B | Be Real - Titus | January 19

You are listening to teaching from Mountainside Church in Boone,

North Carolina, where we live as real people who are a part of a real family

serving a real God in the high country.

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All right. So today we are in the book of Titus once again, which is kind of

why we're not having anybody read unless Brie wants to read it again. No, she passed.

But it's a short book, three chapters, 46 verses, but there's a lot of depth,

a lot of substance for us to meditate on.

So, there's more for us. We could spend a lot more time than these two weeks

in this book for sure, but certainly these two weeks will be beneficial to us

as we study this short book.

What we're doing, whether I explicitly explained it or not last week,

is we're kind of revisiting the mission of Mountainside.

We ushered in last year and spent some time unpacking of what it all meant.

This is going to be a very much abbreviated version of that.

And that mission is that we want to be a place where heaven meets earth by proclaiming

the universal reign of God.

Embodying Jesus to our communities, inviting our neighbors to join us in becoming

real people who are part of a real family and who worship the real God.

So last week, we talked about being a place where heaven meets earth.

We talked about being different, living differently, loving differently.

We talked about, as it says in Romans chapter 12, for all of you familiar with

Romans 12 · chapter mention

that verse, don't conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by

the renewing of your mind that you may be able to test and approve what God's

will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will.

I love the NLT version. That's the NIV, which is probably what many of us memorized

back in the day. But the NLT version is a bit more direct.

And as you can imagine, I like the more direct method. It says,

don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person.

Don't copy the world. Don't copy the behaviors of the world.

Don't be this human Spotify playlist that just on repeat, just mirrors the beliefs

and the cultures, the beliefs of the people and the culture around us.

Don't just spout off this greatest hits anthology of what the world says and

what the world believes and all of those things that those who have not been

shaped inwardly by Jesus hold their hope in.

Don't just become this, this human mimic of what the world believes.

Put your hope in Jesus. And that's the instruction I should say is,

is true and needed, not just for the world at large, but for Christians as well.

There's plenty of, of ways in which a devoutly held faith in Jesus and attending

church regularly does not mean that Jesus has actually shaped your inward life.

It doesn't mean that you've actually experienced, the power of Jesus in your inmost being.

What we're talking about is spiritual transformation. That's what we talked

about a lot last week, this idea of spiritual transformation,

that we are being transformed at our heart level, at the inmost being,

the foundations of who we are,

that we are, that God has made us,

what the Bible teaches us, what Genesis tells us is, God has made us to be his

image bearers, to reflect his glory and goodness into the world.

So we need to be formed to better reflect his image now into this world.

And the truth is that, that we talked about last week is that we are all being

transformed all the time that no human can escape spiritual transformation.

It's, it's, it's all of us all the time for the messages we heard are being

transformed at the center and of our being, the heart, the depths of our heart.

So if we aren't growing in Christ likeness, then perhaps the implication there

is what we are claiming that we worship is not Christ like Christ at all.

That's the implication. If we're not growing in Christ likeness,

then perhaps what we are worshiping is not like Christ at all,

because you will become like your gods. You will become what you worship along the way.

And again, this is not just a Christian reality. This is a reality for every

human being on the planet that your heart, Your inner self, the depths of who

you are is being shaped. It's being formed at all times.

It's being formed by something and this, the good news of Jesus,

the enduring presence of Jesus in your life right now, and the hope of a future

that he gives us, the promise of a hope and a future.

It's such good news that alters the entirety of who we are. It alters everything that we're about.

It's your life becoming the image of Jesus, becoming a place where heaven touches

earth. It completely changes the culture around you.

It changes the cultural compromises that we make along our way in our life.

It's remaking you into God's image.

It's reshaping the world around you. So that's what we talked about last week.

Today, we're going to turn our attention, shift our focus to the remainder,

the bulk of the mission statement.

And so last week, I encouraged you to be heaven. If we could take that sort

of abstract idea and put it a little bit more concretely into our lives.

This week, I want to encourage you to be real.

And you could say, be Jesus just as easily that to say the things that Jesus

said, to do the things that Jesus did.

But ultimately, we're not going to completely be Jesus, but we can step into

the fullness of what God has for us,

a deeper, more real reality of our lives that as the spirit of God empowers

us along the way, this, we become the most authentically real version of ourselves.

