Crazy Big Family | You Asked For It Part 5

So as I was preparing this message, I couldn't help but think of that scene

from Fiddler on the Roof where Tevye is like walking along and pushing his little

milk cart thing and he's moving and somebody is arguing, saying,

you know, we can't just be stuck in the past.

We have to update and kind of incorporate new ideas. We've got to be open to discovery.

And Tevye's like, oh, yes, you were right.

And another guy says, we can't just open things up. We'd abandon tradition.

It would make us forget who we are.

And Tevye goes, oh, you were right. And somebody listening goes, well, wait a minute.

They can't both be right. And he goes, you, sir, are right.

Man, you guys need a second cup of coffee this morning. You got to help me out

now. We are going to be doing the last question today.

And we were going to be talking about secularism and how that actually is not

as devoid of religious belief as a lot of people would like to believe that

we all have to operate with the definition of the good and the true and the beautiful.

But as I was talking about it to my son, whose eyes were glazing over a little

bit as I was explaining it.

He also said, you know, dad, what would really help me is a question that I

also got from some other people.

He said, when I'm sitting on the lacrosse team that he was on and somebody said,

Hey, I, you know, what are you doing this week? I'm going to church.

And they're like, Oh, what kind of church?

And he's like the good kind, you know, the churchy kind, right.

It's got a Christian kind.

And, uh, like, and then he goes non-denominational and I'm non denominational.

So if you've got any denominations on you, get taken out of your pockets before

you come in because we don't allow that in this place, whatever that means.

And it's a little bit confusing, right? Because if you were to meet somebody after lunch today,

and I apologize if this is your first Sunday, but if you were to meet somebody

today in line at lunch and they were to say, you know, taking your order or

they were, you know, there checking you out and someone says,

oh, you're coming from church?

And you said, yes. And they said, well, what kind of church?

If you had to answer in one sentence, all right, I want you to turn to the person

sitting next to and give it your best effort.

All right, go ahead and go for it. I'm going to do one sentence.

How would you describe our church?

The good kind, not the bad kind. Now, I know that if we kind of surveyed,

I bet a lot of the answers we're given are just different parts of what people

love about what God is doing at Northside.

But I bet if we put them all together, it would say something like,

right, that we want to be a Jesus-centered community, that we want to be kind

of rooted in Scripture, right?

We want to be guided by history. We want to be passionate about unity.

We want to be the kind of place that has an open arms for our community,

but also has hands ready to be part of his mission.

Or if you didn't make it sound like a giant corporate business statement,

you might say something a little slicker like, we want to be a place where we

have one king who sits on a throne.

We listen to one word that wasn't just spoken then, but is still being spoken through that word now.

And we want to be the kind of place that has one family.

Because one of the problems as you look around is that, you know,

there's, we're going to go out there and proclaim this what the Bible says,

but I don't know if you know this or not, but like not all Christians agree

on everything. And that sort of undercuts the message a little bit.

This is what the clear word of God says. And don't listen to that guy.

Like, how does that work? And you could say, well, our church is based on the

Bible, which is true, except for every church says that their church is based on the Bible.

It doesn't really help out in it. It only makes it more confusing.

And so you have people criticizing the church.

And the criticism is, if the Bible is so true and God is really active in history,

then why are there so many different kinds of churches?

We're going to kind of tackle that a little bit today, talk about our slice

within it and how we like to think about it.

And we are going to try to cover some topics real lightly.

But to do that, we're going to start by acknowledging that God's heart beats for unity.

And we're going to look at John 17, but before we do, a little bit of history.

So when the church was founded, right, right, when then Jesus died and was buried

and was resurrected, 33 AD.

Right, from that time, if this was the start of the church here,

and over there on the other side of this little extension is where we are now,

it was 1054 AD before the first church split happens.

Like, think through that for a second. That means for a thousand years, they did not all agree.

They had lots of arguments, lots of stuff happens, but they were still under one umbrella.

And this happens called the Great Schism, where the groups that are now has

the word Orthodox in their name split off at this point.

And then that continues on. And then we get to about 1,500, about the 1500s.

What happened during this period is as Europe is developing and countries are

growing and the churches are trying to build these huge cathedrals.

You've probably seen pictures of them. As they're doing that,

that costs a lot of money, in case you're wondering.

