Community: The Growing Community

This podcast is a ministry of Grant Parkway Baptist Church, helping people know, enjoy, and glorify God.

For more information about Grant Parkway, visit Grantparquay.org.

Father, just use our life however you want, however you choose.

I pray God that we are courageous enough to follow up with the realities that come with that prayer.

And the reality that comes with that prayer is that we trust you because you're our father, you're our dad.

You know exactly what we need.

You know exactly how you're going to use us.

You know exactly how all this plays out.

And so we just want to live submitted lives for your good, for your glory, for your kingdom, and for you.

So we uh come today, God, we ask God that you give us hearts to feel you, minds to understand you, eyes to see you, ears to hear you, tongues, God, to taste you.

We pray for all these things, God, to be made known to us, not just in our minds, but in our experience today.

We love you, Lord Jesus.

Amen.

You can be seated.

My name is Lance Williams, and uh, I'm the spiritual formation pastor here at Grand Parkway.

As Wade introduced me, I am the long preacher, apparently.

Uh yeah.

Uh but that's all right.

Uh I don't mind that at all.

Um so with that, um, we are gonna be uh let me get right to it uh so we don't uh keep you till 1130 this time.

Uh let me get right to where we're gonna be today, and that is we're gonna be uh focusing on over the last uh uh over the last uh this this month, actually.

Um we're talking about community and what that looks like for all of us is that we are gathered, just like we talked about last week, we are gathered for the name and for the reputation of someone else besides ourselves, and that name is Jesus.

The reality behind that is found in Matthew 18 that we looked at last week, but we're gonna talk about today two growing passions for me.

Number one, community, and how do we grow as a community, uh as a community of Grkway.

And so if you've got your Bible, we're gonna be in Matt in Mark chapter 8, verse 27.

Mark 8:27

We're gonna journey all the way through to verse 38.

Um, as I talked about, again, is the value of community last week.

Today we'll talk about our growing community.

Next week we'll talk about how that looks like as far as friendships are concerned.

And then as Wade talked about, we will serve, uh find ways to serve together during that last time and the reason why.

Um I also talked about last week this um that basically we were created for otherness.

There's something in us that if we're just with God and him, that there's something that says God, that God says that is not good.

It is not good for men to be alone with just him and us.

And so we were created for otherness.

Um and not only that, but we were created to grow, to enjoy progress.

Um, that is why um maybe some of your weeks, maybe some of your days yesterday were spent like mine watching either DIY or HGTV.

For me, I don't have those things, so I go and I just try to camp out from 1230 to 1.30 on PBS when our friends from Massachusetts try and help me understand what it looks like to renovate a home in this old house and then ask this old house.

No one else, okay, no one else has PBS, I guess apparently.

Either that or you hate uh progress, which I doubt.

Uh but nonetheless, it's either it's either HGTV, those home renovation shows, that's why we like progress, or we like the kind of progress that happens in a kitchen.

And so you like to watch cooking shows and all those kinds of things.

We enjoy to watch things kind of start and end, and we also enjoy the journey in between.

And that's really what I want to talk to you about today is this journey in between.

And what do we do to kind of progress?

What do we do as a community, not just for ourselves, as a community to become the growing people that God wants us to become.

So with that, let me uh open up the scriptures, and uh we will read Mark chapter 8, verse 27, which says this.

Mark 8:27

And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi.

And on the way he asked his disciples, Who do people say that I am?

And they told him, John the Baptist, and others say Elijah, and others one of the prophets.

And he asked them, But who do you say that I am?

And Peter answered right away, You are the Christ.

And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.

Verse 31.

And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.

And he said this plainly.

And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

Can you imagine that?

Verse 33.

But turning and seeing his disciples, Jesus rebuked Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.

And calling the crowd now to him, with his disciples, he said to them, If anyone wants to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

For whoever would save his life would lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it.

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

For what can a man give in return for his soul?

For whoever is ashamed of me and my words, in this adulterous generation, and this sinful generation of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father and with the holy angels.

We read that, and we have a good understanding, and I don't really have time to get into the back half of this passage, but the reality is this if you need to hear something today about what God and his posture towards you is, is that he does not want to shame you.

Okay?

No matter where you are, he that is not in his heart.

That's why he kind of writes these things down, make sure they were preserved for us, make sure that we understand them.

It's because he wants us to live in such a way where we follow him, prioritizing the right things so that when we get to our life, we get to our eternal destination, heaven, the new heavens and the new earth, he's not going to stand there and go, I mean, I wish you would have just lived in such a way where I could be proud of you today, but you didn't.

