weakness, through our sin. You find God in confession, you find God in repentance. Self-righteousness stands on what I'm able to do. It comes out of a fearful, distrustful frame of spirit. It's attractive to people. This is the thing you need to know about self-righteousness. It is very attractive because you can control it. You know how you've been this week, right? If I did the right things this week, God's on my side. If I didn't do the right things this week, God's against me. It is attractive to people who come from boundary-less lifestyles. People who come from very loose, immoral lifestyles and they want to be told what to do. I find that very attractive. And interestingly enough, it's very attractive to people from legalistic lifestyles who were raised with a lot of rules. And they love having rules because it feels like home to them. And so you have these kind of two groups of people who look completely different on the outside, but on the inside there's still that same distrust of God and this belief that if I could just be his servant, if I could just be a slave, if I could just follow the rules, then I'd be safe. what I've seen a lot of in my years in the ministry is this huge pendulum of people who are looking for, kind of growing in their faith, becoming Christians, people who grew up and just kind of charismatic, Pentecostal backgrounds. A lot of times as they start reading the Bible and the Lord actually converts them out. There's Christians over here, but not everybody over here is a Christian, right? A lot of times there's children that kind of rebel against this lifestyle, become real wild for a while, and then they'll get converted and they kind of spend about, They kind of spend about two or three years in the Reformed faith. We're kind of like a rest stop. And then they swing over to very legalistic traditions. And it's funny, they have this legalistic tradition that they rejected. And then there's kind of a Roman Catholic or a real liturgical, strict, even reformed traditions. It just feels at home to them, right? And here you have living by faith. Just the assumption that God loves you. Freedom. Freedom from the law, the Apostle Paul calls it. It feels weird. So we want to swing, a lot of times it's tempting to swing up here where people can tell us we're doing it right. It's attractive to people from boundary-less lifestyles, it's attractive to people from legalistic backgrounds, and it's very attractive to anxious people. to people who just are scared by nature, who just want that certainty that they feel like they never quite have. That's what it means to be self-righteous. It's just you put your faith, speaking religiously, your faith is in what you do. Your faith is just in what you do, it's how you perform. If you do it right, if you keep the rules, God's on your side. What's the harm in that? What's the harm in that? Well, first of all, first and most importantly, self-righteousness alienates you from God. You don't have intimacy with him. Your only relationship with him is through what you do. And so, you're always kind of wondering, have I done it right? And if I have done it right, why haven't I gotten what I feel like I deserve? That's where this oftentimes ends up in shipwreck. I watched this really stupid show a few months ago, and I'm not going to tell you the name of it, it's that stupid. But in it, this particular episode, has Dr. Channing, you remember her? She was Rizzo from Greece. And she's older now. So she's a mother, and her son's marrying an atheist. She's a very religious mother, and her son is marrying an atheist. And she will have none of that. And so, she plans this weekend out, way out in the woods, in a cabin in the woods, and she roofies her new daughter-in-law. She drugs her. Her and her husband kidnap her, take her out of the bed while she's drugged, take her to the hot tub and baptize her because she will not have an unbaptized daughter-in-law. She just won't have one. In the process, they scratch the girl's thigh on a rusty nail. and then put her in this nasty hot tub, so it gets terribly, terribly infected. The girl wakes up like, something happened to me in the middle of the night, I got a huge infection on my leg, and it gets bigger and bigger, and they end up taking her to the hospital, and they're afraid that she's gonna die, and she miraculously survives, and she comes out and she says, I'm a Christian now. I prayed, I prayed to God and I said, I said, if you'll save me from this, I'll serve you for the rest of my life. And so Rizzo drives back into town and goes to church. She finds her pastor and she tells him the story and he says, well, that's so wonderful. And she goes, uh-uh, I'm not coming here to brag or to celebrate. I'm coming here to resign. I'm turning in my two weeks' notice. I have served the Lord my whole life. I have given 10% of all my money. I have given way more than that of my time and my energy, and He never answers my prayers. This little tramp prays one time and gets what she wants? Uh-uh, I'm out. And that's the self-righteous heart, right? That's the older brother heart. You're throwing a party for this lost son? I'm out. I'm out. The older brother heart always wonders, why does somebody else get what they want and I don't get what I