And this thing that happened right before...

This next movement is the church began using spiritual tourism to raise money.

And so you can get inside this steeple for this money, or you can get a,

see a relic from this saint for this money and it'll get sins forgiven,

or it'll get a relative out of purgatory, all this, all this stuff.

And there was a lot of issues, but this was the last one that really set things off.

Because in the year 1517, a guy by the name of Martin Luther looked at all this

money happening, all this confusion.

And he looked at his Bible and said, I don't see anything about that in here.

And he goes like, I get it. The Sistine Chapel is beautiful,

but it ain't free. And I don't like the way that we're raising money to build it.

So he nails in 1517, November 1st, 95 arguments against the current practices

of the church. And he kicks off something called the Protestant Reformation.

And if you didn't know it, we are a product.

We are part of that Protestant Reformation.

And that Protestant is from the word protesting, meaning we were critical of

the way the church was being done.

And we said, look, we want to get back to the Bible.

We don't want to do things that don't have a basis in scripture.

And so Martin Luther said at a meeting, he said, I will stand on scripture.

Here I stand that I cannot be moved.

And one of the bishops said, listen, Mr.

Martin Luther, sir, if you just give the Bible to everybody,

what's going to happen is people are going to read it and they're going to come

to different conclusions and it's going of split to the church into just hundreds of pieces.

And Martin Luther is like, that would never happen.

It's super clear. We would not disagree. He might have been wrong on that point, just a smidgen.

Right after the Protestant Reformation, it splits into just more and more and

more different churches. And we come along in this 1800 period.

We're getting close here to the end.

And during this movement was the beginning in America. You may not have thought

about this, but that America was the first experiment in free market Christianity.

Before this moment, if a prince became a religion, everyone was that religion.

If a mayor became a religion, everyone was that religion. It was by group and area.

But when we got here, we began to say, look, there's no more state religion.

The governor's religion doesn't matter.

Anyone you can get to go to your church, it's up to you, whoever you can convince to come.

And boy, man, did that get some things going. And some of the things that happened were amazing.

Missional movements began because of that. People going into Africa and sharing

the gospel, going into China and the Hudson Taylor and others into China.

Amazing things happened and weird things happened as well.

Very strange things. Cults that are just unusual.

Some of which oddly became appliance and like silverware companies.

Awana is one of them and Oneida is another one.

Those are weird cults and And there's weird stuff that happened there,

all of it. And that leaves us where, okay, what about today?

Well, if you go back, we have to start with the fact that when Jesus was talking

about the church, he talked about it as one body.

So let's pull off. We say this. He's going to say in John 17,

John 17:22

verse 22, here's how he's going to put it.

He said, look, he is praying for future believers. He's just prayed for his disciples.

Then he pauses and said, not only for these disciples, he's praying,

but for those who will believe.

That means Jesus prayed for you. He prayed for your side.

And this was his prayer just day, a day before he's going to go to the cross.

These are his final words, which carry huge amount of weight.

He said, I have given them the glory that you gave me.

And the reason I've given it to them is that they may be one as you and I are

one, that the unity between Jesus and God would be expressed in his people.

Jesus clarifies, meaning I am going to be in them. Jesus will be in each one

of us. And Jesus is going to be, the father is going to be in Jesus.

Meaning because of Jesus, we have a clear picture of what God is like.

And because of that, we can be brought to complete unity.

That the world may know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

That unity is just part of God's own heartbeat. This is what he was passionate about.

And he doesn't just mean structural unity, right? Because we know that because

when we see businesses merge, we see Amazon buy Whole Foods,

We're not all standing on the sideline going, my goodness, how they love one

another, like doesn't inspire us. It's not just structural unity.

It's what we see throughout the New Testament when people are reconciling and

people of different backgrounds and different religious beliefs are coming together.

He said, this is how you're going to know that they may be one.

We say in the rest of our movement that God's church is intentionally one church.

But what I want to pause and acknowledge is that we actually agree on more than you might think.

That if you listen to it out there, it's going to sound like,

oh, everybody's disagreeing so it can't possibly be true. But here's the thing.

90% of the doctrines of those who hold to historic Christianity are actually

in common between the different churches.

Look, think about it like a pizza. This is a good illustration. Pizza, right?

There's lots of different toppings you can put on a pizza. Pepperoni,

the correct topping is allowed.