As Jesus gets a hold of our spirit, as Jesus works and transforms and forms

our inmost being, as we are empowered by his great, great spirit within us,

We get to step into more reality. We get to become the most real versions of

ourself, a fully human image of God, a fully human image of God,

living and active for his glory.

That's what we're becoming, a fully human image of God, living and active for

his glory, a real person able to be touched and whose life is felt,

whose life has real impact in the world around us.

That's what we're talking about when we talk about real, that we are God's plan

to bring heaven to earth.

He has chosen us. He has decided he has made it so, right?

There's, you've probably heard somebody ask in the past, like,

does God need us? And ultimately their answer is going to be no.

But if we really think about it, the answer is kind of yes, not because God

is lacking anything without us, but because he has decided that we are his plan.

So we are required because God has said so. So you are required in this plan of God.

He wants you more importantly. Again, he's not lacking anything without us, but God has chosen you.

He wants you. There's this, like in the Garden of Eden, right?

There's this repetition of this idea that I want you to rule with me.

I want you to do this with me.

I want you to be with me side by side that you are chosen and beloved.

And he says, you can't do it without me.

Obviously God is all powerful and can do it without us, but he has decided that we are his choice.

And he also tells us that you can't do it without me. We can't do it without him, right?

That we will fall into the same trap as they did in the garden,

that we'll choose for ourselves what is good, that we'll only hurt the people

around us, we'll only hurt ourselves.

So we can't do it without him. And God, Jesus tells us, I want to do it with you.

He repeats the same message to us as God repeated in the garden.

In John 16, he says, I'm going to go away to the one who sent me and not one

of you is asking where I'm going.

Instead, you grieve because of what I've told you. But in fact,

It is best for you that I go away because if I don't, the advocate,

and depending on your translation, it says lots of different things, right?

The helper, the comforter, the counselor, the Holy Spirit, the strengthener.

If I don't go, the Holy Spirit won't come.

Then I will send him to you when I go away. So he's telling the disciples who

have just spent the better part of three years living next to him.

He's saying that you'll have a greater, richer, more fuller experience with

me than even what you have had these last three years or so,

two, three, whatever it was.

It won't just be God with you. It'll be my spirit in you.

It won't just be God beside you. It'll be God's spirit in your skin,

closer than your skin, giving you life and breath and filling up your lungs.

And he says, essentially in this message, right? That I want to work with you

to restore this image that was broken.

This image that you have created to be this image that I've stamped onto each and every one of you.

I want to help you by sending you a helper, a strengthener.

And so it's better for me if I leave or better for you.

If I leave, he says in verse 12, there's so much more I want to tell you,

but you can't bear it now.

When the spirit of truth comes, when this advocate, the strengthener,

this helper comes, He will guide you into all truth.

He will not speak on his own, but will tell you what he has heard.

He will tell you about the future.

He will bring me glory by telling you whatever he receives from me.

And all that belongs to the father is mine. And this is why I said that the

spirit will tell you whatever he receives from me.

So there's this beautiful union, this perfect relationship, this fuller communion

that is processing from the father to the son and from the son to the spirit.

And then from the spirit to his people, to his church, to his beloved people is this.

We could think of it as this holy and sanctified version of the game telephone.

You guys remember the game telephone we played as a kid, right?

Except without your jerk friends who try and purposefully mess it up.

And so there's something really like rude and funny said at the end.

It's not, it's a holy and sanctified version of this where everything is spoken

and communicated in perfect clarity, perfect harmony.

And so the question is, because we're at the sort of end towards the end of

this chain. And the question that it begs is, who are we going to pass the message along to?

Who are we going to pass this precious revelation onto in clear words and humble actions?

Can we pass it along with the same clarity that has been passed down from the

Father to the Son, from the Son to the Spirit, from the Spirit to us?

This chain of communication, the word we're going to use kind of throughout

today is this idea of flow, this flow of communication. Is it going to stop with us?

Are we going to continue as the spirit speaks to his body, to his church, to you?

Are we going to continue that message and pass it along as we pass it along to others?

And then the beautiful picture is, and then you get to bring those people along

that you've passed it to. And you get to tell them, guess what?

You get to have this experience as well. You don't have to have me speak into

your life, but you get to have this experience where the spirit shares his heart with you as well.

