Hey. You're listening to Cut for Time, a podcast from Faith Church located on the North Side Of Indianapolis. My name is Claire Kingsley. And I'm Dan Breitwieser. Each week, one of us will sit down with the person who gave Sunday's sermon to discuss their message.

Cut for Time is a look behind the scenes of sermon preparation, and they'll share with us a few things that we didn't hear from the sermon on Sunday. Thanks for listening. And it is cut for time. It is feeling like summertime and very exciting if you were in the sanctuary this week. We have officially unveiled the stained glass window, the very last pane.

And, Nathan and I were joking last week that we should have had, like, a standing ovation for getting through this for the last three years, but no standing ovation. I think I was the only one that clapped, but that's okay. That's okay. So I'm here, with Nick Carter who just did a a tremendous job, walking us through this to the ends of the earth, in this last section, of acts as we start into acts 27. And so, Nick, just give me a quick summary of, quicker, maybe less than quick, a summary of, what you talked about on Sunday.

Sure. Well, I'll go with my my my catchphrases in the sermon, which was, control is not common to the human experience nor is it promised in the Christian life. And then I followed that up with you don't have to be in control when you know the one who is. So those were some phrases that I intentionally repeated as we were going through, the the text. And the the gist of it is falls on a boat.

The the captain and the, the centurion decide we're gonna go take a voyage that Paul believes is a is a bad idea. And he he, respectfully disagrees, but at the end of the day, he's not in control. And he sort of he has to be surrendered to God's plan there. He knows. God has told him, you will testify in Rome.

So he already knows that that's gonna happen. And he's about to find out that it's gonna happen through a shipwreck. And, you know, I just tried to, relate that experience to I think it's common to all of us. You know, this experience of, this plan is not a good plan. This plan is gonna lead to some hard things.

Why are we doing this? And, we we've all been in a situation where we're not the one in control. The people who are in control are doing things that we disagree with, and it leads to bad outcome. Well, it leads to what we feel like are bad outcomes. Right?

Stressful outcomes, harm, suffering even. But God is not stymied by that. And we got to see how Paul responded. And, yeah, it was when I first looked at the the text that I was assigned, I thought, well, how do you make a sermon out of that? And by the end of it, I was like, man, this is really hard for me to even do.

I don't know if I can stand up on stage and preach this to everybody else. And those are the best kinds of sermons, right, when it's very convicting for myself. And and then so you you really have empathy as the preacher to know what I'm asking you guys to do is it's not easy for any of us, but I I feel really convicted that this is, what the Lord has has laid on my heart and has the word for our church right now. Yeah. And I know you kinda oversee the, you know, adult education for our church.

What is it like to even just get up there in a an official way? You know, you don't have a, you know, divinity degree, but clearly gifting and in, you know, I think teaching and preaching and and to, you know, preach a sermon, you know, in in that way. What's it like to preach? You should really ask what it's like to preach twice. I think that's the hardest part of it.

I I feel like there's an adrenaline rush in preaching. I do a lot of public speaking. And and to answer your question, like, I teaching is one thing if if you're you know? And I do feel like I've I've been gifted to to be able to to teach. God's, works through me in that, and and it's it's, it's it's fun.

One of the one person told me that, you can know your spiritual gifts when it's something that you can do over and over and over again. You just never get exhausted of it. That's it's not like a perfectly complete theological definition of it, but I I think that's true for me. And the the difference between teaching and preaching is the performative aspect of it. I can go in with a half page of some notes of here's really where I wanna go and some points that I wanna make sure the class gets to, and we can do I can do a class on that.

But, when you can't, banter back and forth, we can't just, like, ask a Socratic question, get a lot of discussion going, see something go in a cool direction, and then go with that thread with people in the class. When you have to fill the thirty five minutes of air, there's a perform it really is somewhat of a performance art, and and people may not like thinking about that when they think of preaching. But it but we also don't want a really bad guitar player leading worship either. Right? I mean, so you there's a little bit of of a performance art to it.

So that takes a lot of the time is is scripting out, you know, the timing, the phrases, how a joke is gonna land. Those kinds of things take a lot more time for me than just to prepare a a lesson. If if I were to to teach a lesson, it would be much less time in in prep. Well, Well, and I think part of it and we get to even that phrase, performative art. But part of it is, you know, you're trying to touch people's hearts.

And so you can't just Yeah. Throw out a few things and see what sticks. You really wanna be carefully thinking through and praying through that. And as someone who's taught public speaking classes, I mean, there needs to be some repetition, which, you know, and and things like that to really get people to help grasp what you're trying to share. Otherwise, they don't even have a framework to to understand what you're talking about.

Yeah. And I've gotta be careful not to minimize. Right? The majority of preaching still is the spiritual work. I mean, it begins with praying over the text, and then praying, God, you've chosen this text for this church, for this week in this church, and so you already know what message you have for your people.

