Leverage: A Life Without Regret

No one wants to live a life of regret, yet many get to the end of their lives and are filled with shame. Like the old man at eternity's gate, they put their face in their hands and weep. That doesn't have to be you. 

In the opening talk of our "Leverage" series, Pastor Blake uses the example of Esau to caution and challenge us. Esau prioritized the temporal over the eternal and traded what matters most for that which doesn't last. As a result, he was filled with regret and grief. However, if we reverse engineer the compromises of Esau by putting Jesus at the center, prioritizing the eternal over the temporal, and feeding the spirit over the flesh, then we can live our lives well by leveraging them for what matters most and lasts forever.

Mentioned Resources:

At Eternity's Gate by Vincent Van Gogh

The World Regret Survey

The Power of Regret by Daniel Pink

The Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So our scripture for today is going to be Hebrews 12, 16 through 17. It says, and make sure that there isn't any immoral or irrelevant person like Esau who sold his birthright in exchange for a single meal. For you know that later, when he wanted to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, even though he sought it with tears because he didn't find any opportunity for repentance. Hebrews 12, 16 through 17, this is the word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Awesome. Well, good morning, everyone. Man, I mean, if you if if you've laughed, if you've cried, it's been just a good full morning. So, man, Easter was beautiful, spring season is beautiful, so I thought I'd get up here and talk about regret. You know, thought it would just fit with what we were talking about. Uh so we are launching into a new series today called Leverage, How to Live a Life Without Regret. Regret is defined as a feeling of sorrow, disappointment, distress, or remorse about something that one wishes could be different. Anyone have any regrets in your life? Anyone just over the past four hours since you've been awake? You know, we all know those those car rides in the morning can get a little get a little get a little violent. But the reason we're launching into this series is is is simply because we don't want to live a life of regret, right? No one wants to live a life of regret. No one woke up and thought, man, I'd really love for the next for the next 50 years of my life to be spent in regret. I'd love to get to the end of my life and have regrets. No one thinks about that, no one feels that, no one desires that. And yet what happens to so many of us is regret, right? So many of us this week, we started out and you go, man, here's the type of man I want to be, here's the type of woman I want to be, here's the type of husband I want to be, here's the type of wife I want to be, here's the type of mom or dad I want to be, here's the type of friend I want to be, here's the type of employee I want to be. And then by the end of the week, you're filled with regret because you didn't embody what you say you want to be and what you wanted to do. You know, life has a lot of different types of regrets. Sometimes we have small regrets. Uh the things you're able to kind of look back on and laugh at a little bit, but still bring you a little bit of embarrassment. Something I kind of think about when I think about small regrets is my boy Scotty P. You know, it's a great, great scene from a movie where he's got, he's like, I got I got no regrets. And Mr. Miller goes, not even a letter, huh? Because it's a good old no regrets there. But you know, you have small regrets in your life. You have small things that you look back on and you go, man, I shouldn't have eaten that. I shouldn't have bought that. Or man, you look back at those old pictures and you go, I can't believe I wore that. You think back and you're able to kind of laugh at it now. They're smaller regrets, they're not that big in the grand scheme of things, but but you still have those regrets that you're kind of able to look back, laugh at, but you just kind of go, like, man, what was I thinking? But then we also know that we have big regrets. We have big regrets in our lives. These are the the things that you look back on and you weep over. You don't laugh about them, you weep over them. You want to and you you want to resist it, you want to ignore it, you want to avoid it. Like you don't even want to think about it too much because if you dwell on it too much, it'll just lead you into this place of despair. There's an organization called the American Regret Project. I know that that's probably a very hopeful job to be part of. But literally, they've they've surveyed thousands of people around the country and they try to do it in all kinds of different age ranges to really accurately reflect the population. And uh you can actually go to their website and read the regrets that people have. And I have a few of them that just kind of stuck out to me. Uh, the first one is a is a woman, she's 42 years old. She said, I wish I had learned how to better manage and budget money. And at first you go like, oh yeah, don't we all? But man, you think about maybe what's the pain behind that comment? You're 42 years old. Man, what does your life maybe look like? That you're at 42 years old going, like, why did I not manage and budget my money better? Are you missing rent? Are you 42, still can't, you just want to own a home, or you you don't want to be in debt? You're not able to take care of things the way that you want to, and so you just have this regret over the way you stewarded those early years, and you just wish. The second female, 66 years old, she said, I wish I had taken more risk and not always played it safe. I wish I'd taken more risk and not always played it safe. What kind of life maybe is she living right now, filled with that kind of regret? There's a man, age 56. He said, I regret lying about accomplishments to a mentor in order to impress him. 30 years later, I still think about it and regret it. A woman 75 years old. This one really stuck out to me. She says, I was too reactionary, judgmental, and not more motivated by love. I want to point out a word to you. Was she 75 years old? She sees the finish line ahead of her. She's looking back over her life, feeling like it's already over. She's going, man, I was. I was too reactionary, judgmental, and not more motivated by love. And it's all almost over. Another woman, 56 years old, she said, I damaged my family by having an affair with a friend. The family's broken, fallen apart. A man age 71 said, I've treated my wife and family poorly for 25 years because of my anger and my drinking. And then the last one was a man 51, said I regret that I ever stopped contact with my mother. And you think about maybe his age, 51 years old. Did he just lose his mother? Is she still around? Or did he lose any opportunity to reconcile? And now he's 51 years old, going, Man, I cannot believe I allowed that relationship to break. In his book, The Power of Regret, Daniel Pink categorizes regret. He says, a majority of regret that they found out through this study fits into four categories. He says the first one is foundation regrets. He said, Foundation regrets are those things where you think, man, if only I'd done the work. A lot of people feel this about education. Like they may be in their 30s or 40s and they're looking back and they're going, man, I wish I would have just, I