You could ruin it with your ham and pineapple people if you want to.

Banana, just go crazy. I don't know. Put whatever you want on there. It's still a pizza.

Now, there are some things, though, if you take it away, it's not a pizza anymore.

Don't know. You can put sauce on it. This doesn't have sauce.

This doesn't have any crust on it. it's still a pizza. And I'm like,

look, I don't know what you can call it that if you want to.

Still not a pizza, though.

There's certain things that have to be there. And there's other things that

are not really essential to it.

And if you're looking around at the way that historic Christianity has kind

of unfolded, there's a really good book, Roger Olson's book called Mosaic of Christian Belief.

It's about 400 pages. It's not light, but it's very accessibly written,

describing kind of the different movements and parts of Christianity.

But what he describes in there is how the creeds worked in early Christianity.

Those statements like the Nicene Creed that says, we believe in one God,

the Father, creator of heaven and of earth, of all that is seen and unseen.

And he says that, look, these creeds were not designed in order to clarify everything we believe.

It's been spelled out. Because if you read them, they're surprisingly light

on details. We believe in the Holy Spirit.

Put a period right there. I mean, what do we you believe about the Holy Spirit?

You believe in doing miracles?

You believe, like, what do you believe about it? They're like,

oof, we're working that out.

Well, what do you mean when you say God made the heavens and the earth?

Like, how long ago? They're like, oof, we're working that out.

The purpose of the creeds was not to confine us or to, like, define everything.

They were to put the boundaries on it, like a basketball court,

right? You have the lines drawn on it.

And look, anything going on inside the lines is part of the basketball game.

If you leave the lines, You may still be exercising, but you are not playing

basketball anymore. Like it's a different conversation.

And we're going to look, if you look through the Nicene Creed,

that these are things that all those who hold to historic Christianity still believe.

We believe in Jesus, God's own son, begotten, not made, God from God,

light from light, who is conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.

And it goes on. I've got them on the Welcome Center on the way out.

That you don't have parts of Christianity saying, like, we don't believe in the Trinity.

We don't believe Jesus died. No, that's not part of ours. In fact,

if they're outside of this conversation, they can still be people we partner with in community.

They can still be people that we love and serve alongside of,

but it's not part of a historic Christian conversation.

That all people that can say these things, we believe that God made the heavens and the earth.

If you began to say, I don't believe God made anything. Physical world's bad.

Spiritual world's good. God wouldn't make physical things. We'd be like,

I don't know what conversation you're having, but it ain't a Christian conversation, whatever it is.

And we talked last week about we can interact with people who are from other faiths.

And the tricky part in America is that people can put the label Christian on

things that aren't willing to say these kinds of confessions.

And it's a little bit like somebody who gives you mushroom coffee.

And in case you're not aware, that is not coffee.

Not like in any way, shape or form. They're only saying coffee because if they

called it mushroom dirt drink, you wouldn't buy it. Right.

And they know you like coffee. And so it's like it is coffee.

And then you drink it and you go, that other title would be more accurate.

Like that is that is not really coffee.

And there can be people who put the name Christian on it.

But if they don't believe that he was conceived of the Holy Spirit,

born of the Virgin, married, and he suffered under Pontius Pilate,

died and three days later rose.

If they can't say that creed that we have been saying since 300 AD,

and even before that with Irenaeus and what he called the rule of faith, very similar.

We often recite the Apostles' Creed, and the Apostles' Creed,

which is a little simpler and shorter, is not an earlier version.

It's a shrunk down version of the Nicene Creed, because what I just said is

a little bit wordy for worship, honestly.

But this is what the church has said. Look, when we can say these things,

then we're going to disagree about stuff, but we're disagreeing within the family.

We're disagreeing with people who, on some very important issues,

but we can still say, but look at how much we hold in common.

So we're going to tackle really quickly one gospel, but we're going to look at five big questions.

And that's just really to kind of place us a little bit so that you have just

a more of a sense when you're trying to interact with people from this background.

And I know some of you have family who are this denomination or that group,

or some of you grew up, some of you grew up in this church and you've not been

to a lot of other churches. You know what goes on in there?

I don't know. I've heard stuff about incense and candles are jumping around.

I don't know what they do in there. We're going to just kind of place where

this lines out. And we won't be able to answer every question.