And that process is the same process as teaching. If I were teaching a text in a class, in a girl class, on a, you know, a home group bible study, I would I would give the same prayer, the same kind of preparation, the same just seeking, guidance and wisdom as far as what the spirit why the spirit has decided that this text should be studied by these people in this week. It's isn't so that's not performance art. Right? It's what I'm describing is the difference between teaching, which is my role at our church most of the time, and then preaching is just that let that next margin of time that goes into layering on the delivery.

It's it's gotta it just takes more time. Absolutely. Really good. Alright. Well, this is called Cut for Time.

So I will ask, is was there anything that you had to cut as a result of, your your time? No. No. Unfortunately, I was joking with you and a few other people. We could call this podcast stretched for time.

It was a challenge for me to create a sermon out of, what I felt like was less text than I wanted to preach. If I if I got to pick. Right? If I were in control, if I were the one given control of this, I would have I would have gone over a larger, section of text. So that was the first challenge.

It was how to to, really have something substantial out of out of just that snippet. Because I feel like it was a third of the story. The the story of of this last leg of the journey, which obviously, the shipwreck is the centerpiece of it. But the challenge of, just focusing in on this dialogue that preceded the shipwreck, turned out to be really rich. And I I did enjoy it in the end.

Yes. Well, and I wanna go back to it. I think you you hinted at it or actually, I you did touch about it, in your sermon, in terms of, you know, we've been presenting this for the last three years as the, you know, acts as the theological history of the church. And so with that, you know, big theme in mind, you know, why include so much of, you know, a story? We had, you know, 20 verses and we're just we haven't even gotten to the shipwreck yet.

Why do you think Luke included so many rich details when it comes to the theological history of the church? Yeah. Yeah. That's, it's a great question. I think two thoughts come to mind.

The first is well, both of them I touched on, but, you know, the first really is, it can't be understated, how significantly, the early church, and the early, you know, hearers of the gospel and hearers about Jesus and about this, this, Jesus movement, how they would have interpreted the shipwreck. Right? And when somebody gets waylaid at sea, that is that is a clear sign that that God or the gods are angry with them. And so I I do think Luke somewhat had to, have a countervailing narrative to that, and and it's and explain, you know, that that's actually that's not necessarily how God works. So in other words, the Christian God is not the God who just always makes things go well for you.

And that in and of itself is a, such a countercultural part of the the first century church and and the theology of of Christ. Right? That suffering is a part of sanctification. Such a that's just an anathema to the early gnostic Greek thinkers and and even to to Jewish thinkers, honestly, to the the Near Eastern thinkers and the way that they they saw, Yahweh working with them. So there was that.

And can I just throw in I mean, I think of that the the scripture where, you know, the the Pharisees come and they're saying, well and I I think it's a guy who's lame, and they're like, who sinned? Was it him? Exactly. Or was it his parents? And so there you know, outside of the idea of there's just bad things that happen, you know, that that is such a you know, we take for granted that there's accidents that happen and catastrophes and, you know, hurricanes form and they, you know, run into land and they, you know, do those things.

Like, we just see that as that's just the weather. You know, there's nothing that literally we could do to stop it. But for those you know, in that time frame, that was the gods, and they were actively working because somebody did something wrong and made them upset. You know? Storms didn't just happen.

Right. And they were they were somewhat petty, right, in that regard. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And then the the second piece and I do think I kind of had this this comedic scene in my mind of of Paul and Luke going over the final manuscript. I'm sure this didn't happen at all. But this this could be a a skip comedy of of Paul going, do you have to include that last part where I said we would all die? Luke's like, well, you did say it.

He's like, well well, would you have to include that? You know? We we we added so much out. Do we have to put in the part where I was wrong? Luke Luke knew what he was doing.

You know, he recorded the the, a full description of everything that Paul had said, knowing that seven verses later, he's gonna or, maybe it's the 19 verses later. No. They were fine. Not a life is off. And I do think that that's significant, and it's not an accident that Luke put that in there.

Yeah. And I think that's so fascinating because it is, you know, when we talk about the the, you know, proofs for, the resurrection or things like that. A lot of it comes down to that's not you know, like, you're not portraying the the the most, strong version of, you know it was the women who saw him first. And, you know, the people like, no. He didn't rise in the debt.

I mean, like, you know, the Yeah. It's in real time in a I think in a way that, is so, not common to that culture. You know, if you look at, you know, the writings of Greeks and Romans and things like that, that's that type of being wrong is is not portrayed, particularly in the gods. Oh, for sure. For sure.

If the if the, disciples had editing powers over the narrative, this is not what they the finished product would have come out. Yeah. Yeah. I will not deny you. I yeah.

