Movement | Inviting Our Neighbors to Join Us - James 2:14-26 | August 4

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Well, good morning, everyone. I'm here to preach my second sermon ever,

so I'm very excited about that. I got Josh beat by one still, I think.

So we've been going over the mission statement. I'm going to read it over here

and then we'll kind of get into it.

We want to be a place where heaven meets earth by proclaiming the universal

reign of God, embodying Jesus to our community and inviting our neighbors to

join us in becoming real people who are part of a real family and who worship

the real God. So I'm going to talk about that.

Basically, the second half of the mission statement today.

So thanks, Zach, for that. I assume you wanted me to freak out partway through

my sermon writing as I did.

And yeah, that's inviting our neighbors to join us and becoming real people

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

So what I didn't remember to be fair is that Zach actually preached about real

people, real family and real God in January.

And I just wasn't here. That was, you know, partly on me.

Yeah. Thankfully Zach and Josh and Jake covered a lot of ground in the last

four weeks or so that really gave me a lot of material to work off of as I was preparing.

And to start with, I want to talk about becoming real people.

And as I'm discussing that, I want you to think back to Zach's sermon about

heaven meeting earth and the concept of the temple being a place where heaven

meets earth and how God is now expanding that through the temple of his people, right?

As I recalled, you know, a temple of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament.

And yeah, and just like with that week, I want to go back to Genesis to get started.

So, Genesis 1, 26 through 28, it says,

Then God said, let us make mankind in our image, according to our likeness,

and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky,

and over the livestock, and over all the the earth and over every crawling thing

that crawls on the earth.

So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God,

he created him. Male and female, he created them.

God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the

earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of

the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

So, I'm sure this is a very familiar passage to most of you.

And a couple of things I want to call out here to kind of discuss this concept

of becoming real people are, well, first the term image.

So, the, yeah, the term image here, the word translated image,

most, mostly in the New or in the Old Testament, excuse me, most often it's

actually translated idle. Okay.

It's the same word that's translated idle throughout the Old Testament.

And part of the reason for that is basically when the people around the Israelites

and occasionally the Israelites made idols, that was supposed to basically be

the image of their God, right?

And more specifically, they would place an idol in a temple.

So if we go back to thinking about how the temple is like the place where heaven meets earth,

then the image or the idol was to represent and really in many people's minds

actually was the presence of whatever God was being worshipped in that temple.

And so then when God tells the Israelites and by extension us not to make any

image, any idol for ourselves.

Part of the reason he's doing that is because he already did.

There was no idol in the Israelites tabernacle, in the Israelites temple,

because they themselves were meant to be the image bearers of God.

Right well yeah so so that's

less part of what it means to bear God's image right so God create

God put this this temple in Eden in the form of a garden right and so and the

reason I say that is we see that garden imagery carried out in the instructions

for building the tabernacle and then later in the instructions for building

the temple right those were those were calling back to the Garden of Eden with

with the imagery that was displayed in their decorations and,

then God places his image in the garden, right? In that temple.

And so mankind is meant to take, like then we move on to where he's supposed

to be fruitful and multiply, right?

He's supposed to take that presence of God and expand it out into the rest of

creation as God's representatives on earth, right?

Which brings me to basically this language of rule, right?

Back, also back in that time, a lot of the kings in the nations around the Israelites

would have called themselves the image of God, right?

So that was something that was in many of those cultures reserved just for the king, right?

And that was kind of a power grab, right? And maybe a little ego,

certainly a little egotistical.

But this actually is really kind of subversive teaching then that God gave the

Israelites that all mankind was God's image and was supposed to rule the earth

as God's sub-regions, right?

Sub-regions is a fancy word that means sub rulers. Okay. So there you go.

The, the, in the words of a Bible project video that I really like is the task

that once belonged to elite Kings now belongs to every human,

right? To, to rule the earth.

And what does that ruling look like? According to, according to the, to the, to the passage.

Well, if we move on to Genesis two and we see the Lord, God took the man and

put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it, right?

So, it looks like gardening and it's, of course, not only...

Perhaps I'm a little biased toward gardening.

I think gardening is surely a part of it, but I think we can extrapolate out

from that, that it's taking creation forward, right?