wish I would have just put my head down, finished college, got the degree, did the thing. Or maybe it's a work opportunity or a job thing, and they think, man, I wish I'd just, I wish I could go back and just do the things, commit myself. I'm around a lot of a lot of athletes often. And uh, I mean, there's so many of them that think back and go, man, I wish I would have just worked as hard as I knew I could have. Who knows how good I could have been? What opportunities maybe could have been there? If only I'd done the work. Foundation regrets. The second one are moral regrets. We're obviously familiar with moral regrets. And and these, these, these, these kind of fitness categories, they go, man, if only I'd done the right thing. Like they look back over their life and they see these moments where maybe that relationship fractured or they crossed a boundary or they did something that they knew they shouldn't have done, and they look back over it and they go, man, if only I'd done the right thing. If I could just go back to that moment and do the right thing and it haunts them. The third one is boldness regrets. And they think, man, if only I'd taken the risk. If only I'd taken the risk. You hear so many. If you ever sit across the table from an older person who's maybe got fewer years in front of them than they do and more years behind them, you know, they you sit down and you hear a lot of these. Man, I wish I would have. I wish I would have taken that risk. I wish I would have done that thing. I wish I would have tried to start that company or or start that business. I wish I would have. I wish I would have. I wish I would have. Boldness regrets. And the final one is connection regrets. And these are the ones that say, man, if only I'd reached out. If only I'd reached out. Or maybe in our modern moment, it's if only I'd not ended that relationship. Family fracturing is at the highest level it's been in recorded history for us, where sons and daughters are leaving their families and cutting off contact with mothers and fathers, and mothers and fathers are cutting off contact with sons and daughters. And I think I can't help but think that maybe they're going to end up with some connection regrets. You know, no one wants to live a life of regret. And yet many people do. It's not what you want for yourself, and it's not what I want for you, and it's ultimately not what God wants for you. In the text that Mara just read, we we hear a story out of Hebrews about a man by the name of Esau. And we kind of want to use his story this morning to try to look at and do an do an anatomical study of regret. How do you get there? Why does it happen? And then hopefully reverse engineer that to say, man, how do we, how could, how can we potentially live a life without regret? Have less regret in front of us than we do behind us. And then we kind of want to finish our time asking for all of us in this room who already have regrets. Can we redeem our regrets? In in Hebrews, the book of Hebrews, uh, we don't really know who the author is, but we we have some insight into the audience. The audience is Jewish Christians who kept wanting to revert back to old tendencies because of the challenge of the Christian life. So these are people who were who were who were Jewish people who had encountered Jesus and had chosen to become disciples or followers of Jesus. And now, because of all the things that were now coming on their life, the temptation that they were now facing, the persecution that they were now facing, they were constantly being tempted to revert back into old tendencies, to go back into old ways because it was easier. They were tempted to get their eyes off of Jesus and his eternal promise, caving to the immediate pressures of ease and simplicity. And the book of Hebrews is an exhortation for them to go all the way in with Jesus, to not hold back or miss out on all that God has for them, not to be like the people of Israel who had divided hearts and constantly drifted away from the God who loved them and rescued them. You see in the book of Hebrews, they they constantly are bringing the Old Testament to bear, and they're going, man, remember this person, remember this person. And sometimes it's good, and sometimes it's like our text today, where it's a lesson to learn from something they did wrong. And in this text, the writer uses a visceral Old Testament passage to communicate this point. Esau is the Old Testament Judas, and his story is one of forfeiting his future for nothing. In the New Testament, we see Judas turn Jesus over to the Roman government and to the chief priest for 30 pieces of silver. And after Jesus is arrested and he and Judas realizes what's happening, he goes back and he tries to give them back the money and take back what he had done, what he had traded in, the Son of God, for 30 pieces of silver. And he was filled with all this regret that he ultimately committed suicide as a result of the regret that he felt. And Esau is kind of an Old Testament version of Judas, someone who was filled with regret because they traded everything in for nothing. Esau was the oldest son of Isaac, who is the son of Abraham. And so this is the patriarchal family of promise. If you go back into Genesis, God makes his foundational promise and covenant with Abraham. And he tells Abraham, You are going to be the father of many nations. You're going to change the world. Your family, through your lineage, you're going to change the world. It's called the Abrahamic covenant. And this legacy was passed down from generation to generation to generation. We just sang about it in the same God. I'm calling on the God of Jacob who does whatever through generations. Sorry, I don't know the lines right there. I really committed that too early and didn't know where I was going. But we mentioned in the song, Abraham's a big deal, his family's a big deal. So Esau is the grandson of Abraham, and he's got a brother named Jacob. And so the story that the writer of Hebrews is really coming out of is a two-parter in Genesis 25 to Genesis 27. I kind of want to walk through it really briefly so that you understand kind of the foundation of where the writer's coming from. So in Genesis 25, we see we see a little bit about Esau and Jacob. So Esau and Jacob once again are the sons of Isaac, grandsons of Abraham, and they're very different sons. The text tells us that Esau was a skilled hunter and his father loved him. It goes on to tell us a lot about the fact that he was really hairy, and I mean, just really giving us a really good description of Esau. It tells us that Jacob was not very hairy and his mother loved him. And so, what a description. So you have one daddy's boy and you have one mama's boy. And and they had a little bit of a rivalry that was going to follow them around for the rest of their life. But in Genesis 25, the text says this, starting in verse 27, it says, The boys grew up, talking about Esau and Jacob. And Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country. While Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents, Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob. Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country famished, and he said to Jacob, Quick, let me have some of that red stew. I'm famished. That's why he was also called Edom, which means red. Jacob replied, First, sell me your birthright. So, quick pit stop, what is a birthright? So a birthright in this moment refers primarily to the legal and familial privilege that generally belong to the firstborn son in Old Testament culture. So you see, kind of throughout the text, you'll see you'll see the lineage be read, and most often it's it's it's it's naming the oldest boy. And the oldest boy was received the birthright, received kind of the familial and legal privileges of the family. They got authority, they got influence, they got land, they got resources, and this came through their birthright. It encompassed inheritance rights, leadership of the family, and often a double portion of property. And so Jacob has this stew, Esau is starving, and he says, Okay, I'll give you some stew if you give me your birthright. If you give me your inheritance, you give me leadership, you give me the property. And Esau says, Look, I'm about to die. What good is the birthright to me? Some of y'all are like, I'm this dramatic. I'm this dramatic. Ever been on a road trip with somebody who's like this? I'm about to die. But Jacob said, Swear to me first. So Esau swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew. And then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank and then got up and left. And then this is the text. So Esau despised his birthright. Esau despised his birthright. Genesis 27, a couple chapters later, something else happens between these brothers. Isaac is essentially about to die, and it's time for him to bless his sons. And starting at verse 33 of chapter 27, it says, Isaac trembled violently, and said, so so what so what happens in this in this moment is just before this, is that Esau has gone out to hunt and he's gone for the day. And Rebecca takes Jacob and says, I want you to get the bl Esau's blessing, not Esau. And so she says, Here, put on some of this animal skin so that so that as your father touches your arm, he'll know, he'll feel the hair and think you're Esau. And so they go through this entire plot of how to trick Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing. And the reason this is so important is a blessing in the biblical sense is a pronouncement of favor or well-being that that carries spiritual, material, and relational benefit. And what would happen is the patriarch of the family would lay their hand on them. They would be these these patriarchs are spiritual figures and they would bless them, invoking divine favor, protection, prosperity, or leadership. And a lot of times the blessing was actually more important than the birthright because it came with divine favor. And ultimately you were getting a blessing from your father to say, I approve of you. And what's mine is yours. And instead, Jacob steps in and he steals the blessing from Isaac, who couldn't see. And so they took advantage of Isaac in order to receive the blessing. And so Esau comes in, and the text says, Isaac trembled violently and said, Who was it then that hunted game and brought it to me? I ate it just before you came before before you came, and I blessed him, and indeed he will be blessed. And when Esau heard his father's words, he burst out with a loud and bitter cry and said to his father, Bless me, me too, my father. But he said, Your brother came deceitfully and took your blessing. And Esau said, Isn't he rightly named Jacob? Which means cheater. Some of you who named your kid Jacob just said, What? This is the second time he was taken advantage of. He has taken advantage of me. He took my birthright, and now he's taken my blessing. And then he looks at his father and he says, Haven't you reserved any blessing for me? And his father goes on to say, There's nothing. There's nothing for you. And so Esau, in this text in Hebrews, the person is saying, Don't be like Esau, who lost everything for nothing. What happened to Esau? Well, the text in Hebrews says, make sure there isn't any immoral or irreverent person like Esau. So he's connecting us to something. He's saying, He's saying, Man, Esau was immoral and he was irreverent. That's why what happened to him happened to him. And ultimately what we see is three shifts of Esau that happened to him. Is first and foremost, he put himself in the place of God. He put himself as the center of his life instead of God. When the scriptures talk about him being irreverent, what they're talking about is that ultimately he didn't have God at the center. He had himself at the center. And so rather than God being the centerpiece of his life that everything else oriented around and was built upon, he put himself in the center. And what happens in all of our lives is you're born with yourself at the center. Have you noticed this with your own kids, right? Like your kids, even though they're part of a team, they're part of a family, they're not thinking about you, they're not thinking about the team, they're not thinking about the family, they're thinking about themselves, right? They put themselves at the center. And we're born with kind of this inclination to put ourselves at the center. And then if no one calls that out in us, if no one exposes that to us, if no one, if no one, if no one points that out in our lives, if the Holy Spirit doesn't illuminate our lives and give us a revelation to see what we've done and who we are and how we're living, we go on living our lives with ourselves at the center. And this has an incredible cost to us. And we become self-defined and entitled people. One of the phrases that we use, we used it last week at Easter, is we're just not God conscious. He's just not involved in our mindset. He's not involved in our thinking, he's not involved in our planning. And I think a lot of times, this is where it gets exposed for a lot of us who are Christians or claim to be followers of Jesus, is that we say that about ourselves, and yet how involved is Jesus? How much is he at the center of everything that you plan to do and everything that you do? Right? Is he at the center of everything? Is he at the foundation of everything? Or do you start getting out a checklist of pros and cons and thinking through your own kind of personal mindset? Do you start, do you rush to get advice from other people or to look at YouTube videos or think through certain things or read different books and yet never actually place Jesus at the center to go, what do you want me to do? Who do you want me to be? Where do you want me to go? That our lives are just not oriented around him. We're not God conscious. We're thinking about ourselves, we're thinking about what we want, we're thinking about what we desire to. And this lack of God consciousness played placed Esau at the center and it and it led him into these horrible consequences because he just wasn't thinking about God. He wasn't thinking about, wasn't thinking about what he wanted for him or where he wanted to take him or who he wanted to be or how he was forming him. And this leads to a personal downfall in our lives. Because if you think about it, if you put yourself at the center, what do you do? How do you make decisions? What begins to be the inspiration of how you think and how you operate? What you desire, what you think, what you feel. It becomes your standard operating procedure with yourself at the center. And so it tells us that Esau is irreverent. And a lot of times you look at this and you just you think about this life that's just a wreck full of sin, full of horrible things. And it's not. It's just someone who doesn't put God at the center and isn't conscious about him and what he wants and what he desires. A