Today we begin a new series called Case Closed, so let’s start with the big idea behind this conversation.  Most of us spend our lives in a courtroom that we don't even realize we are in.  We wake up each day trying to prove we are enough.  That we are good enough, important enough, valuable enough, successful enough, spiritual enough. And every day we just come up short in building the case to prove we are enough.  And it’s important to see that through Jesus, we have nothing to prove and no case to build, because God loves us enough to send His Son to ensure that through Him we are enough.  

So, we're going to spend some time in a courtroom this fall. Now, I know some of you are probably thinking, "Great Sam, I didn't come to church to go to court." But here's the thing... I think a lot of us are already there, working hard in the courtroom each day. The problem is that we don't realize it. We wake up every morning and, in some way, we're trying to prove something. We're trying to prove that we're good enough, successful enough, important enough.  We want to prove that we are a good spouse, parent, friend, Christian, and employee.  We want people to know we are good people, and beyond that, we want to prove that to God, and even ourselves. And we spend a tremendous amount of time and energy gathering evidence and building our case.  We look at our accomplishments. We look at what people think about us. We compare ourselves to other people. We look at our mistakes and failures. We look at our accomplishments and our successes. And somewhere deep inside, we're constantly asking: "Am I enough?" "Do I matter?" "Do people like me?" "Am I doing enough?" And here's the scariest part: for the most part, we don’t even know we are doing it.  We don’t realize that every day we are working hard to build our case.  Throughout this series, we are going to work on experiencing the true freedom of the Gospel and what that truly means in our lives. We are going to learn how to stop dragging ourselves back into court each day and live with the incredible freedom and peace that Paul lived with.  This fall conversation builds around these words from Paul that sound amazing and, in many ways, almost impossible for us to truly live out…but we absolutely can!

1 Corinthians 4:3 I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. 4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. NIV

Can you imagine living this way?  Paul is saying, hey, it really doesn’t matter what you or anyone thinks of me, and it actually doesn’t really matter what I think of myself; it only matters what God thinks of me, and Paul is very secure in what God thinks of Him…and we should be too.  But we can say it: I don’t know too many people who truly live in the freedom that comes from confidently understanding how loved we truly are by God. I don’t know many Christians who can say they live this way…most of us get up each day and drag ourselves right back into the courtroom, trying to earn a verdict that has already been won for us.  As I thought about this subject, and where to start with you, it was hard not to think about so many of the things Paul says, and how hard it is for us to truly accept them in a way that shows up in our lives.  I mean, think about what we just read and imagine if we lived like we believed what Paul just said there was true. Imagine how different life would be if what others thought about us didn’t impact us, if our own issues with ourselves didn’t impact us, and if we truly believed that only God’s view of us mattered.  Well, for some of us, that in and of itself can be the problem, can’t it?  We struggle not just with how others feel about us and how we feel about ourselves, but with how God views us and would feel about us too.  Now, as Christians, we know about grace and sing songs of God’s love, and we tell others about God’s love for them, but we can still struggle to believe God loves us the way He says He does and that we are worthy of that love.  I can’t help but think of Paul’s prayer in Ephesians here as we think about this idea…

Ephesians 3:17 …I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. NIV

It’s interesting that Paul doesn’t begin this prayer by asking that we become more loving, even though that is what we have been told we should be as Christians and is probably something we all set out to do.  He wants us to truly understand and accept that we are loved by God…beyond that, He wants us to be rooted and grounded in God’s love.  So, let’s talk.  We need to slow down and be very honest here.  I don’t know about you, but I can look at my own life and see that most of my struggles to love well (whether that is others, myself, or even God) don’t begin with other people.  They begin with me.  Here’s what I mean.  When I’m stressed out, anxious, afraid, or defensive, my world shrinks to being all about me; I try to hide or defend things that, if I truly accepted how loved I am by God, wouldn’t need hiding or defending.  Do you see it?  But when we are truly rooted in and accept that God loves us, everything changes.  We realize we have nothing to prove; we don’t need to gather evidence and head back to the courtroom to try to win a verdict for ourselves that God already secured through His Son, Jesus. This is how Paul views life, through the Gospel truth.  That is why he can say things like this with full integrity.

Philippians 4:11 I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. 12 I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. NLT

How can he live this way?  Because what he has doesn’t define him, and he is content because he is defined and centered on God’s love for him.  Some people in the Corinthian church liked other leaders more than him.  But it wasn’t personal or offensive to him, because everything to him is the love of God he has because of Jesus, and he knows he is simply part of something He gets to do because of God’s great love for Him.