I think we see God say repeatedly that it was good, it was good,

it was good, it was very good, right?

He doesn't necessarily say that it's perfect, right?

And I'm perhaps extrapolating here a little bit.

Maybe what I'm saying is not explicitly in scripture, but what I kind of picture

is a world of much raw material, of a very great unrealized potential.

And God kind of starts this project of taming this raw world with this garden

in Eden and puts mankind in it and says,

hey, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, right?

Because they're right now, they're just in this little garden,

fill the earth and subdue it, right?

Take my presence and expand it out and carry this project forward as my sub

rulers of making this beautiful world with me.

And so, yeah, the word work here, the Lord God took the man and put him in the

Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

I want to just do a quick word, brief word study of that as well.

It's often translated serve throughout the Old Testament.

So, for example, Jacob loved Rachel and he said, I will serve you seven years

for your younger daughter, Rachel.

Exodus 8.1, then the Lord said to Moses, go into Pharaoh and say to him,

thus says the Lord, let my people go that they may serve me in Numbers 8.15.

And after that, the Levites shall go in to serve at the tent of meeting when

you have cleansed them and offered them as a way of offering and so on.

It's not always translated that way. It's often translated work.

It's also translated till and cultivate. And some translations do actually use

the word cultivate in Genesis 2.15, which I think is of course,

totally appropriate for gardening.

But what I want to point out here and just just something for you to bookmark

as we move forward is that the word used to describe work, right?

The purpose that God created mankind for here and put them in the garden for

is it has a strong connotation of service, right?

So now what happens next? Basically humankind says, this is awesome.

God's given us this great world and they just, they do exactly what he said,

right? They're fruitful. They multiply.

They take the project of creation out. They make everything better,

whatever they touch prospers.

Oh, wait, right? No, they actually, instead of ruling as God's image,

they begin to be ruled by the very beasts that they're meant to rule and to

act like beasts themselves, right?

And some examples of this, this is again, like a theme that goes throughout

the Old Testament and new as well.

They're tricked by a beast, right? They let themselves be controlled in a sense

by the serpent instead of doing what they rightfully should have done and saying,

hey, like you're out of line, right? We rule over you, not the other way around.

God tells Cain that sin is crouching at his door, waiting to devour him, right?

Like obvious, you know, beast imagery, right? Like a bear or a lion, like waiting.

And I guess bears aren't really ambush predators, but you get what I'm saying.

A lion will say like like waiting to devour him.

And we see the same image we carry throughout the Bible quite quickly with Cain's

descendants, but then also it's very prevalent in Daniel, very prevalent in

Revelation as well, and elsewhere throughout.

So obviously humans didn't rule the way God made them to, right?

And we're going to jump forward because there's a whole Old Testament story

to go through here, but for the sake

of time, we're going to jump to God's solution to that problem, right?

He had to send a representative who would...

Who would carry out the humans, the humans rule the way that they were designed to do it.

And of course, the only, the way he did that was by himself taking flesh,

by incarnating and coming down and dwelling among us as the son,

that is, one of the members of the Trinity, Jesus, right?

He came and showed us what it means to truly rule as a human.

And so, So he comes and preaches the good news of the kingdom.

It says right in Matthew and elsewhere that the kingdom of God is at hand.

And of course the, the implication and what we learn is that he is that king.

He is the ruler, the son of man who is to be seated at the right hand of God

to be in that co-ruling throne that was, that was created for,

for mankind in a sense, right?

He's taking that place, but he's a king.

Who's enthroned not by a violent military victory, right?

At least not his own violent military victory, right? You could argue that something

kind of like that happens to him, right?

But he's actually enthroned on the cross and that's, you know,

you'll have to take my word for it, but it's throughout the New Testament for the purposes of time.

He's enthroned on that cross. His crucifixion is his coronation and he rules

by service, by the washing of feet, right? Those who will be greatest in the

kingdom of heaven will be servants.

So he's showing us what it means to rule the way God designed us to rule, to serve.

So remember back that word to work it and to care for it, right?

To serve and to care for it is a way we can interpret that. Not that we exist to serve creation.

I don't want to get weird with it, but you get what I'm saying, I hope.

And so then he's the first human to overcome the beast, right?