You get to step into this fullness of joy. You get to hear, you get to experience,

you get to commune with the spirit of the living God yourself.

So we get to bring people into this flow of communication that God is constantly

speaking for those who are listening.

And we get to say, you get all of this as well, all of the joy,

all of the comfort, the fullness.

Of the presence of God with you forever. Isn't that just amazing?

For some reason, I got in my head, Robert Irwin. Have y'all ever,

you know, Robert Irwin, the son of Steve Irwin, like he's taken over his dad's

legacy and his like cute little, he's probably like 18 or 20 now.

He's not a cute little kid, but he's like 25.

Okay. But like his thing is always like, isn't that just amazing?

I can't do an Australian accent.

But like, it's such an amazing thing.

And this is what's happening here in this, in the book of Titus.

It's the same communication flow that we've, we've, we've just experienced.

We've just seen Paul is hearing from the spirit as a father speaks to the son,

as the son speaks to the spirit, spirit speaking to Paul.

And then Paul is speaking to Titus and he's saying, carry this to the people in Crete.

I'm entrusting with it, you with it, carry it further to the believers in Crete

and to those people in Crete who are yet to believe past this message along.

And it's actually how these first believers in Crete, the church in Crete came

to be. if we back up 33 years or so, because this book of Titus,

it's not just a religious text.

It's not just a letter. It's actually history grounded in reality and in real events that took place.

And so these events probably took place to our best guess, best on when Paul

was moving around and when he would have been there and when he would have left

Titus with all of the documents that we have.

The best guess is this is between 64 and 68 AD.

So we back up 33 years or so that puts us at 33 ish AD, which leaves us at Pentecost, right?

So Pentecost is after the resurrection, the disciples are waiting,

they're praying, and then the earth is shaken, right?

The spirit descends in tongues of fire and, and man, the powerful,

there's a powerful manifestation of God with them, providing exactly what they

so desperately need, exactly what they are waiting for.

The promised spirit that Jesus had promised them that we just read previously.

And in Acts 2, it says that everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit. And this is our reality.

Everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit. This is who we are as God's people.

We are filled with the Holy Spirit. They began speaking in other languages as

the Holy Spirit gave them this In verse five, it says, at that time,

there were devout Jews from every nation living in Jerusalem.

And when they heard the loud noise, everyone came running. So this is an audible

shaking, an audible noise that not just was experienced by the disciples,

but was experienced by those around them.

Everyone came running and they were bewildered to hear their own languages being

spoken by the believers.

There's this commotion that has taken place as these believers are filled with

the Holy Spirit and speaking these languages.

And these people, they were completely amazed. How can this be? They exclaimed.

These people are from Galilee and yet we hear them speaking in our own native languages.

Here we are Parthians, Medes, Elamites, people from Mesopotamia,

Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, the province of Asia,

Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, the areas of Libya around Cyrene,

visitors from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism,

Cretans, Cretans were there and Arabs.

And we all hear these people speaking in our own languages about the wonderful things God has done.

And they stood there amazed and perplexed. What can this mean? They asked each other.

So this is the birth of the church in Crete.

This is the birth of the church in Crete, The Holy Spirit empowered the disciples to speak in boldness.

Some of those people there and they have Pentecost were people from Crete,

probably Jews or converts to Judaism, more than likely visiting Jerusalem.

They heard this message passed from the Holy Spirit to the disciples.

And then they brought this good news back home with them.

Jesus is Lord. Glory be his name.

It was these believers that Paul would have first met in his visits to the island.

It was these believers that he would have organized into fellowships and to

churches, we might call them.

And it was among these that Paul left Titus to finish this work,

to raise up leaders, to raise up elders, to raise up people full of integrity

who would live differently.

And he would pass this message along of God's presence with his people,

empowering them and transforming them. This is the message.

This is a message that Paul reminds Titus of in chapter two,

for the grace of God has been revealed, bringing salvation to all people.

And we are instructed to turn from godless living and sinful pleasures.

We should live in this evil world with wisdom, righteousness, and devotion to God.

While we look forward with hope to what wonderful, that wonderful day,

when the glory of our great God and savior, Jesus Christ will be revealed.

He gave his life to free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us and to make

us his very own people, totally committed to doing good works.