So he writes these things down because he doesn't want us to experience that.

And so what is it before all of that that we can kind of get our minds around, that we can become a certain kind of people to where that's not even on the page for us.

That's not even in the picture for us to live that way and to find that at the end.

Instead, he invites us into a deeper understanding of what he wants us to know about community, about ourselves, and more importantly, about him.

And that first thing is out of Mark 8, 27 to 38, is basically this that if we're going to become a growing community, if we're gonna become a journeying community, we've got to become a people that learn how to journey together.

The insignificant details kind of jumped off of the page for me this week when I was looking at Mark 8, a very familiar passage 27 to 38.

And basically it starts out with this.

See, see, Jesus changes Peter's life in a very insignificant part of their journey, or seemingly insignificant, right there in verse 27.

And Jesus went on with his disciples.

See, he's got his small group, he's got his community that he's living life with.

He's chosen these guys, and he's brought them close to himself.

And as he does that, he's journeying with them.

Look at what it says.

And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi and on the way.

On the way.

See, they leave from Bethsaida, which is at the north side of the Sea of Galilee, and they head up north about 20 miles to Caesarea Philippi.

It's about a day's journey, and as they're walking in a seemingly insignificant day, a pretty mundane part of their life on the way, God totally wrecks Peter and the rest of the disciples and invites them to articulate exactly what it is they believe about the risen Son Jesus.

Of course, he's not risen yet, but they're starting to understand.

Okay, you've cast out demons, okay, you've healed sick, okay, you've done this, you've done that, you've cured blind men.

And so Jesus on the way, he's journeying with his small group, and he just invites Peter to have a confession, a specific confession of Jesus.

And he says, hey, he asked two questions, asked two great questions on the way.

And he says, Hey, who do people say that I am?

And now that you got that down, who do you say that I am?

Jesus has always been in the business of changing people's lives with really poignant questions while we're on the way in seemingly insignificant areas of our life.

Like the woman at the well in John 4, Jesus was on the way from Galilee to Jerusalem, and Samaria was right in the middle, and he meets this Samarian woman when she was on the way to go get water, changes her life, sends her back to her village, and she starts to become a great missionary for the cause of Christ.

Same thing happens in Acts chapter 8 with Philip.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

When Philip was he heard the voice of the Lord and he said, Hey, go run up next to that chariot where that Ethiopian is.

He's reading my word and he has no idea what it means.

And so Philip gets the charge to kind of run up alongside the chariot.

He says, Hey, do you understand what you're what you're reading?

How can I?

I can't read, I don't know what this is saying.

In Acts chapter 9, Paul is on the way to Damascus, or excuse me, his name is Saul still.

Acts 9 · chapter mention

He's on his way to Damascus.

And while he's on his way, who intervenes?

And asks great questions.

And he says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

All of a sudden Saul turns into Paul, and no longer is he persecuting the church, he is building the church and planting the church.

And he changes immediately.

Literally over a weekend.

And they can't believe it.

And he changes.

See, God has always been in the business of meeting us where we are in seemingly insignificant parts of our lives, but we're journeying somewhere.

And Jesus journeys with his small groups and begins to ask them really difficult but simple questions.

Who do people say that I am?

And who do you say that I am?

And here's what Peter says: one word.

He says, You are the Christ.

You are the Christ.

And in that one word, he's saying, You are the Messiah.

It's the equivalent of the Old Testament promised one to come.

And when Peter says that in the midst of the small group, in the midst of the other 11 guys with Jesus, this is really what he's saying because he realizes that spiritual growth is starting to happen inside of this community when he has a specific understanding and confession of the identity of Jesus.

And so he, when he says the Christ, what he's really saying is you're the Messiah.

You're the promised one.

Okay?

You're the promised one of Israel.

You're the king of kings.

You are the Lord of Lords.

You're the Prince of Peace.

You're the wonderful counselor, the everlasting God that Isaiah talks about.

You're the king, you're the promised king of David that Daniel talks about.

You're gonna want, you're gonna be the one, you are the one who will come and you will set all things right.

You're the redeemer, you're the military general that's gonna come with your army at the end of this and slaughter your armies.

And oh, just when you thought he was real tough, and he is, he's also the husband of the church.

He's the husband of the church.

He's the author and perfecter of my faith, of your faith, as our faith, as a community.

He's the rock in the desert, he's the manna that came down from heaven so that we would all have a sufficient understanding of what it means to feast on the word.

