The Spiritual and the Material

As we look at Romans 15, what we see Paul actually doing is he's wrapping up this letter and he's starting to kind of lay out before us what's coming next.

In his missionary journeys, Paul was this amazing missionary with the gospel, uh, primarily to the Gentile people who had not yet heard the gospel yet.

And you kind of hear that he'd been hindered from coming and see the church at Rome because the Lord called him to go and preach to these people, these Gentiles or non-Jewish people, uh, in these other regions.

And he had felt this kind of resolve, this finished work inside of him.

And so now he felt free to go and actually make some other travel arrangements where he'd be able to stop off in Rome as a part of them.

He's ultimately making his way towards Spain.

Uh and he's got a couple of stops on the way that he's making that.

We're gonna dive in and see that.

But what he's doing is he's a man on mission.

Uh there's no doubt, as you look throughout the New Testament, uh, Paul is probably the kind of top person that you would consider as a man on mission.

Uh, but the reality is uh Paul understood and operated in a reality that he wasn't alone on mission.

He was a part of a bigger reality, the church that was on mission for the glory of God and the good of those who love him.

And Paul pull uh pulls on the resources of the church.

He he calls on them to join him in mission uh so that he can accomplish what God has not just called him to, but what he's called the church to.

And so that's what we're gonna hopefully see at the end of this letter how we have to together as the church uh pursue the mission of God so that his glory might fill the earth like the waters fill the sea.

That's the what the this reality of the end of what God looks like, or not the end of God, but the end of this pursuit of redemption and restoration, will be that God's glory fills the earth like the waters fill the sea.

And so we have been called to participate joyfully in that mission.

And we're gonna see how that plays out here in the text.

As we look at the beginning of this passage in 22 through 24, here's what we kind of see.

We get help for the mission.

We get help for the mission.

This is what Paul talks about.

Now, for some of you who aren't aware, these highlighted words are fill-in-the-blank kind of note-taking words that you can use.

If you download our app, uh you can actually follow along in the sermon and even use these notes for your own personal devotion later on.

You can archive them and use them.

And so uh we want to help you study God's word in your own private life as well, not just here on Sunday morning.

And so, uh, summary verse 22 through 24.

What we see is help for the mission.

Uh, Paul has longed for many years to visit the church in Rome.

This is kind of what he starts about.

He's like, I've been hindered, but now I'm gonna be able to come to you and visit you.

He he's been hindered because God called him to preach the gospel to a very specific people group.

Uh, and they were spread throughout different regions of the world, but they were Gentile people who had yet to hear of the gospel.

This was a unique call on Paul's life, and he was obligated to fulfill that call, and so he had not been able to visit Rome, but like I said, he kind of feels this resolve.

He he had felt a sense of completion in his calling to minister to the gospel in these areas.

Now he'd be freed up to visit the church in Rome as he's on his way to Spain.

And so if we actually look in the book of Acts, we kind of start seeing the parallels of what Paul's writing in his letter to Rome and what Luke recorded as the apostolic kind of journey of Paul.

And we see in Acts 19, 21, it says, Now after these events, Paul resolved in the spirit.

He had this sense of completion of the work that God had called him to to preach to these Gentile people and yet hear of the gospel.

Uh and he was going to pass through Macedonia and Achaia and go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must also see Rome.

So where we see Paul at, his end destination is Spain, but he's got a couple stops on the way to make one of those being Jerusalem, uh, because he's actually been given an offering that he has to deliver.

We're gonna see that here in just a moment.

But let's look at the whole picture of Paul's reasoning for actually desiring to visit the church in Rome.

You see, Paul loved the church.

Even though he had not met these believers, he understood that they were tethered together by the reality of the Spirit of God that filled them, that adopted them into the body, and that made them eternally famili family.

Right?

He knew these were brothers and sisters in the most realist sense.

Uh these were people that were eternally connected, bound and tethered to Paul in Christ.

And he loved them.

He loved the church and he labored for the church.

And so he had longed to be present with them.

But he doesn't want to just visit so that he can be with them.

He he says in the passage that after he had been there for some time, he hoped to be helped on my journey.

Be helped on my journey.

You see, he expected the church in Rome to provide help, assistance, to be able to help him continue what God had called him to do.

He was inviting the Roman Christians to participate in and provide help for a mission that was bigger than themselves.

You see, Paul understood the reality that he could not do this alone.

He needed the church because it wasn't just Paul's mission, it was God's mission, and the church collectively was called into it.

Though they were playing unique and distinct parts in the mission, it wasn't absent of the reality of the church collectively participating in it.