So do you see it here? Do you notice it? It's that same ebb and flow,

that same message, this cause and effect.

The spirit flows, the spirit moves, overflows, and then cascades down to his people.

That God moves and his people respond.

God's grace is first revealed, ushering salvation to all people,

cause and effect, right?

Resulting in complete life transformation. A people sold out for God,

a people turning from the pursuit of pleasure, a people turning toward wisdom,

towards righteousness and devotion, cause and effect.

This is a picture of repentance in these first few sentences of this particular passage.

A turning from darkness towards light. This is Paul's testimony when we,

when he was stopped on the road to Damascus, right?

When he was confronted with the reality of Jesus, the living God,

Paul couldn't go on living the same life that he was living before.

He couldn't keep doing the same things that he was doing. He couldn't keep the same habits.

When confronted with the reality of Jesus, he had to turn completely.

He had to turn his back on his old way of life. And he had to turn towards a new real life.

Walking out of the shadows into God's marvelous light, step-by-step moving further

away from what was and closer and closer to Jesus.

This was Paul's own life. This is the message he's passing along.

And again, Paul says in the latter half of this passage that Jesus gave his life.

So God revealed himself.

He revealed his grace. And the second half, Jesus gave his life.

That's the cause. And the effect is to free, to cleanse, to make us his own.

Freedom and cleansing are the results.

And so the pervasive thought in our culture is that freedom is the ability to

choose for yourself, the direction of your life, the end of restrictions.

It's been said that the freedom we are looking for is the freedom to be ourselves

and express ourselves, unhindered, uninterrupted, independence.

And what's really being communicated there is I am my own person to be who I

wanted to be. And no one has the right to tell me to live, how to live.

That's our, our, our.

Unchallenged at times definition of freedom that we get handed to us in our

worldview, that the world tells us to be our own God, to set our own agendas,

to be masters of our destiny.

When what the Bible tells us is, is that that mentality keeps us as slaves,

that Paul reminds Titus here and the Cretans as well, that all of this free living, so to speak,

all this free living just keeps us in captivity to our desires.

It destroys our relationships. It causes us hurt and pain and it harms those who are around us,

those who we claim to love because the foundational logical aspect of this is that our agendas,

our desires, if that's what we believe freedom is, pursuing our desires,

our agendas and our desires are in conflict with one another at all times. So whose wins?

But when we submit ourselves to Jesus, let his desires win, then all of our

actions and desires become harmonious.

They become in union. There's no more conflict.

There's conflict, but there's no more conflict of desire, no more conflict of

authority, no more conflict of agenda.

All of our agendas speak against each other.

Jesus came and to give his life that we would be free. In fact.

He is the only way to real freedom, to true freedom, to real life.

And the more we know and experience God and his perfect love,

the more we know and experience God

and his perfect love, the more we will understand and become real people.

You will walk into more reality. You walk into more reality as you meditate

on, on God's word, as on these words that the spirit has passed on to Paul and

then on to us through this letter,

these chains of communication, this flow that is taking place from the father

down to his people. I love you.

I am with you. I am good. I want good for you.

You are free. You are mine. Walk into this freedom. Walk into this reality. Be real people.

The problem is that in this natural flow, the pouring out of the father can get interrupted.

We can short circuit this message. The message can be lost in our failure to hear.

And there's kind of a few ways that this plays out that we'll look at because

there are these Jewish rabbis all across the centuries that have been asked questions.

And one of the questions that is consistently asked of these Jewish rabbis from

the ancient world to the more modern world is, can you keep the law or does

rather, does the law make you a good person? Does keeping the law make you a good person?

And the obvious answer to these rabbis who have studied the scriptures and the

law for so long is of course not.

You can keep every law to its very letter and still be a despicable person.

You can keep every aspect of this law.

Jesus encounters this reality with the rich young ruler, we call him.

We get a glimpse into this reality.

He says, he came to, this guy came to Jesus with a question,

teacher, what good deeds must I do to have eternal life?

Jesus says, why ask me about what is good? There's only one who is good.

But to answer your question, if you want to receive eternal life,

keep the commandments. Of course, the man asked, which ones?

Jesus replied, you must not murder. You must not commit adultery.

You must not steal. You must not testify falsely. Honor your father and mother.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

He says, I've obeyed all of these commandments.