He's the light of the world, he's the good shepherd, the vine, the door, the resurrection and the life.

And oh, if we're gonna talk about journeying together, he is the way.

See, that when he said, You are the Christ, all that comes to life.

And this beautiful understanding of the identity of Jesus comes in a very insignificant point of his life on the way.

So, a couple of questions I have coming out of this.

Number one, what's your confession of Jesus?

If you want to know how to change as an individual, much less as a community, what is your confession of Jesus?

Because let me just invite you to think a little bit here.

It's gonna have to be more than just my personal Lord and Savior.

Okay?

It's gonna have to be a little bit bigger than that in the sense that if we want to change the world, which God's called us to do, we got to start telling the story of who God is and what he's done, not just for me, but also for you.

Okay?

And so when Peter confesses that he's saying something way bigger than just a personal Lord and Savior, you are the promised one.

And oh, all the things that that means.

See, here's how this kind of fleshes itself out is that we can come to church and come to church and come to church.

And then, like we did this last week, my wife and I met with this young couple who wants to get married.

Um, God bless them.

And um, as they as they met with us, um, I had to stop about midway and go, you know what?

I am totally overwhelming you right now.

Uh and so let me pull back and invite you to go think about if you still want to hang out with me, because my wife's not gonna be around uh for very for very much longer.

She's gonna have a baby and she's gonna kind of disappear out of this process, and you're just gonna be stuck with this guy.

And so as I kind of talked with them, I just said, hey, you've already been through this premarital program in a in a really big megachurch in our city, and and I know that there's some value to that, but let me just ask you, hey, what is your what's your what's your personal relationship look like?

What is who is Jesus to you?

It's this question Who is he?

And the guy, the spiritual leader of this family, says, I I agree with God and Jesus and stuff.

And I I kind of laughed on the inside and then got real sad.

And I just thought, you are uh not ready for this because there's no real good kind of appetizing confession of who Jesus is.

And here's the reality is that the church, hey, they've been going to church their whole life.

The church had assumed their confession and never given them the opportunity to articulate what they believe.

And all of a sudden they were given that chance, and it just made me sad because there was nothing in there that we walked away.

Melissa and I both walked away and we were like, man, two non-believers wanting to go get married.

That's great.

But it's gonna work better if you're a believer, because that's what God has designed marriage for, to make us holy instead of happy.

And that's only gonna happen, you're only gonna value that when you're a believer.

That's just the reality of that.

And so I just invited them into that reality.

And then we got in the car on the way home, and I just said the road, and it's something I read, not something that's original with me, but I think it's C.S.

Lewis that said something like along these lines, that the road to hell is gradual.

There are no hard turns on the road to hell.

He does not, the enemy does not want to get us off of that road.

And so we just kind of gradually walk down the road of compliance and affirming what somebody else believes, and it's only on the road where Jesus lives and where he's journeying with us and putting his people around us to journey with us.

And oh, by the way, if you're a believer in here, you're put on the journey with someone else to ask these kind of questions, to just put a hard left-hand turn in the journey, to jolt us out of our seat when we just ask simple questions like, hey, who's Jesus?

Not just who everybody else says that they are, but who is he?

Can you not to test them, but just to help them understand?

And so all of a sudden the journey with him is has got these real hard turns to help us understand that is not just an easy, gradual life that God wants us to live with one another.

It's maybe a more transformative journey than that.

And so we get to this.

We've got to be a people that are journeying together, to not assume that we kind of get it together, especially in the church, if we're gonna kind of really become a growing community as individuals and as a whole, and kind of go out and affect the world for the with the gospel.

We've got to do all these different things and journey with each other.

But that's just kind of where it all begins.

Instead, it continues on in our second point, which picks up in verse 31.

Yes, Jesus uh uh invited Peter to kind of confess who Jesus was.

He is the Christ, and then Jesus blows Peter's mind in verse 31.

And he says this, and he began, Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.

And he said this plainly, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

But turning and seeing his disciples.

See, he's with he's with the twelve, and he's seeing his disciples.

There's something grander and bigger here, and Peter just got up out of his chair and got in my face, and everybody has just now seen that, and so he responds this way.

But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.

Have you had the Satan talk with one of your friends yet?

Where you call him Satan?

Have you had the Satan talk where you're with one of your friends yet, where they call you Satan?

Why not?

Why not?

Maybe this is one of those hard turns, and here's why.

Maybe we don't go as far as Jesus went, because he's Jesus.

He can do certain things that we can't do, right?

