WE THE CHURCH Week 4: We Will Endure | Matthew 16:18

Hey, it's Pastor Jonathan, and thanks for downloading the FB El Dorado Sermon Podcast.

In today's sermon, we wrap up our series of We the Church by looking at Jeremiah chapter 17, verses 7 and 8, as we learn together that we can and we will endure.

Jeremiah 17:7

That, my friends, is the face of endurance.

That's James Lawrence.

But his friends call him the Iron Cowboy.

It's quite a nickname, if you ask me.

Here's why his friends call him the Iron Cowboy.

About six years ago, James came up with this hare-brained idea.

He wanted to see just how much he could endure.

So he he made this proposal, and this is actually what he did.

For 50 consecutive days, James Lawrence completed 50 Ironmans in 50 different states.

Yeah, you heard correctly.

Yeah, 50 consecutive days.

For 50 consecutive days, James Lawrence swam 2.4 miles and then immediately biked 112 miles, and then immediately thereafter ran 26.2 miles.

Now you would think after enduring those 50 days, you'd be done.

You'd be like, I've had my career.

I've had my moment.

But almost immediately after uh having those 50 days pass, James Lawrence asked himself the question, can I endure more?

And apparently the answer is a resounding yes.

Because earlier this year, the Iron Cowboy got back on the saddle.

And this time, here's what he did.

He completed 100 Ironmans in 100 consecutive days.

Let's do a little math.

Over 100 and consecutive days, he swam 240 miles.

He spent 11,200 miles on a bicycle, and he ran 2,620 miles.

Now you know why I say James Lawrence is the face of endurance.

But listen, when I say the word endurance, I don't just see the face of a cowboy.

I see so many faces in this congregation.

I see the face of a single parent who endures every single day juggling work and bills and kids and laundry.

I see the faces of a husband and a wife who have been married for decades.

They've endured.

Marriage is never easy.

Together they endured parenting.

Parenting is always a challenge.

And now they endure together growing old, and that's never fun.

I see the face of the guy or gal that I know who I saw their spouse walk out on them.

I see faces in this congregation who have buried family members long before they ever believed that they would.

I see faces of children who don't like school and just endure school.

Every morning they have to wake up and muster enough courage to just get up and to go.

You see, together, the face of that cowboy and the faces in this congregation, they don't just define endurance.

Those faces together paint this vivid portrait of what endurance actually is.

And with each stroke on the canvas, we begin to understand why endurance is such a powerful word.

You see, the outline of that picture of endurance is just the ability to move forward in life even when we face this overwhelming challenge.

And then that outline of endurance is filled in with color.

It's the shades of words like strength and fortitude and patience.

Ultimately, the portrait that is painted for us when we speak the word endurance, it's a person who won't give way, a person who'll never give up, and a person who will never give in.

And if a cowboy can endure, and if members of this congregation can endure, then I promise you this.

We the church, we will endure.

This is the final week in our current series, We the Church.

In this series, we have been reclaiming the biblical vision for God's local church.

Week after week, we have emphasized this fact that we have to begin this process of understanding church by defining the word church correctly.

That church, as it's used in the Bible, is a people.

And it's a people who understand that we can and we will endure.

That's why one day Jesus looked at Peter.

He looked at Peter, this disciple who's often slow to understand and he's slow to comprehend.

And Jesus gives Peter a really clear message.

He says, I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.

And the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

Jesus' message to that Peter and to all the Peters in this room who are slow to comprehend and slow to understand the teachings of our Lord and Savior, including myself, Jesus' message to us is clear.

We are a people who will endure.

Yet we live at this moment in history.

When so many of us, listen, we say that we trust Jesus.

But at this moment in history, we ask a question of Jesus.

We hear those words in Matthew 16, verse 18, and we question Jesus and we ask Jesus, can we actually endure?

Matthew 16:18

Can we really make it through all of this?

Can we really endure?

Even though our country is at best described as being post-Christian.

By that I mean the church really no longer has a seat at the table of public discourse.

The church doesn't sway culture, doesn't really influence culture like it did in the past.

Or we ask that question, can we really endure?

Because while we try to espouse a biblical worldview, the world around us has a secular worldview.

In other words, an earthly worldview.

A worldview that values human opinion and human feelings over the expressed truth of God.

A worldview that can basically be summed up in that familiar phrase, you do you.

