Renouncing Selfishness | Cornerstone Church | Pastor Linn Winters

in our series sounds good and what we're talking about is things that we say to each other, just part of culture and and they sound encouraging, they they sound kind and uplifting, but if if we paused for a moment and thought, hey, wait, wait, wait, if someone actually put into practice

what I'm encouraging them to do, the reality is it probably doesn't end well. It probably is gonna bring some heartache and disappointment in their life. I was well meaning, it's just not good advice. Today, we're gonna take a clump of sayings that we use in our culture because they all have the same core, they have the same

idea at the center of them. It it's sayings like, do whatever makes you happy. You have to love yourself first before you can love somebody else, you do you. There were even using phrases right now like, you know what, you just need to be selfish And there's a lot of talk right now about self care and look,

there is a place for that, right? You've got to be healthy, you've got to be refreshed, you've to be in a good place to navigate life, but the problem is that there's a very thin line between self care and selfish care.

And at the core of every single one of those sayings, there really is this idea that says, you realize it's all about you. It's you first, everybody else next. If you don't take care of you, then who will? And if you really stop and think a moment, it really is all about you need to be selfish. You need to

do whatever you need to do to make your life okay. And it speaks to us because isn't it true that all of us have a little bit of FOMO in us, fear of missing out

and if I were to give away some of my time or if I was to give away some of the money that I'm counting on to make myself, then what would I miss out on if I don't look out for myself first? And here's the question I want us to tackle today, does selfishness actually work?

In other words, if somebody just says, look, I'm gonna leverage, I'm gonna leverage every bit of time that I have, I'm gonna leverage whatever abilities and capacities that I have on, I'm gonna lever whatever finances that I have to make myself happy, to make sure that I get my piece of the pie.

Do people who live their lives selfishly actually end up with more than the rest of us? And we're gonna hopefully answer that question and maybe even consider living a life unselfishly. Here's what I want you to consider. Selfishness always leads to destruction every time.

Think about marriage, think about how many times you talk to somebody and you say, hey, know, tell us about your marriage and they go, well, I gotta tell you the first couple of years, I mean, they were rough.

And you think about it for a minute and you go, well, wait a minute, you were like totally in love. Right? You had just made these incredible vows to each other.

You were in the honeymoon phase, so there was lots of intimacy going on. Seems like the first couple of years would be like the great years. You didn't have any big struggles like loss of a child or loss of a job. It seems like the first would be great. You know why the first couple of years of marriage are really, really rough for most people?

Because you put two selfish people in the room and said, go for it.

And we do right, hey, was single and so I got to decide where I went, when I went, who I went with, how long I stayed out when and now all of a sudden there's somebody else who has their selfish opinion about what I should do.

Every single divorce, every single divorce at the core of it is selfishness. Now it's possible that there may have been one person who was horribly selfish and another that wasn't, but I guarantee you that in every single divorce, somebody or both deeply selfish. Selfishness makes us horrible parents,

try being a parent and be selfish. There's just no way. Have you noticed those curmudgeons? They take a lot of money and a lot of time. You can't be a good parent and be selfish.

I'm convinced, you ready for this? I'm convinced that God gave us marriage. One of the reasons he gave it to us, it's a college level class on selflessness. If your marriage is gonna make it, you're gonna have to learn to kill selfishly and be selfless.

He gave us kids because that's a doctorate level class in selflessness. If you make it, you will learn selflessness. Your game is when and I'm tired? Okay, you realize selfishness destroys friendships. I guarantee you, you look at every single broken friendship and somewhere in the mix, there was selfishness happening.

Every time you see abuse, there was selfishness. I don't care about what harm I caused you. I don't care if this causes you years of struggle, I want what I want in every act of abuse was selfish. Every crime, every crime at the very core of it is selfishness.

Hey, you have something I want, I'm gonna take it from you for me, every crime has selfishness. And guys, I'm just telling you that if you choose to live out selfishness in your life, you will perpetually be at odds with God. You cannot be a Christ follower and live a selfish life,

Because here's why, if every decision you make is, hey, I'm gonna do what makes me happy, I promise you there are all sorts of passages in Scripture that you're gonna look at and you're gonna go, wait, wait a minute, that makes no sense for me.

Why would I wait till marriage to have sex? Why would I delay something that is gonna make me feel happy and fulfilled? Why would I tithe? Are you kidding? Why would I give away part of what I'm leveraging, what I'm counting on to buy and purchase my hat? Why would I give that? How could that make me happy?