But maybe we do have to kind of put in each other's ways just a gentle reminder, just like he, maybe not so gentle with Jesus and Peter, but a reminder that just says, hey, you can do all the religious things in the world, but if you're not doing it for the glory of God, if you again you go back to that definition we talked about last week, meeting for our own glory or meeting for the glory of Jesus.

Peter's posturing here and going, ooh, I think I know the right thing to do here.

Let me go ahead and challenge Jesus.

Never, never, that can't happen.

The Messiah can't die.

And Jesus is redefining who the Messiah is and what he's come to do, and Peter cannot handle it.

See, we need friends that come alongside us that when you read God's word and it says something that we've been told our whole lives it can't say that.

And we've been told our whole lives it really can't mean that, but it just does.

The Bible's just real plain and real simple, and Jesus does call his friend Satan.

It's just uh you don't read that, you don't hear about that Jesus on TV a whole lot.

But we we read things that just say it, and and then we kind of interpret those things, and it really does mean that.

We need friends that kind of go, hey, I'm are you sure that it really says this and it really means that?

And people that are rooted in the scriptures that go, it really does say that, and it really does mean that.

You're not crazy.

Instead, let me invite you to a bigger view of who Jesus is.

He doesn't fit in that little box.

Instead, he's way outside of it.

And now you've got to wrap your mind around that God, not this God.

We gotta we gotta journey together in such a way where we invite one another to evaluate maybe why we're doing what we're doing.

That can't happen, of course, in this room unless you hear from people like me or Neil or Wade or Aaron or Butch or whoever else is preaching.

We've got to have people to help us because it reveals our heart.

Are we going to submit to God or make up something else?

And that's what the challenge is for uh Peter here.

And he reminds him that if you're gonna be growing inside a community, you've got to pursue one thing.

And it's not your own agenda.

It's certainly not something you can't do something that reminds Jesus of Satan and get credit for doing something real religious.

This is not what happens.

Instead, what Jesus says is at the end of verse 33, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.

Neil asked me, he goes, What's the one thing you want people to walk away from today when you get done preaching?

I said, It's that.

Are you an instrument of change around your area, your your kind of circles of influence in such a way that you're challenging and inviting people to think about the things of God over the things of man?

See, this is a challenge and an invitation that's been given all throughout the Bible.

Jesus said it in Matthew 6, seek first his kingdom, and all these things will be added unto you.

Paul, the guy that he changed on the road to Damascus, this murderer of the church, changed into a planter of the church, all of a sudden changes, right?

And in Colossians 3, he says this, if you don't have to turn there, it'll come up on the screen.

Colossians 3, 5 to 17, pretty lengthy part of the scriptures, but I want to read all of it to you because it's important for us to understand.

What does it look like for us to kind of apply what Jesus says to Peter, and he's now saying to us, how do we put the things of God in our mind above the things of man?

Paul would say this in Colossians 3, verse 5.

Colossians 3:5

He says, put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you.

You see this?

Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you sexual morality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and covetousness, which, if you didn't know, is a whole lot of idolatry.

On account of these, the wrath of God is coming.

And in these, in those types of things, you once walked, because you didn't care when you were living in them.

But now, Clyde talked about but God, and I'll say, but now you must put them all away.

Put them away.

Put them in the dumpster where the trash guy can come and take them far away.

So if you want them, you're gonna have to go dig through the trash to get them.

What are we putting away?

Anger, wrath, malice, slander.

Now let's think about all the sins of the tongue that kind of start to come up, because if Jesus came.

To do one thing, it was to unify us.

If there's one thing that creates disunity amongst the community of God, it's sins of the tongue, right?

It's slander, it's gossip.

He goes on to say this obscene talk from your mouth.

And then, oh, by the way, if you weren't done, how about you quit lying to each other?

Seeing that you've put off the old self.

So you got some new clothes here.

You're putting off that old self and putting on the righteousness of Christ with its practiceness.

You've put on this new self, which is being renewed in the image after the image of its creator, who is Jesus.

We're being renewed into this journey that we're on.

The destination is Jesus.

And so he continues on.

He says, Here in this journey where we're putting on the new self, there's neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, scythian, slave or free.

Why?

But Christ is all and in all.

Now, put on then as God's chosen ones.

Oh man.

Now you can just start tasting and seeing that the Lord is good.

Now, he's not just calling us to do impossible things.

Now he's saying, I got you a new identity here.

You're chosen by the God of the universe.

You're holy, you're washed clean, you're my beloved, you're my treasure.

