Spiritual Growth

Praise God for good weather.

Man, I've been needing it.

I know you have too.

I'm glad we can be here together.

My name's Tommy, if I haven't met you.

I'm glad that we can be worshiping tonight in this space.

Very thankful for that.

Thankful for the series that we've been doing over the last couple of weeks.

It's been a great encouragement to me.

We decided to take a few weeks and explore a theme that at least I personally have not spent much time thinking about up until now.

We were looking at the state of our society, the state of culture, the, frankly, I think, enormous amount of unrest and anxiety and tension,

and really sensing that we as a community need hope and comfort and a vision for life moving forward.

And we've found that by looking at John chapter 17 and reflecting on this interesting truth.

John 17 · chapter mention

Often when we think about Jesus and his ministry, we think about the things that Jesus did in his earthly ministry.

We think about Jesus living the life that we should have lived, a perfect life.

And we think about Jesus dying the death that we deserve to die on our behalf on the cross.

And we talk about Jesus' resurrection and the new life that he brings.

And yet there's an aspect of Jesus' ministry that, as I said before, I haven't thought much about.

And that's what Jesus has been doing ever since that time.

And quite simply, Jesus at this very moment, as he has been doing for the last 2,000 years, prays for us.

He intercedes on our behalf.

And I find it tremendously comforting to think of Jesus praying on behalf of his church.

And so in John chapter 17, we get a unique window into the kinds of things that Jesus prays for his church.

John 17 · chapter mention

What is his desire for us, his people?

Those of us who are here who are Christians, what does he desire from us?

And what would he like to see in our midst?

And so that's what we're looking at.

And we looked a couple of weeks ago at the fact that Jesus prays for our protection.

And then last week, Dan preached on the fact that Jesus also prays for our unity.

And then tonight, the last week of this series, it all comes together in the third theme that we see in this prayer.

And that is that Jesus prays for our sanctification.

Which is a word in the Bible that essentially means to be set apart for a wholly specific purpose.

And so as we think about spiritual growth as Christians, what spiritual growth really means for us is growing in our set-apartness.

Growing in our ability to be aligned with and devoted to the unique purposes that God has for us.

And so that's what we're going to be looking at, the process of spiritual growth, of sanctification as Jesus prays for us to experience.

And we see three things about it.

First, we'll see the means of sanctification, the means of spiritual growth.

How does it happen?

Then we'll see the evidence of spiritual growth.

How do we know that we're actually growing?

And then third, and most important, we'll see the purpose.

What's it all for?

Why does it matter whether or not we grow in our set-apartness?

So with that in mind, let's pray as we get started.

Our Heavenly Father, we do thank you for setting us apart, for setting this time apart, and this space apart.

For us to encounter you, Lord.

As we prayed earlier, we pray that your Holy Spirit would come and empower these words to be your voice into our hearts.

And we pray that because we need it.

And we pray it for your glory.

In your Son's name.

Amen.

So as we're looking at John chapter 17, first of all, we're going to reflect on the means of spiritual growth.

John 17 · chapter mention

How does growth actually happen?

And it's important to point out that this is where we see the distinction between the Christian understanding of spiritual growth

and what you might think of as the self-improvement culture in our society.

The self-help world or the self-improvement world.

You know, I did a little research, and the self-help market is an $11 billion market.

So tons of money spent on self-help books and videos and speakers and conferences.

It's a big world.

A lot of money.

And yet it makes you wonder, is there anything to this?

Are people actually being helped?

And there's some research on this.

Steve Salerno wrote a book called Sham, How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless.

And in his book, Salerno refers to the 18-month rule.

Well, what's that?

Well, research shows who are the most likely people to buy self-help materials?

People who bought self-help materials sometime in the last 18 months.

And what that shows you is that people buy again and again and again and again looking for that promise of help.

Right?

And the formula is very clear and very effective.

The formula essentially plays on our sense of discontentment.

Our sense of inadequacy.

That sense that pretty much everybody in the world has.