And I guarantee you that you will perpetually be at war with God if you choose to live selfishly. But still someone's gonna say, hey, well, wait a minute, okay, so what if though, what if I don't care what I do to other people, I don't care what harm I cause, what hurt I cause,

but does it still get me ahead? Does it still make me happier than the rest of the crowd? There are studies and you just have to just Google this, you'll find dozens and dozens of them. There are studies that people who live selfishly have more anxiety and more depression than people who live with kindness and selflessness.

And I guess, I'm just telling you, selfishness has never done anything that harm and destroy in your life.

Selfishness, selfishness is literally the opposite of what you and I as Christ followers were called to. Matter of fact, grab your Bibles real quick, go with me to the book of John and if you're not familiar, if you go to the left and

then I mean, I'm sorry, go to the back and start working to your left, you're gonna find this book of John.

Let me ask you this question, how do other people know you're a Christian? Is it how many times you go to church? Is it that your theology is solid? Is it because you drop a 20 in the offering? How do other people know for sure that you are a Christ follower, that you are actually a legitimate believing dedicated Christian?

Jesus is gonna answer that for you. Here we go, it's John

thirteen thirty four. Here's what Jesus said, was gonna cause other people to know, hey, this belief, this thing in you is real. Jesus said, a new command I give to you, love one another, love the other people who are followers of Christ, love the people in the purple chairs, love them as I have loved you. Oh, wow.

So you and I, you and I who are the church, you and I are to love each other the way that Jesus loved us.

So you must love one another by this, by this love that's exchanged by this, by how we selflessly give to each other's life, by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. Guys, you hear us all the time talking about you need to live your life in community

because the reality is simply this, if you come in this room and sit here every Sunday after Sunday, you're sitting in a room of strangers. How in the world do you know our needs? How in the world do you know maybe a moment to talk and counsel with us over something we're how do you know you don't

because you're doing church with strangers. But when you get in community, when you start going to a women's bible study or a men's bible study or you're part of a small group or a small church, all of a sudden, you get to know one another.

The best thing that could happen is that your best friends are your friends at church and when they struggle, you know and you have the opportunity to love them selflessly to meet their needs and Jesus said, in that moment, people will know that your Christianity,

your faith is real. And guys, I'm just telling you that an awful lot of us, no one's ever gonna see it because we're not living in community with one another.

Selfishness, selfishness always produces a broken life. You can't show me a person who was wildly selfish and go, man, but I'd like to be them. As Christians, you and I are called to live like Jesus. In other words, our goal ought to be, hey, I wanna look so much like Jesus that people see Jesus and don't see me and me.

I wanna live my life the way Jesus lived his life. Well, the question then is, well, how did Jesus live? So grab your Bibles again, go with me to Philippians.

Your Bible is still open, you can go to the right, if you've closed it, go to the back, start working to the left again.

In Philippians, Philippians chapter two and in this moment, it literally chronicles, it describes how Jesus lived while he was here on earth. It's Philippians chapter two and it becomes the model for you and me. This is this is how all of us who named the name of Jesus Christ ought to live out our lives

like Jesus lived out his. Philippians chapter two

starting in verse three, here is what it says, do nothing, don't do anything out of selfish ambition. Don't don't have one behavior, don't don't make any decision in your life that are it's me and it's mine and I'm gonna take what I am Don't do anything motivated by selfishness

or vain conceit, you know what vain conceit is, I'm better than you, so therefore I deserve more than you. It's okay for you to struggle because that's just your plate, but don't get my hands dirty. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit rather in humility, value others above yourselves,

not looking on your own interest, but each of you on the interest of others in your relationships with one another have the same mindset as Jesus Christ. He just says, hey, look, as you live out your faith in Christ, you ought to be looking for the opportunity to bless the people around you, to

be selfless with your life so that their life ends up better and not selfishly hanging on to and trying to get to the front of the line and get more than the person next to me. And then he goes on, describe what that means. Jesus

that this mindset he was a Jesus who being in the very nature of God did not consider equality with God, something to be used to his own advantage, rather he made himself nothing. When did he make himself nothing? When he became human, he made himself nothing

by taking on the very nature of his servant being made in human likeness. Now guys get this moment, you realize Jesus in heaven has all glory, the angels every single day worship him, honor him, he has absolute respect and Jesus willingly left that, set that aside.