Now, have compassionate hearts, put on kindness, put on humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another.

See the community aspect of all this?

Bearing with one another.

If one has a complaint against each other, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

Not a suggestion, a command.

And oh, by the way, and here's how he kind of sums this all up.

And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you are called the one body, and be thankful.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

And whatever you do, I'm reading all of this to finish here, and whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God, the Father, through him.

That's what it's all about, right?

That's how we seek the things of God over the things of man.

And so, how does this work its way out?

I used to go to a church where one guy would get up, I don't know, once a month, and he would always start his sermons with, We got some family business to do in here, okay, today?

So if you're visiting today, then don't listen to this sermon.

We got some family business to do in here.

And I used to hate that until I became the guy that preached once a month and needed to do some family business.

And so now I quite enjoy that.

Thank you for putting the model out for me, and now I will now apply that model.

But truly, what if at Graham Parkway there's just one or two things that we could focus on as a people to become the community of God that wants us to be.

He wants us to be.

There's two things.

Number one is pretense.

If we could just put off pretense and put on repentance.

Now let me unpack those things.

Okay, for us, as this church, these are the things, I've been here about six years now.

These are the things when I look around, maybe some things that we need to work on as a church for our spiritual formation so that we can become who God wants us to become as a community, in our community and in our city, and for God's glory.

First, pretense.

What is pretense?

Um, as I sat there with that young couple, um he began to basically pretend that he was a believer, and then she did too, and then we kind of talked more and talked more.

Why do you want to get married?

And then, oh man, then it really started to come out.

I mean, they were they are deeply, deeply in love with each other.

There's no question about that.

But I just had to stop the young man.

I said, hey man, there's two things worn against your soul.

Number one, busyness.

Number two, pretense.

And I said, and here's why.

I said, I didn't get to say all of this to him, but I'll say it all to you.

Do you remember the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts chapter 5?

Acts 5 · chapter mention

When they go and they sell their land and they go and present their proceeds of their land, basically, their prophets, and they held a little bit back.

We don't know really how much, but they held some back.

But what they did was they told the apostles, they said, Well, we've sold our land, and here's all of our prophets, knowing that they've held some back.

And what'd they do?

They went and they told Peter that, and because Peter had because Peter, it's not Bieber and it's not Peter.

There's no combination, okay?

Uh because Peter, because Peter has a bat phone to heaven, the Holy Spirit reveals to him that they're lying, right?

And he says, Hey, why has Satan so filled your heart that you would come and lie, not to man, but to God?

And when he does that, he's basically reframing for everybody what's going on and how much pretense really is an offense to God.

Because they're not just pretending to do something that they that they think they're doing, they're also lying to God.

And so they kind of present something better than what it really is, and in the process, God punishes them.

And if we know the rest of the story, the next six verses, God kills Sapphira and God kills Ananiah on the spot.

I would hate for that to happen in our church, but it has happened in the church.

As a warning shot over all of us, pretense is the enemy of freedom, and God has come to set us free.

Pretense is the enemy of grace, and God has come to give us grace.

Pretense is the enemy of mercy.

Why?

Why do I focus all on that?

Because God will only meet you where you are, not where you pretend to be.

See, that's the if I'm in community with you, which I think I am, and I've been in a lot of groups over the years, if there's one thing that stunts our growth the most, it's pretending to be somewhere where we're not where we really aren't.

I had somebody come up to me from a different church who said, Man, this is a that was great today, and I needed to hear some of that today, but let me just tell you, there's a great ministry that I have gotten involved with at a different church, and he started to talk about celebrate recovery.

We have celebrate recovery here.

See, the whole reality of CR is that it's a safe place.

If community is going to be anything, it has to be safe.

And so we're at CR, a ministry of our church, it's a great understanding of community because it's safe, and then they just confess their sins one to another, and all of a sudden they don't judge each other based on those confessions, but kind of invite one another into a bigger and grander vision of who they can become.

And no one ever knows what anybody's dealing with in CR because it's safe, close-knit community.

If you want to know what community looks like, it'll scare you, absolutely frighten you to death, but it'll be worth all that to get to go to that.

It's on Tuesday nights, I think it's at 6:30 here in the fellowship hall, usually.

And that's not a plug for CR, as much as it's a plug for all of us to become people that are comfortable with understanding who we are and whose we are in Christ.

Pretense.

Eugene Peterson said it this way.

He says, the great great granddaddy of all sins is the denial of sin, the refusal to admit sin.

Do you have a problem admitting sin in life?