He does it not by, again, not by a violent military victory,

but by submitting to a humiliating violent death on a the cross and overcoming

by life and love, by resurrection,

showing that beast, the beast of sin and the beast that humans become when they

submit to sin to be the toothless thing that it really is in comparison with the power of God's love.

And so just zooming through this, we then in Christ, we are a new humanity.

Jesus is the first of a new humanity. Colossians 1, 15 through 20 is one place that talks about this.

And it says, he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

For by him, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,

whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

And he is before all things. And in him, all things hold together.

And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning,

the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. it.

What I want to focus on here is this language of Jesus being the firstborn,

right? It says he's the firstborn of all creation.

Does that mean that he's the first created being?

No, that's heresy. Okay. And the Bible addresses that he's not a created being,

right? He is a member of the Trinity.

He is eternally co-existent with the Father and the Spirit.

John 1 is one place you can look for that, but it's there elsewhere as well.

So it's not talking about that though. He's He's not the first created being.

He's the firstborn of all creation.

So then we're like, okay, what does that mean? Well, let's go to the end of

this little passage here.

He's the firstborn from the dead, right? He is the first new human.

He is the first one of the new humanity, the first real person as we're using,

or to use the language that we're using in the mission statement, right?

And in him, we are part of that new humanity. We are becoming real people as well.

So we're talking here about a way of living that's totally counter to the way of the world.

It's not an easy way. In fact, it's an extremely difficult way, right?

But there is no more beautiful way for a human to live than by the way of Jesus, right?

It is, in fact, the only way that is counter to the ways of this world that

chooses love really instead of power.

And so, what it means to truly rule as a human, to be real people is to live

in that serving, that self-sacrificial way, in that loving way.

And we're talking here about like a love that is willful, right?

Not that is, willful has maybe a negative connotation.

Well, a love of the will, not a love that is pure, that is, you know, just emotional, right?

We're talking about a love that comes from the will that allows us to rule the

world as Jesus does, right?

As servant kings, as sub rulers to God, humbly serving, gardening the world,

so to speak, building beauty and wholeness.

And after the fall of justice and reconciliation as well, right?

Rebuilding and bringing healing to the world that we have broken.

And Jake talked last week about becoming like Jesus and doing what Jesus did,

how that is part of discipleship.

And that's, that's exactly what we're talking about here, right?

Is, is becoming little Christs, right?

Running around the world, spreading, spreading light and love. And yeah.

So we're not though, just a bunch of individuals doing that on our own.

It's not just me and God, right?

The Bible actually teaches us that we're, we're saved into community, into a family.

In In fact, the realist, most real, the realist family, first things first,

I'm the realist. Nevermind.

The realist family we could ever be a part of the family of God. Right.

And so we're, yeah, so we're, we're not just doing this individually.

In fact, we're part of this, this family that's more real even than our biological families.

And Jesus shows this, for example, in, in Mark three, verse 31 through 35,

where it It says.

Jesus did love his mother and brothers, guys. One like proof text for that is

that he entrusted his mother to, we think, John when he was,

yeah, John, when he was on the cross, right?

So he's not saying that our biological families aren't important.

What he is saying though, is that our true family is the family of God, right?

And hopefully our biological families are part of that family as well, right?

I'm blessed to have that be true of me, but that's not always true, right?

Like sometimes you might experience sort of division between you and your family

because you're a believer and they're not.

But he frames his movement in terms of family and it shows us the kind of love

and loyalty that he expects within the church, right?

That at that time, the family was like like the core social unit.

And it wasn't like we think of it today where like, if I were to say like the

family is the core social unit in America, I'd be saying like,

you know, husband and wife and kids, right?

It was actually different. It was your patrilineal family, meaning the family

line that goes through your father.

So, your closest social relations would be your brothers and and sisters,

as well as your father, and I guess your mother, I don't know.

But particularly your brothers and sisters, right?

And so, that's why it's one reason why it's particularly important that throughout

the New Testament, one of the most common terms that like Paul,

for example, and others use to describe believers is brothers and sisters, right?

He's constantly, or they're constantly saying like, brothers and sisters,

beloved brother, right?

Like all of this language to describe their fellow believers,

that's actually emphasizing that they are the closest people.