And then it promises that the life that you've been dreaming of, the life that you've been longing for, is right here.

It's just around that corner.

And this book or these techniques or these steps are going to get you just around that corner.

You're going to turn that corner and everything's going to be different.

So words like breakthrough.

Right?

You're going to have a breakthrough.

It's a very effective formula.

It's essentially peddling hope.

But the thing is, it's a scam.

And more than that, it's promising a kind of quick fix that really doesn't exist.

And what we see in Jesus' prayer is that the means of true growth and transformation.

Steve says here.

I mean, I'm sorry.

Jesus says here.

Steve.

Steve Salerno.

Sorry.

Still talking about Steve's book.

Now let's look at Jesus' book.

He says in verse 17,

Sanctify them in the truth.

Your word is truth.

And what he's talking about there is that sanctification, the process of becoming more set apart, more aligned with God's purposes,

that happens when we put God's truth into practice.

And by truth, he clarifies he means God's word.

When that becomes worked into our life.

Right?

So plants grow by taking sunlight and they convert sunlight into what they need to grow.

They work it into themselves and it's converted into growth.

And in the same way, Christians are called to take the light of God's truth and convert that into growth.

In other words, it's not automatic.

It's a process that happens over the course of a lifetime.

And in John's pastoral letter, so we just looked at, the gospel reading was from his gospel.

The other reading that we had was from 1 John, which is his pastoral letter to the church.

And in that letter, he tells us a little more about what spiritual growth actually looks like.

And he has this kind of poem that Diana read.

And it addresses three groups of people.

Little children, young men, and then fathers or elders.

And what's important to note about this poem is, these are symbolic categories.

He's not literally talking to kids and young men and dads.

He's essentially saying that there are different phases of growth for Christians.

Different stages of maturity.

So what constitutes the first stage of growth?

What is a basic baby Christian?

Well, here's what he says.

Little children are people who have heard and now believe the gospel.

They know that they're forgiven through the grace of Jesus and that they're children of God.

So little children are those people who know the basic, core gospel message.

Through Jesus, you receive grace and you become adopted as a child of God.

And that's what makes you a Christian.

It's the foundation of our faith.

So then the question becomes, well, what is it that takes you from that first phase of the Christian life?

What is it that makes the difference between people who grow and people remain spiritually children?

And if you look, here's what he says.

Here's how he describes the next phase of growth.

You, meaning young men, are strong.

And the word of God abides in you.

And you have overcome the evil one.

So what he's saying is this.

Here's the difference between people who remain spiritual infants and people who grow.

It's people who take God's word and work it into their lives and immerse themselves in it.

So that it begins to abide in them.

We'll talk a little bit more about that.

And then they use it in an active struggle against sin in their life.

Right?

Right?

Right?

So they're actively fighting against sin.

And they're striving for holiness.

And God's word is their instrument of battle.

This is how maturity begins to happen.

Right?

And so there are a lot of implications as we think about this as the means of spiritual growth.

But essentially this is saying that apart from God's word, spiritual maturity is not possible.

Apart from God's word, we remain spiritual infants.

You can come to faith and receive the gospel.

But you will remain a child in the faith.

Our decisions, our priorities, our dating relationships, our marriages, our kids, all of it has to be worked through the grid of the gospel.

Right?

We learn to see our celebration through the lens of the gospel.

We learn to lament through the lens of God's word.

Everything becomes framed by God's word.

And you know, over the years I've seen people in our church who have faced enormous tragedy.

Enormous struggle.

Enormous heartache.

Enormous heartache.

And I've seen what happens when people take all of that struggle and they open God's word and they allow God's word to shape and to frame and to direct all of those feelings.

Right?

They use God's word to make sense of that struggle.

And I've seen the depth and the maturity that comes from that.

There's really no other way to get it.

And Advent, by the way, is an Anglican church.

For those of you who don't know, an Anglican spirituality, all the liturgy and all the book of common prayer

and all that that we use, it may feel odd to some of you.