Paul was inviting them into something bigger than themselves to be able to participate joyfully, a mission that they were spiritually connected to through the work of Jesus in their own lives.

While they were not physically going to do the work of gospel ministry, they were still participating in gospel ministry through their generosity and their ministry to Paul.

You see, this speaks to the reality of the body of Christ.

Not all of us are going to be Paul.

We kind of talked about this last week.

We live in a culture.

We live in a Mike post-Michael Jordan culture, right?

Everybody wants to be like Mike, and then the world around you tells you you can be like Mike.

No, sweetheart, you cannot.

You are 5'2 and a little bit round.

You cannot be like Mike.

There were some things that made him unique and different.

And so what we have to realize is that not all of us are called to be Paul, nor are all of us gifted or qualified to do the things that Paul did.

That's not the purpose of the church.

When we're all striving to be something else than what God's called us, equipped us, and gifted us to be, what we're going to end up doing is forsaking and neglecting the vital role that we play in the body of Christ.

Because we're dismissing, we're disregarding the uniqueness of the way that God has placed us in the body and desiring with this type of sinful lust to be something different.

If only I was the hand and not the foot, if only I was the mouth and not the nose.

No, see, this is the beauty of the body of Christ, is that Paul couldn't do what he was called to do by the Lord if these church, these Christians throughout the world scattered, didn't play their vital role within the body.

A need for all of us to participate, to see the mission accomplished, not just relying on a select few of us.

Paul may not have just been financially blessed, but he also encouraged.

He built up, prophesied over, ministered to, loved on, shown hospitality, all this diversity of gifts.

As Paul was there with them in Rome.

If we want to limit or distill this all down to just some type of physical offering to Paul, then we're going to miss the reality of the beauty of the body of Christ.

Paul wasn't just given a physical offering, though that was definitely a part of it.

But while he was there, he was ministered to, he was prophesied over, he was encouraged, he was brought in and shown hospitality.

All of these gifts of the body, all these gifts that are divinely, supernaturally given to us through the Spirit, equipped Paul to continue on in labor on the mission of which God called him to, ultimately the mission of the church.

The key thing to see is that he anticipated receiving help.

Help from the church when he visited.

You see, you can't receive help from people who have or believe they have nothing to give.

Paul's asking for help from this church, this body of believers.

Now imagine, imagine if this body of believers just believed that they had nothing to give.

Well, who are we in comparison to Paul?

Who are we to give anything to this benefit and jury?

So Paul understood the the importance of every single believer, the vitalness of every single believer.

And so he's able to call on help because he knows that by the Spirit, each person within the church has something to give for help.

If we are in Jesus, we can provide help for the mission.

If we are in Jesus, we can provide help for the mission.

Because we're not talking about ourselves, we're talking about the work of God in us.

And if we are in Christ, then we have been equipped to be able to help the mission.

Every single one of us.

There's not a single person in this room who has, if you are in Christ, has nothing to bring to the table.

No, you've been filled with the Spirit of God.

You've been gifted supernaturally by his spirit.

You have been equipped for the work of ministry.

You have been given to yourself an office of priest and a minister of the gospel of reconciliation.

You have something to give for the mission.

As we venture down into the next section of the text, we'll see that in 25 through 29, uh, we see spiritual blessings received and physical blessings given.

Spiritual blessings received and physical blessings given.

Paul is going to first go to Jerusalem as he's making this journey from where he is now to Spain, and he hopes to stop off in Rome.

Before he does that, he hopes to go to Jerusalem.

Why?

Because the churches in Macedonia and Achaia have given an offering for the poor among the body of believers in Jerusalem.

So this is a dedicated love offering.

You can kind of think of it that way, right?

This is this dedicated love offering for the poor in the church, not just the poor in Jerusalem in the city proper, but the poor among the body.

There's been an offering given to assist and help them.

And Paul's going to make a stop in Jerusalem to make sure that they get that offering so that they can be helped.

Paul had an emphasis on helping the poor.

When he first encountered the council in Jerusalem, as he was kind of having his doctrine tested on if he was truly qualified to be able to fulfill the ministry of gospel work that God had called him to, as they kind of affirmed everything that Paul had been revealed by the Spirit, at the end they say, Hey, make sure to remember the poor.

And Paul said, Oh, the very thing I was eager to do.

Right?

And so he has this heart posture toward the poor, specifically the poor within the body of Christ.

Paul informs us of why they gave such a gift, though.

This is what I love about this section of the text.

He informs us of why they gave a gift.

We have to really work hard to explain the why in things.

If we don't stop and explain the why, we're gonna miss the heart, the joy, the reason behind the things that we're called to do in the Lord.

