Hope for a Grinch

Welcome, welcome, good to see you guys here this Thanksgiving weekend and all those of you who are online watching from your destinations, I know a few of you are out of town with your families for Thanksgiving and we're so glad that you're able to be with us online and those of you who are new, maybe you're connecting with us for the first time and here in life in person, maybe you're here with us for the first time, we would love to hear from you, fill out one of his blue cards or go to saltchurch.org slash card. If you want to do that online and we will be glad to connect with you, connect some information with you, give you some information about our church, we have, next week we'll be having lunch with Leon also, if you, yeah, yeah, got three people that want to eat with me, but if you're new to the church and want to have lunch with us next week, write that, write that down, put that date down, you can go online and register as well, we'd love to have you with us next week. A glorious time. And if you notice, we have a lot of Christmas already happening.

Y'all came back from Thanksgiving, y'all like, what's going on here, right? We have, isn't it really cool to see all the decor in the hallways? We had people working from October till now putting that stuff together so that y'all could have an experience, your kids could have an experience, and we want to thank Julia and Becky, number one, and all the people that helped. But Becky opened up her house, and they've been working on it for months, and Julia's been a big part of that process, and all of you who showed up and were painting and putting things together for the kids, and I'm excited about this Christmas. Are you?

All right. This is Sign Sunday, okay? We start broadcasting or sharing our Christmas service, and we have these wonderful signs in the hallway, and if you're not here with us this week, you can get these next week, but isn't that gorgeous? Isn't that lovely? Isn't that wonderful?

Isn't that cool? Does that not make you want to come to the Christmas service on the 18th, right? Our Christmas celebration? Yeah, nice font, everything. Isn't that wonderful?

Grab you one, grab you one, all right? Or two, or three, or four, or five, and put them around your community and let people know about Christmas at Salt. Also, if you want to grab some cards, we have some cards out in the hallway. If you want to grab some of those in our Next Steps area, you can get these cards, and these are nice little things that you can just put in your pocket or put in your purse or put in your wallet, and you want to invite somebody to church, you can do this. You know, it's real easy, real easy.

There's not, I mean, you don't have to say anything. Come to church with me. Come to church. That's all you have to say, and just give them this card. And, yeah, they're very cute, too.

They're very cute, too, if you're online. Can you see that? Yeah, they got little Grinches on it and stuff like that. So, but, yeah, I'm excited about this season, and I'm excited about this season. I'm excited about you.

So when it comes to the holidays and you think of someone sour, what's the first character that you think of? Scrooge probably is the first character that most people think, I got you, right? The second most thought of character is the Grinch, right? The Grinch. And no surprise, we're starting a series this week.

Don't be a Grinch. Have you ever met a Grinch? Right. Yeah, I think all of us have. Maybe you're a Grinch.

This series is for you, okay? And as you know, the Grinch is very famous. Dr. Seuss shares this story about a green, bitter, angry who, who doesn't like the who's of Whoville, right? And Dr.

Seuss, the name that Dr. Seuss gave this character has become a phenomenon. I mean, we just use it all the time, right? When we think of Grinch, we don't think immediately of the character. We think of somebody who's sour, someone who's bitter, someone who's angry.

And the first thing that comes to mind is cynical. Someone who's cynical. Because cynicism is the root of bitterness. It's the root of anger. When we're cynical, it can lead us in to all kinds of different places.

And when you think of a Grinch, you think of sour, bitter, angry, isolated. Nobody needs to have a good time if I can't have a good time. Nobody needs to be successful if I'm not successful. That's a Grinch. Cynicism is what brings.

So today we're going to launch this series off with talking about being cynical. Cynicism today. And the interesting thing is nobody sets out to be cynical. Nobody in their younger days say, you know what? When I get about 35, 40 years old, I want to be a bitter, angry person.

Nobody does that. Nobody. But it happens all the time. How did I get to this point? How did I get where I don't trust people?

How did I get to where I feel angry and feel bitter about others and other things? How do we get here? If you looked at the or watch the adaptation, the 2000 adaptation of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, Jim Carrey, that's probably my favorite one to watch. You get a little insight, right? Something happened a long time ago.

What happened? He was picked on. He was disappointed by something that had happened to him. Have you ever bought a product and just, it was terrible? You expected something of it, right?

You bought that product. Maybe it was a CD player back in the day, you know? And it said, and it said, and it... It's supposed to be skip resistant and it never was. Y'all remember that?