And in fact, none very thoroughly.

But giving just a little bit of a hint by acknowledging up front that actually

under even these issues, we hold more in common than we hold apart.

But these we might call questions of ultimate concern. And I like that better

than disagreeing on theology.

Because sometimes Sometimes secular people would be like, ah,

that's the problem with Christians, getting them arguments, them theological

disagreements that no one can figure out.

Not like us based on science over here.

These questions that we'll deal with are unavoidable. Even within science,

they have to be answered.

And the first one we're going to ask is this, and I think you'll see it.

Who's really in control? Are you making choices?

Or are you just a robot because of your genetics and upbringing?

Does this kid just have a biting gene and he just grew up with it and we all

just got to accommodate around it because he can't be held responsible?

Or is free will an illusion after all? Or are you responsible for it?

This was an article by Stephen Cove in The Atlantic 2016.

I love the title of the article. He's a secular researcher, biologist.

And the title of the article is, free will is an illusion, but we should still

believe in it. What a great contradiction.

Like, it's absolutely not true, but we absolutely have to pretend it's really true.

And that just shows you that even if you didn't come from a church,

you still have to ask this question. Am I responsible?

Like, am I just doing things because? And we're going to look at,

there's a couple of different groups that answer this question different.

One is called the Reformed tradition or a Calvinist tradition.

If you see Reformed on the title of any sign or church, they're not meaning

that they're trying to get things back in shape.

They're saying reformed, referencing back to this guy, Calvin,

and they had a high view of God's sovereignty, that God's in control of everything

and he's foreordained everything that's going to happen.

They'll use the sign that there's not a grain of sand that passes through the

universe that doesn't first pass through the hand of God.

And when that definition, they begin to say, you know, I know it looks like

you have free will, but you were so damaged and you're so broken that anything

that has happening is because God already willed it to happen.

And maybe some of you have felt like that. You've grown up in a church where

at least some of that does make some sense.

I grew up in a milder version of that evangelical thought where we believed in free will.

You could accept Jesus, but we weren't sure you could do much else good. Not 100% sure.

And a lot of us were kind of under the impression, you know,

we're prone towards sin and things are broken. And look, if you don't like it,

take it up with a manufacturer. I don't like it either.

Like maybe you should talk to God and should make people better.

Like there's a sense in which, yes, we're all sinful, but it feels inevitable.

But what we're going to say in line with a much larger group of Christianity

is that if you look at the scriptures overall, yes, there are passages which

talks about how God is pulling and moving. And I know people that that has been true for.

It has been a little bit more like a Lazarus story where Lazarus was dead in

that tomb. And Jesus said, come out, Lazarus.

Lazarus didn't say, I'm deciding whether or not to take that invitation.

Like he just rose from the dead. Paul on the road to Damascus.

God just said, all right, Paul, enough messing around. Now it's time to take this seriously.

And God just interacts with them. But for most of us, it's not been quite like that.

Most of us know that we believe that we have the option that salvation is an

invitation that requires your consent and cooperation.

Like the story of parting the Red Sea. You know, God does all the work.

God parts the waters. God judges Pharaoh. God destroys the political structures.

God takes down the oppression. God makes it all happen. You still have to walk through it, though.

Not a 50-50 partnership, not 99, 1%, all the power to make this possible is

God's, but you still have to cooperate and respond.

Which means that we've come from a tradition that takes seriously that Moses,

at the end of his sermon in Deuteronomy, when he says, and we would say every

morning you wake up and Moses would say, you're gonna hold in your hand life

and death, blessings and curses.

You have a choice. You are responsible.

And there's a message throughout the Bible that just says you are responsible.

And even though each one of us has broken that choice, broken and made poor

choices, it's not because it was inevitable.

It was because we held two options and chose poorly.

But at each moment, that means there still stands before us now an option to

choose the good, to listen to that voice that is calling us because of the work

of Jesus to respond to the power that God has made available.

The next question we're going to look at is this question of how does God speak today?

How does God speak today? What is authoritative and what is not?

Because where you land on free will and how that mix, and I know it is a complicated

question, but this next one, how does God speak and what should we be listening to today?

Because if you grew up in a church like mine, we were a Bible believing church

without on the front sign, it said founded in 33 AD, like right there on the front founded.