Paul says this.

Why?

Because they share in the blessing.

Because they share in the blessing.

This twofold answer gives us some insight to the way we view our spirit and our stuff, right?

So let's look at these two realities, uh spirit stuff, spirit reality and stuff reality.

And Paul's gonna help us understand how these two things are actually tethered together.

We often want to treat uh the spiritualness and the materialness of our lives as separate or isolated things.

No, they impact, they inform one another.

And so we get a glimpse into that here in this passage.

Pleased to do it, he says.

First off, they operated in the reality that they had been great benefitors of God's gift of grace because of his radical generosity.

So, because of God's radical generosity in the gospel, they realized that they have been spiritual benefactors of that.

And so they were pleased to give out of their stuff because of the uh the eternal blessing in their spirit of God through his generosity.

This understanding of the gospel brought pleasure, joy to be radically generous with their own stuff.

Indeed, he says they owe it to them.

Through the gospel, we have been made sharers of the blessing.

So we share our blessings with others.

Our spiritual, uh, our spiritual uh spiritual.

I'm gonna get this out ready.

Our spirituality and our materialism is bound together.

In fact, they're reflections and informers of each other.

You see, Paul said they were able to participate, be receivers of the spiritual blessing of God through the gospel.

That God was so radically generous that he gave them Christ, though they were unbelieving, to be saved and brought into the family of God as children of the Father, because they had received that blessing, they were pleased to, and indeed owed it to be physical blessing givers to those around them.

You see how the gospel, the reality of their spiritual life, informed their physical reality.

The gospel shows us that everything we hold on to in our life to save us actually has no power to save us at all.

We do this a lot in our life, right?

We try to think through or we operate in this false reality or false notion that the things in this world can somehow save us.

And the reality is they have no power to save at all.

That's what the gospel shines a light on and exploits.

That everything you thought had power to save you, uh, your good deeds, your wealth, your health, your whatever else, right?

None of that had any power at all.

And it's only in the gospel of what God provides to us out of his radical generosity do we have any hope for salvation in the first place.

You we can't earn or create the salvation we need from our stuff.

Whether that be wealth, health, works, the grave still comes to collect.

What we truly need to be saved, we can't bring about by our own hands.

Only God can provide that for us.

And he did so.

He did so by sending us his son, Jesus, to make for us the means of salvation that we couldn't through Jesus' death and resurrection.

This is the radical generosity of God.

When we had nothing to give him, he gave everything to us.

Right?

That's the beauty of this generosity that they had experienced, and now they they, in their own ability, desire to reflect in their own life.

When we had nothing to give, God gave everything to us.

So now, in light of this truth, in light of this gospel truth, we are radically generous with the things we do have in our own possession, knowing two things.

The things that we have in our possession, our stuff, can't save us.

And you know what that allows us to do?

It allows us to no longer white knuckle it.

We don't have to white knuckle our bank accounts, our jobs, uh, uh, the things that we hold on so tightly to, because you know what?

They can't save you.

The late Charles Spurgeon, a preacher from the 1800s, he said, six feet of dirt make all men equal.

When we have the freedom and the liberty to understand that nothing that we can muster with our own strength, nothing that we can fabricate through our own hands, nothing can truly save us, then we can open our hand to let it go.

We don't have to white knuckle it anymore.

And the other thing that we can understand about our stuff is that they are the way we demonstrate we have actually received the blessing through the radical generosity of God.

We get to actually put on display the reality that we've been receivers of the gospel through our generosity.

It's a reflection, it's a demonstration of it.

Let's look at an interaction real quick between Jesus and this young man that we see in the Gospel of Mark.

It's gonna help us see more clearly how the spiritual and the physical, or the spiritual and the material, are actually bound together.

I'm gonna read through it, then I'm gonna put a text up on the slide here to help highlight a main point.

But it says this in Mark 10, 21, uh uh sorry, 17 uh through thirty-one, we see this.

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus said to him, Why do you call me good?

No one is good except God alone.

You know the commandments.

Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.

And he, this the young man, said to him, Jesus, Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.

Now, look at this text.

This is the middle of the passage, and this is critical to our understanding.

And Jesus, looking at him, loved him.

Let that sink in.

In his love for this young man, and said to him, You lack one thing.

Go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me.

He says this, disheartened by the saying, this is the young man, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

Jesus' love for him told him, Your stuff is not gonna save you.

The young man couldn't understand that.

He couldn't let go, he couldn't open his hand.

Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.

And the disciples were amazed at his words, but Jesus said to them again, Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

And they were exceedingly astonished and said to him, Then how who can be saved?