Do you have a problem admitting, you know what?

I wish I was there, but I'm not there.

I wish I was this way, but I'm just not that way yet.

Yeah, we know, we can see it.

And me too.

You can see it.

And so if we just admit that and realize that God will meet us where we are, not where we pretend to be, then all of a sudden life can start to change and we'll become a different type of people that other people want to go and be around.

Not because of anything that we're doing other than loving one another and loving God.

That's the first thing if we're just going to do some business for Grand Parkway.

The second thing is this pretense one thing.

How about repentance being on the other thing?

Put off pretense pretending to be somebody that we're not, and then putting on repentance, this cloak of repentance.

And here's what this looks like for all of us.

I could talk about how repentance is kind of that changing of your mind to quit thinking of yourself this way and God this way and others this way, and start thinking of all those things, the way God thinks of those things.

But I'll just say this repentance is the safe place of God's acceptance.

It is the safe place of God's acceptance.

Let me unpack to you what I mean by that.

It's here that we rest that God has done enough for us.

And that what he did on the cross those many years ago still affects our daily lives, and we still need it on a daily basis.

This is the place to be enjoyed by God.

This is the place that's kind of the center from which you and I can relate to Jesus and to others because we're trusting in what he's done on our behalf, and therefore we don't have to pretend to be somebody we're not.

We're sinners saved by grace, living for his glory.

And so, what does all that look like?

Pretense and repentance.

Maybe we can get to the point where we quit defending ourselves, we quit faking, we quit hiding, we quit exaggerating in order to self-promote ourselves.

We we quit blaming one another, we quit downplaying our sin.

You ever notice the kind of arguments that you get with your with your wife?

Like, or your or your husband?

Uh, not that I've had any.

Uh but but recently, matter of fact, yesterday, Melissa said, Hey, you gotta do this.

You can't be doing like this.

You can't be Mr.

Grumpy Pants.

I know I gave you a mug that says Mr.

Grumpy, but take it out away.

Okay?

Hey, you can't do that.

And I just go, well, I don't know if you knew this, but I was just blank, blank, blank, blank, blank.

And you were see, for her, it's huge, exaggerated.

Whatever I've got against her is exaggerated.

And for me, it's just this little thing.

That's what we do, right?

We pretend when we are not living in repentance until later, I just had to go to her and go, all right, here's the deal.

My bad.

And we sat down at the kitchen table and we talked it out.

And she's like, why?

Why do you do that?

I don't know, okay?

But that's maybe just a small model of what it looks like to live out of pretense, realizing that it's really not where God wants me to be, and then small but huge win of repentance and going and walking across the room and going, all right, here's my deal.

Here's why can I do that?

Because that's the safe place.

That's the repentance, not just with her, but with the Lord.

And so if we look at this and we start to minimize our sin, I'm gonna just magnify your sin, minimize my sin.

When we do that, this is what happens in the scriptures.

1 John 1 says this.

1 John 1 10, it says, if we say we have not sinned, see, if we pretend that we haven't sinned, what do we do?

Not only are we are we lying, that's the lesson from Ananias and Sapphira, but we make God out to be a liar.

That ain't good.

I haven't yet found one person that's made God out to be a liar where that's turned out good for them.

If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar.

And oh, by the way, his word is not in us.

See that that part at the end of Colossians 3 where he says, Let the word of Christ dwell richly in you.

You can't do that without repentance.

You can't do that without putting off, kind of pretending to be somewhere where we're not.

Proverbs 28, 13, when we talk about repentance, says this.

This has been become a life verse for me over the last probably four or five years.

It says, Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper.

But he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.

What great wisdom from the book of Proverbs.

See, if you conceal, if you hide, if you pretend, if you don't repent, then guess what?

You will not have peace.

But if you confess one to another, and then, oh yeah, forsake, see, that's repentance right there.

Forsaking them, then what do you get?

And it's not a formula as much as it's a promise.

You get mercy.

We think it's the opposite.

We think, all right, I'm just gonna hide and maybe I can just kind of walk through this life and no one will really know what's going on inside of me.

And what I've been dealing with and what I've been struggling with.

And the Bible says the exact opposite.

See, if we live in repentance, that safe place of acceptance with God, we have no problem going up to one of our safe friends, our good friends, CR, community group, wherever, wherever it is, maybe at work, maybe it's apart from here, and you can kind of go up to them and go, hey, been struggling this week.

Can you hold me accountable?

I did that over email this week.

Hey, can you struggle?

I mean, can you struggle?