But the whole theory behind that is this idea.

That we want to immerse ourselves in scripture.

And so all of the common prayer that we use is essentially scripture that's been reformatted to allow us to use it in gathered worship.

That's all it is.

But it's based on this idea.

Total immersion.

And one other point I want to make.

This also says that part of maturity means developing sound doctrine.

In other words, doctrine that aligns with God's word accurately.

And there are a lot of different opinions on the role of doctrine in the Christian life.

But it's interesting to look at what Paul says in Ephesians 4.

He says, be no longer children.

He's exhorting the Ephesians to grow.

Well, what's the mark of a child?

Well, if you look on, he says, a child is someone who is tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine.

Right?

So that's a mark of being a spiritual infant.

Right?

Is that you don't have any sound doctrine.

So people who say, well, you know, I follow Jesus and I believe in Jesus.

But the whole idea of doctrine, I just really, I reject that because doctrine just divides people and I just want to follow Jesus.

You know, frankly, honestly, the New Testament writers would say that that's very childish.

You know?

And we're called to have a childlike faith.

But not a childish faith.

Growing in Christ requires the developing of a sound, comprehensive, integrated theology that aligns with God's word.

All Christians in this room are amateur theologians.

We're all called to develop a coherent theology that's reflective of scripture.

So one more way to think about immersing ourselves in God's word before we move on is an illustration that I use from time to time because I think it's so great.

And it comes from the Chicago Shakespeare Improv Company.

If you're familiar with this group, every night they do, and if you've been around, you've heard me talk about this before, but I really can't find any better illustration of what we're trying to get at here.

So forgive me for the redundancy.

But it's essentially a troupe.

Every night they perform two 90-minute performances.

And they stand up and they say, okay, give me a topic.

Give me character names.

Give me a plot.

And people just shout out ideas.

You know, they shout out things, you know.

And they say, okay, okay.

And then right then, with no preparation, they just begin to improvise an hour and a half of a Shakespearean play.

And people watch this and they say, this is magic.

This has got to be rigged.

How could they possibly do it?

No, it's real.

But the way they do it is they immerse themselves in Shakespeare.

They study it.

They learn it.

They analyze it.

They memorize it.

They recite it.

They immerse themselves in it.

And over time, they develop a kind of Shakespearean instinct.

So that you give them a topic and they can improvise in Shakespearean verse.

And in the same way, we're called to do that with God's word.

Immerse ourselves in it so that it becomes worked into the marrow of our bones and our DNA and it's coursing through our veins.

And so when all of these circumstances arise in life, many of the circumstances in life are never addressed in the Bible.

Right?

Because that's not the purpose of the Bible.

But the goal is that we're so immersed in God's word that we develop a kind of word instinct.

And we're able to improvise in a word-shaped way in all of the various circumstances of our lives.

The only way to do it is the long, hard obedience of immersing ourselves in Scripture.

So the means of spiritual growth is God's truth, his word, when we not only learn it but put our lives under it.

And then that leads us to the next question.

How do we know we're growing?

What's the evidence of spiritual growth?

And we see three things in John 17.

And the first may surprise you.

The first evidence of spiritual maturity is joy.

It's joy.

There are a lot of people who know a lot about the Christian faith but they lack joy.

And one of the great examples, one of the great evidences of a maturing Christian is the presence of joy despite circumstance.

People who are joyful regardless of what's happening.

Right?

And joy for Jesus isn't just feeling good.

It's the joy that comes from putting the glory of his father above everything else.

It's that unique kind of glory.

As long as my father is glorified, I'm joyful.

Right?

And so mature Christians more and more and more put the glory of God above everything else.

They can rest in that glory regardless of what's happening down here.

Regardless of what's happening in their lives.

So that's the first mark of maturity.

Joy.

So Christian maturity isn't about doing our Christian duty and kind of dogmatic obedience and just doing what we're supposed to do.

It's none of that.