He not only set aside the worship and the glory that was his in heaven, he also took some of his God attributes and covered them over, he he put them in a chest, so to speak, for a little while while he was here on earth. Think about this, in heaven right now, Jesus is omnipresent,

he is everywhere at all times, it's part of being God omnipresent, but when he comes to earth in a physical body, he sets aside that attribute, he gives it away for a time being to come to earth to be abused by us, to have people spit on him, to have people tell him that he's a hoax and that he's a charlatan.

Let me see if I can help you grasp what that was, the selflessness of that moment. I want you to imagine for a moment you're walking down the sidewalk, you come to a point and there's a mess on the sidewalk. You take a closer look and you realize the mess is that there's snails

crawling across the sidewalk and people have inadvertently stepped on and crushed the snails. And you look a little closer and and you realize there's actually a conduit, there's a tube going underneath the sidewalk. If the snails would simply go through the conduit, none of them would need to die

And you have so much love for the snails that you decide, you know what, I'm gonna become a snail, so that I can go to the snails and speak snail to them, so that they'll understand and I can spare their lives. And you know, I go, Lynn, that's absurd, why no human being in their right mind would ever be that selfless.

You realize the gap between God and you is greater than the gap between you and snails and he selflessly set it aside for you.

Selflessness will always cause discomfort. See look, selflessness is not thanksgiving and you go to get a piece of pie and you've already had four pieces of pie and so you say to the Oh, you can have it. That's not selflessness, that's called being full. Okay.

Selflessness is when you haven't had any pie and they've had four pieces and you say, go ahead. Selflessness will always cost you something. Selflessness isn't when we pass the offering plate and you drop a 20 in, the truth is you've got subscriptions

that you don't even use that cost more than that $20. It didn't cost you anything, it didn't make you selflessness has an expense, it it'll make me there's a sacrifice that is selfless. For Jesus, it was leaving glory and coming down to be us. And then it goes on as if that's not enough selflessness.

Verse eight, and being found in the appearances of man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death on the cross, to death, even death on the cross. He literally laid down his life selflessly for you and guys, if you really evaluate it from Jesus didn't get a whole lot by going to the cross.

The simple truth is this, he the only thing he gets is a renewed and restored relationship with us, but again, that just comes from love, like he loved us so much, he didn't want that relationship broken. But think about what the cross cost him, the cross cost nails,

the cross cost being spit upon, the cross cost beatings, the cross cost him his life.

The ultimate selflessness.

Let's just say from this cylinder is your life and the dark water in here is every part of your life that's selfish, it's about me and me getting mine and I'm gonna be sure I'm first in line and I'm gonna be sure I get what I'm do. And the empty part is selflessness,

is the part where you've said, hey, I'm gonna let somebody else have a turn, I'm gonna care about you even more than I care about my turn, selflessness. You realize that it's in this gap, it's in this place that you and I look like Jesus. None of this, no one can see Jesus in our selfishness.

Nobody has ever seen a Christian be selfish and went, man, your Jesus is so cool. It's in selflessness, which means every single time you and I have a decision that says, do I put myself first or do I put somebody else first in my life? If you decide to be selfless, well then you make a withdrawal on selfishness,

but when you decide to be selfish, then people see even less of Jesus. But there's an opportunity here, right? There's an opportunity for you and I in that moment say, look, I'm just gonna kill selfishness, mean, I'm not gonna live this, I want to, but I'm not going to live this moment selfishly. Maybe you know a family

and they're struggling financially, maybe dad got laid off and you go, you know what,

I'm just going to make sure they have a great Christmas and I'm gonna buy some gifts for them to give to their kids and it's not just gonna be like little gift, I'm gonna give some gifts that probably mean that maybe my Christmas isn't as big as I was expecting my Christmas. And if you did that,

don't you think that family in your selflessness would see Jesus in you? See, it's a moment when you gave to adventure port, so that we can have a ministry with the kids, you don't even have kids. Well, you do, but they're growing up and they're just obnoxious, but you know what I mean, right? You didn't do that for

you did that for the next generation. How can parents put their kids in that building, see what you did in that moment to make that building possible and not go, wow, I belong to an amazing church, I belong to a church that doesn't just give when it's gonna benefit them directly, they're doing something for me

and for my kids. Wouldn't they see Jesus in that act of selflessness?

It's helping a teen go to camp. You don't have a teen, but you go, you know what, I want a scholarship, a kid to go to camp and that kid goes to camp and encounters Jesus in totally, totally new way. And they know, they know they wouldn't have made it to camp if it hadn't been for your generosity.