And you were so disappointed that you just, or it could have been something else. It could have been a product or a, and you got that product and it was supposed to do this. It was supposed to do that. It was supposed to work this way. It was supposed to be used for this and it didn't work.

What happened? You never bought that product again because you didn't believe in that product anymore. And some of, some of this happens with people, right? Have you ever had people that just disappointed you? Have you ever had people that, that's hurt you?

Have you ever, have you ever had an interesting thing? Have you ever invested time in people only for them? The people that you invest the most time in are the ones that disappoint you the most? Or the people that perhaps you love the most are the ones that hurt you the most? If, if I want to be vulnerable for a minute, when we were first starting the church, I think the first time I noticed, my cynicism creep in was, my cynicism creep in was, was during this period.

And I've struggled with it. And after reading a book by Cary Newhoff called I Didn't See It Coming, this is where I got the idea for this particular message. And, and I, and, and things he was describing in the book, there's a lot of what I was experiencing at the time and something that I have to battle often when it comes to cynicism. And when we first started the church, we had, we had, you know, a few people that were in our lives, particularly a couple that, that we invested a lot of time in, we were good friends, we would do a lot of things together, barbecues, pool parties, just spent a lot of time like brothers and sisters. But over a period of months, they drifted away and ended up going out of our lives forever, moving from our lives forever.

And that was the first experience that I had as being a pastor and watching someone exit my life, never to be a part of it again. And that hurt. That hurts when someone's in your life and then they're gone. And then it happened again and again. And the more those things happen to us, the disappointments, the things that, that are coming to our lives, that, that we think better of that, and, and, and it happens the opposite.

The more you distance yourself, the more you distance yourself from relationships, the more you distance yourself from, from possible friendships. Perhaps you're somebody who says, you know, I'm in, I've been in the dating game for a long time and it never works out. I mean, I've, I've been in love this many times and, and, and, you know, it's not for me. I'm, I'm just done. Or you work really, really hard.

You gave your heart to this job that you're in. You gave everything and it ended up that someone else was promoted over you or you were fired. You get uncynical. You become cynical about life because cynicism doesn't start overnight. Cynicism begins with disappointment after.

Disappointment after disappointment over and over again until the point you're questioning everything. What is this? Am I in the right place? Can I trust people? Can I believe in anything?

Can I hope for anything anymore? And it's okay to be skeptical, okay? You can be skeptical of things when a product's presented to you. Yeah, it's important to be that. But cynicism is different.

It's an attitude. It's a language. It's, if you want to call it, a vibe that just comes out of you everywhere you are. It's a part of you. It's a pessimistic attitude.

And the root of it is anger. And the root of it is bitterness. And we have this anger and bitterness. And we're going to talk about those things as we work through this series. And for some of you, even Christmas is terrible, okay?

You're like, oh, Christmas is here again. All the commercialism. Because you've had some bad experiences at Christmas. Maybe somebody walked out on you in Christmas. A father or a mother.

Or you had a relationship issue. Or you lost your job around Christmas time. Or you're just mad because of all the consumerism and all the things that are going on. And the way that people treat people. And you've become cynical.

And you've seen it over and over and over again. And the interesting thing is that most people who are cynics were former optimists. Most people who were cynics were former optimists. Why? Not because you didn't care.

Because you care. You care so much. Why do we live in such a cynical age? Because we care. And we're full of...

So why do we become cynical? Why do we become cynical? Because we know too much. We know too much. We've been through it over and over again.

We've gone there over and over again. We've experienced this over and over again. And the older you get, the more cynical you get. Think about it. When you were kids, everything was great, right?

You didn't worry about anything. You were hopeful. You believed anything. You were willing to trust anyone. And everything was good.

Why? You didn't know anything. In fact, you were kind of dumb. You were dumb to life, right? But the more you grew, the more you learned, and the more they're going to treat you this way.

This is what's going to happen in the world. This is what's happening over here. We're just going to have to expect these things. And this is just life. But when you're a kid, you don't expect somebody to fire you when you're doing a good job in your business, right?

You don't expect someone to break your heart. You don't expect a friendship that had trust and integrity and all the things that a friendship is supposed to have to break that trust. You don't expect those things when you're a child, but they happen. And that's how greatazione guards can reach you somewhere. The best thing is, what's the most familiar state, right?

That's what you're thinking about. And that's how greatierto can you imagineπωςgennn. The Bible talks about this. It talks about the subject of knowledge. And we're looking at Solomon.

Solomon, he was the wisest man that ever lived. He was David's son, if you remember. And he wrote three books. And two of the books are incredible. The first book was Song of Songs.