Yes, you can.

Uh can you help me?

Can you help me?

Just hold me accountable.

I'm really working on self-control.

Can you help me with that?

Sure.

Proverbs 28, 13, and then it continues on into the New Testament.

Matthew 3:8, uh, John the Baptist says that you we all are called to bear fruit and keeping with repentance.

Matthew 3:8

See, when God came and he inaugurated the kingdom, this king, this messiahship, he says, Hey, this is what a life looks like following me, putting the things of God over the things of man.

Repent.

It's not just a one-time thing, it's an all-the-time thing.

Admitting that we are yet sinners saved by grace, for sure.

See, what we need is that we've got to have uh some people around us to remind us that just in these three or four verses, uh, when we pretend, when we don't repent, we accuse God of lying, we won't have peace, and ultimately this leads to an unfruitful life.

Maybe that's what God's calling you to today.

Maybe he's calling you to just apply some things personally for you that put the things of God over your own ideas of what it might look like for the Messiah to come and for you to believe in him, and oh, by the way, to follow him.

And that really leads us to our last point, verse 34 to 38.

I'm actually just going to read 34 and 35.

And it says this and calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it.

He totally flips it on all of us.

If we want to try and hold tight to the things we value, what God is saying is, let go of those things and pursue the things of God so that we might truly live.

Totally flips our value system.

But the reality is this if we're going to become a growing community, we've got to understand that we have to have the right destination.

And many of us in this room, and I'm part of that, many of us in this room live in such a way that our destination is heaven.

Not a bad thing.

But let me invite you to start considering what Jesus invited people into.

Yes, to live inside the kingdom, but it wasn't just to wait until something like heaven came along.

Instead, in verse 34, and calling the crowd to him.

See, he'd already dealt with his disciples in a pretty decisive way.

Then he brings everybody close and he goes, All right, now if you want to have the right destination, if you anyone would come after me, Jesus being the destination.

Remember, Colossians 3, we're all being renewed in the image of Jesus.

It's all for him.

The journey we're on is becoming more like him.

Heaven is great.

We'll get there one day, Lord willing.

But in order for us to get there and for that warning shot that kind of Jesus shot all over all of us, hey, I don't want to be ashamed of you when you get there.

He says, Hey, follow me daily.

Come after me daily.

And oh, by the way, it means death to yourself.

Wow, awesome.

Yes, awesome, because it's in that that we find life, true life, not when we seek our own selves.

So the question, I guess, in all of that is who are you following these days?

It kind of ties in perfectly with pursuing the things of God over the things of man.

Are we seeking first the kingdom or are we seeking some really, really good things that are not supposed to be in first place?

What are we seeking and who are we following these days?

Because what we believe about God has always intended to have an effect on how we live for God.

And that's why Jesus says in the middle or yeah, in the middle of John 14, he says, if you love me, you'll obey me.

See, if I took a survey right now and I'm not going to, but if I took a survey right now of everybody in the room and I asked you to raise your hands if you profess to be a believer, we probably have a pretty good number of people that would raise their hand.

And then I would ask, I'm not going to, don't raise your hands.

Hey, who's who's doing everything they can?

Yes, we fall, yes, we fail, yes, we sin, but who's doing everything we can to live like we follow Jesus?

I think some hands would maybe go down at that point.

And Jesus says, if you love me, if you profess that I'm the Christ, if you say I am who you say I am, and I really am that guy, the guy that can change you, the guy that came to seek and save you, if you profess these things, then you'll then you'll live and you'll obey me.

That's why the mission of the church has always been go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Why?

And teach them to obey me.

See, discipleship and growth can really just be boiled down to that real sexy word that you and I love: obedience.

Obedience.

It's one of those words that we teach our kids quite often, but not so excited when Jesus begins to teach it to us.

I love what a pastor in New Jersey had to say.

He says, the calling of the church is to do mission.

And the mission of the church is discipleship.

Let me say that again.

The calling of the church is to do mission.

And the mission of the church is discipleship, growth.

Pulling other people outside of the net, bringing them in the net, seeing God change them for his glory, and then walking alongside them, teaching them to obey everything that he's commanded.

Are we doing that?

Are you doing that as individuals?

You have one person out there that you can go, now I'm discipling that person, or maybe there's someone out there that you're going, all right, I need to just call that dude, or I need to call that lady.

And here's the deal: it's not the church's job to disciple everybody.

But it is the church's job, as in yours and mine, to disciple people.

So what are we doing?

How are we following Jesus this day?