And I'm like, I don't even think America was discovered at that point. That's amazing.

Like someone came here and built a building in 33 AD.

Someone explained that was more of a mission statement than an actual historical

fact. But like, and we just kind of said that we have the Bible and we read it.

And they said, yeah, but what about all that stuff in between like the book of Acts and now?

And a lot of my youth leaders would say, I'll tell you what it is.

They were wrong. That's what it was. I mean, they just all got it wrong until

our denomination showed up. Like, I don't know. They were just confused.

God's lucky he showed up because his church was pretty confused until he got us.

And the problem with that approach is it says, I only believe in scripture,

nothing else, but ignores like, how did you get the Bible?

Who translated it? Who kept it safe? Who moved it around? Who offered up messages

that impacted your family?

In fact, what it says, kind of says, is that God was not that active in history,

that God just sort of let the dice roll and was letting his people go.

And even though I grew up in this tradition where really even talking about

traditions of other churches was off limits.

But then you've got a group over here, the Orthodox and Catholic tradition.

In that one, tradition becomes elevated to where it actually has weighty authority.

And what you have to remember is that many traditions are good.

There's nothing wrong with them in their generation, but it's very easy for them to become law.

I was leading worship at a small Christian school, lower elementary Christian

school with my soon wife, not then, we were boyfriend and girlfriend,

but we would eventually get married. And we would go back and forth.

She would sing music really well. I would sing as quietly as possible as is

appropriate. And I would preach.

And at one point, a boy stands up to open our chapel service and prayer.

And he says a few words. His name was Andrew. And he finishes.

And Catherine jumps out of her seat and says, you can't say that.

Boys say amen. Girls say amen.

Because I said, Amen. And Tessa said, Amen.

And you could see how in the hands of someone like Catherine,

a tradition could become a law.

And a law could be passed down and could be enforced, even though there's nothing

about that in the Bible, no matter how you say it.

But you could see how quickly something that seemed to work for a time becomes

the way it needs to be done.

You know, when Innocent I declared in the 1200s that all priests have to be

celibate, meaning they can't ever get married or have children.

He was responding to scandals, like real scandals, like people having affairs.

And he says, like, that's not right. You can't lead God's church and doing all

this. So they have to be celibate.

He was responding to a crisis. The problem is, is that there's a lot of cases

where that's not the right situation, that God's people often have a person

leading the church who is married and has kids because that is more normative for that congregation.

There are times when that is the better choice. There are places where when

you go in as a person who has made a commitment to not get married,

that is what God needs for a time.

But a tradition can become a law.

And a law can then bind everything. It has to be done this way for all time.

And in certain groups, you see, the Catholic Church calls this the magisterium,

the teaching body of the church. And it extends beyond Scripture.

And they don't have a problem saying, well, when that was spoken,

that means it is also binding on us. And it gets added to over time.

One of the doctrines, the doctrines around Mary, one of them is that Mary,

when she was later in her life, she didn't die naturally.

She got absorbed into heaven.

And I think they're making some pretty big assumptions when it comes to that one.

You're obviously not Catholic. That's a great Catholic joke.

It's called the Assumption of Mary, if you hadn't heard that.

But the thing is, is when was that doctrine made a doctrine,

like a binding Catholic doctrine?

The 1800s. And look, I don't know how Mary passed away. The Bible doesn't say.

But I do know that when you, it was a lot of people who for a long time said,

I'm not 100% sure we should put that much weight on it. It seems to be more of a tradition.

I'm not 100% sure that's what happened. But in the 1800s, there was a lot of

political turmoil. It just made sense to iron it all out.

And so over here, you've got people who have put full weight and authority on

tradition. It's the Bible plus tradition.

And what we want to do is say that we're instead going to be the kinds of people

who acknowledge that God has been active in history, that God has had one family

since the very beginning.

And so what we're going to say is this, scripture is our final authority.

We're going to do things that sound and look like they did in the New Testament.

We're going to submit to scriptures.

We're not going to be in the reform tradition, tried to compromise by creating

what we're called confessions, the Westminster confession, where they line out

theological systems, and there's a lot of truth in what they've written.

The issue is, if you have a strong theological tradition around a confession,

is that when you read a certain verse that says something that doesn't agree

with what you just said, you say, I know it looks like it says that, but it can't say that.