What else must I do? Now notice the line of questioning that we find in this

guy. This is in Matthew 16.

Listen to the direction of the man's question. What things must I do?

What do I still lack? Show me this ladder that will lead me to heaven and I will climb my way up it.

Every step. Just tell me what I have to do.

I will keep every commandment. I will do every work. What must I do?

Jesus told him, if you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions

and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me.

But when the young man heard this, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

So Jesus' answer to this young man's earnest question.

Is essentially treasure me, leave the world of your previous life behind you

and come follow me, be with me, do this with me, walk with me side by side.

You can do all the right things and still be just as far from God as people

who have no belief in him whatsoever.

We can have faith in Jesus and not have that faith transform the reality of who we are.

Have that faith not transform the things that we say and the goods that we,

the good works that we do.

And Paul tells Titus, delight yourself in the Lord and out of you will flow

wells, deep wells of living water. Delight yourself in the Lord.

And this living water will overflow from within you into the lives of those around you.

So what flows out of the great works that have been done by Jesus,

that Jesus has done for you? What is flowing out of those great works?

In this passage we read, it's a total commitment to worshiping God with the

entirety of your life and the good works that overflow from that.

That let this message flow through you. Let this message transform you.

Shall I change all that you desire, all that you care about,

all that you value in this world.

Don't just be good. Don't just, let's say that don't just do good things. Desire to be good.

Don't just do good. Desire to be good, to be changed by the great,

great love of the father from the depths of your being.

And may that pour out from you.

Let that flow out of you, pass it along into those around you.

And we can't, I don't think we can talk about this idea of flow without sort

of mentioning what most readily comes to mind when I think of the word.

Now, this is not quite as relevant to the idea that we're talking about,

this outward flow pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

But when I think of flow, my mind always goes to these ideas of the board sports,

of the surfing and the snowboarding,

the skateboarding, which many of you have probably tried your hand at,

at some time over the years and perhaps hurt yourself and therefore never touched it again.

But there is a balance that is of the utmost importance in these kinds of things,

this flow, that if you have too much weight in one direction or the other,

then you're off, out of the flow, off the board, perhaps in the hospital.

So there's a balance. There is a balance that is important.

There are two distinct aspects of how this reality,

this flow of communication that pours from the spirit to his people,

then outflows from us into the lives of those around us. There's two distinct aspects.

And Paul bookends this passage that we just read in chapter two with these two distinct aspects.

He writes in verse seven, he says, and you yourself, talking to Titus,

must be an example to them by doing good works of every kind.

Let everything you do reflect the integrity and seriousness of your teaching.

Teach the truth so that your teaching can't be criticized. Then those who oppose

us will be ashamed and have nothing bad to say about us.

And then at the end of the passage, verse 15, he says, you must teach these

things and encourage the believers to do them.

You must do, and you must teach.

You must say the things that Jesus said, and you must act the way that Jesus acted.

You must proclaim and you must embody.

It's a both and it's not a one or the other.

There is a fullness, a balance that takes place between these twos.

But the problem is that this message can be appropriated.

It can be used to justify or overemphasize certain aspects of our lives,

one aspect over the other of this.

And it happens in both ways, but perhaps the most common way that you've heard

is something to the lens of the effects of actions speak louder than words.

If you spend any amount of significant time within the church,

and you're during your tenure in the church, you may have heard the quote,

preach the gospel at all times,

use words if necessary, which is incorrectly attributed to Francis of Assisi.

In fact, he never said anything like this at all. And his, none of his followers

ever communicated that he said anything to this effect.

The closest that can be said from old Francis is something to the effect in

his fervent belief, his desire that all Christians should demonstrate what they

teach by their actions, that there should be this balance.

He said something to the effect along the lines of encouraging all of the friars, the monks to teach.

He also encouraged them that they should preach by their deeds as well.

Essentially, the exact same thing that Paul is saying there.

Actually, Francis Assisi was known to be this really fervent preacher to the

lines of some of the more giant names that perhaps we've seen in more modern

centuries that that were these fervent personalities.

Francis was known to be that as well. And he's saying the exact same thing that

Paul is instructing Titus in the last letter.

Make sure that your deeds match your words.

Don't abandon words for the sake of deeds, but make sure that your deeds match your teaching.

