Sermon Transcript
Well, this summer, uh, we have been hearing from each one of our elders and some of our church staff, uh, what God has done in their lives, how God has worked, um, in their situations, circumstances, relationships, communities they’ve been a part of. And today we have the conclusion of our series with Todd Chose, so I’ll invite him on up here. Todd is the chairman of our elder board and has served there for a number of years. And I’m looking forward to hearing how Todd wraps up our summer series before we get started with a new one next week. Let me pray for you, Todd.
Uh, Father, thanks so much for the story that you have written in Todd’s life and how it connects, um, to communities of faith in Scripture. We pray this morning that our hearts and minds would be open, um, to what he has to say. May his words be your words, and, um, may they make all of us more like you. We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So when, when Dan first told us we’re going to do a My Story series, and he looked around the table at the various elders and basically said, that means you, you’re going to be going up, It was a little bit of a gulp because I don’t think of my story as one with dramatic turns, you know, times where I ran away from the Lord like Jonah and He had to do something and bring me back. Mine is one where I became a Christian very young and I don’t really remember anything about what I was like before that. And so I was wondering, what am I going to say? But as I looked into it, I think there is actually something to be learned from my story. So I’ll dive into it here.
So I’ve been on the elder board here for 4 years. My wife, my family, and I have been attending Bridges/First Baptist. I’ll call it Bridges even if I’m referring to a time when it was First Baptist. We’ve been coming here since 2006. We found Bridges through the Awana program, and we were looking for something for our kids.
When our oldest was 5, we got him into the Awana program. We were in it for a few years and decided that we want to give back some more, and besides, we live very, very close to the church here, so it was convenient to bring kids over and to get more involved here. And so in 2006, We decided to come here. Since then, we’ve been involved in the youth ministries. We were kind of the leaders of Awana for some years.
We were in the Partners in Christ life group, for those of you who remember that, and then later helped to start the Deeper Roots one where we’ve been involved now since its beginning.
So early on, so if we go back to the beginning for me, I was born at Stanford Hospital nearby. My wife, by the way, was born at El Camino Hospital, so we both are very local here. We both grew up in the area here, and growing up we had a bunch of connections to this church, though we didn’t really know it. Some of you remember Reggie Coates, who used to lead worship here back, in the mid-2000s. He was our high school worship leader in the youth group at Peninsula Bible Church.
I know, I think in the audience here is Dr. Hockenson. At Gunn High School, I had Dr. Hockenson for AP Calculus, and he was a fantastic teacher. And I appreciate it. I went on to engineering, and so the calculus actually came in handy too in my career. And I remember at least a couple of times attending classes here.
There was a while where my mom was thinking maybe I should attend Valley Christian, which met here on campus. And I remember sitting in a classroom in the fourplex, I don’t remember what we were studying, but it was like a classroom situation. Ended up not coming here. So as far as I know, I only attended classes once to check it out.
So my parents, my parents both grew up kind of in Norwegian households. My mother actually in Norway, my father in a community in North Dakota. He came out here for Stanford. And then he, with my mother, came out here again in the early ’60s. And so I grew up, my very early life was in Lutheran Church where I was baptized in the Lutheran Church.
And then later, even though we weren’t going to Lutheran Church later, I was confirmed in the Lutheran Church as well.
My mother, when I was about 6, She really, her faith really came to life and caught fire. And so she just started getting involved in all kinds of things and ultimately was writing women’s Bible studies and books and all kinds of things. And I think a number of you might recognize her because I know she was involved in, with some of you in various ministries. So that’s my father there. He only had that beard for a little while, but it was the best family picture I had.
And my mother in the middle. I was the oldest. My next brother, 2 and a half years younger than me, and then my youngest brother, 11 years younger than me.
And so we grew up near here. My 7th— my 7-year-old year was a very significant year for me, though I don’t remember much of it. But one of the things my mother, as she was getting excited and getting involved in things, she was actually with Sue Larson leading a Good News Club and some 5-day clubs. And one of those met at— for a while it met at my house. And that’s my earliest memory of my wife, Anna.