I mean, you know what's that like, right? When you see certain things,

you read Acts 2.38, when they ask Peter, Peter, what must we do to be saved?

Repent and be baptized.

How many people do you know who read that and go, that, no, that can't be it. Nope.

Like, no, it can't be baptism. Can't be related in there. I don't know what

it is, but it can't be like, my issue is if you had had no system and you read,

repent and be baptized, everyone for forgiveness of sins, what would you do in response?

Repent and be baptized. Look, and I don't know how it all works out,

but these strong theological systems can also begin to guide us away from scripture itself.

And look, when we instead, we want to say, we want to base our beliefs and practices

on the words of scripture. And I don't know how it all works out.

I'm filled with joy when I hear people responding in faith in many,

many different ways, whether their heart is moved and they pray or they've grown

up or however it happened.

We praise God for it. But the kind of church we want to be has said,

I want it to be a clear reading from what scripture says.

But that also means that we're going to allow church history to be a little bit of a guide.

And that's going to be important. I heard one writer say it this way,

that if you become freed from tradition, you can easily then become a slave to fashion.

That tradition helps protect us from innovating in ways that really move farther

and farther from what the scripture says, because that seems to be fashionable at the time.

So we're not going to buy into some interpretation that seems like,

I don't know, if the people in 2000 years, no one has said that that's what that means.

It doesn't mean it's impossible, but you're definitely going to want to pause a while.

I don't have a problem with drawing from traditions that we don't agree with

everything about what they've done, but they've written insights into prayer.

People like Brother Lawrence, who we've quoted when we did the hearing from

God series and people in the early church movements.

And it doesn't mean everything they did is right, but it does acknowledge that

God was active in their life. And they, like us, are flawed.

I know that we've obviously figured it all out so my kids won't have this problem

when they're going into the future. That is supposed to be a joke.

I hope that when they grow up, they will read the Bible and God will move in

them in new and exciting ways and help to illuminate things that I didn't see

because of the time I was living in.

And God will begin to say, I want to be faithful to scripture,

even if that means we make changes.

The next thing we want to look at is we're going to say that God speaks in scripture,

but we still listen to that voice in history, not as an authority,

but as a guide to listen to how God has been working in the past.

We're going to look at this question of how do you receive grace.

And again, some people want to argue that over here that you have to receive

sacraments in a more complicated pattern.

There are seven sacraments within the Catholic Church. The Orthodox have a similar system.

And many of those practices have at least some good. It's good to go to confession.

It's good to tell somebody when you're struggling.

But that's not the pattern we see within the New Testament.

And so we talk about what does it mean. I think if you read through the New

Testament, you would believe what many evangelicals have said.

It seems like you are saved by grace through faith because of the work of Jesus.

That's how you receive grace.

Well, what kind of faith? We would say it's the kind of faith that is willing

to submit to what God has said.

When you believe to the point of saying, I now trust him as my savior,

that's the kind of faith that saves.

Like a man sliding down a cliff, he sees a bush and he's about to go over the

edge. How much trust does he have to have in the bush in order to keep from falling.

Just enough to grab it. He just needs enough faith to be willing to reach out and hold on to it.

That's what we say. What does it take to receive grace? It is enough faith to

reach out to a God who is reaching down to us.

This next question has gone in many different directions, and I know we're moving quickly.

My hope is that in your small group or over lunch, you're going to have this study guide.

You can talk through at least different experiences and churches that you may

have had in your growing up background.

But this next one is, who gets to run the church?

Who's who it's going to say this? What is the church and who runs it?

This is a complicated one. We're going to start, though, with the theological

insight offered by social commentator Christopher Wallace, a.k.a.

Biggie Smalls. Allow me to adapt most structure, more problems.

That's what we're going to see.

That was good. That was better than this side gave me credit for. That's pretty good.

Most structure, no problems. You'll remember this point. But it's true for a

couple reasons we're going to spell out on why this is important to talk about.

Because if you have too much structure, then what ends up happening is that

every church and every location and place has to look more and more the exact same.

It was so strong that for hundreds of years, there's like church has to be in

Latin. And people started saying, but no one here speaks Latin.