Jesus looked at them and said, With man it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God.

And the story goes on.

People who white knuckle their stuff, people who white knuckle their stuff cannot open their hand enough to receive the blessing of God.

This is the reality of the kingdom.

This is what Jesus is trying to show you.

If you want to white knuckle your possessions as if they have any power to save you at all, you will have no ability to open your hand to receive the blessing of the gospel.

You see, praise God that he was so radically generous with us and didn't keep his most prized possession from us, his only son, right?

Jesus showed us how, or God shows us how much he loves us by giving us his son.

For God so loved the world that he gave what?

His only begotten son.

This is the radical generosity of God.

If you think God loves you, God loves Jesus way more.

If you think God loves you, think about the reality of how much God loves his only son.

But he didn't white knuckle Christ.

Think about the way that we would have been uh eternally devastated, condemned and damned if God the Father chose not to be radically generous with what?

With his possession, with his only begotten son.

But the gospel shows us that God did not white knuckle what was his, he yet opened his hands so that we might receive the fullness of the blessing of his son, coming, dying, being buried, but then resurrecting on the third day.

This is the radical generosity of God that we joyfully get to participate in, yet, no, let it be so that we owe it to participate in because we've been receivers of the gospel.

Generosity with our stuff is a reflection of our spiritual life, church.

While being generous alone will not save you.

A person who is greedy, selfish, lustful, and uncharitable with his possessions surely has not known the gospel.

We must strive to be a people who have known the spiritual blessing and find joy in our ability to have physical blessings given.

Amen.

As we look at the close of this passage, we see in verses 30 through 33, there is no one man mission.

There is no one man mission.

Paul has quite the journey to be on before he lands in Rome.

He appeals to the church in this section of the letter.

He says, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, strive with me.

Strive together with me.

I love that he's calling these Christians who he's never met in person but considers as family because that's the spiritual reality of their relationship.

He says, Strive together with me in what?

In prayer.

For what?

For the mission.

He's calling them to take action so that he will be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea.

Let's pick up in Acts and kind of see where we're at in the story here, this parallel of the letter to Romans and Paul's actual life recorded in the book of Acts.

He says, This, while we were staying for many days, a prophet named Agabas came down from Judea.

And coming to us, he took Paul's belt and bound his own hand, uh feet and hands, and said, Thus says the Holy Spirit.

This is how the Jews at Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.

This is Acts 21, 10 through 11.

Paul would be journeying to Jerusalem next.

It's the first stop he has to make.

He has to deliver this love offering from the churches in Macedonia and Achaia.

But he gets this prophetic warning.

If you go, you're going to be bound.

Now look at the way that Paul calls the church in Rome, strive with me that I would be delivered from the hands of the unbelievers.

Well, it was God's purpose and work that Paul would be bound.

He would actually be taken captive as he went to Jerusalem.

And they would bind him, and he would spend about three years in trial and imprisonment before he actually ever even landed in Rome.

So as he goes from where he is to Jerusalem to deliver this offering, before he ever lands in Rome, there's a three-year stint where he's bound, imprisoned, and put under multiple trials.

Ultimately, Paul asks for a trial before Caesar himself.

This gets him to Rome.

But that's after a three-year journey.

And then when he arrives in Rome, after all this trouble, like shipwreck and warning, and sorry, he gets bit by a viper out of a pile of wood, like all these things happen.

Paul lands in Rome, a prisoner.

And he's a prisoner for two years when he first arrives at Rome.

But he's able to rent a house.

And he's able to actually have visitors come and see him.

You know what Paul never ceased to do?

Never ceased to labor in the gospel proclamation.

He continued preaching the gospel.

Paul was surely a man on mission.

But Paul fully realized and functioned in the reality that he wasn't alone on mission.

He was a part of the mission of God, of whom the whole church was on as well.

I love that statement from Paul.

I appeal to you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf.

Paul is communicating that he is not on a one-man mission.

He needs the church.

He sees the beauty of the church and the power of the church collectively working together to see the mission of God advance on earth.

He needs the striving of the saints to push the mission forward.

Another way to understand striving, this word that Paul uses, he calls in the prayer to strive, actually means to go all out.

Paul's saying, I need you to go all when it comes to your prayer life, that I be delivered from the hands of the unbelievers, I need you to go all out.

This is a general call to the church that Jesus Himself makes.

If you're going to come and follow me, you need to go all out.

Unless you're willing to take up your cross and follow me, you have no place in the kingdom.

Unless you're willing to have hate your mother, your brother, your siblings, your relatives and come and follow me, you have no place in the kingdom.