Social bond that they can possibly have among humanity, right?

Is that brotherhood and sisterhood of believers.

And that's what we're saved into when we're saved into the family of Christ.

And it's a challenge actually to even this, like, it sounds like it almost would

be intuitive, but actually it's a major challenge to the way of the world.

And depending on where you are, it might be more or less of a challenge.

But for us here in America, one thing that it challenges is our individualism, right?

We, we have a tendency to, to make decisions based on, you know,

like taking, looking out for number one, right?

As they say, like you make decisions based on your own individual freedom,

but, but what actually we're called to do is as, as was the.

Custom in, in this world, in this time and place in the world to look out for

our brothers and sisters in all our decision-making, right?

In everything that we do, you're actually putting the group first.

It's called a strong group culture or strong group mentality where you're not

putting the individual first.

You're not putting your individual freedom or rights or likes or desires first.

You're actually putting your brothers and sisters before yourself.

It also is a challenge to the tribalism that we see in not only in our culture,

but also in many cultures around the world where we adhere to a social tribe

of some kind And that sorting might happen in different ways in different parts of the world,

but we'll put that even sometimes before our loyalty to our brothers and sisters.

And that's also addressed in the New Testament. For example,

in Galatians 3, 26 through 28, which I realized belatedly I should have gotten

a slide for, but it says, So in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith.

For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male

and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

So, Paul is addressing some of the major social dividing lines in not only his

culture, but also even in the church in that day, right?

And see, like these three divisions that he addresses get significant airtime,

so to speak, in the New Testament, particularly the division between Jew and

Greek, which really is a major theme of several books of the New Testament.

And we're not talking about non-Christian Jews divided from non-Christian Greeks.

We're talking about actual Christian, like Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians

who are clashing within the church, right?

And Paul is addressing this and saying, hey, y'all are family.

Like whatever ethnic background, whatever religious background you came from

before, it doesn't matter.

Whatever whatever tribe you're a part of in this world, it does not reach the

level of importance that the family of God should hold in your social sorting.

Maybe in our time, we would say like, there is neither Republican or Democrat,

right? There is neither Israeli nor Palestinian.

There is neither rural or urban, whatever, right? We can come up with many different

divisions that people put weight to in our world, right?

Different tribes, really, that people become a part of that they sometimes put before their faith.

And that's That's flagrant idolatry and we're called to look beyond that and

to actually have our first loyalty to the family of God, not to any tribe of

this world, not any kingdom of this world, right?

All right. So taking the next phrase here, worshiping a real God,

what does it mean to worship?

Or it doesn't say a real God. It says the real God, right?

There's only one. I think the immediate inclination is to contrast the term

real with, you know, false, right?

The other religions worship false gods or people worship themselves,

which is a form of a false God or people worship, you know, sex or power or

money or leisure, which are all false gods of this world. Right.

And yes, that is, that is part of what it means to worship the real God that

we, we worship the one true God and, and not a false God. That's, that's important.

But I think I don't want to, I want to be careful not to just leave it at that.

I think we need to understand what it means to worship.

And we often, I think without really thinking about it, we,

we say, we take this, we take this terminology and we just in our minds without,

not explicitly, but implicitly change it to, we believe in the real God, right?

Well, we do, but then let's talk about belief. So partway through 2021,

I started memorizing the book of James and I highly recommend scripture memorization.

It's in for a lot of reasons, it's a great spiritual practice.

And I'd love to talk about that, but that's not what I'm talking about right now.

But I'll, what I, what I do want to point out about it is that as you memorize,

you end up meditating, right?

You're saying the words over and over again and thinking about them.

And so, as I memorized this book, I repeatedly meditated on this passage in chapter two.

I've repeated it. I went back and counted. I've repeated it over a hundred times

since 2021 and probably meditate on it even more than that as it becomes part

of my sort of mental background understanding of the world, right?

That's one of the benefits of scripture memorization.

And it says, it's James 2, 14 through 26. It says, what good is it,

my brothers, if someone says he has faith, but does not have works? Can that faith save him?

If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food,

and one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled without giving

them the things needed for the body. What good is that?

So also faith by itself, if it does not have works is dead.

But someone will say, you have faith and I have works.