You know, you have this love relationship between a man and a woman. We also see God and Israel in it and Jesus and the church in it. You know, all this beautiful stuff about relationship and being in a relationship with someone. And then you have the wisdom. Proverbs, you know, has all things that help us out in life.

And it's incredible. But there's this one book called Ecclesiastes. And it's so different than the other ones. The other ones were uplifting, but this one is kind of doom and gloom. It's like a cynic's guide to the universe.

And here's what Solomon says. Everything is meaningless, says the teacher, completely meaningless. What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. I mean, isn't that uplifting?

Merry Christmas to you, okay? The world never changes. Nothing ever changes. The sun rises, sun sets, then hurries around to rise again. Just the same old thing every day.

The wind blows south and then turns north around and around it goes, blowing in circles. And the rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the waters return again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea. And everything is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied.

No matter how much we hear, we are not content. And then it jumps to verse 16 and says this. And I said to myself, look, I have increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before. And I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge. Then I applied myself to understanding of wisdom and also of madness and folly.

But I learned this too. It is chasing after the wind. And this is the part I really want to get to. And it gets to verse 18. It says, For with much wisdom comes much sorrow.

The more knowledge, the more grief. The more I know, the more miserable I am. The more I know, the more I fall into this trap of cynicism. And the problem is you know too much. We know too much.

You know how relationships work. You know how work happens when you put your heart into a job and you get fired. You know how your kids are. You know how parents are. You know how your kids are.

Your neighborhood is. You know how the people that are in your life are. And you know too much. You've been through it before. It's just the same thing over and over again.

You know too much. So what do we do with this? How do we deal with this? It's a hard thing because, number one, you stop trusting. You stop trusting.

If you've been hurt and disappointed to a certain level, you just can't trust anybody anymore, can you? And you start closing your heart to people. You're like a Grinch. You start closing your heart to people. You don't want to have anything.

anything to do with people. And when you close your heart to people, you close your heart to God. Because God's heart is people. And you may say, oh, it's okay. It's okay.

I'm good with God. But you know, the people thing, I'm going to turn that off right now. Turn that faucet off and just kind of leave that there. But if you're not into people, you're not with God. If you're not with people, you're not with God.

And that's a very dangerous place for us to get to. And it can cause all kinds of hurt. And it can cause all kinds of pain. And then we stop hoping. We stop hoping.

We stop hoping. What you do is you project past failures on future situations. You project past failures on future situations. I failed at this once. It's going to happen again.

Man, I've seen it over and over again. All those amounts of disappointment have made you lose hope. And not only to yourself, to others as well. This is where we get real cynical because we don't want anybody else to hope. I saw or I heard a conversation one time between two church planters.

One was getting ready to start. And he was just so excited about starting a church. And he had this going on, that going on. Everything was falling together. And the other guy who was a seasoned veteran in church ministry, he says, you're going to get eat up, man.

It's going to kill you. It's going to hurt you. It's just so hard. And he was just putting this guy down. It was like he was stealing his hopes.

He was stealing his dreams. And that's what cynicism does. When we get hurt so much, it steals our hopes and dreams. We get hope. And we don't hope for anybody else.

In fact, it's like we want other people to be miserable. If I can't be successful, you can't be successful. If I can't win, you can't win. If I can't hope, you can't hope. And then we just stop believing.

We begin to just stop believing. You've stopped believing. You don't believe in anything anymore. You don't even don't trust God. You don't believe in God anymore.

Or maybe you do believe in God, but you can't get past where you are. You're not experiencing God, and you're not experiencing people. And you have this hope for heaven, but there's no life. You're not experiencing life. And that's what cynicism does.

And the hurt of your past pronounces a death sentence to your future. The hurts of the past pronounce a death sentence to your future. Because you've stopped trusting. You've stopped hoping. You've stopped hoping.

And you've stopped believing. So what I've learned as I've dealt with cynicism is that cynicism is a choice. It's a choice. Life doesn't make you cynical. You make you cynical.

Things don't make you cynical. You make you cynical. Situations don't make you cynical. You make you cynical. You don't decide to be cynical, right?

It's a progressive thing that comes in, but it's a choice whether to be cynical or not. You decided to close your heart. You're the one that decided to remove yourself. You're the one who decided to distance yourself from anything or anyone because of what's happened to you, because you've projected that into your future. So what do you do?

What do you do? What's the antidote? Simple. The gospel. The gospel of Christ.

