So go on friends. I'm John and I work here, so we're glad that you're joining us if you're online, very special. Welcome to you. We started a conversation this new year called kill the spider and this came from a book by a guy named Carlos Whittaker called kill the spider. And it's kind of this conversation about what would it look like if the growth that we wanted to see in our lives, if we wanted to see this in our relationships, in our spiritual walk with God, what would it look like if we stopped just clearing out the spider webs? But we got to the root of the issue and we went for the spider. If I have a spider in my apartment and I just keep cleaning up the webs, they're going to keep coming back. I got to get to the root. And that's how it is in our lives so often that we don't get to the root of our issues. And so pastor Larry started this a couple of weeks ago. I call him PLD pastor Larry Davis. That's kind of my cute nickname for him. So if you see him call him that he loves it. And he started this conversation two weeks ago and he kind of started talking about the seven deadly sins. So we talked about pride and we talked about greed and I have to confess something to you. I didn't really know much about the seven deadly sins before this. I'm sorry if you're like a huge seven deadly sin buff, if you know all about them, which would just be weird anyway, but I didn't know much and so I said, Larry, this is awesome. You're gonna let me talk, talk about this. What is it though? What do I do? He's like, just go look it up. So I look it up and I'm getting really excited cause like I said, pride and greed like okay, I can talk about those for awhile or like last. Like I got a lot to say about these things. Come on scene . You know what you want . He gave me you guys, you guys are with me. It's my favorite picture by the way. It's in my office actually the least sexy of the seven deadly sins slot . I think he just didn't have anything to talk about with sloths. So he said, let's let the kid have it. So I started looking this up and I got really, really excited actually because when I started researching this and looking into this issue, it was life changing for me. I'm not trying to raise the bar in an unrealistic way for you. I am specifically talking about for my life, I was able to see patterns that had been building up even the last six or seven years and things. Oh breakthrough. I like it. Alright , let's go home, get to see it. It was really, really eye opening for me and unfortunately I've got like 25 30 minutes with you so I don't have a ton of time to talk about all of this stuff. It is such a big, big topic. So we have a podcast, I don't know if you know this, it's called the North gate review. We be found on the app. It can be found on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we take the messages that were given on Sunday and we open them up and we unpack them and we go deeper into some stories and stuff. And I'm going to be telling more personal stories on the podcast. I'm so sorry. Not today. I do not have time for that. But today we're talking about slots and what is slot to you? What do you think? Oh , someone came prepared. Okay. Usually we think procrastination, we think laziness. And as I was thinking about this message, I'm like, it's 2019 in the Bay area, dual income households. Everybody's got like two jobs. You gotta have your side hustle. It's so expensive to live here. Come on. Nobody's lazy. But when I looked this up, it is so, so, so, so much more than laziness. It is something that I believe if you're thinking it's laziness and you're like, all right, I'm done listening to you right now. Stay with me, stay with me for a little bit. I believe there's something for all of us. So the best way to begin, I think would be a brief history of the seven deadly sins. It's time to get the history class. Come on. Guys are seven deadly sins originated in the fourth century in a Mediterranean, sociopolitical climate, much like ours today. That sentence, I've worked hard on that one. Um , it originated from the church in that day. But actually where they got the idea for this was from the monks men . They had the eight evil thoughts. So the monks had set aside their life to live a life that mirrored eternity and it's changed. Lessness say that one five times fast. What the monks tried to do was get rid of distraction and enter into a deeper presence of God every single day. So they built a life that had habits and practices and it was very similar each day because they thought that was what he turned it he was going to be like, now they want it to get to the root of the issue as well. So they had the eight evil thoughts. These were not sins. The eight evil thoughts were temptations. They even called them demons. These were things that would distract the monk from entering that deeper presence with God. However, the church was not satisfied with that. They wanted something that they could label. They wanted a sin that they could actually put a name on it. Now, of the eight evil thoughts, there were three that were considered the worst. There was pride, there was anger, and then there was this Greek word, a CEDIA . I've never heard of this word until now. It was the worst one. In fact, they said that a CEDIA nourished other vices. It was the problem child. It would root itself deep inside of you and then manifest itself in other ways like pride or greed or in the or whatever else, but it nourished