lot of times we put ourselves in really bad positions when we paint these, when we paint these really chaotic pictures of what it means to be ungodly. We think, oh, ungodly people, that just means that they're full of sin and full of evil and full of horrible things, and their life is full of darkness. And it's going, no. It just means they don't have God at the center and they put themselves there. You can be really ungodly and really well behaved. You can be really ungodly and really religious. You can be really ungodly and be a great church attender. You can be really ungodly and serve on a church team. You can be ungodly and pastor a church. People do it all the time. They take their own desires and their own insecurities and their own brokenness and they place themselves at the center and they begin to create a world around them to try to resolve and deal with the issues inside of them. And they look at everybody and everything else going, I need you to heal me, to fix me, to satisfy me. And we become just these natural standard operating narcissists in our own lives. Where we put ourselves at the center and God is over on the outskirts, and we visit him when it's convenient. So he puts himself in the place of God. Second thing that he does as a result of this is he puts the temporal over the eternal. One of the things I want you to notice in that in that Genesis text is uh in Genesis chapter 25, is we have this huge chunk of text at the top where this where this exchange is happening between Jacob and Esau. And Jacob's trying to sell him and pitch him and get him to sell his birthright to him for a bowl of stew. And then I want you to notice they finally come to this agreement. And then and then in verse 33, in verse 34, it says, Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate it, he drank it, he got up, he left. Notice how quick that is. Notice how fast that was? They go through all of this argument, trying to get his birthright, the thing that's most important, the thing that's going to determine his legacy, the thing that the Thing that secures his future. And he says, He says, Man, I'm hungry, I'm starving. And so he trades his future for a bowl of siou. And it says, He ate it, he got up, he left. That's how quick it happened. How many of us, the regrets in our lives, you look back on and you go, you go, Oh my gosh. I can't believe I did that, or I sacrificed that, or I crossed that boundary, or I did that thing, and what I got was 30 seconds of peace. 30 seconds of satisfaction. It fulfilled me for a moment. And now it's this wound in your life that you carry around. And Esau placed the temporal over the eternal. Notice throughout the Old Testament, God is referred to as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. Imagine if he doesn't forfeit his birthright or trade his blessing, and he's the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and Esau. And literally the way that God would announce and pronounce and define himself changed because Esau prioritized the temporal over the eternal. And what happens to us is we collapse into the moment in our lives and our circumstances begin to dictate everything about our lives. And what God wants to do is he wants to give you more vision where you're able to zoom out over your life to look at things in the scheme of the eternal, to see what God has for you, what God wants for you, what God promises to you. And yet you get sucked into the moment, you collapse into the moment, and you end up trading the eternal for the temporal. And Esau sacrifices generational blessing. Sacrifices. Imagine, imagine what could have happened for his future children and his grandchildren if he doesn't trade his birthright or his blessing. We see Esau live the rest of his life angry and bitter because of a moment where he sacrificed everything for nothing. He put the temporal over the eternal. And when scripture talks about the flesh, all it's talking about is you have these natural desires. It's actually kind of taking us back to almost like you have these animalistic desires that are just natural to your body. Like if you just if you just pay attention to your body, your body just feels things, desires things, craves things, wants things. And what God calls us to do is to have control over ourselves and over our bodies, to have self-control. In the Old Testament, Cain and Abel, Cain kills his brother Abel. And and and God confronts Cain and He goes, Cain, sin is crouching at your door and you need to be master over it. And there's so many of us that there are these desires, there are these cravings, there are these things that are constantly beating on the door of our lives, and God is going, you have to have mastery over that. But when you put the desires of your flesh over the longings of your spirit, you cave to the pressures of your animalistic desires. And you become less than what you're meant to be. What makes you uniquely human is that you don't operate according to instinct. You don't operate, you're not enslaved to the nature of your body. That's what makes you uniquely human, is that you can have control, self-control over those things. You can actually choose to submit. You can say, feelings, submit, emotions submit, desires, submit. You can actually begin to have a little bit of control where you form those things and shape those things to be, to desire what you want them to desire and what you want them to do. And ultimately, this is what the Holy Spirit wants to do to come in and change our desires, to change our heart, where we desire the things that we didn't used to desire, where we want the things that we didn't used to want, where we have vision for things that we didn't have to use vision for. And what this ultimately means is that we're enslaved. When the flesh is over the spirit, you're enslaved to what you want and what you feel. Enslaved to it. You can't get past it. And what you need to know is that God has actually created us as desire-oriented creatures. Because a lot of people they hear this and they go, okay, what I know what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna shut my heart off and I'm not gonna have any desire. And God goes, no, no, no, no, no. You're a desire-oriented creature. Like God created you to desire. Why? Because you're made in the image of a God who desires. He wants things, he desires things, he loves, he has affections, and God created you in his image to be the exact same way. But we what we don't do is we don't take the time to get down into the depth of our soul to figure out what are we genuinely longing for, and we settle instead for bodily or fleshly desires. So, so instead of drilling down to the thing beneath the thing, when you settle for that thing, when you choose to just gratify the desires of your flesh with something easy, scrolling on your phone, distracting, numbing yourself, whatever it may be, pornography, shopping, Amazon, whatever it may be, where you get that little bit of release. Have you ever taken the time to go, what am I really longing for? What am I really longing for? Well, my flesh craves that. What am I really longing for? Am I longing for intimacy? Am I longing for connection? Am I longing to be known? Am I longing to feel safe? Am I longing for security? Am I long- and when you start drilling down and you get to the thing beneath the thing, you start to realize your soul has longings that are meant to be satisfied and gratified by Jesus and Him alone.