1 Corinthians 3:6 I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow.7 It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering. What’s important is that God makes the seed grow. NLT

Content in all circumstances, at peace with others, doesn’t get defensive or take things super personal, and is unstoppable and motivated to keep going through more hardships than we could ever imagine… beatings, shipwrecks, imprisonments, whippings, snakebites, death threats, and eventually execution, and none of that impacts him because He gets the magnitude of God’s love and is rooted and established in it.  He knows God loves him and knows the enormity of that love. If we don’t accept God’s love, we spend our days working to prove ourselves, hiding our issues, probably overcompensating, and exaggerating our own importance, and work really hard trying to earn something we can’t earn, and win a verdict that we can’t win because it’s already been won for us.  Someone who struggles to understand and accept how much God loves them will always live with questions about their self-worth and value, and it’s those questions that motivate and drive their behavior, their interactions with people, and even their relationship with God.  Here are some examples.  When you thank them for something, they are scanning you, trying to figure out what you really want.  When you offer to help them, they are wondering what it says about them, or what you are actually up to. They are evaluating all the time, looking at your clothes, your car, your title, anything to see if they are more or less important than you…And no matter what you say or do, somehow your words can hurt or offend them, because they are hiding and defending things that don’t need to be hidden or defended… they struggle to love well because they don’t grasp how well they are loved.  And to be clear, I’m talking about Christians right now people who say they are thankful for God’s love, who often struggle to believe it is true for them…because we all know ourselves so well, that we struggle to truly be rooted and established and accept God’s love for ourselves.  Now, try being a church that says we are outward-focused, with people who are struggling to understand how loved they truly are by God!  Many people have told Ken and I over the years that you can’t build a church focused outward on people in need of Christ, and I believe at its source this is the exact reason why it is so difficult… because all the attention that could go outward keeps getting pulled back inward to the self, because we don’t grasp how loved we are…we can’t love well because we don’t know how well we are loved. 

When we truly accept that God loves us, we focus less on ourselves.  Other people stop feeling like competitors, interruptions, or threats. They become imperfect people just like us, who need God's love just like we do. When we become rooted in God's love, our hearts soften toward the people around us. And as that happens, as our roots sink deeper into God's love, we slowly discover how amazing His love is, and little by little, we begin to love as God loves. So, think about this as we open this fall conversation today.  Is there anywhere in your life that you still live as though you need to earn God’s love?  Remember, it’s a gift that we simply receive.  So, this being the big series intro, let me show you what we are doing this fall; to do that, we need to go back to that foundational scripture I read earlier…

1 Corinthians 4:3 I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. 4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. NIV

So, I want you to see this. Every morning when you wake up, court is in session in some way. There's a judge and a jury. There's a prosecutor, and there you are as the defendant.  And the prosecutor begins presenting evidence the moment you open your eyes and turn off the alarm clock. "Look at what you did yesterday." "Here's where you failed." "Here's the dumb thing you said." "Here's what you should have done."  You jump on your phone, and it continues.  "Look at how well they're doing." "Look at their marriage." "Look at their family." "Look at their career." "Look at their house." "Look at their ministry." "Look at their life."  "Why aren't you more like them?" All of it leads to one conclusion: I’m just not enough.  So, in this courtroom we drag ourselves into, we are the defendant and, at the same time… we are often the prosecutor too!  I say this a lot, but it’s so hard to believe that God can love us as much as He does because we know ourselves better than anyone else; we know our thoughts, failures, and issues…we know where we fall short. And so, we stand in front of the court and begin presenting evidence against ourselves. But there's another problem: we can be so desperate to earn the proper verdict in this courtroom that we start presenting our own evidence. "Yeah, I messed up, but look at all the good things I've done.  Hey, I’m a mess, but at least I'm better than that person! Yeah, I'm not perfect, but I go to church and do good things!  I’m a hard worker… I'm a good person." And before long, we are completely exhausted because this court case never closes.

In this series, we will talk about the big court cases we can struggle with.  Here they are. The Case of the Restless Ego, the Court of Public Opinion, and the Court of Self-Judgment.  These are the three big court cases we struggle with, and after that we will look at the beauty of how God took care of this for us, and what it can look like to live a life free from the courtroom.  It’s going to be a lot of fun with the potential to help us so much!  Because I think we can all relate to this one, it isn’t easy to get out of the courtroom, and it can be really hard to truly grasp God’s incredible love and grace in our lives.   