You’ll see her the year I met her. There she is. So that’s my wife the year I met her.
And it turns out I wasn’t going to be able to avoid her for very long because she went to the same element— Palo Alto district elementary school, and both of our families went to Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto.
So we only attended the same school for a couple of years, and then she actually came to Valley Christian on this campus. So she went through her elementary years coming here to this campus, and then sometime during that year when I was 7, I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior. And then this— my mother took me, we were kneeling down on the white shag carpet in our living room. I think I remember it, but I’m not sure if this is something I’ve been reconstructing in my brain or not. But it was at that time when I was 7.
So, I became a Christian very young. I don’t have any real memories of what it was like before that. So, I don’t have a— exciting story of my foray into drugs and wild living and then being saved later.
But I do have a story of, first of all, faithful parents who brought me up knowing the Lord. My dad, who’s sitting over here, who just celebrated his 90th birthday, He would read to us at the breakfast table most mornings. I remember him reading The Screwtape Letters, some other books, but often he would read us scriptures. And some of his favorite scriptures were from Proverbs, where he would stop at verses like Proverbs 13:24, which ends with, the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them. And then we’d have a discussion about that and what it means.
But he was sincere about that, and he did discipline, but it was always in a loving way and correcting me when I needed correction. My brother didn’t need as much correction, obviously, because a lot of the discipline was with me, and my brother was smart enough to learn from my mistakes.
Another tradition that my dad started is that we still practice. In fact, he still leads it on our Christmas Eve. As like good Norwegians, we have our big celebration on Christmas Eve for Christmas. And going back for many, many years, my dad would sit us all down in the living room and we would read through the prophecies of Christ in the Old Testament. We’d go through each one, we’d talk about each one, then we’d go and read the New Testament accounts from Luke and from Matthew on the birth of Christ.
And it was a great way to center back on Christ and also to ingrain in us the richness of Scripture and how the whole story was told from the Old Testament and then into the New Testament about Christmas. So, Christmas wasn’t just Santa Claus and that. It was— he helped to bring a real focus on the Christmas story. As excruciating as it was for some of us kids because that was the last thing in the way of getting to the presents. And it also seemed like every year he added some more prophecies, which made it go on a little longer.
But I really look back and that was a really kind of a strong grounding for us in the midst of busy Christmas seasons and all the thinking about material goods and all of that. He really centered us back on Christ and on the whole story of the Bible and the prophecies and God’s plan in the big picture. So my parents gave me a great foundation. They brought a loving home. My parents both love Jesus.
And that sort of set the stage. When I was in junior high, I went into the youth group at Peninsula Bible Church.
And Peninsula Bible Church had at the time a program called Scribe School, which was a pastor training program. So, people would come from all over the country to study for a period of time there.
And God used that in a lot of ways, and there were a bunch of the students in in that scribe school and their wives, and the students were men and women too. And they would really go find places in the church to minister, and one of the places was the youth ministry. And so, we had a bunch of these really knowledgeable about Scripture, mature Christian men and women who were serving in— as leaders and mentors. In our youth group at that time.
And so, you know, we were mentored. They were teaching us how to study the Bible, how you study history books and the books of poetry and so on, teaching us how to use concordances and Bible dictionaries. And so, I had kind of an extraordinary foundation in learning. And along with what I learned through my father and so on, it gave me just a deep appreciation for the depth of Scriptures and how to kind of peel away and get at the meaning of things. PBC was very expository, so, you know, sometimes it would take us months in the main sermons to get through a book of the Bible because there are tearing it down verse by verse.
And sometimes that was difficult, but a lot of times it’s just kind of an amazing testimony to the depth of Scripture and how you can drill down deep and get a picture, but you can also pull out wide and see the big picture of what God is doing. And so, the depth of appreciation for Scripture is something I really came away with there.
