Built Different 1 | A Firm Foundation | Nathan Lawson

There's an ancient tradition that the most trusted advisor of the king is the cupbearer.

He would be in the room, not stealing from the king's table,

but taking things off the king's plate to ensure that what the king was eating

was safe and he wasn't being poisoned.

In a sense, it would have to be both an advisor and a trusted individual whose

integrity was beyond question so that he could not be bribed in order to pull

out an assassination of the king.

And I explain that if you think of that, it really means that what I was doing

for my children and their Halloween candy was actually looking out for their well-being.

I mean, there could be dangerous things in that candy. It could be expired. Who knows?

Botulism or poisonous drugs. So in a sense, it's not stealing.

I mean, it's really an act of respect and compassion. So I just wanted to go

ahead and get that in here as a footnote in case you also needed to remind somebody

of that great truth as you go home and look at the abundance on your table. It's not stealing.

It's protecting the next generation. We are, at least in my family,

Halloween marks the end of what can only be called like a birthday quarter, really.

So both of my brothers, my father and my wife have birthdays in October,

one week after the other. I have five children with birthdays in September,

and it ultimately culminates in Halloween.

And so our glucose levels are dangerously high at this point.

I mean, you might be able to cheat on one of those weeks and say it's in the

spirit of the holidays, but I'm not sure if eight weeks in, if you can still

claim that this isn't just becoming, you know, more of a birthday habit.

And one of the things about birthdays, if you've been around them or especially

when little kids are involved, I remember Isabelle's fourth birthday,

and she's our oldest, so obviously we love her the most, obviously, and.

Just kidding. My kids aren't in this service. They're in first service.

So, no, we love them all the same. But like you really go all out,

you know, on the first one.

And so like we had a guy, a friend bring an actual horse to her birthday to

do pony rides. Like we didn't just do a craft.

Like kids decorated flower pots and we actually put flowers in them,

gardening and organic whatever. And like we're doing all this stuff.

And like we're really going. We're like 110 percent in.

This is like super birthday. and you get to the time of cutting cake and my daughter, who is four,

is there and she's into Disney princesses, shock of all shocks and as they're

cutting the cake, some voices of protests were heard.

You see, some of the girls did not want the piece of cake with the H on it.

They wanted the one with Belle or Ariel or Aurora, like they wanted the cool

frosting, not that ugly frosting with a letter on it, like they wanted the cool

ones with the slightly thicker frosting And whose piece is bigger anyway?

And let's just say a small debate broke out amongst the little ranks in this group.

There was a back and forth discussion on what fairness should look like when

it comes to birthday cakes.

Now, if you've been in that situation, you may have said, look,

I can see the tension. I see the problem.

Technological solution. Simple, simple. We're going to give everybody an individual

cake with identical decorations on the top. So we do not have to sit here and

become a judge and jury over whose peace is greater.

And so that should sort out the tension. And if you've ever been at a little

kid party with cupcakes, you know that then they never fight over anything because

everything's been solved. Am I right? They just stop fighting after that.

That's not what happens, at least in our household. Then it's who got the cupcake

first and who got in the games first and why did they get more presents than

I got and why is it I have to wait my turn?

And here's the thing, if you've noticed, that it isn't really a cake problem.

Like you can have advances and ideas to make things a little better,

but at the end of the day, it doesn't seem like a systems problem, right?

No matter how many you solve, there's just going to be another one because the

problem isn't the system.

The problem is us. like we're the same people at the party that fought over

that thing are very likely to bring that same tension into the next thing.

And the reason that this is important is in the early part of the 20th century,

there was kind of this idea that once we invent enough gadgets and innovation,

it was going to solve all the world's problems.

We'll make advances in farming that would just blow your mind.

And, and like hunger will be a thing of the past. And, you know,

Everyone will be able to afford groceries.

Like it's all going to work out. And we have made advances in medicine.

Penicillin's coming on board. All these diseases are being cured.

So now it'll be so abundant that everyone will have access to health care.

Like we saw where this was going. At least back in the early part,

people were like, look, wars.