I will not deny you. Me, Satan. That's right. Yeah. That's right.

Yeah. Well, you you talked about, you know, control, the the, you know, kind of the first point. Control is not common to the Christian life and and not promised, but confidence ends. Let's let's talk about that. What what does that mean?

What what what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. It's it's confidence in god's working, right, not in my own self. I I think the older that I get, the more I see, how the things that I'm not as competent in as I thought I was, the the how efficacious I can be or not be. It makes me more and more grateful that it's my ultimate salvation.

Even the outcomes of some of the, like, projects that I undertake, no idea how many times I I find myself going, lord, I don't know how this is gonna turn out okay. I'm gonna need your help. So that confidence, which I think in what I was quoting from is Romans eight. Obviously, Paul was, trying to encourage, people who were themselves suffering. We we suffer, and we still have the tendency to think that must that may mean that god is not happy with me.

And, no matter what we go through in life or what the what the results are that we deal with, we know that Christ looks on or sorry. The father looks on us as he does on Christ. And he sees Christ and and standing there, interceding for us. So, yeah, I I think the the biggest question that we need to answer and the most important thing for everybody to understand is their ultimate salvation and standing before god. There are temporal things that we go through, and he won't give us more than we can handle.

But they grow us, and, ultimately, it's the confidence to know that, in the last days that we will hear, well done, my good and faithful servant. Yeah. I think, sometimes that, those that I think and recently, we've talked about, you know, if if you're not suffering, then it's coming. You know? If you're not suffering now, I think you know?

And so, and I think too often, those that aren't suffering take that for granted, and they just kind of you as humans, we you know, it's the the splinter around our own eyes and the log in somebody else's, or vice versa. Excuse me. Log in our own eyes and the splinter in somebody else's. And so it's you know, it can be just, well, just pray about it and it'd be fine. And it's like, no.

Like, this is you know, there's Yeah. There's more to that, than that. And so, yeah, suffering is is certainly, it isn't because you've sinned. It isn't because you've done something wrong. And there are times when, you know, suffering is a result of your own own actions in that, but, certainly, that can be something, that's that's outside of that.

How do you develop confidence? How do you, what are some of the key practices for you to have developed confidence in that for those listening and thinking through, you know, what what would you encourage them to do? I'll I can only answer that from the time when I've lacked it. Right? When I when I, fear that you know, really just fear that that god is not not pleased with me.

And I think the most important thing then is to to be in community of believers where you have the the safety and security to even say that out loud to people who you know, know the gospel, love the Lord, and love you because they will remind you of scripture. It's, we are not designed to listen to podcasts and then be great Christians. I I love that we do this. This is not a dig on comfort time or anything like that, but maybe you've got no. Not not at all.

But but you you have to if you walk away from this podcast and most of your, spiritual growth, your relationship with God, all those things are are ingested through, your AirBot AirPods, then you've gotta be plugged in the community. Because when your confidence waivers, there's a lot of, you know, charge you up preachers you can listen to. You can listen to, you know, upbeat, ballads, Christian ballads. And, at the end of the day, those things are not ultimately going to completely finish it. I think you've gotta have community where it is safe, and it's honestly, if we're in in an honest Christian community, it's expected that at some point, you know, somebody's gonna really struggle, right, and and really have hard questions.

And I know early in my Christian walk, I without the mentors that were around me, the and and the community groups and home groups, you know, that I'd been in through through the years, I wouldn't have the confidence. Right? I would I needed to be reminded of of who god says that I am. Yeah. And I think sometimes, what I've been encouraged too in thinking through is sometimes the you know, you just gotta do it because you gotta do it, and then your heart tends to follow along at various points.

And so, you know, to if you're waiting for the moment where your your heart's like, yep. That's it. You know? You might be waiting for longer. And so sometimes it just takes, Lord, I'm just going to, I'm just gonna do it, not because I really want to, but I know I need to.

And Yep. You know, those habits, can, I think, you know, drive the train at some point? Yeah. One of the other thing I wanna kinda hit on, on this would just be, I think you did a really interesting job of of highlighting God's crazy upside down plan, and how, you know, I couldn't have devised a plan like that. Can you kinda just kinda walk through kinda some of the high points you kinda talked about?

Because I think that was a really strong way to to to finish your sermon. And the the crucifixion, you mean? Yeah. I mean, just I mean, I think just the way you were, you know, highlighting various things. I just I've I've contemplated that for years, really.

That's that's been just kind of a a a baffling mystery to me of how you get a death sentence and be sinless. You know? We can look back on that plan now. We're like, what a magnificent plan that God had. So gracious.

Right? That he would he's gonna be the sacrificial lamb. But it it's it's not as though all the messianic Jews in in thirty AD, you know, finally figured it out and caught Jesus. And they're like, we've got him. Right?