SPEAKER_01 27:19

But instead, you don't question, you don't dig, you don't mine, you settle, and you react and respond.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

And you trade eternal spiritual inheritance for momentary relief and pleasure. And what's interesting about this, why this is so important, is that the same shifts that Esau makes is the same is the same shift that our culture has made. A great way of thinking through Esau is actually to think about secular culture. Secular culture does the exact same thing. What it does is a lot of people think about culture and they think, oh, what the culture wants to do is they just want to make God wrong or make God evil or make God bad. No, what they want to do is they want to just remove God from your framework of thinking. They don't want to think anything about him, they don't want him to be anywhere in the equation. They just want you to put yourself at the center and move him to the outskirts. You know, I talked a few weeks ago about the Church of Satan. I know, I know it's crazy. Some of y'all are like, you talked about what? But what's interesting is people actually think that the Church of Satan wants you to worship Satan. And they actually don't believe in a literal Satan. They say what they want is for you to place you at the center. That's their goal, is for you to place you at the center, to worship yourself, to worship your life, to prioritize yourself over everything else. And that's what's interesting is Satan loves that. That's the same thing Satan wants to do. Notice that the enemy doesn't prowl around throughout the text saying, worship me, worship me, worship me. He just says, Don't listen to God. That's all he says. When he's in the garden and he's talking to Eve, did God really say that? God didn't really say that. You don't have to worry about him. Eve, it's about you. Take care of yourself. He doesn't say, he doesn't tell Eve, hey, come follow me, come worship me, come desire me, come submit to me. He just goes, no, Eve, he's not gonna take care of you, just focus on yourself. That's all he does. And now we have this modern culture that has the exact same vision. And what's happening is it's just it's distorting our vision and it's forming us into something that we were never meant to be. And you're gonna face the exact same temptation as Esau. You're gonna face the same temptation to place yourself at the center, move God to the outskirts. You're gonna face the same temptation to place the temporal over the eternal. You're gonna face the exact same temptation to place flesh instead of spirit. To listen to yourself, to ignore God, to put yourself at the center, move God to the outskirts, and to see your life become chaotic and broken and you live a life of regret. And notice, notice, there's like you don't hear this and go, man, that's inherent, like that's just evil, it's just wrong, it's just terrible. No, it's just small shifts. That's how the enemy does it. It's just small shifts. He's slick enough to know that what he doesn't do is come out and tell you some outright lie that's absolutely outrageous and egregious. He twists God's words just a little bit. That's what he does. When he tempts Jesus in the desert, and he's trying to get, he's trying to get Jesus to do the same thing that he did to Esau. He's trying to get Jesus to trade away his spiritual inheritance, trade away his destiny, trade away his calling for the sake of temporal urgency and desires. And what does he do? He quotes Scripture to Jesus. He quotes the truth to Jesus. But he doesn't quote the full truth, he quotes a half-truth. He says, you know, Jesus isn't as said, and then Jesus says, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, but it's also said. It's also said, it's also said, it's also said. So what the enemy does is he doesn't tell you some bold-faced lie that doesn't have any, that you don't have any chance of believing. He tells you just enough truth to hook you, to lean you in, and then for you to turn your back on everything that God has for you. Self over God, temporal over eternal, flesh over spirit. You know, in Romans chapter 1, when Paul describes the degradation and downfall of society, this is what he describes. He says that they become self-defined entitled. What he literally describes is they were godless and thankless. They just didn't think about God. They lived their lives out of reaction and response, and they just didn't think about God. Didn't respond to him, didn't thank him, didn't put him at the center. And what happens is there's this downward spiral of our lives and downward spiral of society as a result. And what I'm trying to get you to understand is that Satan's great scheme is to rob you of your spiritual inheritance, your joy, your vitality, your passion, your vision, your ability and capacity to lead and serve, your intimacy with God in the secret place. But he does this bit by bit with modern pleasure and short-term reward. So it feels like you're winning in the moment when in actuality he's bleeding you out slowly. And it's a series of small shifts that make you get rid of God, lose your eternal vision, suck you into constantly responding and reacting to the immediate and urgent, namely your selfish ambitions, pleasures, and desires, and inevitably leading to tremendous long-term consequences. Towards the end of his life, Vincent Van Gogh painted one of his more famous paintings, and it's called At Eternity's Gate. In 2018, they actually released a movie based on Vincent Van Gogh with this same title, At Eternity's Gate. And the point of this painting is it's this man who's at the end of his life, and he's sitting by a fire, and all he can do is put his face in his hands and weep.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

Because he's filled with regret as he sits at Eternity's Gate. And what I want to tell you this morning is that you don't have to live that life.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

This does not have to be you when you're at Eternity's Gate. This does not have to be you when you get to the end of your life. That's what God wants for you is not for you to have your face in your hands as you weep over the life that you unfortunately lived. What he wants for you is to look with a lot of joy and satisfaction over the life that you got to live, over the life that you chose to live. The life that you lived with Jesus and for Jesus. The life that you live that's leaving an eternal legacy and ripple effect, the life that you live that's leaving a generational ripple effect through your kids and through your grandkids or through the people that you've impacted, your spiritual children. You don't have to live a life of regret. This doesn't have to be you. I think it's important for us to acknowledge that there's a difference between worldly regret and godly repentance. And I think what God wants us to know this morning is that regret isn't enough. What he really wants for you is repentance. Regret isn't enough. God wants repentance. Throughout the book of Hebrews, there's so many times that the author's trying to get them to see that there's that there's a cost and there's and there's a