I mean, that's an 1800s problem. We're not going to have that going forward.

And then the reality of it hits. and we had the most violent century in human history.

Because, like, technology didn't solve it. It just sped it up.

One poet said in the wake of World War I, the greatest taking of human life

up to that point, and he writes this poem often quoted, where Yeats writes,

right, Things fall apart.

The center can't hold.

The thing that we were basing society on that we thought was strong enough is

not strong enough to hold back human evil.

It doesn't do it. It's like still there. All the things we had before are still kind of plaguing us.

And you may not be a philosopher, a theologian, or historian,

but you probably have seen enough at this point to at least question the idea

that technology is going to solve our problems.

Like I think you're looking around going, in fact, I think they might be making it worse.

People that wanted to bully people in the comfort of the, you know,

in their own neighborhood can now do so anywhere on the globe,

like unfettered, like it almost seems to be exaggerating the same problems that

were there before. Maybe you haven't said the.

It just seems like society is cracking a little bit, that what we were trying

to build on isn't strong enough to hold back the things that want to get people's

life off track and down in to those rafters of hopelessness that seem so much

more common today than they were even 20 years ago.

And so I just wonder, as we kind of were embarking on a new series where we're

going to be going through a book called Colossians, and it is a jam-packed book.

Like, if you want a book that it just has maximum return on investment.

It is a short book, less than 20 minutes to read through the whole thing.

But every line just has incredible insight from Paul on the nature of the gospel, life in community.

And he's gonna give us a lot to really think about. It's a book that you can

read and then reread as it begins to work on the way we think about things.

Because what Paul is gonna recognize, right, is that the foundation of our faith,

like what we believe is going to eventually be manifest in what we do.

That before he gives advice in chapters two and three and four on live like

this and do this in community, he needs to talk about what you believe.

Because if you really wanted the long and the short of it, and that is this,

that what you do is a reflection of what you really believe.

Not what you say you believe, not what you claim, not what's on the inspirational mug, right?

Like we can say things like, I, you know, I just, I just, I just love everybody.

And then you look at your social media feed and somebody says,

you know, it doesn't seem like you love everybody. It seems like a few people

may be excluded from that circle.

And you may say things like, I just, I'm such a generous person. I care about people.

And by that, I mean, three people, like the three people I hang out with.

Those are the people I'm generous with sometimes if I can, and they don't call me too often.

Like you, you, what you really believe is reflected in what you do.

And I guess there's some good news there because it also means that if we were

to take some stock on it, that we could also examine what we believe and make

sure that what we believe is a proper foundation for what we have been called to do going forward.

And we really want to examine this foundation. If you've ever been going to

buy a house, like we look at all the things on the outside of the house,

what school district it is, how updated the carpets are, how,

you know, whether or not the paint is modern.

And those of us who are colorblind taking on faith on other people that this

is better than that or whatever.

But at some point you have to bring in an inspector because some of the most

important things that speak to the viability of the house are not things that

are readily apparent when you are just walking through.

That some people who have been known to flip homes might put a little crack

filler on it, cover up with some paint, knowing it'll hold for about three months

until those cracks come back again,

exposing a foundation that is fundamentally flawed at a huge expense of repair.

A foundation is critical to get right because everything else flows from it.

But for a lot of us, it is hard because our version of the faith is often not

a foundation, but a decoration discussion.

We want to put some paint on an otherwise outdated structure.

And for some of us, that might look like I'm scrolling through and I scroll through.

I want to watch the shows I want to watch and do whatever I want to do and think

about whatever I want to think about right up until I'm getting about to fall asleep.

And then I'm like, hey, Jesus, look, I need the peace now. Like,

because you just slap peace on top of all the things I wanted to think about

and all the things I wanted to do.

I just want to like your blessing, but like right here at the end.

You're like, God, I want you to come in and be involved in it up until.

Well, it seems to be a bit of an inconvenience.

God, I want to embrace your grace.

Well, not your grace for other people, the grace that you have for me.

Like grace we have for other people has to be a little sparingly because,

you know, I don't want to be taken advantage of.