And they're like, it has to be the same. but like they

don't even know what we're saying it has to be the same has

to look the same we have to sing the same songs we have to sing the same music it has

to be the same length it has to look the same the buildings need to look the same it's got

to be the same and the problem with that idea is there's ways that god would

want to respond in one era they're going to look different than another and

groups that have bound themselves some of you grown up in a church you don't

have to be catholic but there were so many traditions and bureaucracies and

committees and structures that like even when a young person came and said i

think god's calling us to do that mm-mm-mm-mm.

Not here he isn't. That's not what we do. That's not how it's done.

And they began to get held back because it needs to be done the way it was done.

You still have too much structure when it tries to make things the same,

simply needs no room for the Holy Spirit to respond differently.

And if you take a fairer step back and look at church history,

God moves in exciting and different ways.

Sometimes God calls a generation to say, we're going to really focus on hospitals

and helping to heal because there's a lot of tragedy going on.

It's going to involve education. This one's going to involve people really taking

on the responsibility of missions individually. This generation is going to

look like, and it looks different.

Some groups that say we're going to gather together and worship from six in

the morning to 12. And you're like, I'm glad we don't have that tradition. Amen.

I mean, isn't it wonderful when

you read the book of Acts? It almost seems like God did that on purpose.

The church is going to have to have apostles teaching, prayer,

fellowship, and the breaking of bread.

Yeah, that should sort you out. That's not a lot of specifics.

It's almost like God knew when the gospel goes into Ethiopia,

it's going to look this way.

When the gospel goes to Virginia, it's going to look different.

When the gospel goes to D.C., my friend,

Scott Incaro, he's a church planner in D.C., And it looks very different than

this gathering because there's room to move and to adapt and too much structure

begins to bind to where even as people feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit,

they struggle to respond because of limitations by structure.

But also a problem that can happen with structure is as you consolidate money

and power, the kind of things that happen when you consolidate money and power.

It's just prone to corruption because the people running it are not very connected

with the people who are living it.

And the people who are giving don't really get to see and have access to the

people who are controlling it.

And as always happens with human systems, no matter how idealistic they were

put in place, eventually it becomes a challenge to make it faithful.

But on the other side, I know growing up, being in Africa for a number of years,

that there are charismatic churches that have said, we will have no structure.

We will have a leader, an anointed one, a prophet, an apostle,

a leader, a major speaker, someone with real power.

And you even see it in mega churches that are not charismatic,

but they so consolidated their

power under one person, there is no structure. No one can tell them no.

No one can tell him to stop. Can't be fired. They're too big.

Don't touch God's anointed. I heard one bishop say, and in those structures,

you can just as easily as the one with too much structure, too little structure.

You've seen the scandals about the money and the jets and the infidelity.

And you're like, but wasn't there some kind of, and you look into it,

there was no accountability.

There was nobody looking. And so what we want to do is say that we want to model

the structure we see in the New Testament, where we have a local group of leaders

who have been, who are mature believers who have been confirmed by this congregation

to have the Holy Spirit present in their life.

And they will hold me as a teacher accountable.

And that if I'm going off the rails, that they're going to rein me back in or

fire me or have a serious word.

And I am also going to help challenge and encourage them to go deeper.

And we hold each other. We need to have enough structure to say that we can

hold each other accountable. What do we believe?

And we believe that that means we meet as a group, a plurality of elders,

if you wanted the church language, a group of people who are guiding this church.

Enough structure so that we can be faithful and not be drawn into temptation,

but not so much that we hinder that many of you may right now have a calling

from the Holy Spirit. And we want to have the freedom to say, that's a great idea.

Let's move. We don't want the structures that will hold you back.

Who is this church? It belongs to Jesus and we're all stewards in it.

Final one. What's the end game? If you guys are watching of your clock.

This is an impressive eight points. It's 34 minutes. That's not bad at all.

I mean, that's good efficiency for your Sunday. You're getting value for money right here.

This last one, Endgame, and no, we're not talking about the Marvel movie.

What's the goal of all of it? What does successful like look like?

Like all these questions, there is no avoiding this religious or not religious.

You have to have a definition. What is it that life is, what are we chasing after?

What's worth sacrificing for? What's it all doing?

I'm going to look at a couple of different traditions. The Orthodox tradition,

they call it theosis, which is becoming like God, sharing in the divine nature

that Jesus became like us, that we might become like him.