It's learning how to drink deeply from that well of joy.

Of the glory of God.

Regardless of what's happening.

And of course the more we find joy in God's glory, the more we're going to be drawn together.

And so not surprisingly, the next mark of maturity is unity.

It's people who are unified.

Christians who are unified.

Jesus says, I do not ask for these only, but also for all of those who will believe in me through their word.

That's us.

That they may all be one just as you, Father, are in me and I in you.

Now Dan preached on this last week, so I don't want to say too much about it.

But I do want to point this out.

A lot of communities these days, a lot of churches, pursue unity by doing away with doctrine.

And they say, in order for us all to get along and to have a cohesive group and to have a unified community, we need to relativize doctrine.

So you believe what you want and you believe what you want and you believe what you want.

And we'll all agree to disagree on all those things so that we can preserve unity.

And if we're reading John 17 correctly, Jesus would say that that's a false unity.

It's not a real unity.

And the reason that it's false is because it's unity at the expense of truth.

But Jesus is not praying for that.

He's praying for the opposite of that.

He's praying for unity through truth.

Unity in the truth.

Unity that is derived from the truth.

He's praying that we would be unified in the truth of who Jesus is.

The truth represented in scripture.

The truth of what we're called to be.

The truth of the gospel.

So unity does not come by saying let's agree to disagree.

As tempting as that might be.

True unity is when believers are striving together to understand who Jesus really is and what that really means.

Resolving our differences.

And of course, the more we're devoted to the glory of God

and the more that we're unified in the truth of his son Jesus,

the more love is going to come to define our relationships.

And not just any love, but his love.

So the third mark of maturity.

We have joy.

We have unity.

And the third mark is love.

Probably the most important.

At the end of the prayer, Jesus says,

Jesus prays that we would be so consumed with love for God

that that love would begin to shape and define all of our relationships.

Now there's something that I want to point out about all of these three.

Joy, unity, and love.

What do they all share?

They are all communal measures of spiritual maturity.

Not individual.

Right?

So yes, I want to become more patient.

Yes, I want to become more kind.

Yes, I want all these things.

And all of those things are marks of spiritual growth.

But he's emphasizing what?

The communal aspects.

Which tells us what?

An essential aspect of spiritual growth, your spiritual growth,

your personal growth,

an essential aspect of that is found in a community.

That that's how you know.

Okay, how do you know you're growing?

What are your relationships like?

That's how you know that you're growing.

Right?

So this is one of the main reasons why it's important to be involved in a local church,

wherever you live.

To be involved in a local church.

Listen, you know, there are a lot of people around here who say,

well, my church, I have a group of friends,

and we get together regularly, and we pray, and we read scripture,

and we worship God, and that's my church.

And I would say, I'm so glad that you have that,

but that is not a church.

I mean, self-selecting a group of people that you already like,

and already get along with, that's great.

But the kind of love that we're looking at here,

the kind of joy, the kind of unity,

it's really found when you're in a room full of people that you didn't pick,

and you look around, and you realize that God has said,

that person is your brother, that person is your sister.

You may not even like that person, you have nothing in common,

and yet somehow you have to figure out how to share joy with them,

how to be unified with them,

and how to love them sacrificially.

And that's when you're going to grow.

I'm glad that you have friends,

but we're talking about something much deeper,

much harder than that.

If you really want to spiritually grow,

find a local church, does not have to be Advent,

find a local church that's centered on the gospel,

and pour your life into it.

Pour your life into it.

It will change your life.

Mark my words.

It's one of the best ways to grow.

One of the last things I'll say about growth,

and evidence of growth,

comes from the Chronicles of Narnia.

I think it's the second book,

and Lucy sees Aslan,

and Aslan is the lion who represents God in Narnia.

It's been a long time since Lucy has seen Aslan,

and they're reunited.

And it says this.

The great beast rolled over on his side

so that Lucy fell,

half sitting and half lying between his front paws.

He bent forward and touched her nose with his tongue.