Sometimes we approach it like

it's a buffet, like a decoration we can put on as and when we are able.

And what Paul is going to do here in Colossians chapter 1 is challenge us to

Colossians 1 · chapter mention

have a conversation about what is our foundation.

And he is going to say, what you need in your life is not something else.

You don't need more of this or that.

What you need is more of what you have already been given. What you need is

more understanding of who Jesus really is.

And so as we go through the rest of this morning, we're going to be doing in

this series a little bit of memorization.

In every chapter of Colossians, we're going to pull out one key verse.

And honestly, everything we're going to be talking about in the message is going

to come down to this one verse.

If you just want one thing, this is going to be a real efficient way to do it.

We're going to learn this verse because the secret of the gospel is not in how

clever can Nathan be, how creative can Daniel be in worship experiences.

The secret of the gospel from Colossians chapter 1 is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Colossians 1 · chapter mention

That the secret power of the gospel is regardless of your education background,

regardless of your spiritual pedigree, that if you allow the gospel to begin

to work on your mind, there will be transformation.

That God has consistently used men and women just like you to transform lives and communities.

The secret of the gospel is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

If we will allow his word to take root in our hearts, which is going to require

a little bit of, well, I said memorization.

This is not going to be easy. It's been a while since some of us have learned

a verse. Oh, let's be more realistic. It's been a while since a lot of us memorized anything.

I moved to Virginia a couple years ago. We got new phones, my wife and I.

I do not know my wife's phone number. I'm just going to say that.

Like, I've learned it a few times, sort of, and I forget it because I never use it.

I just push my wife's name, Tessa, on my phone, and there it goes.

I have teenage children who do not know their own phone number.

They have to look it up when they're sharing it because it does it for you. You don't have to.

If I were going to be in an accident without a phone, that last call would be useless.

The only person I could call at this point would be my childhood friend Paul

if he still has his landline.

I don't know if he does because that was the last time I learned a real number.

So I get that it is going to be a little bit uphill.

But there is a gift in learning something that is more than just information

by meditating on a single verse and allowing it to take root in our hearts as

God asked his people to do in Deuteronomy chapter six,

verse eight. He's commanding the Israelites.

He said, look, the commands I'm giving you today, impress them on your children.

And then he says, tie them as symbols on your hand, tie them on your forehead,

talk about them when you walk along the road and when you get up and when you

rise up and when you lie down.

And so as an obvious application of this, we all need to get tattoos.

That's what we're going to be doing throughout this series.

Temporary tattoos. We're going to be getting temporary tattoos,

unless you really want to take this a lot more zealous than I was anticipating.

So in the back of the sanctuary, as you go out today, is going to be a tattoo

on the back of a verse card. And here's what it's going to look like.

All right, so let's bring it up. There it is. I think we can all read that. Just kidding.

That is not in Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek. No, it's not. It's English.

What it is, is this is a mnemonic device. And we're going to be using these

throughout the series where the verse we want to learn is going to be on the

right. We're going to read it together in a minute.

And then the tattoo is going to have the first letter of every word in the verse as a mnemonic device.

And so let's read this together. Colossians 1, 17.

Let's read it together. he is before all things

and in him all things hold

together Colossians 1 17 now let's read it like we've had coffee and we all

got to sleep in an extra hour like we mean let's try one more time here we go

he is before all things and in him all things hold together all right we're

going to test your memory skills here can you do it by by go ahead can you say the verse again.

Not bad, not bad at all. You might have to check, check a few words here and

there, but pretty close. Look, you guys are already scholars. You've already got it.

Now, this verse is a real, a real important verse.

You might think of it as a hinge in Colossians chapter one, because it's going

to really summarize everything that comes before it, verses 15 and 16,

and the verses that come right after it.

And the first thing that it's going to teach us is that Jesus is before all things.

That before the Milky Way galaxy had formed, before the atoms that make up our

universe had begun to coalesce and come together, before the continents had

taken shape in the places and spaces that they are, Jesus was already there.

When God said, let there be light, it was in and through Jesus.