the other vices that we had. Now, when the church took over these eight evil thoughts and said, you know , we need to label this because if they're not actually committing adultery, that's not lust. If they're not overeating, that's not gluttony. We need something. We could put a name, a label on and then they have all the power because they said you have to come to us to get forgiveness of sins. So they created the six deadly sins because they had absolutely no idea what to do with the CEDIA. No clue because it's such this big category, this broad thing that affects the whole body, the inward, the outward, it affected everything. And then finally they settled by calling it fluff , which is such a shame because we, in Western culture they think of laziness, but floss is so, so much more serious , so, so much more than just sloths than just laziness. There was a French monk who said the word Sloss, or sorry, the word a CDM is so pregnant with meaning that it frustrates any attempt to translate it. It's been labeled as the lexicon version of a mole working on us while hidden from view. It is a dangerous, dangerous thing. But as we get to our topic today, I want to be clear, we are talking about temptation. We're not talking about a sin. This will lead you to sin and it probably has in your life if you're going to be honest with yourself. As we open this up today, it's led to many sin, many sins in my life, but we are talking about the temptation to walk into sin. If we're talking about killing the spider, let's not just talk about the sin. Let's get to the root of that. Let's go to the temptation. Let's get to the spider of temptation. So today we are talking about a CEDIA. This word is probably new to most of you. It was new to me just a month ago when I started studying for this. So what is it? What is a CDN ? It has been called a restlessness that we are unable to shake restlessness inside of us. We understand this and our iPhone, Amazon culture, you can have anything you want within two days if you have it on your phone. How many people, how many people in this room have been asked a question that you didn't know the answer to and you didn't want to take the time to look it up? So you told them to Google it? Yeah , or have or you have those passive aggressive friends. Have any of you ever seen that thing where you can send them when they text you a question where you can send them a link that when they click on it, it takes them to Google and is typing it out for them, like to teach them, Hey, you could just Google it. You can have whatever you want whenever you want. At Amazon, we'll get there the day of, probably within the hour if we really wanted to test it. We live in the Bay area. How many people are actually from Benicia in this room? There's like 20 of you. Yeah, the Bay area of California. We all moved here. Come on. We're not from here and the people that were from here, most of them left because it was so expensive. There's a restlessness inside of us. I have moved so many times in my life because I'm onto something else. Something better. The grass is always greener out there. This is the temptation of a CEDIA. It's paralysis of the soul. The medieval theologian, Thomas Aquinas labeled it as an intermediate position between both body and soul, but he went deeper into this by saying that it was springing from physical weariness, but ultimately it is the spiritual phenomenon of aversion, of the appetite for its own good aversion from God himself, the opposite of joy and divine good that we should experience. In other words, it's rejection of a divine and entirely good gift. We're created in the image of God. We're created to be in community with God CD . His temptation is to get you to reject that, to live in waste alone, isolated. That is the temptation it wants us running from who we were created to be and as a result running from our most authentic selves. That's why I want to be very clear. This is a temptation. We all have doubts. We all have struggles. This is a temptation to live this life. It will lead you into sin and it might manifest itself in a different way. Pride, greed. Like I said, any of the other seven deadly sins or maybe some that aren't even on the list, but it is a first and foremost. It is a temptation. So I just said a lot of like really big statements that took me a long time to define myself. So let's get really, really practical here. What does it look like in 2019 in Benicia, California? Here , let me give you some names. What are some names that it goes by today? Indifference. Workoholism , commitment phobia, apathy, complacency, resistant of change. If any of those been labeled for you, here's, here's how it kind of shows up in our life today. What does it look like today when your thoughts run away with you and play out scenarios that haven't happened yet? Anybody with me on that one? That's like my worst problem. I have this overactive mind. I'll be sitting in my office and I'll get a text from PLD. Pastor Larry Davis. I'll get a text from him. Hey, stop by my office real fast. Oh , what did I do? Have you been reading my emails? I did not mean that. I'm so sorry. It was just a joke, Larry. I'm just kidding. Do that. And I don't even think he can read my emails. Anyway, you play out these scenarios in your mind. Well, she says this, then I'm going to say this and then of course she's going to respond to this way to that. And then if she responds with that, then I'll come back