Unless you're willing to eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no place in the kingdom.

There is not one aspect of the call of the gospel, of the call of us coming into the kingdom of God, that isn't, unless you go all out, you're not a part of it.

There is no one man mission.

Paul isn't asking for a small thing here.

He's asking the church to go all out for the success of the mission.

The kingdom asks the same thing of every person who enters it.

Go all out.

The kingdom advances fundamentally by the church who resides within it going all out in every aspect of our lives.

This is why we are a gospel-centered church.

Jesus, first and foremost, is one of our first value that we have as a church because the gospel of Jesus does not create extreme impact on.

There's not one part of your life that the gospel of Jesus does not create extreme impact on.

Your work, your finances, uh the way that you where you live, uh the things that you do, the places that you do in your recreation, or the things you do in your recreation, the friends that you make, where you get your hair cut.

I want every aspect of your life to be funneled through the lens of what is this about the gospel?

How is the God of this universe calling me as a member of the church to go all out in everything I do?

Because the gospel permeates, informs, transforms every single aspect of our lives.

Where you go grocery shopping, right?

Every single aspect.

Where you choose to put your kids in school, every single aspect is gospel informed, gospel transformed.

But we continually want to put our stuff, the materialism of our lives, and our spirit, spiritual, spirituality of our lives in these separate silos and act like they don't impact or reflect or inform one another.

But that's not true.

What we see in this text is this together, the mission of God advances.

Together, the mission of God advances.

When we are brought into the kingdom through the radical generosity of God, we no longer have any claim to autonomy.

None.

Now, us living in America in this modern culture and time, we love autonomy.

We love the notion of self.

The Bible doesn't understand that notion.

It doesn't understand autonomy or self in the key ways that we think we do.

You see, we no longer have any claim to autonomy when we're brought into the kingdom because we are his and we are one another's.

In gospel culture, the individual person is always known in context of their relationship to God and their relationship to one another.

Jesus doesn't just love you, he loves the church.

We have to get this thinking straight.

Because for too long, we've preached a gospel with inside the American church that Jesus loves you.

God loves you.

And those things aren't untrue, but they've been separated or divorced from entirely the reality of the church.

And so we've breed autonomous Christ followers who don't connect themselves or tether themselves to the physical local church when the Spirit of God has baptized them into the spiritual reality of the church.

There's no reflection of the spiritual material in their world.

You see, Jesus doesn't just love you.

He didn't come to die for you, he came to die for his church.

The beauty of that is that we are beneficiaries and that we get to be a part of that reality.

It is the church that has been purchased by the blood of Jesus.

It is the church who will not be overcome.

It is the church of whom hell's gates will not prevail.

And it is the church who will be glorified in his return.

We have to fight against the notion of autonomy, ultimately against the idolatry of self.

You see, we serve a God who is on mission, a mission to see his creation restored for his glory.

It is his mission, and we are receivers of this beautiful call, the joy of being able to participate in it.

The beauty of the mission is that God has already accomplished the victory for it in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

And now we, the church, get to walk out the unfolding of it being actualized in the earth.

Think about this.

God has said, I'm gonna restore all things.

I'm gonna restore my creation for my glory.

I'm gonna come and purchase it.

I'm gonna claim the victory through the death and resurrection of my son.

And in that, that whole working of Christ, in his finished work, he's accomplished not just the restoration of all things for the glory of God, but he's accomplished it uniquely through his church, of who we are called to be a part of.

And then God says, I've already accomplished all this.

You can see it because the grave is empty, but the actualization of it, really unfolding throughout my creation, still has to be walked out.

And guess what you get to do?

You get to participate in that reality.

And already accomplished victory in the death and resurrection of Christ.

We get to joyfully participate in the unfolding of it in creation.

Every time someone repents and believes in the gospel, we are joyful participants of seeing what God has already accomplished through Christ unraveled and revealed in creation.

He's already got the victory.

We don't even have to work for the victory.

We just have to faithfully labor to see it unfold.

What a joy to serve a God who is on mission.

A mission he has already claimed the victory in and calls us, the church, to participate in it.

While many of us see the reality that God is on mission, we struggle to grasp the role that we play in it.

Yes, it is the church collectively called to be on mission, but it is the members distinctly called to play particular parts in it.

Remember, the church is one body comprised of many members.

We all play distinct roles within this body for the mission of God.

Our role in the mission is vital.

But I see ourselves struggling to understand it in one of two ways.

The first way that I see us struggle as the church in understanding this is that we run out in front without the church.

Many of us, we run out in front without the church.

We're zealous for the mission, right?