Be sure you live out the grace and truth of the gospel.

And the notion that you can hope to do this outside of a balance of speaking

the truth and living the truth is neither practical nor faithful to the gospel.

It's not faithful to these words that we have that you must do both and your

words and your action must be in one accord.

You must teach and you must do, you must teach,

proclaim and you must embody your actions should reflect the truth of your teaching.

It should give weight to what you say. Your actions should give weight to your words.

And the Shema is one of the most central prayers to Judaism.

It would have been one of the most essential prayers in Jesus's life as a first century Jew.

It comes from a few different passages in the Bible and the Hebrew Bible specifically.

One of these passages and perhaps the main one is Deuteronomy chapter six.

It says at the end of, of this passage is Deuteronomy six verses four through nine.

But towards the end of this passage, it says, these commandments that I give

you today, this is God speaking, are to be on your hearts, impress them on your children.

God speaking through Moses, but impress them on your children.

Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road,

when you lie down and when you get up, tie them as a symbol on your hands and

bind them on your foreheads.

Write them on the doorframes of your homes and your gates.

Speak and live this message I have given you. Pass it along.

Pass it along to all those who are around you. Let it flow out of you into your

words and into your actions.

Let this, these commands be part and embodied in all that you do and proclaimed

in all that you say as you go around in life.

It reminds me of, there's an old hymn called Pass It On, which many of you may be familiar with.

If I remember it correctly, it sticks out in my mind because there's always

that like man's part where you echo Pass It On or something like that,

right? That's that song.

The first verse says, it only takes a spark to get a fire going.

As soon as all those around can warm and soon all those around can warm up and it's glowing.

That's how it is with God's love. Once you experienced it, you spread his love

to everyone and you want to pass it on, which leads me to this last interruption,

this last problem that can take place that we can experience in the.

Interruption of this flow, that this message can stop with us.

We can let it stop with us, unfortunately.

So don't let that happen. As I was praying and walking one day this past week

or the week before, I've been trying to record the times I feel like God has

given me some sort of image or a picture or clarity to his words.

And randomly this kind of popped into my head, a picture of, of what this looks like.

If our whole lives are just God pouring into us, people pouring into us and

us not then in turn passing along to others.

And I guess to put it in visual terms that perhaps you can understand because

the kids have been into the Willy Wonka movie and the book, but more recently

there's that character,

Violet Beauregard who turns into a blueberry.

We can become bloated if we just allow the spirit to pour into us without pouring into other people.

We can become so full and we are just to the capacity of needing a release,

of needing to pass it on, a needing for it to pour out and overflow over top of us,

to run over the edge of our cup, so to speak.

I've been talking about discipleship a bit sometimes in the terms of breathing.

It's a breathing in from the spirit and it's a breathing out to those around us.

And if we only breathe in, we're going to die.

And if we only breathe out, we're going to die.

It is a flow that of breathing in, of being filled with the spirit and a breathing

out onto those around us. It's a both and.

I remember going back to this picture of being bloated or perhaps God's trying to tell me to move on.

So I don't say this, but I remember a video from Francis Chan.

Actually it was Francis Chan and Gareth from the band Rin Collective.

And they had this series, the band had the series where they were teaching people,

Christian artists and speakers and different things, how to speak with a Northern Irish accent.

And it's really funny. There's, there's a few of them online.

Francis Chan ends up sounding more Scottish than anything like the donkey from Shrek.

I think he actually mentioned Shrek in it, which is not Irish,

but at the end of the video, Francis then in turn teaches Gareth some Chinese phrases.

I think it's Cantonese specifically, but he teaches them some Chinese phrases

and the last phrase he teaches them. and I'm going to get you to say it with

me because, you know, I speak Chinese fluently, so this isn't going to turn out bad.

It's something to the effect of can you say that?

One more time. Just you.

So this is what it means. You have to kind of squint, like hold your belly and

squint because it means I have really bad gas.

It's funny because obviously it's funny because it's funny because you know

from an early age that's funny to us but like the literal meaning is not so

different from some things that we have in English we have this idea of passing

it we have this idea of release it's the same idea of this,

passing of hot air specifically but there's this passing that needs to take

place this release that needs to take place.

We become bloated if all our life is, is just engorging ourselves with the spirit of God.