When I was in 7th grade, we had a— some of these leaders wrote a play.
And it’s just kind of amazing the subject matter that they chose, but they did a great job with it. So, this was a play based on Revelations 2 and 3. So, if you’re familiar with Revelation, it’s written— the stated recipients of Revelation are the 7 churches in Asia.
And this play was about the 7 churches. So, the play had John who was on Patmos, the island of Patmos, where he received the revelation that he was writing down. And then each of— a representative, a messenger from each of the churches came and talked to John, and he delivered the message That’s in those 2 passages, those 2 chapters of Revelation.
We performed this a bunch of times. I can remember about 5 of them, several times at PBC, once at Menlo Park Press, and then we went on the road. We went and did the play once in Southern California and once way up north in Northern California. And for me, this was solidifying relationships as a kid, as a 7th grader.
Kind of for the first time developing kind of a Christian community with the other 7th and 8th graders that were there in this play and developed strong friendships with them. And it was really my first Christian community. Now, we were, you know, dumb junior highers and stuff, so it was important that we had the level-headed leaders and so on there to help us understand.
But this passage in this play has kind of stuck with me. It’s kind of a yardstick by which you can look at your life and the life of your Christian communities that you’re in.
So, of course, it’s written to 7 churches. There were more than 7 churches back then, and so he chose these, I think, because there are sort of 7 kind of behaviors he’s wanting to talk about and have people examine themselves and their communities for. So, the 7 churches were Ephesus, which had some good things going for it, but he called out that they had lost their first love. Smyrna, which actually was doing pretty good, but it was being persecuted. So, they were under pressure, but God considered them rich.
That was a really good message to Smyrna. Pergamum, Pergamum had a few good things going for it as well, but they were compromising. Some false teachings were creeping in. Then there was Thyatira, and Thyatira was struggling with temptation and immorality.
Sardis had a reputation for being a church that was alive, but God called them out for actually being dead. And not following Him at all. And then there was Philadelphia, which was doing great, and He says they’re going to be rewarded. That’s where I was in the play. I played Phil of Philadelphia.
And so, I went up and received the message from John about all the goodness at my church. I do remember at the time being a little jealous of some of the other ones because the ones who were screwing up like Sardis and Laodicea had much funnier lines because they thought they were doing great, and the way John called them out was where the laughs came during the show. And Phil was pretty straight-laced, but it was— that’s the one that you really want to be, and we’re going to read that passage in a second. Finally, Laodicea, You’ve probably heard of that one because that’s the one that they were neither hot nor cold but kind of tepid. And so God says, I’ll spit you out of my mouth.
They thought they were rich, but God called them out and said they were actually poor. So I want to read a couple of the letters.
We’re not going to go through all of them because it’ll take too long, but I do encourage you to go look at these if you’re not familiar with them and look at you know, you can probably place times in your life where maybe you can relate to some of the things that are going on. And then he gives remedies in many cases for how to improve there. And it’s useful for yourself, but of course, it’s written to a community in these cases. So, here’s the letter to Philadelphia from Revelation 3. I’m not doing them in order.
I’m going to do Philadelphia first and then go back a little bit. So it says, to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, these are the words of him who’s holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut.
I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word. And have not denied my name. I will make those of you who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars, I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you. Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. I’m coming soon.
Hold on to what you have so that no one will take your crown. The one who is victorious, I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will they leave it. I will write them on the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the New Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God. And I will also write them— write on them my new name.
Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
And then we had songs with the whoever has ears and stuff. It was actually a musical, but thankfully for everyone, my part didn’t have any music associated with it.
But this letter to Philadelphia is God saying, well done. It’s a commendation. This is a church that that was steadfast and following God and is an example. The whoever has ears phrase is at the end of each of the letters to the churches. And it’s basically saying to all of us that this letter is not just for this church, this letter is for all of us.