There is not an atom on this planet where Jesus can't rightfully look over it and say, mine.

There's not a place you can go in this world, no matter how high and how low,

where Jesus can't say, I was here first. Because Jesus, as Paul is going to

summarize, is before everything.

Before you were born, before the problems that you're facing right now,

before the anxieties you're facing, before our own culture began to feel like

things are falling apart, Jesus was creator. Here's the way Paul is going to put it.

So this is going to be, it's a bit of a dense verse, I know.

That's why we're memorizing that key verse, to hold it together.

This is what he's going to say. The son, Jesus, is the image of the invisible

God, the firstborn over all creation.

For all things were created through him, whether things in heaven and on earth,

visible and invisible, thrones, powers, rulers, authorities,

everything was created through him and for him.

He is before all things.

You see, Paul, in that phrase, he is before all things, is summarizing those

other verses I just read, that everything, whether visible or invisible,

whether in heaven and on earth, not just the physical things,

but the spiritual realities.

And even when he writes those thrones, powers, rulers, and authorities,

Paul was writing at a time when the Roman Empire was not friendly to Christians, to say the least.

And even so, he still declared Jesus as creator.

You think it's audacious to claim that Jesus is the only way of salvation?

Because we're like, well, that's only so much of the population of the world.

Paul is operating at a time when the gospel represented 0.1% of the Roman Empire.

And he said, I know what it sounds like, but I've seen and heard with my own eyes and ears.

He is before all things.

Those powers and rulers and authorities, if you're familiar with church world,

are referring to the Nero's, Herod's,

Pilate, government officials, judges, and Sanhedrin's, but also those unseen

realities, whether good or bad.

Those spiritual forces that aren't good, that are released upon the world as

forces for darkness, even that is not outside of Jesus's control.

And I think if you were to put this little tattoo on your skin and you were

to say he is before all things,

and the reason you'd want to put it somewhere where it's going to interrupt

your day is because what Paul wants to say is everything that comes afterwards

would change if this was really the way you thought about things.

He is before all things.

When I'm anxious about...

You tell him, man. Yet you remember that God, when I'm scrolling my banking

app and I'm feeling anxious about the financial resources, I remember that if

God has control of everything, then he has enough to give me my daily bread, what I need.

That means when I'm going into anxious situations, I know that God already has

a plan for my life and those around me.

It means that no matter where I go, Jesus is there with me. And when I lie down

at night, despite the state of our nation, we can have the knowledge that God is over everything.

It just resists compartmentalization. It's just not something you can fit into

a small box that Jesus is saying. Paul is saying, look, I know what you're thinking.

He's a really good thing to take care of your sin and get you into heaven.

But it is so much grander than that. He is before all things.

Before you were born and knew your own name, he already decided that he loved

you enough to die for you.

That before you proved a thing to anyone, he declared you to have value because

you were made in your father's sight.

That Jesus, by being before all things, by looking at that same creation that

God formed in the very beginning of the world and saying Jesus himself was with

God in the beginning and declared it was good,

that means something to those of us who are prone to take the weight of the world on our shoulders.

We pray to a mighty king that when I send my kids out into the world,

I can know that the reason I can do that with confidence is because he is before all things.

It just changes things when you got that kind of confidence.

I sometimes sent my daughter before I sent her to a boarding school in Zim.

And she was just going to the day school part, not overnight.

But she went at 12, as is the case apparently with British schools,

not just in Harry Potter. That's apparently a thing.

And they go out there. And I was concerned because some of the boys there can be quite old.

But I had done a good job fostering confidence in here.

I knew I had done well when a boy came up to her and said, Oh,

girl, you are so beautiful.

You are so smart. He was trying to lure her in. And she goes,

obviously, and continued to walk along the way.

Like, yeah, yeah, that proves you're not blind and dumb. I'll give you that.

Because she knew before he opened his mouth with his little flattery, she knew who she was.

She knew her value. She doesn't need someone else to tell it.

What would that look like to you?

One of the verses that we will have this week is the last week.