Criticism melts under the relentless hope of the gospel. It does. What is the gospel? The gospel is good news. When God came to earth in Jesus, we didn't know what to do with him.

So we put him on a cross. We hung him on a cross. We killed God. We didn't know what to do with him, but he took that very thing and made it something good. That's how powerful the cross is.

He took something that we meant for evil and he made it good. He had a plan all along. He takes death and brings resurrection. He takes darkness and makes light and he brings life to the hopeless and he can do that. The relentless gospel of hope in Jesus Christ melts cynicism.

And as a result, you can hope again and trust again and believe again. Once a cynic, not always a cynic. Once defeated, not always defeated. Once a closed heart, not always a closed heart. It is possible by the good news of Jesus Christ.

And I get it. Life is hard. Life is tough. Sometimes it's hard to see that because you're going through a lot. But you know who else had a hard life?

The first century church had a very hard life. In first century Palestine, there was pestilence, there was disease, there was slavery, there was brutality, there was abuse, there was racism. There was everything that they were facing. It seemed hopeless. And the early Christians were trying to figure all this out, this following Christ.

How do I follow Christ? How do I follow this resurrected Jesus Christ in a world that beats my hope and my belief out of me? How did they have hope? How did they have belief? How did they pour their hearts into Jesus and pour their hearts into others and love others?

Paul writes this in Ephesians 1, beginning with verse 15. He says, Ever since I first heard of the struggle. Strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God's people everywhere. I have not stopped the thanking God for you. So he's got a prayer going on.

I'm just thanking God for you. I'm praying for you. I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in the knowledge of God. Not in the knowledge of the world, but in the knowledge of God. And I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light, so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called.

What did he do? His holy people are his rich and glorious inheritance. You are his rich and glorious inheritance. That should get you all stirred up just right there. That he died for you so that you could be made his rich and glorious inheritance.

And then he says, I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God's power for us who believe in him. And then he says this, and this is the most important part of the scripture. He says this is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God's right hand in heavenly realms. It's the same power, the same transforming power that raised Christ from the dead. That's how powerful the gospel is.

That that same power that raised Christ from the dead can raise you to life. It can make you not cynical anymore. It can give you hope. It can help you believe again. It can rebirth something once a cynic, not always a cynic.

I can overcome this by the gospel, the good news. And if you're a follower of Christ, that is available to you. And if you're not, that is, that can be available to you. That can be available to you by making a decision today to follow him. He can give you because that same power can raise you from the dead.

Now that sounds kind of big and everything. On one hand, that's incredible. As Christians, we see that, wow, that's awesome. But some of you are looking for something today to help you, right? Give me something.

Give me a point. Give me a practical solution today. And I'm going to give you something really quick here that perhaps will help you even today, tomorrow, the coming week. You can already see changes by doing this one thing. Be curious.

Be curious. See, critics assume they know everything, right? I already know. I've already learned everything. I've already been knowledgeable.

I already know all the answers to life. That's who we are, right? That's what cynics say. Oh, it's just going to be this way. I know.

I've been through it. We've used that excuse. I've been through it. You said that to somebody who's trying to figure out something, right? I've been there.

Listen, trust me. I've been there four or five times. It's not going to work out. It worked out for you. You've been there because you rarely ask questions.

You just know. You think you know. But the cynical are never curious, and the curious are never cynical. When people are asking questions, they're not cynical. Cynicals are never curious, though.

They never ask questions. They don't think they need to ask questions. When you think you know the answers, why do you even stop and ask questions, right? But what if we turn that around? What if, when we think we have the questions, what if we just stopped and asked?

You know, is this really it? Can I really believe? Can I really hope? Can I really trust? That's perhaps why the Scripture says that we should become like children.

Perhaps that's why Scripture shows us that, you know, when a child comes into play, they are always asking questions. We tell them to shut up, you know, and go away, but they're going to ask anyway because they're curious. They want to know. They know that there's more. They just don't have the information.

I mean, we can't unlearn what we already know, but perhaps we can become like a child. I will make new friends again. And it can be good. I will be successful in my job or my career. It can be.

It's not hopeless. I can be married. It's not out of the question. So you become curious. You ask questions.

You ask good questions. And what I had to learn is to train my mind and train my thoughts. And it's it's a challenge because at times you feel like there's no hope. There's no belief, especially when you start entering into that cynicism bandwagon. You start becoming.

But you have to stop. And I try to refrain. Is it really that bad? Am I really going to forever be devastated? Am I always going to feel this sad?

