Jesus • First & Foremost

Well, this morning we're gonna be in Colossians 1.

We already read the text.

If you don't have the app yet, go ahead and download it because you can actually follow along in some sermon notes there.

But what we're looking at is really this uh thought for our 2020 vision is anatomy of a healthy church.

We want to try to understand what that means and what that looks like.

We're a one-year church plan.

In fact, if you guys didn't know this, today, this Sunday, is the one-year anniversary of Messio Day North.

Amen.

Amen.

We are so thankful for all that God has done through us and in us over this year.

Uh if you don't know, I want to just kind of celebrate some of the things that God has done.

First and foremost, uh, we have tripled in size since we started as a church congregation, which is awesome.

Uh like a third of that is just kids, right?

Which is awesome.

We love that.

Uh so we've tripled in size.

Last year for a first-year church plant, we had six baptisms.

Praise God.

Uh, we had nine children dedicated.

We had six missional communities.

And then get this at our Eve of the Eve gathering, uh, we had almost 250 people here for Eve of the Eve.

That was awesome.

And so for a first-year church plan, we can just praise God for what He's given to us as blessing and fruit of our labor as we seek to just simply be faithful to the gospel, faithful to the preaching and living of his word.

And so now we have to look at, we're one year in.

Most church plants actually don't last three years.

The statistics in our culture nationwide is that most church plants will cease to exist before they're three years old.

So we don't want to just say, hey, we've arrived, right?

We there's a lot of great blessing to celebrate and to recognize and to honor God with, but we want to keep our head down and hand to the plow as we keep pushing forward to see this city reached for the glory of God.

So it's our vision for 2020.

We're kind of looking at that, and this sermon series is going to help set us up, but we've got a couple of just really practical, tangible things that we have for a vision for 2020.

First, we want to go to two gatherings.

Our hope is that we grow this space enough that we actually go to two gatherings, and our hope would be to do that by the spring.

We think we're getting there.

We've actually been trying to figure out different ways that we can make more space.

We've added almost 20 more chairs in here, and uh, we still need to keep making room uh to do that.

So we're hoping to go to two gatherings.

We're hoping to purchase and renovate this building.

Uh, that's be in prayer for that.

We're fighting some funny legal things as, but we've been approved for financing.

We're getting a great deal on the building, and our hope is to renovate it.

We've got some really cool ideas that are too premature to kind of communicate to you guys now.

But if they come through, man, they're gonna be amazing.

But one of the things that we want to do, most of you don't know this, but there's like a whole ghost town above us, right?

And it's just vacant.

They used to film The Walking Dead up there, they don't anymore.

Uh but uh we can actually renovate that space and almost double our square footage uh for our kids, which continues to keep growing and growing.

We're super excited about that.

One of the visions for 2020 is also to expand our kids and our security programs.

So, what we want to do is we want to work to be way more inclusive to support families who have children with special needs.

That's one of the things that we want to do is we expand our kids program.

We'd love to make a room that's multi-sensory, able for children who have special needs to be able to go in there, spend some time, uh kind of come in and out as they need, and have support there to help parents uh with those children.

We also want to create a universal kids and security team safety certification training.

So we want to have all of our kids workers and all of our safety team workers be certified, trained in different safety um um uh um things.

What is that?

Like uh yes, boom.

You know, Heimlich maneuver, stop the bleed, CPR, things of that nature.

So we want to provide certification training for them.

So we want to make this a safer place in the event that something happens.

Uh we also want to install a diverse team of deacons.

We believe that deacons are a crucial role in office to the health of a church.

And so, Pastor Jordan and I, we've started to identify people that we think could be deacons leading practical, tangible ministries within the church, and we're starting to engage with them to see how that would fit and if we can install them uh as deacons in 2020.

And we've got a lot more that we've talked about and seen.

So 2020 is gonna be busy.

Hopefully, for Katie and I, it's not as busy as 2019 was, but we're really excited about continuing to push forward to see what God has done.

And the elders, we've been talking and praying about what is God really calling us to as a church because there's a lot of reality where we could just kind of sit and park, right?

There's many churches who never get to this size, there's many churches who never get to this resource portfolio, there's many churches who will cease to exist, like I said, in less than three years.

And so there's some temptation to be like, man, this is good.

We could ride this out for a while, but we don't have that in us.

We want to keep growing because it's bigger than us.

It's about the glory of God and the good and joy of the people in our city.

And so our 10-year vision is this we want to reach 1% of the Mason-Westchester area.

Now you might say, 1%, that seems lame, right?