want? It's why are the unbelievers seem to have such a better life? Why are they happy and I'm never happy? Why won't God give to me what he gives them? It's that self-righteous heart that leads to shipwreck. That's usually the way it leads to shipwreck. It alienates you from God. It alienates you from other believers. The self-righteous heart has a very hard time fellowshipping with believers, especially from other churches. Because you see, the way that we know we're right with God is because we do everything right. And if I do everything right, and you do things differently, you must do everything wrong because we can't both be right and be different. So if my righteousness, if my confidence before God is in my theology and you don't share my theology, you must be an unbeliever. You must be wrong. You must be doing it wrong and I can't celebrate what you do. The biggest and most obvious difference between us and other churches is baptism. It's tempting for us to say, no, you do it wrong. I'm not justified by my theology of baptism. You know that, right? Someone whose faith is in grace, if your trust is in grace, and you know that God is gracious, and you know that you are a sinner, then you know that you're wrong about a lot of things. I believe in total depravity. I believe that I am a little bit wrong about everything. And I'm completely wrong about some things. I have to be. I'm not inerrant. So I know I'm accepted by grace, so everybody else is too. So you want to baptize that way? That's great. Maybe you're right. Let's celebrate it. But if I'm justified by being correct, then I have to reject everybody who's not just like me. That's where denominational pride comes. It doesn't come from joy in your theology. Denominational pride usually comes from fear that if I'm wrong, I may not be acceptable to Christ. It alienates us from God, it alienates us from other believers, it alienates us from enjoying the good things in creation. Colossians 2 says, don't listen to those who say, do not eat, do not drink, do not touch. It blinds you to your own sin because you just can't admit it. I can't admit that I'm broken about things if the way I do things is my justification. Look at the tax collector, I mean the Pharisee, what does he do? He takes joy, he takes pride, he puts his faith in the things that he does, in his tithes, in his fastings. He's blind to his own pride. He commits this hideous sin in the middle of his prayer, right? He commits a hideous sin in the middle of his prayer. He says, thank you that I'm not like this guy. That's pride. Jesus says the entire law is summed up in one sentence. Love your neighbors as you love yourself. Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind. And he doesn't show any love for this guy. He's only glad that he's not like this guy. He commits this hideous sin in the middle of his prayer and he doesn't even see it. He can't see it. If he sees his sin, if he allows himself to see it, then he's lost everything. It sets you up for terrible disappointment because if you can't admit small failures, They're going to stack up to become huge failures. And it's going to shipwreck your faith by setting you on the wrong course. What do I mean by that? I taught a teacher training a few years ago in Oklahoma City. It was for a classical school. They wanted me to come in. The headmaster wanted me to come in and teach on grace because he was too cowardly to do it. It was fun. I had a great time, actually. And so I was talking to them about, you know, God's just scandalous grace, forgiving sinners, and how to try to base their classroom on that. And they weren't having it. I mean, they weren't having it. And one woman just finally just raised her hand and said, if I taught this, my kids would just sin all the time. And I looked at her and said, your kids sin all the time. That's it. I mean, that's just facts. The question is, are they going to hide it from you or are they going to tell you? That's the only option here. Parents, you know that, right? Your kids are going to disappoint you. Bianca says you're not even a parent until your kids disappoint you. That's when it begins. Are they going to tell you or are they going to hide it from you? Those are the two options. Whether or not your kids sin is not an option. And if they're afraid to share with you the small failures, then they're just going to stack up until it becomes a huge failure. And then you've got shame and you've got public shame and you've got all those things that you dreaded have come true. And that's when it becomes shipwreck. That's when it becomes bitterness. So how do we protect ourselves from it? Self-righteousness, right? It comes from this distrustful, fearful frame of spirit that causes us to put our trust in ourselves instead of living by faith. Put our trust in the rules instead of living by faith. Put our trust in Babywise or whatever the new book is instead of living by faith. Books are helpful, you know what I mean. So what do we do to avoid them? What is the escape from self-righteousness? First of all, you have to assume you're already in it. You have to assume. If you assume, boy, I'm glad I'm not like that tax collector, or I'm glad I'm not like that Pharisee, you're just like the Pharisee. That's his prayer