with either this or this. And if I say this one, she's going to have this to say, and if I say this , then she's going to have like these three things to say. Am I the only one here? Come on. And how often do those scenarios actually work out that way? Never. I'm going to say usually because my ideas are pretty great. Um , I'm not talking about pride today. I'm talking about slough. Here's another one for you. When the past seems more desirable than what is ahead of you, just sitting in your garage with the boys drinking a beer, talking about when you played football back in high school. I don't know why I'm going Southern here. I just in my mind, I picture like an overweight guy just reliving the glory days. Hey, Hey, I didn't mean you. Here's another one that works out in that way. Maybe this is a little bit more relevant. Oh my goodness. Did you see me last quarter? I was crushing it. I see all those sales that I just made now, like I said, we're talking about a temptation. There is nothing wrong with being amazing in high school and there's nothing wrong with crushing it last quarter, but the temptation is to live there and to allow that to cripple you from moving forward. The Bible is very clear. Remember the goodness of God. Look at what he has done. We just saying about the faithfulness of God and do it again and remembering how he has been there for us and using that to catapult us forward into new growth, into new areas with God. That is the temptation of a CD to keep you there. Here's another one for you. Questioning your purpose, your calling or what life is all about. Anybody. This happens to me like four times a week I'll be driving in and there's like that gap in the songs that I'm listening to and then just like, you're not good enough. Where'd that come from? This was such a happy song and you ruined it. Doubts about your calling. Or if you knew what I did last year, there's no way you would listen to me right now. God doesn't love me. His grace isn't for you. It's for them cause they're better than you. These doubts that come in that will cripple us. Like I said, as a temptation, there's nothing wrong with these doubts that pop up in your head. They're out of your control, but when you fall into that temptation and allow it to manifest itself inside of you, then those doubts start going further and further and further and you end up where you don't want to be. Here's another one, distracting yourself with other things. I wanted to prepare this message today, but I'm like watching the office for the 800th time on Netflix and just keeps distracting me. Netflix, our phones. What's the first thing you do when you come home from work? Boom TV. Got to watch the shows, got to watch my stories as they say, and we use the excuse that, Oh, it's just a really rough day today. I just need a few minutes to myself. I need to unwind. Yeah. Here's the problem with that. You're not solving anything in your life. You're muting reality. You're stepping out of reality and you're not solving this problem, so what's going to happen the next day? You have to go back to work. You're going to face those problems again. The temptation of a CEDIA is to not get you addressing your issues. It doesn't even have to be that way. It can also be your wife texts you and says, Hey, clean the garage. When you get home and you're like, Oh my goodness, I'm not doing that. You know what I'm going to say? I got stuck at work today. I got stuck at work an extra hour. So sorry. I mean, it's not like she's going to call your boss and make sure that was true or you go the opposite way with that and you say, I'm going to buy her some flowers. I'm going to cook her a really nice dinner. She's going to have her mind blown when she gets home. Like you are so amazing. You are like the greatest gift God ever gave me. I'm not speaking from experience, clearly not. She's like, how did you have time to clean the garage and the dinner? Well , you see I only had time for one of these. Here's another one. Not answering your phone because of caller ID. Cause that my dad right now, Oh my gosh, Nope. Ignore. We're all convicted here. I'm going to move on. Dad, if you're listening, I love you. I always answer for you always at its core, at its core, I could keep going on with these scenarios. At its core. A CEDIA is a temptation, a failure to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your strengths , a failure to obey the greatest commandment that was given to us to not live the way we were created, to live in waste, to isolate us. It robs us of our joy of our peace. It keeps us from abiding in God. That's the whole goal of a CEDIA. Its main goal is to keep you isolated, living in waste . So if it is a failure to obey the greatest commandment, let's break that commandment down. Let's look at that. What is the greatest commandment found in Deuteronomy chapter six verse four. It's up here on the screen here. Oh Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength. We know this first. This is a great verse. This is called the Shema into the Jewish people and even to Jews today who are still practicing Jews. This is a prayer that is recited twice a day in the morning and in the evening. It is the most essential prayer in Judaism. The first word in this verse is actually very, very, very important. The first word is here, hear O Israel to the Jewish authors, to the Jewish reader. This word here, would it be understood as invoking action? This is not