And can we really endure?

Even though we live in what one researcher, David Kenneman, calls a digital Babylon.

Digital Babylon, according to David Kenneman, is all the ways that the screens in our life, this screen right here, this screen in your pocket, the screen in your living room, the screen on your laptop, all the ways, all the screens in our life, whether it be social media or just the internet in general, shape us in these ways that are contrary to the way of Jesus.

Can we really endure when, let's go to the next slide, the church is located in the middle of those three forces?

It's in the middle of those three forces that are arrayed on all sides of us that we ask that question.

Can we really endure?

Can we really move forward in life as a church if no one listens to us and no one thinks like us?

Can we really overcome the hurdles that are before us if culture continually tries to draw us away from Jesus, especially the next generation, especially our children and grandchildren away from Jesus?

Is it really possible to never give up, never give way, and to never give in, to endure to the bitter end?

And at each point, when we ask Jesus that question, I think he just nods in agreement and he says, Yeah, listen, those cultural forces are so real.

Those cultural forces, some of them you're complicit with, some of them you're accepting of, those cultural forces, they're not for your good.

They're not for the glory of my kingdom.

You're right.

They want to take your life, they'll never give you life.

Jesus is right.

He's like, you're in a spiritual battle.

He agrees with our assessment of the situation that we're in danger, but then he says, But listen, you can and you will endure.

Because listen, post-Christian, digital Babylon, secular worldview, I think according to Jesus, this is how Jesus would understand them.

He would say this those are just more instances, more examples of the gates of hell.

And yes, they may cause some to stumble and others to fall away, but those gates of hell have never, nor will they ever defeat my final ultimate plan.

My church can and will endure.

Sometimes, and it's true, every week, listen, every week a local church closes and a local church opens.

And it's true, every week a local church is planted and a local church withers.

But Jesus's global church, hear me, hear me carefully.

Jesus's global universal church will endure until Jesus comes again.

And it's my belief that what is true of God's global universal church can be just as true of this local church.

That in the face of enormous adversaries, forces a raid against our uh again trying to take away our good and to defeat us, that in that moment of time, this local church, we can and we will endure.

That's a real possibility if we live into the promise of Jesus and we believe it to be true, but something's required of us.

And that's what we're gonna talk about this morning.

For us to be able to say, we the church, we can and we will endure.

We must, listen, we must grow deep roots that produce good fruit.

We must grow deep roots that produce good fruit.

Check out what the prophet Jeremiah says in Jeremiah chapter 17.

Jeremiah 17 · chapter mention

This is verses 7 and 8.

Jeremiah says this.

He says, But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.

They will be like a tree planted by the water, that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes, its leaves are always green, it has no worries in a year of drought, and never fails to bear fruit.

With those two verses, the prophet Jeremiah directly addresses the people of God.

He addresses the people of God at a moment in history, a moment in the life of the ancient kingdom of Judah when their culture was collapsing around them.

It wasn't a great moment in time.

God's people, in fact, many of them had rejected the worship of the one true God and exchanged the worship for the one true God for idols.

And in that moment, as their culture collapses and as cultural forces are arrayed against God's people, Jeremiah calls those who are still faithful to God to reaffirm their trust in the Lord.

And even as Jeremiah himself prophesies the arrival of the armies of Babylon, not some digital Babylon, but the literal chariots and spears and armies of Babylon to come to the walls of Jerusalem.

He says, They're coming, guys.

And even as he says that day will come, he summons those in the city who are still faithful to God to reaffirm their confidence in God.

And when you kind of think about it, their cultural moment, their moment in history was in many ways just as stressful as our moment in history.

Sometimes we think it's never been this bad.

Oh, it's been this bad before.

But Jeremiah, what's he do?

He says, in this moment, your culture's collapsing.

In this moment, your culture's coming for you.

In this moment, an army's coming to take your life.

But if you're the faithful one of God, you will trust him and you will put your confidence in him.

You can and you will endure if you do that.

Because you, because of your trust and your confidence, what does he say you are?

He says you are like a tree.

You're like a tree.

Let's go to the next slide.

This is another picture of endurance.

This is a picture of a bristle cone pine tree.

Bristle cone pine trees are said to be the oldest known living trees on planet Earth.

The oldest known bristle pine uh cone pine tree is over 5,000 years old.