His warm breath came all around her,

and she gazed up into the large, wise face.

Welcome, child, he said.

Aslan, said Lucy.

You're bigger.

That's because you're older, little one,

answered he.

Not because you are.

I'm not.

But each year you grow,

you'll find me bigger.

That's what spiritual growth is.

The more mature we become,

the bigger God gets,

and the smaller everything else becomes,

including us.

The bigger God gets, right?

So the more we grow,

the bigger God gets,

the more joy that's found in God's glory

eclipses everything else, right?

The more we grow,

the more God becomes bigger,

the more we strive for unity

and work through our differences, right?

The more we grow,

and the bigger that God gets,

the more his love comes to define our relationships,

even above our own preferences and priorities.

This is how we know we're growing.

Okay, so the means of spiritual growth,

God's word.

Empowered by the spirit,

worked into our lives, right?

The measures of growth,

joy, unity, love,

God getting bigger.

Now what's it all for?

What's the purpose of spiritual growth

as we look at this passage together?

Verse 18, Jesus says,

As you sent me into the world,

so I have sent them into the world,

meaning us.

And for their sake,

I consecrate myself,

that they also may be sanctified in truth.

I do not ask for these only,

but also for those who will believe in me

through their word.

Now remember,

in John's writing,

I just want to clarify,

when he says world,

he's not talking about geography.

World,

whenever John writes world,

you need to,

when you're reading John

or any of John's letters,

you need to mentally translate.

When he says world,

what he means

is a mentality,

a worldview

that is set against God,

that rejects or ignores God.

So the world

is the community of people.

It's all people everywhere

who collectively reject

or ignore God

in the world that he made.

Right?

And so Jesus says,

just as God sent him

into the world,

into the midst of people

who reject and hate him,

so he has sent us

into the world.

He sent the church.

Here's all the people

in the world

who reject God

and God takes his church

and plunks it

right down in the middle.

And he says,

that's where I want you to be.

That's where I want you to stay.

I'm not going to take you out.

I want you to stay there.

Now why?

Why?

And this gets to the very heart

of what it means

to be the church.

Some of you are not Christians

and this may sound irrelevant to you.

But a lot of times,

those of us

who are in the church

lose sight of why we're here.

What is all this about?

And this reminds us.

And simply put,

we are meant to be

a preview.

A preview.

Right?

A coming attraction.

Right?

This is what's going

to happen everywhere.

We're meant to be

an embodiment

of the new creation,

to use the theological language.

Right?

A vision of the future,

here and now.

So imagine a big,

imagine a big housing building

that is just crumbling

and decrepit

and rotting

and the wiring doesn't work

and the water doesn't work

and it smells like urine

and imagine that

everybody who lives there

is up to their neck

in debt

and it's rat infested

and there's crime

and the whole thing

is falling apart.

And imagine that

somebody comes

and they say,

I'm going to,

I'm going to,

I'm going to raise

this building to the ground.

I'm going to scrape it clean.

There's going to be nothing left.

But then,

in its place,

I'm going to build

a work of art.

You can't even imagine it.

It's going to be

a work of art.

It's going to be

the greatest,

the greatest thing

ever built.

It's going to put

everything else to shame.

And instead of driving up

the cost of housing

and kicking all the people

that were here out,

I'm actually going to issue

an invitation.

Because this structure

is going to have enough

housing to fit everybody.

And so I'm going to

send out an invitation

and anybody who wants

to come and live here,

they can come.

And all they have to do

is come and talk to me.

And by the way,

those people who are in debt,

I'm going to pay off

all that debt.

And not only that,

I will cover the full cost

for them to live here

and have everything they need

for all of eternity.

And all they have to do

is come to me.

And imagine that this promise

is made to the world

and people say,

well, what is it going to look like?

What's it going to be like?

And imagine then this person

brings out a scale model

and puts it on the table

and says,

well, this will give you

some idea.

That scale model,

that's the church.

That's what the church

is meant to be.

Right?