It's going to say, may your conversations be full of grace. What would that

look like carried around? I thought about as our tattoo.

What if we put a QR code right here that said, how's my talking?

Is it filled with grace? Rate this conversation.

How would your week go if people could rate how you talked? How grace-filled

was that conversation? I wouldn't want my conversations rated.

And the fact that I would be a bit nervous about it is I failed to take chapter one into account.

That he is before all things. But there's a second half to this verse.

What's the second half? Can we remember it? It not only says he is before all

things and in him, all things hold together.

He didn't just make it and said, good luck. He's going to bring it all back together.

He is that force in the universe that desires to reconcile all things.

This is the way that Jesus put it.

Let's skip down. He's going to say this. This is the verse.

So he is before all things and in him all things hold together.

Here's the next verse. Because he is the head of the body, the church.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from among the dead.

Proof that those who are now dead in their sins and their trespasses,

who are lying in ignorance have the potential for resurrection because Jesus

is evidence that it is not just wishful thinking. It is a promise with a guarantee

that we have already seen.

He is first born of those who are being reconciled, but it didn't stop there

for God was pleased to have his fullness dwell in Jesus with this being the result.

When God brought his full power and person in Jesus, what he brought to this

earth was not endless judgment and condemnation, but first God's desire to fix

everything. Here's what it said.

And through Jesus, to reconcile to himself all things, whether of earth or things

in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.

He brings all things together.

He reconciles all things. It's a hard truth if it was right here on my hand,

because sometimes I've been driving around and somebody cuts me off in traffic

and I would like to take a momentary spiritual vacation.

Lord, for the actions we are about to have, please do not record.

I'm glad this isn't church, that's for sure. The things we're about to say,

the things we're about to do, what would it look like if right there on your hand,

right there before you spoke, that word was in your mouth already and you had

to look at every person you know and say God desires that person to be reconciled

and put back right and dwell in peace.

I mean, we say it in church. I've typed it out as well, but it's different when

you're dealing with real people, people who cancel things at the last minute.

They canceled the marathon I've been training for due to the government shutdown.

Thank you very much. I do appreciate that. And my response was not a Christian

response in my first instinct.

It's a hard thing, but if I really believe that, that every person you see,

it's going to take some memorization so that when I see that person,

God desires peace with them.

He desires to put it back right. That kid who's in your classroom,

who has no boundaries and his parents do nothing about it and is making your

entire semester exhausting, God desires that kid to be in relationship with

him and have peace with him.

That means the teacher who tells your child that dyslexia is just an excuse for lazy students.

That teacher God desires to be reconciled and made peace with them.

That the ones that are the hardest to get along with.

Because it doesn't leave us any

wiggle room when it says God desires to reconcile himself to all things.

That those that you're coming in contact with, you don't know where you're gonna

bump into, where there is potential for life and redemption and reconciliation.

This is a verse that if you took it on, would just change how you approached

your week before you texted anything, before you started scrolling on your phone.

Does this honor the one who is before all things?

Do my actions seem to be in line with the one who wants to reconcile himself to all things?

And even more painfully, it said all things, not all people.

I grew up, God wants to reconcile himself with people, but let's,

but I mean, this world, I mean,

listen, why change oil in a truck that's going over a cliff

that was what my preacher said growing up i mean like

we're not going to get here and sweat bullets over the environment that's what

those liberal people do it's a painful thing if what jesus said is i made the

world i am its creator and i care about how you treat it i don't want just people

put rack right i want all things put back right the way you treat the world

and streams and trees and animals.

All things? I want all things put back right.

From the smallest insect to the grandest part of creation, God desires to reconcile

because of the work of Jesus. We are now agents for reconciliation.

It's a hard thing if you began looking at your practices and said,

not only do the people we treat, but the things we consume and we do.

Am I reflecting one who desires to put all things back right?

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

That the only thing you need to remember is that that verse is meant to carry

on at the weight that he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of

creation, and he's the head of the church, reconciling all things to himself.

If you were just to take this idea and carry it through the week,

can you imagine the possible transformations, the peace that you have access

to knowing that God has a plan for your life and is using you to make a difference,

that he is not only before all things.