Show me your faith apart from your works. And I will show you my faith by my

works. You believe that God is one.

You do well. Even even the demons believe and shudder.

Do you want to be shown you foolish person that faith apart from works is useless?

Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son,

Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works and faith

was completed by his works.

And the scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed God and it was counted

to him as righteousness.

And he was called a friend of

God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by our works

when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way.

So as the body apart from the spirit is dead. So also faith apart from works is dead.

So this passage has been somewhat controversial in the history of theology.

Martin Luther, like kind of didn't want James to even be in the canon because

he felt like it conflicted with the, the doctrine of, of salvation by faith alone.

But he, you know, obviously it's in the canon.

So, you know, I actually don't know what the end of that story was,

but apparently he assented.

But that's not really what I want to talk about,

Not, you know, where salvation comes from. It is by faith alone.

What I want to talk about is what that faith, what that belief looks like.

This word belief and faith, it's actually the same word.

It's pisteo. It's translated belief often.

For example, whosoever believes in him will not perish, but will have everlasting

life is probably the most famous use of the word, right?

The way I guess I've come to understand this passage in shorthand and partly

through this memorization and other things have, have happened in my life that

have made me think about this.

And it's this, basically you believe what you do now that probably needs a little

bit of explanation. So I will attempt it.

Your actions reveal what you actually believe.

If I sin, let's say I, let's say I lie on my timesheet at work, right?

I say, and maybe I, I, you know, as we often do when we sin, I justify myself.

I say, well, they're really not paying me enough to live here in Boone.

And I got to buy groceries and pay my rent. So I don't know what else to do.

And I have all the reasons that

I feel I need to commit this fraud and basically steal from my employer.

I'm actually saying that what I... I might not say this.

I might not intellectually believe this,

but what I actually believe is that my way, that this sin that I'm about to

commit is better for me and is better and is justified better than God's way

that he commands me, right?

Whether I intellectually believe that or not, I'm showing by my actions what

I actually believe when I commit that sin.

And you can say this about whatever sin you commit, you're showing,

and I'm not condemning everybody here.

I'm just condemning everybody.

I mean, I guess that's what I would be because we all do this sometimes, right?

We show by our actions a lack of faith, right?

That's what it is when we sin is we're showing that we believe something,

whether we explicitly believe that or not, that is in contradiction with God's word.

On the other hand, let's say someone sins against you and they offend you and they mistreat you.

And what you want to do, and maybe you even have the power to do it,

is you want to get them back, right?

You want to take them down. You want to give them what they deserve, get justice, right?

But instead, you treat them with kindness, right? You turn the other cheek.

You may not even believe that it's going to work right but by obeying that command

of jesus you are showing that you have faith you believe in his way even if

like intellectually you're like i don't know,

This is just going to mean that they mistreat me more, but Oh,

well, this is like, do you guys kind of get what I'm saying here?

Like you, you, you show by your actions, what you actually believe when you,

when the world offers you power, the power to force others to submit to what you think is right.

Even if maybe you're, you're wanting to use it in a good cause, right?

But you say, no, I'm not going to use power over others to force submission.

And I'm going to refuse that corrupting grasp of power and do things by the

way of the servant king, right?

You're showing that you believe in Jesus, even if it doesn't make sense to you, right?

That's kind of what I'm trying to get at here. And so maybe a quiz will help to get my point across.

Okay, so raise your hand if you believe in chairs.

Guys, come on, hands up. Play along with me here. All right.

Keep your hand raised if you believe in them enough to sit on them.

Yeah, you all do, right? Okay, good. Everybody has live faith in chairs, right? Okay.

Raise your hand if you believe it's important to wear a seatbelt when you ride in a car.

Okay, good. Now keep it raised if you always or usually wear a seatbelt.

Good, James. I see you're not lying.

Okay, here we go. This is the test right here. Raise your hand if you believe

that flossing is good for your gum health.

Raise your hand if you floss every day. So some of y'all have dead faith in dental floss. Okay.

That's, that's what, that's my point here basically is that when you're worshiping

a real God, it means more than just believing the right things about God or

believing in the right God, right?

It's more than that. It's giving him the respect of taking what he says seriously.

It's seeking to live more like Jesus, the one who showed us not only who God

is, but also what it means to be a real human.