Because we found the sacrifice. That's not how that worked. And so he was he was crucified with the no just cause for his death. And, you know, the pieces you know, just to kinda recap, I think what you're talking about, you've got you have religious law following Jews who were so they were just jealous of who Jesus was because because of his spiritual power and his his giftings and then his deity. Right?

They they were envious of it. That led them to want to kill him, but they didn't they didn't have the power to do, death sentences in that political environment. And so speaking of bad leadership, right, under the consequences of a poor leader. Pilate was a poor leader. He was just a a spineless, conniving political minion who who just wanted to keep the crowds happy.

And and even though he had already said out loud that Jesus was innocent, he perceived that the crowds were turning on him, and he thought he's probably gonna win a little bit of political points if if he lets him go get crucified until he goes for it. That that is the epitome of just poor leadership. Right? And, and those consequences kind of falling on Jesus, and that's precisely these are non accidents. God designed all of that.

He he knew exactly who would be in political power. He knew exactly how Jesus' glorious, gracious ministry would incite anger from the people who who'd thought of themselves as being righteous. It's it's just masterful. It's just masterful how God put that together. Yeah.

God has perspective that we don't. And that's That's right. It is, it's that's hard as humans. We think we think it all. Like, we think we we, you know, we wanna tell God, this is how you should act because, like, come on.

Let's take it out. You know? Like, I I know what it's I I know how this should work. And and, you know, so this is covered times with things that weren't in the sermon. I could I could go even further on, like, just in in history geekery.

Right? You've got the world at a time where the Roman Empire had created the Pax Romana. There had never been so much unity and peace across so much of the known world. And then in order to to maintain that and, an empire wide economy, there had become this trade language, koin e Greek. It was not classical Greek.

It was a distilled it was like a kind of a caveman English. Right? They distilled down the language to a very simple language that then could be spread and used in trade across the whole known world. So so you've got, just about, a couple hundred years prior to, Jesus' time, the whole Old Testament got translated into Koine Greek in the Septuagint. So you have the Old Testament in that language, and then Jesus comes on the scene, and and you have the the New Testament writers.

And you have Paul who has Roman citizenship, and he's fluent in Greek and Greek thought as well as Eastern thought, and he he writes, prolifically in Koine Greek. It's just all of that that whole scenario was just it was it was ready made for the Messiah, the savior of the world to enter and for the gospel to spread to the ends of the earth. It was ready made, and none of that's coincidence. None of that's coincidence. Yep.

And and so it did. And that's the the story of the Right. That's the theological history of of acts and how that all happens. That's right. Well, Nick, thank you so much for, your time.

Do you wanna just maybe the with the last thing, just talk about the the weekend in August, you know, the, in-depth, Grow weekend. Grow weekend. Thank you. I was like, it's not the deep dive. Grow weekend.

You wanna just for those listening, kinda walk through what that will look like so people can get on their calendars now? Yeah. Grow weekend, it's a a Friday evening. So we gather, checking the calendar. I think it's 6PM, six to eight.

There's kids programming, so it's Friday evening and Saturday morning, and then the Sunday morning sermon ties into it. So it's a it it's just an in-depth sort of, immersed study for the whole weekend that we do as a church together. There's even, discussion questions for community groups to gather, either that Saturday evening or or whenever throughout the the next month, whenever their gathering is to kind of mull over some of the same topics. And, yeah. So Margie Boswell speaking on Friday evening.

And the the big topic is we believe. Right? In in meaning that's the first phrase out of Nicene Creed. And it's diving into what are the core tenets of what we actually believe. The Christian faith is, more than just propositional truths, but it's not less than.

And so we are gonna spend some time looking at what is it that we we believe that and how do those beliefs shape our lives and then make what we call a Christian life. So, yeah. Saturday Saturday morning, it'll go from nine to noon. And, again, there's parallel programming for the kids. And then the Sunday morning sermon will be on the same kinda tie up the same topic.

And we did this once already, and it was I think it was a great experience. And so excited. It's it's coming back and a springboard going ahead for what, all the information or all the program is gonna be, you know, going forward and, for the for the, coming fall and spring. Good deal. That's right.

Alright. That's right. Well, Nick Yep. Thanks so much. Appreciate your perspective and and bringing us the word in such a powerful way, on Sunday.

And I am not sure exactly who's preaching, but we'll continue on in acts, and and maybe we'll, at that point, get to the the part where Paul actually gets shipwrecked. So join us then. Yep. Tom Macy will be talking about the shipwreck next week. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of cut for time.

If you wish to submit questions to our pastors following their sermon, you can email them to podcastfaithliveitout dot org or text them into our faith church texting number. And we'll do our best to cover it in the week's episode. If this conversation blessed you in any way, we encourage you to share it with others. Thanks for listening. We'll be back again next week.