There's no comparison

between this model

and the reality.

It's just a glimmer.

It's just a shadow.

Just a foretaste.

But it's something

and when you look at it,

you say,

yeah, I get that.

And the more you look at it,

the more you realize,

I want to be a part of this.

Sign me up.

Who do I talk to?

Right?

Where's the leasing office?

Right?

How do I get in?

That's what the church

is meant to be.

Right?

When people look

at the relationships

and the priorities

and the values

and the unity

and the joy

and they look at all this

and they say,

I want that.

What do they have?

That's the church.

That's what we're called to be.

I'll give you one example

of what this looks like

in practice

before we close

because I think it's important

to kind of make this tangible.

It comes from the early days

of the church

when the church

was only around

about a thousand people.

It was around 40 or 50 A.D.

Not long after

the resurrection

and as the first aspects,

the first gospels

are starting to be conceived of

and beginning to be written down.

You have about a thousand people.

And Rodney Stark,

who's a historical sociologist,

so this book isn't like

some piece of Christian propaganda.

This is just an academic

who's trying to figure out

how did the church grow so quickly

over just a few centuries.

And he wrote a book

called The Rise of Christianity.

He talks about the state

of the Roman Empire

at the birth of the church.

And quite frankly,

the empire was crumbling.

It was crumbling.

And you know,

we have these images

of the barbarian hordes

invading Rome.

No, that didn't happen.

You know what the biggest problem

in the Roman Empire was?

It was low fertility.

They couldn't birth enough children

to replace the population

that was dying out.

And so the barbarians

didn't conquer.

They just moved in

because there were more

and more and more

abandoned homesteads.

So they just came in

and just picked up

where they left off.

And the reason

for the low fertility,

there's a lot of reasons

and Stark goes in depth

into all of them,

but essentially Rome

was a very male-dominated society.

And so,

and sex and power

were very closely linked.

And so men felt a lot of freedom

to have sex with other men

or other women

or children

as much as they desired.

And there were really no checks on that.

And because of that,

and because of the sort of

free widespread availability of sex

with whom ever you might prefer,

marriage was seen,

even by the philosophers,

in a really low light.

Marriage was seen as a burden

and a bother

and something that almost

we wish we could just do away with it.

So men didn't like marriage.

They didn't prefer marriage.

And even when they did get married,

they would often marry

a 12-year-old girl

or younger.

And then often that girl

wouldn't survive very long

and so then they would marry

another 12-year-old girl.

And you see how that goes.

And along with that,

the practices of infanticide,

which is, you know,

exposing a child

and letting it die,

or abortion,

both of those things

were very widespread

and actually also encouraged

by the philosophers.

Abortion back then

was very dangerous.

A lot of times it resulted

either in death

or infertility.

And most often,

the vast majority of the time,

abortion and infanticide,

those were performed

on female children

because women didn't really

figure very highly

in the societal value system.

So as a result,

Stark estimates

that in Rome,

the ratio of men to women

was 131 men

for every 100 women.

Imagine that ratio.

Out in the suburbs,

140 men

for every 100 women.

That ratio is insane.

So no marriageable women

anywhere, right?

growing number of men.

And into this society,

and because of the plummeting

fertility rates,

the population was beginning

to shrink

and they couldn't afford

all of the elderly people

who needed care.

They couldn't afford,

there were nobody

to take care of them, right?

And so right into this

crumbling society,

the Christian church is born.

And the Christian church

was radically countercultural.

They prohibited abortion

and infanticide

in their own communities.

They didn't even try

to change policies, right?

They had no power.

But they just said,

okay, in our midst,

that's not going to happen.

We'll take care of them.

Right?

They had a high view

of marriage.

And they talked about

how marriage

was actually connected

to this great story

of God loving

and giving himself

for his beloved.

And that marriage

is actually something

that points to the union

of Christ and his church.

the bridegroom and the bride.

And they said that even

that the act of sex

has this transcendent power to it.