Think about just how deeply we are affected by what other people think of us. Someone compliments us, and we feel great. Someone criticizes us, and it ruins our day. Someone doesn't respond to our text, and we start making up a story in our heads. "Are they mad at me?" "Did I say something?" "Do they not like me?" "What did I do?" And social media has only made this worse. Because, in a way, we can now look into everybody else's courtroom.  Every post is more proof that we are good people, that we are enough.  We see their highlight reel. Their vacations, accomplishments, family pictures, and their perfect moments. And what do we do?  We compare their highlight reel to our behind-the-scenes, and then we wonder why we don't measure up. We don't just live our lives anymore. We evaluate and compare our lives with others. We're constantly asking: "How am I doing?" "How do I look?" "What do they think?" "Am I winning?" And the worst part of it is, we never get a final verdict. Because even if we finally accomplish what we thought would make us happy, something else always comes up, and someone else can always top us, and we go back to find more ways to prove ourselves.  You reach the goal, then you need another one. You finally think you're doing well, and then somebody else walks into the room. And you're back in the courtroom.

But personally, I think the hardest court case to escape is the one happening in our own hearts and minds.  We could call it the court of self. This one is hard to get away from because it goes with you everywhere!  This can mean that even if everybody else stopped judging us, we may keep judging ourselves. Some of us have become experts at this. We can focus on the negatives in our lives.  We rehearse our failures, replay conversations, and know exactly what we should have done or said.  I struggle mightily with this, enough that I have named my looping thoughts “The Hepner Loop,” and every day, I journal and pray to avoid negative loops in my heart and mind.  And some of us just keep beating ourselves up, carrying that guilty verdict for things God has already forgiven. We keep dragging ourselves back into court. God says, "You're forgiven." And we say, "Yeah, but..." God says, "It's covered." And we say, "Yeah, but you don't know what I've done." God says, "I know exactly what you've done." And that's why He sent Jesus. But we keep going back into court.

Let’s go back to those words from Paul and really slow down this morning, because it sounds amazing, doesn’t it?  We want you to imagine living this way. More than that, we want to live this way!

1 Corinthians 4:3 I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. NIV

This is so awesome.  Paul says: "I don't care what you or anyone thinks about me." Then he says, "I don't even care what I think or feel about me." Now, Paul isn't saying that other people don't matter. He's not saying we should become arrogant, selfish, or insensitive. He's talking about something deeper. He's saying: "Your verdict doesn't determine who I am.”  And even his own verdict doesn't determine who he is. Why? Because there's another Judge. And that's where everything changes.  Let’s look at verse four, because it explains that only one verdict matters. 

1 Corinthians 4:4 My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. NIV

This is everything. Paul can live this way because he understands it’s the Lord who judges us.  It’s not other people.  It’s not my loved ones, my boss, my spouse, my friends, or my coworkers; it’s not social media that gets to judge me.  It’s not even my issues, past mistakes, success, failures, or accomplishments…and this is massively important…it’s not even me, how I think and feel about myself doesn’t get to judge me either.  God gets the final word in saying who we truly are, and that is the game-changer of our lives.  Because the Good News of God’s love, what we call the Gospel, isn’t telling us that we need to try harder to win a good verdict for our lives.  The truth of the Gospel is that Jesus has already won the verdict for us…It is done; the case is closed. 

Romans 8:1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. NIV

Do you hear that? No condemnation. Not less condemnation if you don’t mess up tomorrow. Not no condemnation if you perform well enough today; no, it’s done… Jesus handled it all for us. 

So, as we jump into this new conversation, I want you to be asking yourself some important questions. Are you waking up each day and heading to court?  Do you spend time and energy building your case?  What are you trying to prove? What are you trying to prove about yourself to yourself or to others or even to God?  Maybe you're trying to prove you're successful or important. Maybe you're trying to prove you're a good spouse, parent, or Christian. Maybe you're trying to prove that you have value.  Maybe you're trying to prove you're better than somebody who hurt you or that you don't need anybody. Maybe you're trying to prove you haven't wasted your life, or that you're enough. Whatever it may be, I need to say something important here, even if it is hard to hear.  The problem with trying to do that is…that you will never be able to prove it. Because the human heart is an endless courtroom. There's always another accusation. Another comparison. Another standard. Another person. Another failure. Another achievement. Another verdict to chase…and I’m just going to tell you from experience, trying to earn something that only God can give you and has already done for you is an exhausting concept…it’s like getting on a treadmill and thinking that if I run hard enough or fast enough, it will get me to where I want to go…it doesn’t matter how fast you run or how hard you try, you won’t ever get there.  In so many ways, that is the difference between religion and the true Gospel message.  Religion says, "Live this way, and maybe you'll get the verdict." The Truth is found in the Gospel message, which says: "Because of Jesus, you've already received the verdict." So, we have nothing to prove, and as Christians, we now live from the verdict, not for it.  And that changes everything.