We're on fire for the mission, and so we just run out in front.

And often this happens in young Christians and new Christians, right?

They just want to storm the hill.

They want to take the mountain.

And so they just run out in front without the church.

But unfortunately, what we see also is that these new Christians, these young Christians, they don't mature out of that.

Because holistically, within the American church, there isn't a theology being preached, there isn't a doctrine of understanding of the necessity of the local church to be rooted in and your identity formed and shaped and you to be matured in the gospel in.

We don't realize that without the church, we're vulnerable to the attacks of the enemy.

We make ourselves an easy target for his devices.

We often say things like, I don't need the church.

Or I don't believe in being a member anywhere.

What they're ultimately saying, every single one of them, is I'm choosing to fight the mission alone.

I'm choosing to fight the mission alone.

It's a false sense of strength rooted in the idolatry of self.

You think you're strong, you think you're going to be able to overcome the enemy in all of his attacks, but you're lying to yourself.

Often these people do great harm to themselves and the church as well.

Because they inevitably find themselves in a battle, and instead of fighting with the strength of the church, they're fighting in their false strength of self.

When we look at the church today in America, it's a very popular thing for people to publicly denounce the faith, right?

To say, hey, I'm stepping away from Christianity, or I'm stepping away from uh uh from belief in Jesus.

And I would argue, I would submit, I don't have metrics on this, but I would submit this.

The vast majority of them probably had no reality of the theology of the church in the way that the Bible calls it.

They understood and operated in what the American church produced for them.

It was shallow, it was empty, it was hypocritical, and it promoted autonomy more than dependence.

It promoted independence rather than the need for one another.

And so what they're not stepping away from is the gospel, what they're stepping away from is what the church in America has produced.

You see, often these people find themselves fighting alone.

And they can't.

They can't make it through the battle.

So not only do they do harm to themselves, but also in the process, they ultimately do harm to the church in two primary ways.

One is that as they're working to make disciples, they are really making shallow, immature, and even false ones.

There is no whole disciple of Jesus without the church.

It's not possible.

It's not the way God designed it to be.

There is no whole disciple, mature disciple of Jesus without the church.

We are not just reconciled to him alone, but we're reconciled to his people and to his mission.

Again, this is the reality that Jesus didn't just die for you.

Jesus died for his church, of which you are a part of.

And so if we really understand the gospel, when we come to faith in Jesus Christ, we're not just reconciled to him, we are also reconciled to his people because we've been brought into a family that eternally transcends our known existence here and now.

And we are tethered together as brothers and sisters in Christ.

So we're reconciled to his body, the church, and praise God, we're also reconciled to his mission because we are now a part of the church, which is on mission for the glory of God and the good of those who love him.

Number two, another way they do great harm to the church is they refuse their strengths, their gifts, and their purposes to the body, and they make it weaker.

Church, you play a critical role in the kingdom.

But it is only fully realized and maximized in relation to the church.

What you bring to the kingdom can only be fully realized and maximized in your relationship with the church, because only then is it honestly known, affirmed, championed, and supported to see the work of God expand throughout his creation.

Zeal that isn't rooted in the whole understanding of the mission of God and the necessity of the church will inevitably, inevitably lead to destruction.

You don't have to fight this alone.

Nor is it God's will for you to do so.

Another way I see us wrestling with this is that we stay back and hinder the church.

We stay back and hinder the church, some of us.

Some of us, though, we have such a low view of ourselves and the work of God in us that we don't even partake in the mission.

We have uh believed two great lies that the church is something you come to and receive from, right?

It's just something that you attend and benefit from.

And the second great lie that you believe is that you have nothing to bring to the table for the participation in the mission.

These are two great lies that are harming and devastating the impact of the kingdom in our society.

We leave it up to a select few instead of realizing the critical role that you uniquely play in the body.

You don't realize that the God of all creation has chosen you, called you to himself, placed his spirit in you, gifted you supernaturally, made you a minister of the gospel, and handed you the victory.

Because if you've been saved by the gospel, then don't tell me that you have no role to play or nothing of value to offer.

Look at the work of God in you.

Now, you alone, you by yourself, like on paper, may not be much.

Me on paper, it doesn't look pretty, right?

I I don't have much to show.

I don't have anything to write on my resume to say, look what I get to bring to the table.

But the reality is this that if the Spirit of God dwells in me, because I've been saved by his mercy and grace, and I've been gifted by that spirit, then I have more than enough to bring to the table to participate in the mission.

Because I know this, that because I'm a believer, because I'm a child of God adopted in by grace, when I pray, the God of all creation bends his ear to listen to me.