And everybody who heard that,

it was mind-blowing.

And they thought it was

the most beautiful thing

they'd ever heard.

Right?

They also applied

the same standards

of fidelity to men

as were applied to women.

And they enforced that.

Right?

And they gave women

a much higher social status

than they found

anywhere else in society.

So not surprisingly,

what happened?

Well, women flocked

to Christianity.

Women said,

oh, this is the best thing

I've ever seen.

And so many women came

and they brought

their unbelieving husbands

and then over time

their unbelieving husbands

came to faith.

Right?

And because of these practices

they began to have

more and more and more babies

and very soon

there was actually

in the Christian church,

well, the ratio that I said,

140 to 100 men to women,

in the church

there was actually

a surplus

of marriageable women.

just like Church of the Advent.

A surplus

of beautiful,

highly educated,

incredibly eligible women

and all they want to do

is get married.

Right?

And they're all in the church.

They're the best kept secret

in the world.

Right there.

And as a result

there was this explosive growth

in the church

and in addition to this,

one other thing I'll say,

when the plagues

would sweep through

and begin to ravage

and people were getting sick

all over the place,

the pagans would flee.

They would run as far

as they could away from it

and people would abandon

their own family members.

But the Christians,

because of what they believed,

because of their

counter-cultural values,

because of the parable

of the Good Samaritan,

they stayed

and they cared for people.

And what happened

is amazing.

A lot of times

all these people needed

was nursing care.

They didn't need medication,

they just needed nursing care.

And so estimates

say that that kind of care

provided probably saved

two-thirds of the people

who were sick,

got better.

Because they were cared for

by Christians.

And then what would happen?

Well, then two things.

One, they would become Christians.

And two,

they would then be immune

to the illness.

And so then they would go

and care for other people

who would then get better

and become Christians

and then be immune.

And you see how that happened.

And so even as Rome

fell apart,

Stark calculates

that Christianity grew

at a rate of 40%

per decade

between the years

40 and 350 A.D.

from perhaps

1,000 believers

in 40 A.D.

to nearly 34 million believers

a few centuries later.

If you want to know

how it happened,

that's how it happened.

Why?

Because Christians

were a radically

counter-cultural movement.

They used things

like sex and money

and power

in radically different ways.

ways that didn't reinforce

existing structures

of power and oppression

but ways that actually

pointed to a higher way,

a greater hope.

They lived in a way

that provoked questions

only the gospel can answer.

I want to note

that they weren't trying

to change policy.

They weren't trying

to get people into office.

They didn't dream

of that kind of influence.

They were simply

being the church.

And I think

that this is relevant

because I think

that a lot of the factors

that you see

that were present in Rome,

I think that there's

a lot of parallels

with our society today.

Even the dropping

fertility rates

among a number

of countries in the West.

So as we look at this

and as we think about

the implications of this,

as we think about

the means and the evidence

and the purpose

of our holiness,

this is what it's all for

so that we can be

that scale model

of new creation.

So in a culture

of moral relativism

and despair and confusion,

we could be united

in a joy

that comes from

the glory of God.

In a society

that is literally

being torn apart

by racial,

socioeconomic,

religious conflict,

political conflict,

that we could be unified

in Jesus Christ.

And in a society

of weaponized shame

and hurt

and trauma,

that we would be

a people of love.

Not just romantic love,

sacrificial love,

not only for one another,

but for all of those

in the community around us.

Pouring ourselves out

to see them flourish.

That's what we're called

to be as the church.

That's the purpose

of our sanctification.

So even as we know

that Jesus is praying

this for us right now,

let's join together

and pray.

soak it up.

So,

yeah,

if you kind of

may I shed a challenge

that because of this

blessing in dismay

somewhere,

because of how it

can be filled up,

but for you should

or may I shed about you

to the future

and may have

a little bit of

not just the

fear.

It's time.

You're going to

to be as an

aspect.

You're going to

to be FR

because you're

right away.

If you attract

them dark

and you