Now, if you are tracking with me today, you might be thinking, "Okay, Sam, are you saying that I can do anything I want, and God will just ignore it?" No. We talked all summer about how important it is to obey God’s commands.  So, sin is a big deal, and how we live matters; doing our best to live holy lives matters. But here's the incredible message of the Gospel: The Judge didn't simply dismiss the case. The Judge took our sentence. That's where we're going in this series. Because ultimately, the Gospel isn't that God lowered His standard. The Gospel is that Jesus met the standard for us. Jesus went to the cross, took our guilt and shame. That condemnation that was ours, Jesus took for us. He took our sentence and gave us His righteousness.  We call that the unfair exchange, the gift beyond gifts…we call it grace. That's the Gospel. And that's why Paul (who, oh, by the way, used to kill people who loved Jesus, who calls himself the chief of all sinners) can stand in the courtroom and say that it doesn’t matter what you say or think about me, and it doesn’t even matter what I think about myself (you think he didn’t have moments of extreme regret over his past?); he knows he doesn’t need to earn a verdict because the outcome has already been won through Jesus. 

There's another reason I love this courtroom concept that we are jumping into.  It’s because eventually the curtain gets pulled back on our lives and we realize that we are not nearly as good as we pretend to be.  But also not nearly as bad as we may believe that we are.  We're human. We're imperfect, broken, sinful, insecure, and often needy. And we're all trying to figure this thing out.  We can spend so much time and energy trying to figure it all out and convince everybody else that we're okay that we lose sight of the truth: that what we need is Jesus!  And that's our prayer for this series. We don't want to spend six weeks learning how to become better at hiding our issues or winning a verdict; we want to learn how to get out of the courtroom altogether.  Because Jesus didn't come simply to make us better defendants. He came to set us free altogether!

So welcome to the trial! Over the next three weeks, we'll look at those three cases we experience in our lives: the case of the restless ego, the court of public opinion, and the court of self-judgment. Then we will talk about the Judge taking the sentence and what it means for the case to be closed. And then we're going to talk about how to truly live outside the courtroom. That matters because so many of us hear the Gospel and believe it.  We accept Jesus and are thankful for Him, but then we wake up the next day and go right back into court, trying to prove ourselves all over again.  We start comparing again. We start worrying about what people think again. We start beating ourselves up again. We start trying to earn what Jesus already gave us all over again.  And Jesus is standing there saying: "Why are you back in here?" "Didn't I already take care of this for you?"  And I think that can be one of the hardest things for us to accept. The Gospel isn't ultimately about proving that you're good. It's about discovering that Jesus is good. It's not about proving that you're worthy. It's discovering that He is worthy. It's not about building the perfect case for yourself. It's realizing that you don't need one to build one at all. Because Jesus already knows everything about you the good and the bad. He knows every failure and weakness, every sin and insecurity, every thought, feeling, and urge you have tried to hide, and He still came for you.  It’s not about you being good enough; you are not; it’s about the fact that He is good enough.

Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. NIV

Not after we cleaned ourselves up. Not after we got our act together. Not after we become worthy. While we were still sinners, Christ came for us. 

So one final question as we close. If you walked into God's courtroom today and knew you couldn't hide anything, what would you be afraid He would find? What evidence are you afraid will be presented? What accusation are you afraid will come? What failure do you think defines you? What do you think God thinks about you? Because that question is the heart of this whole series. Over the next several weeks, we're going to show you something we hope you can accept because we know it will change the way you live.  Your identity doesn't come from the verdict you're trying to earn. It comes from the verdict Jesus has already won. And when you finally believe that, you stop living for approval; you stop competing, comparing, and defending yourself. You can even stop beating yourself up and trying to prove that you're enough. You can finally walk out of the courtroom and never come back, and it all happens when we realize the truth: Jesus took our verdict for us; he took our punishment; the verdict is in, and the case is closed. 

So welcome to our fall conversation, Case Closed.  Wednesday night at 6 pm, we will take this conversation even deeper, and next Sunday we will look at our first case, the case of the Restless Ego.