downfall to the way that they choose to live their lives. He even tells them in Hebrews chapter 10, he says, if we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth. So this is a person who sits in the church and they have the knowledge of the truth. They hear the preaching, they read the books, they sing the songs, they know the things. And he says, he says, but if they deliberately keep on sinning, even though they've received knowledge of the truth, he's saying there's no sacrifice for sins. Why? Because they're showing by their life that they don't actually trust in Jesus. And so he's trying to give them a warning of going, man, if you continue to live your life in a way that doesn't have God at the center, you're proving that you're not something that you claim to be. And he's calling them, put God back at the center. Be who you actually claim to be. He says, How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot? He's saying there's one thing when someone, when someone doesn't follow Jesus out of naive out of naivete or they or out of ignorance. But he says, how much more out of the person who actually puts themselves underneath the teaching of the word, puts themselves in the context where they're receiving over and over and over again, and yet they still choose day by day to reject Jesus in their life. He's saying, which one's more hardened of heart? The one who's there and hears and listens, but constantly rejects and walks away? Or the person who never hears and drifts away. Say, man. And so he's this is why the writer of Hebrews is constantly saying, guys, keep going. Keep going, keep leaning in. Don't be like Esau. Don't be the one that deliberately keeps on walking away from Jesus. That you've heard the good news and it's enough to have heard it that you settle for a life that's not the one that He has for you. The life that Christ died to give you. Say, no, no, no, no, don't settle. Don't settle. In Hebrews chapter 2, they say, pay the most careful attention so that we don't drift away. Say, man, keep watch over your soul, keep watch over your life. Why? Because if you don't, you're just gonna drift. You're just gonna cave to the to the pressures of this culture and you're just gonna drift away. You're gonna look up one day and go, How did I get here? And you go, man, you just drifted because you stopped keeping watch. And the reality is, some of you right now are making decisions that you will regret. You are living a life that you will regret. That if you keep going the direction that you're going and doing the things that you're doing, you will be the man at eternity's gate, the woman at eternity's gate with your face in your hands and you're weeping. Because you gave up your spiritual inheritance and you let life pass you by. Regret isn't enough. God wants repentance. Why? Because he wants a change of your life, a reorientation of your heart and a redirection of your life. Hebrews chapter 12, just before this passage on Esau, the writer says, Let us lay aside every weight and sin that so easily entangles, let us run with endurance the race set before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. Saying, Don't be like Esau, who traded everything. He's saying, No, no, fix your eyes on Jesus, run with endurance, lay aside every weight and sin that so easily entangles. Keep your eyes on him and go get after it. Don't drift. Don't be like Esau. Run after him. Keep your eyes on Jesus. The pioneer and the perfecter of our faith. And notice what he says. He says there's weight and then there's sin. That some of you, you have sin in your life. Like these are things that that God hates and you know God hates. That you know God wants better for you. He calls you to a different kind of life, he calls you to a different kind of standard, and yet you and yet you're choosing to submit to that, choosing to submit to a yoke of slavery, choosing to remain in bondage. But then he also says there's also just weights. And these things aren't necessarily inherently sinful, but they're stuff that are just holding you back and keeping you from what God has for you. Like, man, spending four hours on your phone may not necessarily be sinful, but it's probably a wait. It's probably a wait. Like, man, there are things in our lives that it might not necessarily be outright sinful, but it's holding you back from the best that God has for you. And what he's saying is, like, man, what it means to keep close watch over your life, what it means to throw aside those weights and sins that's so easily entangled is to take inventory of your life and to go, man, what's keeping me from the best that God has for me? And then going, I want to attack all those things that are keeping me from the best that God has for me.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

All of it. It's gonna look different for every single one of us.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

So as we start to move towards the end, how do we avoid living a life of regret? How do we live a life without regret? I think it's simple. I think you just reverse engineer what Esau did and what our secular culture is trying to do to us. Is that you move from self to God. You put God at the center and you move away from yourself. It doesn't mean that you that you stop being mindful of who you are or what you need. You're still human, you still have limitations, you still have brokenness, you still have needs, you still have longings. But you don't put yourself at the center of your life, put God at the center of your life because He gets to He gets to dictate how we how we live our lives and how we pursue satisfaction for our longings. There's so many of us that simply because we haven't trusted God to satisfy our longings, we've settled for things that are less than his best. And Jesus is going, how about you have the audacity to just trust that I'll actually take care of you? And maybe I'll prove it to you that I can and that I will if you'll just let me. If you'll stop going to these other things or going to these other people or settling for these other options, and you actually go to me and allow me to lead you, to take care of you, to help you. Maybe you'll find out that I actually can and I actually do. You begin to orient every area of your life around God, your family around God, yourself around God, your work around God. Everything in your life begins to orient around him. He becomes the son of the solar system. He's at the center. He's not a priority list and he's at the top. He's the son of the solar system. He's at the very middle and at the very center of everything that revolves around it. So that everything you do is motivated and inspired by him. You have a godly vision for everything, a godly vision for parenting, a godly vision for vocation, a godly parenting for being a neighbor, a godly vision for how you attend church, a godly vision for absolutely everything. The second thing is you move from temporal to eternal, you get vision for your life. You get vision back. So many of us, we've just been so chained by burden and circumstance. You're so locked in. You're enslaved to burden and circumstance, and you've just lost vision of the