And we should be paying attention to what he’s saying to each of the churches and what things might be going wrong in them or the commendations if things are going right. To examine yourself and examine your own faith communities, your life groups, your churches to see if this really pertains to you and whether you need to work on something here.
So, I’m going to move on. I’m going to read the letter to Ephesus that’s there, which is in Revelation 2:1-7.
This is the only other one we’re gonna read because this is the one that sort of hits me sometimes and I find myself, I find it speaking to me at times. To the angel of the church in Ephesus write, these are the words of him who holds the 7 stars in his right hand and walks among the 7 golden lampstands. I know your deeds, your hard work, and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people and that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name and have not grown weary.
So far, so good. They sound pretty good. And they know their Bible or the words of the apostles well enough that they can discern falsehoods and recognize it. All good so far. Yet I hold this against you.
You have forsaken the love that you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen. Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. But you have this in your favor.
You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, Nicolaitans, Which I also hate. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I give you the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
So this one I can relate to a little bit. I’m fundamentally kind of an introvert and like what my daughter likes to call introvert time. Time by myself, and I find that if I’m too much, too indulgent in that, and I’m not invested, and that causes me to not invest in community as much or in people in general and just kind of look in a little bit.
And so what does lost first love look like for me?
Kind of a loss of joy and the glow of Christian life and maybe it’s seeming of humdrum and routine. I don’t know if any of you have experienced that. Love for others kind of fades and importantly, they don’t see the light of truth shining through me when I’m in a state like that.
So how do we get out of that kind of thing? Well, he gives kind of the recipe. First, remember. He says, consider how far you have fallen. He says, remember back to when you had that.
Remember back to a community you were in where you were thriving and living with passion for God.
Him. As an aside, my— I think of— when I think of passion and really loving God, I think of my mother most, who was just so passionate for Jesus at all times. I don’t know if some of you, I think, know— knew her, and she always just radiated joy in him. But remember, and I can remember back to times when things were great. And so, first of all, remember that.
And then secondly, repent. Repent means turn around, go back, do what you were doing. And so, for me, that’s sort of getting back into spiritual disciplines of getting in the Word and studying it and then engaging with other Christians, others who are believers so that we can We can journey together.
So this is something that I do sort of at times catch myself and have to go back and kind of get that first love going again.
So moving on, I started dating Anna late in high school. There we are in high school when I was a senior. And then I went off to Oregon State University, and I had one of my friends from the youth group actually went with me and was my roommate. And I wanted to give back and actually get involved with youth ministry, and there was a friend of mine who was involved in the junior high at a local church, Northwest Hills Baptist Church. And so he said, hey, come with me and serve with the junior high group.
This turned out to be a really impactful thing. It turns out that the junior high pastor who I was helping out with had 2 years earlier been in a boating accident while on a junior high boating trip and was a quadriplegic. He’d broken his neck. Now, he was hopeful that, you know, he wasn’t going to recover from that, but he was hopeful that he would quickly get to the point where he could go in his wheelchair over to the church. He lived right next to the church and actually lead the Sunday morning time with the junior highers or the Wednesday nighttime.
But the reality is during the 3 years that I worked there, he only was able to actually show up in person a couple of times because he had just terrible pain in his legs. And so he was bedridden, which meant that 2 other OSU students and I were his hands, feet, and mouth in this ministry to the junior highers. And so then I think back on this and it really was you know, God’s work to prepare me first to receive what I did in the PBC youth group in terms of getting excited about the Word of God and learning how to study it. And then going through that and being at Oregon State where I was now teaching, sort of doing the same thing as my leaders had been doing and teaching junior highers and having to explain the Word of God to them.
So we would meet with Jack and his wife weekly around Jack’s bed. And we would talk about, you know, how the Wednesday night had gone or the Sunday, start, you know, plan our next lessons. And I think the strongest thing that I took away from that was just how this man, Jack, in the midst of just this terrible situation where not only was he a quadriplegic, but he was a quadriplegic that had so much pain that he had to just stay in bed. And he was such a people person and so passionate. But in the midst of all this, he just had— his focus was on God and he had a thankful heart and recognized those good things that came his way.