just to listen and do nothing with the information. It is to listen and do something. So the call, the Shamar is to respond to God's love. Understanding God loves you, and then respond by loving him. And this isn't a new idea. If you read the songs, you hear them. The Psalm is saying, crying out to God, saying, here my prayer, hear my plea, hear my cry. Oh God. It's understanding that God's going to hear you and do something for you. It's the same way in our conversations today. If I'm saying, are you listening to me? Are you on my side? Do something about this call. The Shamal is to respond to God's goodness in three different areas. Now, if we just take a broad stroke on this, we can kind of get an idea, but if we break them apart, there is so much goodness. There's so much truth and there's so much depth to each one of these three things, and I believe each one of these three areas, our heart, our heart, our soul, our strength is it has a unique way of breaking into each one of those. So let's look at each one. Your heart first. What does it look like to love the Lord your God with all of your heart? This word heart is understood as the organ in your chest that pumps blood and sustains life. But to the Jewish writers, they didn't have a concept of a brain. They didn't know how to write that out. So the heart, yes, it meant that, but it also meant much, much more. For instance, one way the heart could have been interpreted was it was where you felt emotion. We understand that. We still kind of use that same language today. If I was to say to you, I have a heavy heart, it means that I'm sad. If I'm lighthearted, I'm happy if I'm brokenhearted, my girlfriend took my hoodie and I'm never getting that back. Some of these kids in here need to learn. There is no broken heart like a stolen hoodie. It's where we feel emotion . We understand that language, so they call the sheer model of the Lord your God with all of your heart is a call to love the Lord your God with all of your goals, your dreams, your feelings, your emotions, and a CDO wants to break in here and get you living by your emotions, making decisions by what feels good. That's how a CD keeps you from loving the Lord your God with all your heart. I follow a pastor on Instagram. His name is Carl Lynn's , his lead pastor in New York city at Hillsong church in New York and last week he posted a picture of him and his son and it was something along his son's like, I don't know, eight maybe, and his son said, I don't want to go to church today because we're there all the time. And he used that as a teaching moment. He said, that's really, I'm really sorry that you feel that way. However, we don't make decisions based off of what we feel like at the time. We make decisions based off of truth and we believe that being in community with God's people is what we are called to do. How many times are we making decisions based off of what feels good, not going to come to church today because it's raining and I just don't feel like it and there's online church, so why do I even have to care? I'm not going to come to community group because I just had a really rough day at work doing what feels good, not based off of truth that actually engaging in community with other people will lift you out of that. It'll make you stronger. Iron sharpens iron. The second word here is soul . What does it look like to love the Lord your God with all of your soul? The word here in Hebrew is nefesh. Now we have a pretty poor understanding of the soul, the concept of the soul in our Western culture. We actually got that from Greek philosophy and the kind of understanding of what a soul is is the essence of a human trapped in a fleshly cage. This fleshly body and it'll be released when we die. That's not biblical. That's Greek. Biblically. There was no difference between the body and the soul. The soul actually was the best translation of that word. Nefesh would be throat, your throat. Because when you think about it, you breathe through your throat. Life within , Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry. Ron. Life goes in and out right here. You eat, you drink right here through your, I love the imagery in the Psalm as the deer pants for the water. So my nefesh so my soul longs for you. That beautiful picture that as a deer is thirsty for the water, he longs for it. He's breathing, he's drinking the water. That's the way our souls are longing for the presence of God in our lives. See, to the Jewish or sorry, to the biblical authors, you do not have a nefesh. You do not have a soul. You are a soul. So your entire being. So the call of the Shamar to love the Lord your God with all your soul is a call to love the Lord your God with all of your abilities, your talents, your gifts, your limitations. And like I said, a CDO wants to break in here until you're not good enough. The CDA wants to say, Hey, that's your gift. You worked hard on that. I pray it every time that I lead worship in this place and in our San Francisco campus, I get the band together and I say, God, be glorified to the offering of our gifts here today because everybody on the stage has a gift for music. God , whether it was a God given where they didn't have to work hard for it or God gave them hard work as a gift and they worked hard to learn this musical instrument, whatever it is, it's a gift. It's what God has given us an offering that that is the Shema offering that gift to God. Whereas a CD is going to say, no, no , no, no, no. They don't even pay you at church. If you play music there, don't worry about it. You could go to a coffee shop and make tips. So not that I'm saying we should start doing tips at church. That's not my point. Now, my point, different message, different message, different one to love the Lord your God with all of your gifts and your abilities, acknowledging that it all came from him. The third thing here, level Lord your God with all of your strength. I love this word. I as I was preparing for this, thinking about the Shema, I did a lot of research with these guys. The Bible project, if you've never heard of the Bible project, do yourself a favor. Open up your mind, change your life by looking them up on YouTube or their website, the Bible project, they are incredible. They're like three to five minute videos that are packed full of wisdom and insight. It's amazing. So I was looking this up and I love what they said about this word strength. They said in Hebrew, we have a word for strength . This is not the word for strength in Hebrew. Sorry, that was really funny to me. Um , this word here in the Shema is owed and it is a adverb. It's there to enhance the other words. In this prayer, it means very or much. For instance, in Genesis when God looks at the earth that he created, he says it was good and on the seventh day he says it was good. It was very good. It enhances that like, Oh, that was really, really good. Which has happened. It's been translated in different ways. When the Torah, which is the first five books of the old Testament, when it was translated into Aramaic, they used the word wealth in Greek. When they translated it for the new Testament, it was translated to strength. Jesus translated it. When he answered the question as mind and strength, some translations might say, might see the correct question is not, which one is it? The correct question is, what else is it? They call the shamatha Masa level, Lord, your God with all your muchness. That doesn't really make sense, but it kind of makes sense. Right? When I was taking my notes, I just wrote down the infinity symbol. It's everything and more is there to enhance the other two words but also call you to more, to love the Lord your God with everything else you can think of. And the biggest one I could think of for this was time. Love the Lord your God with all your time and see we are people who cannot be bored and I know what you're thinking right now. I don't have time to be bored. Okay. Yeah, we all say we're busy. That's like the buzzword right now. How are you? I'm so busy as if to say I matter to people. I'm very, very important. That's kind of what we're saying. How many of us have ever bragged about the amount of hours that we work? I have. It feels really, really good. I'm so sorry I couldn't , I couldn't call you last week cause you know I worked like 60 hours. It was Christmas. So work at a church. Really busy time for me. Just basically saying I'm super cool and important. Trust me. A CEDIA wants to keep you busy because it knows that it can get you living in waste. Missing out on the best thing that God has for you. That by distracting ourselves with just whatever we can get our hands on, we're missing out on the best thing. A life of purpose and a life fulfilled by what God wants for us. CDO wants us wasting our time. And as soon as you feel that boredom creep in, what's the first thing you do to pick up your phone? It's the first thing you do. We can't even go to the bathroom anymore without having our phones like we cannot be left alone with our own thoughts in the world today. It's so sad. But what? What were , what would happen if we engaged boredom if we said, you know what? I'm going to sit here believing that if I don't medicate myself and distract myself that God might have something for me if he broke through the boredom to give me something, a word, a message that he might have for me. Maybe it's just a sweet reminder that he loves you. If we can break through that boredom. So the call to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength is the love the Lord your God with everything, but first by responding to his love because God is the one who showed us all this love. We read him first John, that we love God because he first loved us. We acknowledge that he loved us and love him with everything the same way he loved us. Like I said, I have so much more that I want to say about this. I was telling my friend Megan Friedman out there before the services even today, I was like, this topic is so big. I feel like I'm trying to teach on the whole church building and I don't even have time to talk about the children's wing. Like there's so much more to be said about this topic and it has impacted me greatly. Like I said, we're going to talk about it in the podcast this week. Make sure you listen to that. There's going to be some more stories, but today I wanted to wrap this all up with a very concise , clean, concise one. Next step for us, cause we're church . Next steps. We're all about moving forward in our faith and if the main thing a CTO wants to do is to keep you isolated, living in waste, refusing to love the Lord, your God, refusing to do what's best for you, the way you were created. How do we combat that? How do we fight this temptation and my friends? I believe the best next step that we can take here today is community. Community is how we fight. This temptation of a CDA wants to get us alone. Believing