Am I always going to be this depressed? Am I always going to be there? And the truth is, in most cases, you're not. You're not. And things tend to work out over time.

And what we do, if we keep our heart closed, we'll mess out on the 90% of good for the 10% of what's not good. Because we'll focus on that 10%. And of course, there's toxic people. And we we talk about that message series, how to deal with toxic people and people who are difficult. But they're not all that way.

There are strategies for that, but they're not all that way. Not everybody's toxic. Not everybody's critical. Not everybody's demeaning. Not everybody's that way.

They're not they're not all doused with mental issues that affect you. They're not all that way. So when you lose hope, everything else dies. That's why we have the gospel of resurrection. The gospel is resurrection, it's new life, it's rebirth, it's transforming.

So be curious and kill cynicism. Because there's hope for a Grinch. There's hope for a Grinch. You can trust again, you can hope again, and you can believe again. Let's pray.

Father, just invite your presence here at this moment to stir our hearts a bit as we land this message and begin this new message series as we're going to deal with things like bitterness and we're going to deal with anger and we're going to deal with all the Grinchy stuff that's going on. But first of all, we have to tackle this thing. Many of us here, in fact, most of us have gone through times where we just feel cynical about life. We have damaged hopes and dreams. We've been through tough times and we've been disappointed over and over and over again.

But today, challenge us, Lord, to look to you as the one who resurrects the cynic, who resurrects the Grinch, who brings new life, even to those who have been followers of you for a long time, have lost their way and have drifted because of the world, because of things, because of people who have broke their hearts or people that have broke their trust or situations that it just seemed I was doing the right thing, I was doing the right thing, God, but it still ended up this way. We can have hope in you today, Lord. Lord, so I'm praying for everyone here who perhaps is a cynic, perhaps who is a grumpy pants, that they can be filled with joy again and filled with hope again and filled with belief again. Just blow your spirit into their lives once again. Just strengthen them from the inside out, Lord, today.

And for those who perhaps have never given their lives to you, maybe they've been hopeless for a long time, may they experience the resurrected life that you give. And that's you today as we keep praying and we keep trusting in the Spirit here and you're stirred in your heart. If that's you who's never really made a decision for Jesus, you've never committed your life to Jesus, would you give him an opportunity to make you believe, to give you hope, to give you trust? Because you can trust him, you can believe in him, and you can hope in him, and that hope will never die. So pray this with me, Father.

I trust you. For my life. I trust you and in your blood that covers my sins. I trust in you today. I put my hope in you today as the Son of God who came to earth.

I believe. I believe. I confess with my mouth. I believe in my heart that you are the Lord God. So come into my life.

Come into my heart. Make me new. I want this Christmas season to be my resurrection season. My resurrection life. A new life that starts now that I will never forget that will echo into eternity.

So God, I give my life to you today. Thank you. Thank you for saving my soul. We ask this in your name. To any of the other cynics in here, yes, I too was triggered.

It's okay. It's a good conviction of the Holy Spirit. I was like, dear husband, why are you preaching a message series about your wife? I feel like this is a little pointed. No, but I hope somebody else in here was inspired to be more curious and to ask the Lord to soften their heart.

Because I know I was. And I don't want to be a Grinch. I don't want to be that person. You know, yelling at the kids to get off my lawn. Because I am already that person.

I caught myself doing that several times this summer. And it's, okay, good. There's somebody else who's that way. Yes. There's hope for us.

There's hope for a Grinch. Thank you so much for being here today. Before you leave, don't forget to take some signs. Take some cards. Enjoy some of this decor.

And if you see Julia or Becky or any of the rest of the team who helped decorate, please say thank you. Because that was out of their heart. Their heart for everybody and their love for their church family. Just to bring, like, some hope and some whimsy and some joy to your heart and to your family's hearts. As usual, we don't pass around buckets or anything.

But if you would like to give and support Salt Church and our ministries, you can. They're going to throw something up on the screen to show you how to do that. You can always put something in the box on your way out. You can always mail something into our P.O.

box. You can give securely via Planning Center. Or you can text the amount you want to give to 84321. Don't be a Grinch now. Let's put that slide up there.

Who's Grinchy? Okay, maybe it doesn't exist. That's okay. It exists in our hearts. If you have questions about that, you can always ask someone at the Welcome Center for help on how to do that.

We so appreciate it. If you are brand new, as usual, we don't ask that you give. We don't want you to feel compelled to give. Your presence was the gift to us today. Thank you so much for all that you have.