Now, what's truly fascinating about bristlecone pine trees is the difficult, awful circumstances in which they live.

They don't live in a greenhouse.

They don't live with a master gardener taking care of them every single day.

Bristle cone pine trees live just below the tree line where temperatures plummet easily below freezing.

And that means that the growing season is really, really short.

And then because they are at such high uh altitudes, the winds at that altitude are enormous, just continually battering these trees over and over again.

How can a tree like that endure for so long?

Uh, in large part, because of the roots that it has.

A portion of its roots are just below the surface.

Those roots just below the surface, here's what they do.

They're looking for any drop of water that they can find.

But then there's also these few large roots that a bristlecone pine tree has that go deep beneath the earth, that give it structural support, that allow it to withstand the weather and the winds and the turmoil of growing at such a high altitude.

And much like that bristlecone pine tree, you and I, this church, we the church, we need a deep root so we can endure.

Because with a deep root, we can endure the assaults of a post-Christian culture, the lies of a secular worldview, and the influence of digital Babylon.

According to the prophet Jeremiah, what does Jeremiah say?

He says, our roots grow deeper and deeper day by day as our trust in the Lord and our confidence in God increases.

And those roots, they grow deeper and deeper.

They go farther and farther out until they finally find water.

They finally find a stream out of which they can drink.

The stream that God's people drink from, that our roots will finally find.

It's a water that is pure, a water that will refresh us no matter how we are challenged on a daily basis.

It's a water that will strengthen us, even as a culture would attack.

And it's a pure water because it flows out of God's holy word.

Psalm 1 teaches us this.

It says, the one who delights in the law of the Lord.

The one whose greatest treasure in life is to know all the teachings found in God's holy word.

That person is like a what?

Tree.

Like a tree that's planted by a what?

A stream of water.

That's why when we the church gather, each week we place a such a strong emphasis on God's word.

Because every time we gather, here's what we want to do: we want to extend our roots deeper and deeper into God's holy word.

It's why when I preach, I go to God's word and I try to stay away from my own opinions.

They don't deserve a pulpit.

It's why when we pray so often we are guided by God's word.

It's why the songs that we sing echo the promises and sometimes uh directly repeat the promises found in God's word.

It's why at times in our service, it's not just the text I preach from that we read, but we read other lengthy passages of Scripture because that is the pure water that God's church needs to drink from if we are to endure.

And I believe it's been this church's ongoing commitment to God's word for over 175 years that this gathering of God's people has endured.

And we are never going to depart from it.

We will always read it and we're gonna wrestle with it and we're gonna apply it.

Each week we're gonna claim the promise of Jesus when at the end of the Sermon on the Mount he says, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

But it's not enough for us to let the stream of God's water flow when we gather.

It's also a stream of water we must go to, we must put our home's roots down into as we scatter.

We must be people who listen, read and meditate and memorize God's word.

Because when we read and meditate and memorize God's word, it has this power to expose the lies the culture teaches us.

And God's word, it has the power to reveal to us those places in our heart and in our attitudes and in our minds that we've already found ourselves complicit with the culture around us, where we have mistakenly agreed.

With the ways of the world.

Are you beginning to see why we, the church, have to have these deep roots to drink from the pure water?

We need this pure water because the assaults of a culture and a worldview that are opposed to God, they're not going anywhere anytime soon.

Like that day is not coming.

It is what it is.

And God's word, it prepares us for the assaults that come.

And notice this that Jeremiah actually anticipates these ongoing challenges.

What does he say?

He says there are going to be heat waves in life.

And there are going to be seasons of drought that come when the rain doesn't fall and the ground is dry.

There are going to be times, he says, when most trees and most people would not be able to endure.

But God's people can and will endure because they're like a tree that's already found a stream that's never going to run out of water.

And listen, if we drink continually from God's pure water found in His Word, it also has this power to transform each and every one of us.

Yeah, God's water, his holy word has this power to grip each of us by the roots and at the root of this church and to transform us so that we produce good fruit.

Jeremiah, he doesn't name the fruit.

But later on in the New Testament, Apostle Paul, he lists out nine varieties of fruit.

In Galatians 5, he says, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Against these things.

There is no law.

Did you know that farmers in the United States grow over 2,500 different types of apples?

Of those 2,500 different types, you can only buy a few, a handful, in the local supermarket.