Of course, there's a lot of people who haven't yet found that community.

And so part of the goal that we have in this series is a relatively audacious one.

I already thought we were going pretty hard to say, I want you guys to all do temporary tattoos.

I don't want to find a person from Northside who says, I love Jesus and want

to learn scripture. I just don't want to put a tattoo on because I just don't

think I should have to do it.

Do it for the teens who will ask you a question and you can use it for a conversation.

This is how important God's word is.

Do it so that when you have your grandchild staying over, you can point to this

and saying, yeah, even adults have to submit to Jesus just like you.

You should do it so that your neighbor, when he asks, what's with that?

I can't even read it on your hand. You would say, you would have no idea the

stories I could tell you about my Jesus.

You do it because there are others who need as a testimony, the reality that

there is reconciliation possible when they've almost given up hope.

The mother, the single mother who's at wit's end because she is exhausted.

Every friend she has getting, trying to get her kids covered and she knows they're

not behaved the way that makes her proud. In fact, she's a little embarrassed

by it and she's absolutely at her wits end.

And the only reason she's even coming to church is more because of getting an

hour off than believing there's going to be any hope at the end of this.

Even that person can suddenly find that even though they hadn't planned on it,

reconciliation is possible.

The addict who has been through more programs than they could count.

And they say, I don't even know. I'm just, I'm just trying to just get through

the motions at this point, probably more damage that's already been done in

for a penny, in for a pound.

Even that person can be put back, right? the person who has been anxious so

long, they barely remember what life was like before it came.

That we'll sing a song in a moment at the end that says, I know a name.

I know a name that can empty graves. I know a name.

And what Paul wants to do is we're going to be talking about how you live in

community and how you grow rooted and established in him and your conversations

and serving one another in forgiveness.

But it has to start with your own personal understanding of what does it mean

when I say that I submit to King Jesus, who is Lord over all things.

So we're going to be asking some of you guys to do something that goes against

every instinct in our culture.

And that is that I want you to register to join a rooted group in November that's

not going to start until January.

It's 10 weeks of discipleship where you're going to be in community.

And really just, it is geared toward all levels to someone who has never opened

a Bible a day in their lives to somebody who has been a seasoned Christian.

It is more of a journaling exercise. So no matter where you're at,

every answer is right. And I promise you that God will use it to change your life.

But we need some of you. Our goal is to get 70% of our church registered in

November for an event that's not starting until January.

And let me tell you, all my friends in ministry say that's impossible.

People will not RSVP until a school system holds a gun to their head and say

their kids will be expelled if they don't fill out the form.

Like that's the night they fill it out. At the very last minute, I do it.

We all do it. And what I'm going to ask you to do is to go against it and say,

I'm going to commit early so that the people around me who need to have the

opportunity of community,

we can begin putting people in groups and opening up spaces to welcome new people

to experience the life-changing power of the gospel because he desires to reconcile all things to himself.

So you'll see these cards on the way out, both those who are ready to register

and those who are not quite sure, they just want some more information.

You can fill out either one.

If you're ready, then you go ahead and scan that QR code and say, put me in a group.

And if you, like me, do not know how to use QR codes very well,

you just tell one of the guys at the welcome desk and they will sort you out.

We're also going to have this opportunity for you to consider helping to support

others who are going to join in this group.

And Mark will be talking about more of that in the weeks ahead where you can

give a scholarship because we are serious when we say we want every person participating,

knowing that there are people in this community who are between jobs,

who are single parents, who've been laid off and looking at work for years.

We want to cover the cost of their child care, which is not cheap.

We want to cover the cost of their books and resources. We want everyone to

find a place because we believe that hope changes everything.

And we believe in a Savior who is before all things and in him all things hold together.

Make sure you grab that verse on your way out. You put it somewhere on one hand or another.

Maybe on your hand where you check your watch so that it interrupts your day as you're driving.

It interrupts the hand that you're using when you're going to scroll social

media. You're going to see it and remember that.