eternal reality of what Jesus promises for you. And you just got to get vision back. You got to see the eternal over the temporal. John Wesley once said, I judge all things only by the price they shall gain in eternity. What if you live your life that way? Is that worth my time? Is that worth my investment? And your first question is going, what price will it have in eternity? Am I going to spend my life on that? What price will it have in eternity? Will it burn at the end or will it last? Philippians 3, Paul said, I count it all, all loss, for the sake of knowing Christ. For the sake of him. And it's knowing that Jesus sees everything and he's going to reward us based on what he sees and what he knows, not others. It doesn't matter what people say about you in this life if you stand before Jesus and you're the weeping man at eternity's gate. What matters is that you realize that this little moment that we're in right now is this big compared to the grand scheme of eternity. And you don't want to sacrifice this for this. And then lastly, you move from the flesh to the spirit. You actually prioritize your soul. It doesn't mean you ignore your body, but it means you prioritize your soul. You begin to live a life of deeper formation. When Paul talks about the flesh and the spirit in Romans, he he paints this picture of starving the flesh and feeding the spirit. That your body's going to continue to desire and want things, and you need to tell it no and say yes to the spirit. And you have the power to do that. If you're in Christ and you have the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit desires Jesus more than anything else. And if you say no to the flesh, your body desires something, you say no to it, you say yes to the spirit. This is why fasting is such a huge thing. Is when you fast, when you actually say no to food, when you actually say no to things that your body saying, I need that, and you actually say no. I'm going to master over you and say yes to the spirit. I'm going to say yes to more of Jesus and no to more of what you're telling me that I need. And you begin to get mastery over your body and over the desires of your flesh. When your body starts to reach and respond and go for the phone, because that's what your natural inclination is to do, you can say no. When you're alone in the middle of the night and you're anxious and you start to run to that comfort thing rather than to prayer, you can actually tell your body no and yes to Jesus. But you have to put the spirit over the flesh. This is one of the reasons that in Hebrews chapter, this is why, this is why the gathering and why community is so important, is because you are a terrible accountability partner for yourself. Have you noticed that? You're really bad at holding yourself accountable. Like one, for I am, I'll just be honest, I am bad at this. Okay. Maybe you're sitting there going, like, I'm actually solid. I'm like, okay, ask somebody next to you. But but like for me, I get really inspired in moments. I mean, I'm I can I heavy inspiration. I have moments where I'm just like, oh my gosh, throwing caution to the wind, my life is about to be, I'm about to be the most fit, healthy, yoked person on the planet. But it's like 2 a.m. when that happens. You know? And then the alarm clock goes off at 5:30 and it's like, get up, work out. And I'm like, no, fam, appreciate it. I'm gonna go spend time with the Lord in the bed with my eyes closed. I'm gonna meditate on his word day and night. And you just you stink at holding yourself accountable, right? This is why community and gathering is so important. In Hebrews chapter 10, he actually says, Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. Let us consider how we may spur one another one. Another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day approaching. Why is this so important? Why are communities so important? Why is why is being invested this in this so important? Because have you noticed that if you go without people like this or moments like this, the world doesn't have a good hap, it doesn't have the habit of telling you to focus on God. It doesn't have the habit of stirring your soul up, stirring yourself up to love and good works, does it? And so what you do is you have this reorienting thing once a week or in your community or or when you're walking day by day with the people that you're in relational discipleship with, and you have these people who are constantly saying, keep your eyes on him, keep your eyes on him, keep your eyes on him, because you know day by day by day you have a tendency to take your eyes off of him, put yourself in the center, and be enslaved to the temporal over the eternal. And yet you have these people that go, hey, hey, keep your eyes up. Keep your eyes up. This is why we need each other. You don't have to live a life filled with regret. Jesus wants to save you. For some of you, he has saved you. The Spirit wants to fill you. The Father wants to lead you and guide you, and God wants to lead you and guide you to a life of flourishing impact, joy, and legacy. But I want to talk to the people in the room who are currently filled with regret and you don't know what to do with it. That even as we're talking, memories are popping into your head. And you don't know what to do with the regrets that you have. Maybe you're sitting there and literally your your life is currently in shambles around you. Because of things you did or you didn't do, things you said or you didn't say. You know, there's a couple of common common ways that people deal with regret. The first is that they is that they try to resist it and remain ignorant of it. They try to ignore it. You've done some you've done some things in your life and you just try to avoid it. You don't remember it, don't think about it, just get away from it. And what happens is you begin to live a delusional life. A life that's that's avoidant of the of the things that you've done, you just you just try to get away from it and get over here and you begin to live out of a delusion, something that's not true. You begin to build a life around you that's that's based on based on a false reality. Because you just want to ignore the pain of your life. Then there's some of us that we actually find our identity in it. Some of you in this room, you've done things that you regret, and it's literally become the defining thing of your life. It controls you. And you've become weak and you've become small, you don't believe God, you don't trust Him, you don't take risks because of who you think you are. And it's become an identity, and this leads to despair. Just despair. If all you are is the worst thing you've ever done, that leads to a life of despair. But I think the invitation this morning is to surrender. To surrender your regret. And this leads to redemption. You don't have to be defined by the things that you've done, the things that you haven't done. You know, regret is part of what makes us human. You don't need to ignore it, you need to acknowledge it. For some of us, we have things in our lives that we have refused to acknowledge, and you need to acknowledge it. Maybe it's something you need to take responsibility