What does our life look like as a result of what we believe?

Here's what it looked like for me this week.

Um, I was running on uh Thursday night, which I know is hard for your many of you to believe.

Uh I actually do exercise every once in a while.

Um and so I was running on Thursday night and kind of getting done with my run, and I was listening to a sermon on stewardship and on just being obedient to God.

Imagine that.

It was great, it was fine, especially with your wallet.

That's what he was kind of talking about, and I was like, okay, this is good.

Uh and then I'm kind of on the home stretch, right?

And I'm I'm I'm listening to my football coach in high school.

Run through the line, run through the line, and I'm like, I'm 35, I ain't running through the line, but I'm gonna try, I'm gonna give it my best.

And I hear that voice writing, I'm going, I'm sprinting, I'm going at least five miles an hour.

And then I hear the spirit of the Lord go, hey, go talk to those people over there, your neighbors.

No, I don't want to.

I'm running through the line.

And oh, by the way, not only am I running through the line, but I know who you want me to go talk to, and I have not gotten along with them in the past.

And I stop.

I actually ran through the line and then came back.

Hey, double obedience.

Uh so I ran through the line, I came back and I began to talk to uh to my neighbors and uh great people.

Uh I got to talk to them, and and here's the deal: a couple years ago, they they were kind of new on our HOA and they were kind of making a lot of changes, and one of the changes they wanted to make, because we were in financial straits as a community, um, is they wanted to shut down the pool for the summer.

What?

No, you can't shut down the pool.

I got two young kids.

You got to, we got to go to the pool.

Uh and so I voiced my very gentle and delicate opinion and um and talked with them a little bit about that, and they did not shut down the pool, not because of me, but because it was just that's a crazy thought.

But I just said, and this is what God was telling me to do, go and talk to them, and then I didn't know what to do, and then I stood there and began to kind of entertain their conversation, and they were entertaining mine.

And then I said, and then he said to me, Now I want you to say this.

And I was like, oh man.

See, following Jesus, death to self looks like this for me in my life.

Hey, I just want to let you know that I know y'all took over a really bad situation or HOA.

I know you guys worked hard to get us back up and running financially.

We got a splash pad now, it's great.

We're building and doing all kinds of stuff in our community.

I just want to let you know, I really appreciate all the hard work and diligence that took for you to get us on the right track.

Okay.

And they just looked at me and their heads literally went like this.

And it led into a conversation of, hey, what do you guys believe about Jesus?

You know I'm a pastor?

Yeah, we know you're a pastor.

Oh, you know I'm a pastor.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hey, where do you guys go to church?

Well, I'm a Christian and she's Jewish, so you know.

I was like, oh, absolutely, this is beautiful.

I said, Well, you should come to ours.

He's like, I'm actually looking for a church right now.

Well, come on, man.

And maybe he'll come today, maybe he'll come at some point during the week, during during the month.

Who knows?

But the reality is that doesn't happen until I submit to the Lord.

Die to myself, go over there, have what I think is just a meaningless conversation about their garage sale that they're gonna have.

And they just begin to start share in life.

You just never know what obedience is going to bring if we would just be obedient in this small thing.

That rhymed.

And apparently threw me off.

Here's the deal spiritual growth as a community and as individuals happens when you and I pursue death to self and life in Christ.

So, how is it that we're gonna do that this week?

It doesn't mean that you you you you kind of hold off until you're on a mission trip one day.

It means on your way out of here, you might just need to go do that thing that somebody's telling you what to go do.

Somebody asked me recently about uh being obedient to the Lord.

He goes, Are you saying that you hear voices?

Yes.

He goes, All right, now we're talking.

Sometimes it's just that way.

Sometimes it's just so evident in God's word that the application of that is just being obedient to the Spirit and what he's telling you to do in the moment.

So as a growing community, and as we kind of uh become a growing community as we journey together, as we pursue the right things about God, as we put on uh uh repentance, as we put off pretense, amongst other things, as we do these things and following Jesus, what do you need to focus on as we finish up today?

Do you need to focus on the journey and kind of finding somebody to journey with?

Do you need to focus on pursuing the godly things over your own?

Or do you need to focus on just kind of the simple obedience of death to self and following Jesus day by day?

Where are you?

You definitely need to answer that today.

What is it you gotta work on?

Um, with that, would you stand up with me and let me speak a word of blessing over you?

Hold your hands out like this.

Your God has come to give you life.

He's come to give you rest.

Rest in him.

The way that works is to seek first his kingdom, and then everything else will be given.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.