Now we might find that pleasurable or fulfilling or emotionally satisfying, but it's not the gospel.

We have to pass it on. And the way we say it, the way we've been saying it is

by proclaiming the universal reign of God.

One thing, if we're going to say what Jesus said, the thing that Jesus most

often said is that the kingdom of the heavens is near. It is at hand. It is here.

Now we proclaim the universal reign of God, that, that God is our King,

that Jesus is Lord. He is King of Kings.

And we do it by embodying Jesus to our communities.

We talked about this last week as well, but the presence, the promise presence

of the spirit in us is that Jesus is continuing incarnational work happens with us.

Just because Jesus resurrected and is now sitting in heaven,

doesn't mean that he has any less incarnated himself in this world,

but he has passed it along to his spirit that is alive within us,

empowering us to do what he did, to say what he said, proclaiming and embodying.

We say becoming real people who are part of a real family, who worship the real God.

I stole that from Roy, by the way. I don't know if y'all know that.

I would just occasionally listen when Roy talked and take notes and towards

sort of the culmination of all this, he started using these words real a lot

more, talking about being real people, talking about the fact that we're a real family.

And obviously it's all because we have a real God because we say this thing,

right? Like real people, real family, real God.

And there's a nice flow to it. There's a building, but the reality is that it

happens in reverse. That God is the source.

God is the source who pours into us from his great, great love.

That he's the initiator. It starts with him.

He pours into us with his great love and the changing power of his constant

companionship, his ever presence.

That God is ultimate reality. And that ultimate reality filters down to us.

It filters down to his people.

It flows into us from his spirit and from each one of you, from the people,

from our family around us to be shared.

Overflow from within us in word and in action to be shared with the world around us.

What we're talking about here as we wrap up our time is deep work done over time in community.

Each of us requires for spiritual transformation in the depth of our soul, deep work.

We're not talking about behavioral changes. We're talking about what we care about changing.

Deep work, the depths of our being over time.

I know Jake and I have talked about this a lot. There's a specific book that

he can tell you about because I don't remember what it's called,

but talks about how while we all idolize this idea of quick change and perhaps

we've seen it, the reality is for most of us, it's going to take time.

It's deep work over time and it can only happen in community.

It's easy to be spiritual by ourselves.

It's hard to grow with the challenge of a broken person sitting next to us.

But that's where growth happens.

Growth happens in challenge. It happens as we hold each other up,

strengthen each other up to grow towards Jesus.

It's a deep work that happens over time in community.

We can't grow by ourselves. We need each other.

We need the time of the spirit to transform us as we seek his kingdom together,

as he overflows within us and our words and our actions.

So I just want to end our time together with these two questions.

What does your heart beat for? What do you desire in the depths of your soul? Same question.

That's not two questions. What is your life about?

What do you desire? What do you long for? What is your heart beating for?

And then the second question.

Will you let God, are you willing to let God invade your life,

change what you care about, change what you desire and lead you into the abundant life with him.

His desire to be with us, that we would rule with him and do it with him has

not changed from the garden of Eden.

He wants us to be with him, to do it with him.

That's perhaps the greatest promise within the scriptures is his companionship,

his ever presence. And that's what makes eternity so great is that he is there.

Yesterday, we were just at a funeral of a friend, our campus minister.

And Jenny was really disappointed because nobody who was speaking mentioned

the fact that on multiple occasions to us, he mentioned that one of the things

he most looks forward to in heaven is that he believes that he'll get to wrestle a bear.

One other thing he looks forward to is being able to be with Jesus and also

talk to Moses and all these guys.

But one of the funny things is that he's like, I bet I could wrestle a bear

in heaven. So perhaps he's wrestling a bear.

Whatever picture of heaven we build for ourselves, and I'm not trying to build

a theology of eternity currently, but the truth of eternity is that it's good

because God is there and his presence is what makes it good.

Whatever else we think we can do, it'll be enjoyable because he's there with us.

We get to experience that reality here. That's what it means to be a real person

is that we get to experience ultimate reality, which is spiritual and with God,

we get to experience it here because he came to be with us and his desires that

we would be with him, that we would build our lives with him upon him.

Thank you for listening to Mountainside Church's podcast. We hope you found

inspiration and encouragement in today's teaching.

To learn more about our church, stay connected or partner with us.

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