When I speak truth, a believer's faith is strengthened and built up.

When I step out in faith, God moves with me.

When I speak to a mountain, it moves.

This is the reality of what we have as believers in Jesus Christ, filled with his spirit and set forth on mission.

Why?

Because the same power that raised Christ from the dead now lives in you.

Do you understand that?

When you're sitting in your seat and you don't think you have anything to offer, think of the truth of the gospel that you're refusing to believe, that you're rejecting about yourself, that you're disregarding, that the Spirit of God who raised Christ from the dead, the only reason that we have hope as believers is because the tomb is empty.

Paul said that if the resurrection didn't happen, then we are to be pitied among all people in creation.

But that spirit that caused Jesus to get up and walk out now resides in you if you are in Christ.

So don't say that you have nothing to bring to the table for the kingdom to advance in this city, for the kingdom to advance in this region, for the gospel to be made known, and his glory filled this area when you've got the spirit residing in you.

If you feel like you play no significant role in the mission, you need to get over yourself.

Because it's the same self-centered idolatry, but instead of pride, it's apathy.

This isn't about you, church.

This is about Him.

And every single one of us that sits in these seats and says that we have nothing to show, nothing to bring, nothing to do, we have no unique gifts, talents, or workings in us, all you're saying is that you're so focused on yourself instead of the work of God in you.

If you want to only view yourself through your own shortcomings, then you're committing in your heart to reject the greater reality of all the work that God has done in you.

Which reality are you going to walk in?

Honestly, from here on out, I want you to consider this, pray on this.

Which reality are you going to walk in?

Are you going to keep looking at yourself and all your shortcomings and all your failures and all the things that you know that you don't meet the standard in?

Is that what you're going to keep looking at on a daily basis and then having your life impacted and affected by what you choose to do based on that?

Or are you going to start living as a person who's been ransomed from that reality, who's been purchased by the blood of Jesus from that reality, who's been filled with his spirit from that reality, so that you can walk in victorious new life?

God has given you a new mind, a new heart.

He's put his spirit within you.

He is bringing you along the process of sanctification.

He will glorify you.

Everything in his promises are yes and amen for you.

He has got your back.

Which one are you going to start operating in?

This false lie that's centered around self, or are you going to start believing what the gospel actually says about you?

Because here's something that you have to consider the devil is never going to try and convince you to follow him.

The devil's always going to try and convince you to follow yourself because he knows that if you can become the center of your own universe, he has got you.

And the glory that you're supposed Supposed to give to the Father by faithful obedience to his long command, by seeing his gospel go out in the creation, that glory is being robbed because you're pouring it all on yourself.

Whether it's in pride or whether it's in apathy, he doesn't care.

He'll take either because he wants your focus off of the mission.

Both the zealous one and the apathetic one need to realize this mission is not about you, it's about the glory of the King.

And it involves a blood-bought, victorious church.

The beauty of the gospel is that Jesus purchased a victorious church that's on mission.

Jesus purchased a victorious church that's on mission.

Both the zealous one and the apathetic one need to realize this truth.

The zealous one that Jesus purchased a church, not a bunch of autonomous individuals.

The apathetic one needs to realize that Jesus purchased a victorious church that they have been sovereignly brought into.

Look at these passages that Jesus gives his church before he ascends to the right hand of the Father.

Let's just read through these a little bit.

Matthew 28, 18 through 20, the great commission of the church.

And Jesus came and said to them, What?

All authority in heaven and earth has been given to who?

To me.

To Jesus, the head of the church, our chief shepherd, our elder brother, the first among many righteous.

Go.

Think about that.

Jesus just said, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to who?

To me.

And then what does he say?

Go.

Why?

Because we are in him.

And then he is with us.

If we see this, it says, Go therefore and do what?

Make disciples of all nations, baptizing in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to deserve all that I have commanded you.

And behold, the one who all authority in heaven and earth has been given to is with you to the end of the age.

Some of y'all wake up in the morning, you act like Jesus ain't nowhere to be found.

You're going to go through your same old day, your same old routine, your same old junk, and you're going to go home at night, lay your head down on the pillow, and wonder why you just wasted the last 24 hours of your life.

Because you're not waking up with the reality that the one of whom all authority in heaven and earth has been given to walked with you through this day and was giving you the keys to the kingdom.

The victory that he accomplished through his resurrection is saying, walk in power.

Acts 1.8.

Jesus speaking to his disciples, but you, you will receive what?

Power.

When the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.

Think about this.

Why does it look like culture's winning?

Why does it look like society is advancing and the kingdom's retreating?