But no matter your favorite apple, whether it's a honeycrisp, that's the favorite at my house, or um a Fiji or a gala or a Granny Smith, no matter your favorite variety of apple, listen, what are they all?

They're all apples.

It's all a single fruit with different varieties.

And Paul, he had never walked through a Brookshir's produce department or a Walmart produce department, but I think he understood that exact principle.

Because what Paul speaks of in this moment is a singular fruit, the fruit of the Spirit.

It's not fruits of the Spirit, it's fruit of the Spirit.

There's one Holy Spirit that produces one fruit with nine different varieties, Paul says.

And again, they bear repeating love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.

And the presence of each variety of holy fruit, listen, it is proof positive that we can and we will endure for this reason.

It is proof positive when you see those varieties of fruit in our midst, that God is at work and the Holy Spirit is present among his people.

And that's why more and more, what do we want to do?

We want to open ourselves up to the truth of God's word.

And when we open ourselves up to the truth of God's word, the Holy Spirit begins to work in our midst, and fruit is produced that reminds us that our God is here, our God has a plan, our God is at work, and we the church, we can and we will endure.

Do you see any low-hanging fruit in the room this morning?

You know what low-hanging fruit is, right?

It's fruit that is like easy to grab, easy to see, easy to snatch.

I see some low-hanging fruit in the in this room, evidence of God at work.

I see the fruit of love as low-hanging fruit.

There are so many people in this room who express their love and let this fruit lead to generosity in their life.

Whenever a need emerges, they want to be the first one to take care of it.

I see the low-hanging fruit of joy when we worship.

As we sing songs, no matter whether it's an old hymn or a new song, like these same people are just filled with joy.

They're just overwhelmed by who God is, and they are just engaged in singing in that moment.

I see the low-hanging fruit of patience in this room.

For those who are prayer warriors, and you know, sometimes you pray for something and it doesn't feel like anything happens in that moment, or even a day later, or a week later.

But the fruit of patience says, what do you keep doing?

You keep praying and you keep praying and you keep praying and you keep praying, and you patiently wait for God's answer.

You may see different low-hanging fruit in this room, but I promise you it's here.

And here's the thing again, it's a testimony that God is at work and that we can and we will end the door.

One final portrait of endurance this morning.

Let's go to the next slide.

That's a a painting uh by a Spanish artist named Diego Velazquez from the 17th century.

It's called Christ Crucified.

And this morning, listen carefully.

That is not just the final portrait of endurance, it's the ultimate portrait of endurance.

Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2 says that Jesus did what?

Hebrews 12:2

Jesus endured the cross.

He did something more difficult than a hundred ironmans over a hundred consecutive days.

He walked to a cross and bore the weight of the world's sin.

And with each stroke of brush stroke that uh was required for that painting, we see what true strength is, and we see what salvation required.

That Jesus, he endured the suffering and shame to pay that debt of sin.

Listen, Jesus not only endured the cross, on the third day he overcame the world, he rose again.

Ultimately, listen, the cross and resurrection of Jesus give us this final and ultimate reminder that since our Christ, the Christ we sing hallelujah to this morning, since our Christ has endured, his church can and will endure.

We may suffer in this world, we may be shamed by this world, but we can endure the world and overcome the world because of the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

Because listen, there's a day coming, and it's gonna be an amazing day.

Because on that day, we're not only gonna endure like Christ, when Jesus returns, we will reign with Christ.

But until that day comes.

And we don't know when that day will be, but it will come.

But until it comes, let's endure together.

We can do it.

And we will endure, we will do it.

We just have to grow a deep root that's gonna produce some awesome, amazing fruit.

Let's stand together and sing.

Almighty God, your word challenges us this morning.

It challenges us to not be overwhelmed by the world around us.

Your word encourages us this morning, encourages us to know that we can endure so much more than we think we can because of the power of the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

At this hour, God, we reaffirm our commitment to your holy word.

We're gonna let our roots go deep into the stream.

We reaffirm that commitment not just as a church, but as individuals, as family units, that we will drink deeply from your pure water.

And we're not just gonna read your word, God, we are going to open ourselves up to your word.

We're gonna let your word read us so that the Holy Spirit can transform us.

Holy Spirit, we are open to your movement this morning.

Produce more fruit in our midst.

Let us see that you are at work.

Have your way, Holy Spirit.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.