In other words, when they say theosis, they mean that God desired that the Christian

life is the pursuit of becoming more like the shape of Jesus,

his son, but as it is in your own life.

If you look at the Catholic church, they have a couple of different ones,

but I think the more dominant one is this beatific vision, beauty,

but a vision that is so glorious to worship God with such clarity that the presence

of God would overwhelm any other temptation,

removing the desire for evil and consuming you with a desire to pursue him,

that everything else falls into place because you would finally see the way

that God really is and who you are in relationship to him.

And what that's going to mean is that you're going to behold just how much Jesus

loves you and it allows you to become like the son.

And in Reformed theology, you're going to be justified because of faith and

this process of sanctification, not earning it, but is still being conformed to the image of Jesus.

And we talk about our church and we're going to talk about what we desire for

each one of you is that you would follow Jesus, that you would be able to listen

and learn from Jesus, and that you would look like Jesus.

Perhaps you're saying, I don't want to poke a hole, preacher,

but those all look pretty similar.

I'm struggling to see the distinction between the different groups.

And you would be correct that though they do different languages for it,

that all traditions say the goal, the reason Jesus came and died for you is

that you would look like Jesus.

That the reason that God is calling on your life is the reason that God sent

Jesus is because Jesus says, I am showing you what it meant for human beings

to be made in the image of God. And we are going to restore that image.

And we're going to do it in each one of your lives. I've ended on a note that

says, as different as some of these other things and structures and traditions

and scripture may be, that there is a common mission that God's people hold to.

That we don't want to get lost in the differences and they are important,

But they should not blind us to the fact that we have more in common than we have apart.

And so we want to be a community that is Jesus-centered. We want to be a community

that is rooted in Scripture,

shaped by history, committed to unity, with arms wide open to any who are seeking

to know Him and hands busy for His mission.

Or perhaps said in a way that my teenage son would find much catchier,

we serve one king who sits on the throne right now.

We listen to one word spoken then, an absolute saving word that has been saving

people generation after generation, and that one word is a living word now.

One king, one word, and one family.

There has always, only, ever been one church.

And I don't agree with everything that happens in the world,

but I do know that God is moving, active, and present, and His Spirit is calling

people back to faithfulness wherever they happen to be.

And so it would be appropriate that we would gather around this table at the very end of our service.

Because as we say every week, but perhaps today with greater weight, this is not our table.

This is Christ's table. And we're not here because we control it and monitor

it. We're here because we were invited as well.

That being a minister of gospel does not exempt me from the fact that I am here

because I fell on my knees before the cross and said to Jesus that I am broken

and I am in need of a savior.

We gather around this table to say that Jesus desired to have you in his family.

And that family is probably a lot bigger than it looks than you would think.

That when Jesus was inspiring John, the Holy Spirit inspiring John for revelation,

and he said, let me tell you what this is going to look like.

I know where you're sitting now, there's a lot of different churches there,

whatever background they are, and some are not healthy and some are,

but here's what it's going to look like at the end.

Jesus said, imagine a wedding feast, but I mean one like you haven't seen.

Some guys are dressed up, some guys look like they just got off work,

some guys are wearing, I don't even know what, they're speaking different languages,

they're from different backgrounds, some are wealthy, some are not,

some just wandered in the street, it seems like. He said, imagine a wedding feast.

With every tribe and language and tongue and background.

And he said, I wanted to set a meal, this meal to remind you that that meal is coming.

So we're going to have just a few moments as Melissa plays, we gather around

the table. If you've not yet made a decision, I'm going to be down here at the

cross. We had three people come forward in the first service.

This would be an excellent day to say, I want to be part of that kind of family

with one king, one word, and one family. Would you pray with me?

Now, as we gather around this table, God, we take this bread that reminds us,

God, that your forgiveness is what unites us.

And God, I know there are disagreements. God, I know there are things that are

broken about your church, things that break my heart.

But God, I also know that you are big and moving and active and that your spirit

is calling people back to faithfulness.

So God, as we gather around this table, may we be passionate to listen to your

word. May we be passionate, God, to pursue unity where it is possible.

But most of all, God, we just ask that you would begin to move in us God,

that we would be a living example of what it means, God, to serve one king,

to listen to a living word, and to be part of your family.

We ask this in your son's name. Amen.

Music.