I want to submit to you because we don't believe the gospel.

We think we're being defeated.

We think that we have to be on the defense.

We think that we've got to retreat.

No, stand up, push forward.

We're on mission.

God's got the victory.

We don't have to back down anymore.

We don't have to be ones who fear and retreat.

In love and truth, coupled together with the one whose all authority in heaven and earth has been given to by our side.

We can advance the mission forward, church.

Why?

Because Jesus didn't purchase a losing church.

Jesus didn't purchase a church who might win.

We'll kind of see what happens at the end of time.

Jesus didn't purchase anything other than a victorious church that is seen, known, and fully realized in the fact that the grave is empty.

And it's a church.

It's us together advancing the mission of God, seeing his kingdom permeate this area for his glory and the good of those who love him.

So what do we need to do?

Three things.

Number one, we need to invest in the mission.

Invest in the mission.

God is calling you to invest in the mission.

This doesn't just mean financial, but it's not absent of that.

It means in whatever God's given you, whatever gifting he's placed within you, whatever way he's created you and wired you uniquely to play a part in this body, invest.

We're looking for people to go all out.

Go all out on the mission to see the gospel go forth, to see children be called home by faith in the resurrection of Jesus.

This is what we're looking to do.

We've got to invest in it.

We can't just sit on the sidelines any longer.

We can't act like we don't have anything to offer.

We got to be people who go all out.

This means that every aspect of your life is filtered through the lens of the gospel and what Christ has called you to.

Too many of us, we want to look at different aspects of retreat, right?

Or separatism, right?

We want to move out here and be away from people.

That ain't the gospel.

I'm just telling you right now, retreat is not a part of the gospel.

Engage in advance.

The incarnational reality of God is that he doesn't retreat from us, he dives into the middle of us.

He becomes one of us, he puts on flesh, and then he eats with us and drinks with us and parties with us.

That's what Jesus did.

He engaged culture.

He didn't retreat from it.

The gospel calls in every aspect of our lives.

We have to ask, how are we engaging culture?

How are we engaging the people around us?

For what purpose?

For the glory of God and the good of those who love him, for the hope of the gospel that we hold as Christians.

We have to be people who invest in the mission.

Number two, we have to be together on mission.

We have to be together on mission.

Church, it is vital that we stay tethered together as the body of Christ, submitted to one another as members of the body of Christ, so that we can mature in our faith, so that the giftings and callings of God in our life can be affirmed and encouraged so that we can push forward together.

Because guess what?

What God has called us to do isn't gonna happen by just a select few.

I'm not that gifted and talented.

I'm not that good looking.

Cultural normal, you gotta have a good-looking pastor to get on.

Nobody?

No?

All right.

Well, I mean, it's a thing.

They have like uh fashionpreacher.com, they tell you how to dress.

It's really weird.

Um I can't do this alone.

Some of our other gifted members of the church, they can't do it alone.

Why?

Because that's not what God ever called us to.

There's gonna be some of us who are out in front, there's gonna be some of us who are in the back.

That doesn't mean anything about importance, that doesn't mean anything about necessity.

It means this is where God has wired us and gifted us.

Listen, there's a ton of labor, there is a ton of burden, there is a ton of sorrow at times of being a dude out in front.

We don't all need to be trying to be Paul or the person who's out in front.

We have to realize that the ones pushing from the back are just as vital to make sure that we keep advancing and we keep going forward, or else we're not gonna be able to do what God's called us to do.

We need to be together in mission.

Lastly, keep your eyes on the mission.

Listen, church, it's so easy to get distracted in this day and time.

Without what's going on in culture, the world has forever been distracted by idols.

It's just the reality of our life and our existence.

Our eyes get off the mission so easy.

And it gets onto things like our relationships or our finances or our jobs or our routines throughout the week or whatever else.

Our eyes get off the mission so easy.

And then you put ourselves in the modern context that we find ourselves in, our eyes get off the mission.

Listen, church, we're never gonna legislate the kingdom of God.

We're not gonna vote in a savior.

That's ridiculous.

Can we say that out loud?

That's ridiculous.

Go ahead, repeat it.

That's ridiculous.

That literally is utterly ridiculous.

You won't vote in a savior, you won't legislate the kingdom.

That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be involved in those things, but by by and large, we have just put our hope in those things for too long.

And it's a tragedy because mission has been uh hindered because we got our eyes off of it.

On a false mission that actually has no hope, no power to save.

Church, let us daily get up and keep our eyes on the mission.

Let us think about what God's called us to, where God is calling us to, who God is calling us to, that we might stay faithful.

Amen.

Let's pray.