too, right? Assume you're already in it. Assume you're already in it. How do we daily get out of it? Usually it really hurts. Usually it really hurts. Now, the answer obviously, the answer to all my questions is repent. Repent and believe. So just do that and you'll be fine. But the reality is it's usually really painful. And it usually comes when the thing that you have put all your trust in fails. For me, it was fatherhood. I mean, I have known since I was 10 years old that I was going to be an awesome father. I was going to get that right. The reason why I was a bad runner, the reason why I lost the Pinewood Derby, the reason why I couldn't throw a baseball very far, the reason why I couldn't catch a football, it was all my father's fault. If he had just spent time with me, had nothing to do with my genetics, it actually was my father's fault, Not on the level I thought. It had nothing to do with genetics, coordination, being the smallest kid in the class by a good shot, but making up for it by also being the slowest and the clumsiest kid in the class. Had nothing to do with any of that, right? It was my dad's fault because he never spent any time with me and I was going to be a great dad and my kids were going to be perfect because of that. I mean, that's why I was a camp counselor in college, that's why I was a youth minister in college, that's why I was a youth minister in seminary. I was going to get this right. And so my kids came out like overcooked pancakes, you know, just burned pancakes. You know what I mean? Like you're so worried that you're going to flip it too soon that you never flip it, and it just burns to a crisp right there in front of you. That was my kids, right? I just overdid everything. Everything. And when it got to a point where I couldn't get through a day without spanking them or disciplining them, I got to a place where I came into the house one time and Bianca said, why did you yell at Brundage? And I said, I didn't. And he said, I went and found him, he was in his bedroom crying. I said, why are you crying? He goes, you yelled at me. And I said, when did I yell? He said, you told me to turn on the water. I was trying to plant some bushes. They all died too. But I said, buddy, I was just trying to get you to help me by turning on the water. And he goes, people shouldn't yell at people. And this reality just set in that I'd been so stern that I couldn't even ask my kids to turn on the water hose without hurting their feelings. And it was an ongoing failure, it wasn't a one-time thing. And as I failed at the thing I valued the most, I realized that I was the failure and I needed grace. And so right there at that place where I was the most prideful and the most certain, then I began to feel the most broken and I began to receive God's grace the most. And that's where my repentance from self-righteousness began. And it's probably where it's going to begin with you. The thing you value the most, whether it be your marriage, your job, your appearance, your success, you're going to be like Harold Abrams. You may win the race and then realize you're alone. And what did you sacrifice for it? You've got nothing. And usually that's where the place of repentance begins. And we begin by repenting of our distrust. We just go to the Lord and say, Father, I'm sorry, I just didn't trust you with my children, with my life, with my heart. I didn't trust you with my soul. I didn't trust you with my future. We repent of that distrust. And then at that very place, We begin to receive God's grace. God, be merciful to me, a sinner. God, be merciful to me, a sinner. That's the one who goes home justified. And I want you to know it does not end there. God's grace does not end with you baiting your chest, saying you're a sinner. It ends with your understanding that He doesn't want you to be an obedient slave. He wants you to know that you're His child. He wants you to live as His child. What does Galatians 4 say? I left it off the printer. He says, When the fullness of time had come, he sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to rescue those who were under the law, to secure our adoption as his children, as his sons. That's where it ends. That's where we want you to live. I don't want you to live banging your chest every day, be merciful to me a sinner, I'm a failure. I want you able to release that stuff. Let that stuff go. And live with the confidence. of a child. That's why we went ahead and added this text, right? Let the children come to me. Do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. I mean, how many children get up on their birthday or get up on Christmas morning wondering whether they were good enough to get anything? They just assume this stuff's for them, right? They don't walk into the living room going, I wonder if any of these toys are for me. They just open them because they're confident in their parents' love. And that's how He wants you to be. He just wants you to feel His pleasure. He enjoys you. Please pray with me. Father in heaven, I don't know why we have such slavish, scared hearts. We just can't trust that you like us. We can't trust that you're on our side. I pray, Father, you would free us from that and give us the grace to live as your children. I pray in Jesus' name, amen.