doubts, believing lies. It hurts to care for other people. It hurts to open up to other people. In fact, that word care literally means to cry out. If you look at the roots, the Indo-European roots of that word, it comes from lament to cry out. It hurts. It hurts to care for people because it is not passive. It is an assertion that no matter how strange or messy our relationships can be, it's worth thing to be present doing even our small part. So for you, maybe your next step here, maybe your first step could be coming to church more regularly. What would it look like if everybody showed up to church on this same Sunday that says they come to North gate , it'd be Easter, it'd be Christmas Eve. We'd have to add like five more services. Jesse would hate it. No , I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. He would love that. We all would imagine the community we would have if we were all here every single week and not using the temptation of a CEDIA to say, yeah, there's online church. I'll just stay at home and watch it. And if you're online with us, so sorry if you're in the area, if you're in the area, come be with us in community. If you're not in the area and you're watching online, maybe the next step for community for you is to invite a neighbor, invite a coworker, get together in your house, make breakfast together, and just spin community together. Where you are. Okay . Maybe the next step for you might be starting point. Maybe you've been coming to North gate for a while, but you've never really jumped in. Maybe you're brand new and you're like, this is awesome. I want to know more about it. That's what I hope you're saying right now. Um, maybe the next step is to join in community with other people who are doing the exact same thing as you. And we have this thing called starting point that's going to be meeting at 1130 in the family building and it meets every single week of every month and it gives you all this information about what goes on here at North gate and locking arms with people that are in the same phase as you. Just figuring it all out. Maybe your next step is joining a community group because you need something during the week. One day, one weekend day is not enough for you. You need more, I would say rooted , but we just started last week, so I'm a little late. I'm sorry. You can start when we start up again later. Maybe it's going to Northgate you. We just announced that we have some new classes. We're starting a new session. Maybe it means serving. Maybe that's your next step. Getting your hands dirty with other people, building the kingdom of God, loving on people. Iron sharpens iron, opening up being vulnerable, letting people talk to you, believing that it might be uncomfortable at first, but the relationships that you build are worth it and so valuable. Maybe you're new or maybe you're not new and you've never done this. Maybe your next step is to engage in community with God the way we were created. Maybe you're not even in a relationship with him yet. That is your next step. That's your first step. And if that's you today, come talk to me, come talk. We're going to have prayer partners here in just a minute. And if that's you and you want to take that next step, we have this journal here that you can pick up for free out there. It's going to walk you through 21 days and at the end of the day, you're gonna get a followup call from a pastor or an email or something. I don't know if we've decided yet completely and pick this up, walk through it. Kill the spider guys. Let's address the temptation head on and fight it with community. There's going to be so many other people going through this book with you. It's engaging in community with God, believing that he loves you, not letting the doubts tell you. We have a saying around here that there's nothing so lost that can't be found. There's nothing so broken that it can't be mended. There's nothing so dead that it cannot be resurrected. Believing that God's love is for you, that his grace is for you, that there's nothing you've done that's so bad that he can't love you, but you're not too far gone to engage in that community. We stand with me as we pray. God, we are so thankful for your love that overwhelms us, your grace that is beyond our understanding. God. I pray that we, we root out this temptation to live in waste that is so, so easy in this culture today to be alone, to not have to be open with other people, but God, I pray that we fight through that and whatever the next step for us is each individual. God. I pray that you make us bold and that you put it on our heart. What we need to do, it's in Jesus' name. Amen. So glad that you're joining us. Like I said, if you need prayer, we've got a few people down here, some prayer partners that would love to talk to you. I would love to talk to you. Don't forget to pick up your giving statements out there. If you were generous this year with North gate , if you are making that first step, pick up this journal out there in the lobby. It is free, but let me leave you with a blessing. I know we're all, we're all squirming right now. It's just too much. We're all restless, you know? Let me leave you with the blessing when when we bless each other here at North gate , we hold our hands out in a posture of received . May you understand the love of God this week and new ways and respond with your heart, your soul, your strength. Thank you so much for being here. We'll see you next week.