for. Because the reality is that we should feel regret when we do something that is regrettable. It's something that makes us uniquely human. When a lion attacks an antelope, he doesn't feel bad about it. But when a person crosses a boundary, you should regret it. When you do something you know that's not what you should do, or it's not who God has made you to be, you should have regret because you've done something that is regrettable. You should feel regret, but you don't have to be owned by regret. It doesn't have to become the story of your life or the defining characteristic of your identity. The gospel is, the good news of the gospel is that when Jesus went to the cross, he took on all that you've ever regretted so that he could flip the script and free you from condemnation. And what the writers of the New Testament say is that they actually begin to boast in their weakness. They begin to boast in the things that the enemy used to use to condemn them and keep them chained. They begin to boast in them. Why? Because they're now free from them. They know it's not who they are, they know it doesn't have power over them, it doesn't define their life, it doesn't control or dictate their future. It doesn't have to have to be their destiny. And so you can now boast in your weakness because of the cross. Romans chapter 8 says, there's now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. He condemns sin in the flesh, those things that you regret, those things that you've done, the sin, he's condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering. Why? In order that the law's requirement would be fulfilled in us. He's taken the sin. He's taken all the things that you regret. If you try to sit there and think back of all the things that you've done that right now you carry the wounds of because you regret them, what Jesus wants to do is come alongside you and say, Paid for that. Took that, paid for that. That's mine now. That's mine now. Second Corinthians 5, he who knew no sin became sin. He became the things that you regret. So that in him we might become what he is, the righteousness of God. And he's going, I took your place, let me take it. And there's some of you right now, you've actually not experienced the new life of the Spirit. You've not experienced the grace of God, you've not received the mercy of God. You have an experienced new life. Why? Because you have things you're trying to grip onto and you don't want to release. You found your identity in what Jesus has paid for. You're avoiding what Jesus wants you to give him. He can't pay for what you don't surrender to him. And you say, Man, give that to me. Give that to me. Why? Because God has more for you. God has more for you. We want you to know that your regret is redeemable. Your regret is redeemable. It's amazing. The beauty of the New Testament is that the very things that used to bring them such shame become the most powerful parts of their ministry. You notice how often Paul shares his testimony? When he stands before the Roman government in chains and he says, Hey, hey, I used to persecute the church. I used to do that. But then I saw Jesus. And there's some of you here that you want to be able to boast in your weakness. This is who I used to be and this is what I used to do, but he paid for that. And you want people to know they too can be free. And it can become the most powerful part of your ministry. The thing right now that has been the deepest source of your shame. And Jesus is saying, give me that. Powerful, powerful image of the Father receiving the Son who had run away, wasted his life, lived a life of regret. And the son could have died out there and never returned. He could have said, My father will never accept me. I'll never be received. And I might as well die in my shame and my pain and my regret. But instead, he turns around, he goes home, and his father runs out to meet him, embraces him, puts a ring on his finger, puts a robe on his back. And he says, My son who was lost has now been found. And he throws a party. And there's some of you who need to receive that today. One of the most powerful things that Rembrandt would do, I get choked up every time. But is this next image? That's Rembrandt. Over here on the right. He would paint himself into the image. So he paints this picture of the prodigal son returning to the Father, and Rembrandt would paint himself into the image. And it was a way of him trying to experience the thing that he wanted to experience. And so, man, some of you, you can maybe step out here and you can look at that picture and you go, wow, that's beautiful, but I could never, that could never be me. And some of you this morning, you need to paint yourself into the image. You need to paint yourself into the story. And you need to experience, not just be an onlooker, but to experience the grace that's on the table for you. The redemption that's on the table for you. You've been onlookers, you've been bystanders, but you need to get into the story. And my friend, the safest place to lay down your regret is at the scarred feet of Jesus. It's the safest place for you to lay down your regret. And so, my friend, what I want to encourage you to do today is don't take your regret out that door. Lay it at the feet of Jesus. Receive mercy. Receive your new name, receive your new life. Some of you in here, you are followers of Jesus, but you still have a spirit of condemnation that needs to be prayed off of you and you need to be released from. Come and receive that prayer this morning. Others of you, you've not received Jesus because you found your identity in what you've done. You can't find your identity in Christ and what you've done. You've got to get out of those old clothes and put on your new clothes. Become who God has created and called you to be. Our prayer team is going to be up front. We're going to move into a time of response. Come and receive. Receive. Receive. Let's pray. Jesus, we need you. We love you. We all have regrets. Every single one of us in this room have done things that we regret. We've said things that we regret. But God, there are some of us in this room who have been set free from those regrets because we're in Christ and we no longer have a spirit of condemnation. We have a spirit of freedom because we're sons and we're daughters. And then there's some people in this room that they're not sons and daughters. They still feel like slaves. They still feel shame. They still feel that condemnation is their identity. And you want to set them free from that this morning because they need to receive the spirit of adoption so that they can let go of regret. God, I pray that those people would come forward. They would say, I want Jesus. I want to be something new. And they would allow us to pray over them and welcome them into new life. Other people in this room, they are followers of Jesus, and yet they are controlled by the things of their past that you want to set them free from. And they just need a brother or sister to pray over them so that they can receive the gift of your grace and of your mercy. God, I pray that they would come forward. Would you move in this place, Holy Spirit? In Jesus' name. Amen.