And just loved working with us and having us visit him during the week.
When Jack would give his testimony, he would often say, he would kind of start with, well, everything was fine, and then there was the accident, and then he would go on. And it was an amazing testimony because he went through so much. And I’ve never gone through anything like that. But I at least got to see it up close and see Jack’s heart just overflowing with God in the midst of terrible circumstances. And so, that really struck me, and it was a pleasure to serve under him.
And of course, it was very stretching for me as a young college student to be in that position of leading this group. We had about 25 kids or so who would come at a given event.
And I think sort of that period of college with Jack and his group, and we had some other Bible studies and so on, I think that was sort of the closest thing to the Philadelphia ideal that I experienced. But I was in some other great communities as well. Anna and I, so after, After I finished college, Anna and I had been apart that whole time. She was down at Cal Poly. So we maintained a long-distance relationship, but we loved each other.
She’s the love of my life. And after college, we got married and we moved to Boston. And we attended the historic Park Street Church there. And a fantastic— they had a fantastic young adults group there. We were in a small group with a bunch of medical people, so every week they would have different schedules, so we’d choose the day of the week that would work best for them.
And I remember one of them coming, rushing into our Bible study with blood all over them because she was so excited. She’d done her first amputation. And so, that was kind of an experience. We were kind of the non-medical people. People in that community, but it was just a different group of people who loved God, and we were blessed.
And so, we really see God’s hand in taking us to these different communities where we saw God manifesting in the lives of the people around us. And for me, when I sort of started to feel distant and like I was lacking my first love, it was energizing to be among Christians who had energy. And I think that’s one of the great things about community is that, you know, at a given time some of us could be experiencing some of those conditions of the churches that John called out, but if you’re in a community that loves God and is and is obeying Him like the church at Philadelphia, that helps you get— that helps individuals get past those things. It helps you reignite the first love. It helps you fight off wrong, you know, deceitful teaching or identify truth versus error.
Being in community is just so important.
Anna’s been the perfect life partner for me. She’s kind of a community builder. I know at home it’s pretty common where she’ll say something like, hey, who should we do something with tonight or this weekend? And my introverted self would sort of think to myself, well, how about nobody? Let’s just stay home.
But I know she’s right and she organizes stuff and I’m always glad we did, always, always. Always, she’s out there connecting and I need that and I appreciate that.
So as I kind of look back, my parents and family prepared me to learn at PBC. PBC prepared me to go off to college and then actually lead youth and to teach them, that experience prepared me for adulthood and the leadership opportunities that eventually came. And I just find that it’s so important that I’m in a strong community, and if I’m neglecting it, then kind of my introverted tendencies take hold, and it looks a little like I’ve lost my first love and I need to get back. To get the energy and the passion.
So if I guess what the takeaway I’m hoping you get is that following Christ is a team sport and being in community is just so, so important. And so I would encourage you, if you’re not in a close community where you can share and actually speak into each other’s lives, I encourage you. We have life groups here. You’re welcome to just come to my Deeper Roots, our Deeper Roots life group next week if you want, room 521, 9:00 AM. But there’s a bunch of life groups here, and if you’re not connected, doesn’t matter where you are in your faith journey.
If you’re not a Christian, that’s totally fine too, just a place to ask questions and and find out more, I encourage you to just come to one of the life groups that we have.
So let’s pray. Father, we thank you. We thank you for your words, the vision that you gave to John that he wrote out, and for your emphasis on the body of believers, not individuals, not all-star individuals, but but that you give us community. You give us other people who believe that we can help each other when one isn’t doing great and we can learn from each other. We thank you for that gift.
We pray for anyone here who is looking for a community. We pray that they would find you, find a life group either here or somewhere else. We pray that you’d Just sweep them into community with you. Amen.