You don't think that team sees Jesus

in you? How about this one? You know that when you were a teenager, life was hard, you struggled with all sorts of stuff and and you made some decisions that didn't turn out so well and so you decide, you know what, I'm gonna go serve in the student ministry

and now it's Wednesday night and some of your coworkers come to you and they say, hey, we're all going to the new movie that's out, do you want to come and you have to go, I can't, I'd love to any other time, please invite me, but tonight, I do small groups with teens.

They go, really? Why do you do that? You go, well, because when I was a teen, I struggled. When I was a teen, I made bad and I'm just thinking if I could help a teenager not make the mistakes I made, that would really be a good thing. How often do you do that? Everyone's every Wednesday night.

You don't think your coworkers would see just a little bit of Jesus in your selflessness? And guys, realize every single every single decision we make, we get to decide, am I gonna live this moment selfishly or I'm gonna live it the way Jesus would have lived it, so that the world can around me can see. Jesus said,

by this all men will know you're my disciples by the way you love one another.

Think about this, Jesus lived the greatest life ever

and he did it by being selfless. Watch what happens next in the passage, after Jesus lays all these things down, He lays down His glory, He lays down His life, go with me to verse nine. Therefore,

therefore means refer to what's ahead of it, because Jesus was selfless and left his glory in heaven, because Jesus was selfless and obeyed God going to the cross for you and me, therefore, God has exalted

him to the highest place, he gave him the name that's above every name, that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord. All the people who crucified him, all the people who didn't believe in him, all the people will one day acknowledge

who he is to the glory of God the father. Guys, you realize we live in an upside down kingdom that the very things that sometimes feel like loss to us are actually gain and as you watch Jesus live out every month, God says, because you live selfishly, I will exalt you.

One of my favorite stories and we most of us in the room have heard it a little bit already, one of my favorite stories is the story of Malinga. So if you don't know Malinga, Malinga is a young man who came, he interned here, he we've sent him off to do work in Zambia, he's he's an amazing, amazing pastor.

But his story is this, when he was a young college student, it was spring break, a man from Tanzania said to him, hey, I know lots of pastors in Tanzania, I'll take you there, I'll give you chances to speak. If you're a young Bible college student,

you do anything to have a chance to speak. So he hops in the car with this man he does not know, drives to Tanzania. When they get to the border, it turns out the man is a smuggler.

He thought if I have a pastor in the car, they won't check my car, it didn't happen, they checked the car and they decided that because Malinga was with him, he must be a co smuggler, they threw him in prison. And if you listen to Malingo, he'll tell you when he first got there, he was feeling sorry for himself.

He was like, hey God, why is this happening? And if you were fair, why would you do? And he was having a pity party and one day he saw another prisoner preaching the gospel and he thought to himself,

hey, I can either sit here and feel sorry for myself and angry at God for doing something that doesn't make me very happy in this moment, or I can be selfless. I can take whatever circumstances I'm in and I could try to do this for others, so that these prisoners who probably have no hope of eternity

would know my Jesus, and so Malinga began to preach every single day in the prison. The man who had been the smuggler who had caused Malinga to be in jail, he bribed the guards to get drugs and the guards gave him drugs, he was trying to commit suicide, they didn't work, but they incapacitated

the man, he was kind of zombie like for about two weeks, and during those two weeks, as that man defecated on himself, Malinga would clean him. When it came time to eat, Malinga would go stand in a line with 3,000 men, he would come back, he would spoon feed the man,

and by the time he was done, the food lines were closed, he did that for two weeks. Every single day he preached the gospel and as best we can tell thousands of criminals, thousands of prisoners came to Jesus Christ. Malinga was eventually released and

was back in Bible college, someone invited him and said, hey, would you come talk at Baylor University? And so he went to Baylor University, he told the story, he told what had happened to him. The president of Baylor came to him afterwards and said, I want to give you a full scholarship to get your master's degree.

When he was done with his master's, the president of Baylor came back a second time and said, I'm going give you a full ride scholarship to get your doctorate. I sat down with Malengo a little while back and said, you realize what just happened, God asked you for two years of selflessness

and because you were willing to do that, he rewarded you with a master's degree and a doctorate. Think about this, if you had been trying to earn enough money in Zambia to pay for a master's degree and a doctorate, it would have taken you at least ten years of saving every penny you earn. God exchanged two for 10.

He highly exalted you Malinga, because you were willing to live selflessly And guys, I'm just telling you, we live in an upside down kingdom, that's what God does every single time.