He showed us the real God, but he also showed us what real humanity is like

and invited us to be a part of this real eternal family.

So it's a faith that's revealed by action, right?

His faith was revealed by his works is what that passage says about Abraham

and that action is it's following the way of Jesus, right?

So some of you more astute observers might have noticed that I skipped a part

in the mission statement.

Did anybody notice that? No. Yeah. What did I skip?

Inviting your neighbors to

join us. Yes. Okay. We have one astute observer in here. Good job, Julie.

I didn't skip it because I don't want to talk about it, but I wanted to set

the stage for what we're inviting people into.

And really what what I want to say about this is like, how could we not, right?

How could we not invite people into this? Something I've come to realize is

that we're, we've been brought into just like the greatest story that's ever been told.

And it's ongoing and we're invited to be an active part of it.

And how could we not? How could we not be active participants in this?

Like, what really else is there even to do with our lives? How can we keep it to ourselves?

And Josh and Jake already talked quite a bit about the how of this.

Josh talked about proclaiming the universal reign of God, right? The kingdom of God.

And it's something we do in both word and deed. It's both telling people with

our mouths the good news of the kingdom, right?

But it's also living as kingdom people, living by kingdom principles.

So, you know, helping your neighbor lay sod when there's no obvious benefit

to you in his eyes, right? There is just sacrificing of yourself.

It's like Elizabeth who, sorry, Elizabeth, I know you probably don't want to

be called out, but you're awesome. So I'm doing it.

Elizabeth spends, gives a lot of her time and spends it with the Jewish community

in Boone and is there being a light among them.

And she spends, I mean, a good portion of her time, I don't know,

I'm not gonna put a number to it, but going to synagogue and being light and

salt there among that community.

It's Rebecca opening her home, even though like she of all people in our congregation

probably has the best reason to be closed off, right?

But she's still opening her home to both us and to people who are still outside

the family, right? And inviting people in.

And Jake expanded on that, talking about how we're to live incarnationally, right?

To embody Christ, to be his hands and feet to the world around us.

And just like he did, we're to enter into their lives, right?

To live incarnationally and to be like Jesus and do what he did and to be salt and light, right?

In this world, filling it with beauty and striving for wholeness and justice and reconciliation.

That's kind of the how in very short of this. And then, yeah,

I guess to end, I just want to tell a personal story about when I was a kid.

So when I was, it's going to sound maybe like it doesn't, it's not,

it's going in a weird direction at first, but when I was, so when I was 12,

I read Matthew 12, which tells, which talks where Jesus talks about the unforgivable

sin, which is blasphemy of the Holy spirit.

And I quickly began to wonder, well, like, what would that be?

Right. And then I started to obsess about it. And then pretty soon I thought

I'd done it. And I didn't. Okay.

But I was, of course, very distraught. This is actually fairly common.

Perhaps this happened to some of you with the popularization of the internet

helped me realize that I'm far from alone in this.

But I figured this meant I was going to hell, which was probably my worst fear.

But part of what I realized and feared was that basically I...

Some, some, somehow I recognized as a 12 year old that I had my whole life ahead of me.

And what, like, it wasn't even worth living if I wasn't going to serve Jesus.

So I decided that even if I was going to hell, I was going to spend my life

telling other people about Jesus, which,

was, I realize now you probably pretty good for a 12 year old,

but I'm not saying it's to my own own horn because I pretty quickly became distracted

by dreams of being a Navy SEAL.

And like really a lot of weeds grew up in my heart over the years that God later had to pluck.

And I really had to, I didn't rightly prioritize telling other people about Jesus for a long time.

And yeah, like, but God thankfully held on to me despite my stupidity over those years.

And we did my heart, which I'm grateful for.

But I think what I want to point out is that like 12 year old me grasped something

that I, that I really, I had to relearn later to some extent and that's that

my life would be wasted if I didn't spend it following Jesus.

And if I didn't spend it inviting other people to do the same.

And that's, that's true for all of us is that this is the mission that God's given us to do.

And there's really like, why do anything else, but, but worship God,

but glorify God and invite other people to do the same. So to paraphrase John

Piper, let's not waste our lives.

Let's be a part of God's mission.

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, visit mcboone.com.

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