He honors our selflessness, not our selfishness, our selflessness and he raises us up.

So here's the question, how do I start being selfless? How do I do that? First off, I'd say start being selfless with your time.

The truth is in our culture right now, time is one of our most precious commodity. Why do we take our cars to the car wash to get them washed? Because we figure our time is more important than the cost of going to the car wash. Why do we pay someone to mow our lawn, right? Time, time is one of our greatest commodities.

Some of have heard this story before, you're too early, I'll call you back, go away. You're making me mad right now, all right. I'm gonna be selfish. No. It's my time. Alright. Some of you have heard this story before, story of Tom Lutz, he was a biology teacher when I was an eighth grade kid, my dad had left.

I my heart was longing for a father figure and I'd get done with school, I would ride my bike the wrong direction, I'd get to his house, I'd wait forty minutes for him to get there because he's taught at a different school in Downtown Phoenix and every single day for probably a year and a half,

he let a scrubby eighth grader come into his house, eat his food, drinks Cokes, you got to imagine there were days he came home, tired from work to see me sitting there waiting for him. There had to be days that he said, oh, again, and yet he was absolutely selfless with his time.

Another way is you just become selfless with your talents, you have capacities and things to be selfless as, God gave me this ability, I do it. Listen, were a young couple and we just bought our tiny little house and the roof was horrifying on this house and

a person that we knew, a guy by the name of Jody Newby saw it and he said, Lynn, you got to do something about your roof, it's gonna destroy your house. I said, yeah, but I can't afford to have anyone come repair it. He said, I'll come tomorrow.

I said, well, Jody, I'm not going be much help. I don't know how to fix a roof. He goes, I'll show you. I'll share my talent with you. And he spent a day repairing my roof. He gave his time, he was as time he could have used to make money and yet he was generous with his time. He'd be generous with your treasure.

Early on in Lisa and my marriage, we were struggling financially, we were out with another young couple. They said, how's life? We said, man, marriage is great, ministry is fantastic, but we're not sure if we have gas in our car tomorrow. The next morning we woke up that couple, Steve and Darlene Evers

had driven to our house which wasn't close, put an envelope underneath our windshield wiper so that we could fill up both cars with gas and guys, they were a young couple. I guarantee you that was inconvenient, was hard for them.

That's where you start. You become generous with your time, you become generous with your finances, you become generous with your talents, you use them to bless somebody else. What would that look like for us? It looked like your wife coming home from a women's bible study and saying, hey, just met a single mom

and she's doing everything she can do to keep her family together, she's working and then she comes home and has to cook meals and take, in her house, her house is falling apart around her And men, you could go repair her house, that would be selfless. I know your favorite football team is on, it would be selfless.

It could be that you know a family, you know a couple that's really, really struggling in their marriage and you say to them, hey, you know what? My marriage is okay, but I'll go with you to reengage.

I'll go every single night for those ten, twelve weeks that that so that you don't have to feel alone and uncomfortable. I'll go with you. That would be selfless.

If I were to hand you the cylinder today and say to you, hey, let's be honest. How much of you is in you and how much of Jesus is in you? And just pour it out, pour it out until it the the right percentage.

I wonder what our cylinders would look like. Two weeks ago, I asked you to spend the next thirty days in prayer and last week I said, hey, would you just pray about those places in your life where you said, God, I'm gonna exchange your truth for my truth.

If I'm counting right on my fingers, we still have sixteen days left. Would you for the next seven days pray this? God, would you bring people into my life that need me to be selfless for them?

And would you open my eyes to that moment so I don't miss it? Help me to see those appointments, those divine appointments you brought to me, and help me to live that moment like Jesus would, not like what my heart wants to. Help me to be selfless for a week. Let's pray. Hey, dear Lord Jesus, man, this one's hard.

There's there's something in our brokenness that just says, I got I've got to take care of me. I've got I've got to I've got to put myself first if I'm actually gonna be happy, not realizing that selfishness actually diminishes our lives. And then you invite us into this whole new way of thinking. Lay down your life.

Consider others more important to you. Love love others the way that I've loved you. And in that expression, when we say, hey, God, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna be selfless. I'm gonna be sacrificial in this moment. And then God exalts. God rewards when we live our life like Jesus. So this week,

help us to see those opportune help us to see those divine appointments you've made in our life for people who need us to be selfless toward them. This we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Hey, if you need prayer, we'll have people at the front. I love you. I'll see you next week.