Well, 1% of almost a hundred thousand people within Mason and Westchester means that we want to grow the church to roughly a thousand people in the next 10 years.

So that's our big goal.

That's our big vision that we have here at Missio.

And so that's gonna mean a lot of things.

That's gonna mean that we have to multiply missional communities as we seek to serve and reach our neighbors and the people within our city.

It means that we're gonna have to disciple more and create more discipleship programs so that we can actually raise people up in the Word of God, not just make converts, but make disciples.

That means that we're gonna have to raise up new elders and have more teaching people up here in the pulpit and elders who provide soul care for the congregation.

That means we're gonna have to have more deacons.

That means we're gonna have to plant more churches because we believe that we have to plant churches and saturate cities with gospel-centered churches so that people will be reached for the glory of God.

When you look at a nationwide statistic, 43% of the nation is unchurched.

43% of the nation.

Now, if that statistic carries any sort of parallel weight to our context of where we're trying to reach in this Mason-Westchester area, that means 43% of the people around you are unchurched.

So when I say we just want to reach 1% of 43%, do you see we can't do the work on our own?

There is a massive amount of labor to put forward to see the kingdom of God go.

And so this is one thing that we understand.

When Jesus says, as he's teaching his disciples, he says this crazy thing that many of us overlook and we don't really process in the way that we understand our Christian faith.

He says this to his disciples at the end of his teaching ministry, he says, the harvest is great, but the laborers are few.

See, we have it flip-flopped in our minds.

We think the harvest is few, but the laborers are great.

Well we think when we understand an American context that we presume to be Christian is that all of us can just be lazy because there's not work to do.

Jesus says the exact opposite.

Jesus says the harvest is great, and you're all sitting around doing nothing.

I'm not saying that to you.

You guys are great.

It's all those other churches that are doing that, right?

But we flip-flop that in our mind.

What if we changed the way that we thought and we actually realize the truth of what Jesus says, that the harvest is bigger than the workload, than the workforce.

1% of Mason Westchester area is nothing to a 43% unchurch population.

That just means that we gotta get our hands dirty.

We gotta work harder.

We gotta go to reach people with the gospel of Jesus for the glory of God and the joy of themselves.

We want to reach just a portion of that 43%.

Our hope is not to grow through attracting other Christians, our desire is to grow through making new disciples.

Look, we're not upset that we have grown through a lot through attracting other Christians.

Praise God, and we're thankful for that.

But the reality is we are becoming more and more a post-Christian culture, and that pie of Christianity is getting smaller and smaller.

And here's what you and I can decide to do: we can either fight to scrape and claw after the pieces of the pie that's left, or we can work to make the pie bigger.

We want to make more disciples, we want to make new disciples, we want to reach people with the gospel.

And so we have this year recap, we have this 2020 vision, we have this big 10-year vision that we want to accomplish.

And look, we want to do a lot of work, but we're unwilling to do it if it means we're unhealthy.

That's one thing that the elders have committed to.

We won't do this work if it means at the end of it we're unhealthy.

But how do we measure health?

Right?

I'm sure a lot of you for this New Year's probably made resolutions.

How many of you made a New Year's resolution?

Like, you might not have like written it down or anything, but in your mind, in your subconscious, in your heart, you said, Yeah, I want to change X.

How many of you show of hands?

Yep.

You all did.

Come on.

It's alright.

Uh how many of that New Year's, how many of you for a New Year's resolution is, I want to be healthier?

Right?

Yeah, I have this like running thing that I keep telling people, I have the body like a Grinch.

Like I have these really long skinny arms and legs, and then just I've got this bulb out in front of me, right?

And so I want to I want to not be like the Grinch any longer.

I want to have a better physique, I want to be healthier.

And so we make these resolutions that we want to be healthier, we want change, or we want all these different things, but here's what I've realized, right?

As we make these New Year's resolutions, certain things happen where most of us don't follow through with them.

One of the primary reasons people don't follow through with their New Year's resolutions is because they don't see the results that they expected to get.

But here's the thing.

I go to a gym, if you didn't couldn't tell, uh and uh this is a new thing for me, so don't expect too much.

But however, uh, I go to the gym, and here's the thing the gym is full of people.

And as you look throughout the gym, you see all kinds of different people.

But it's astonishing how many people you see not doing anything that will actually produce results.

Because they don't actually know what the end result is supposed to be.

They've got the tools, they've got the machines, they've got the equipment, and they're just in there, and I see some of these people like, I don't know, with like five-pound weights, and they're and I'm just like, okay, dude, you're not getting healthier, you're not getting more fit, you're not building muscle.

What's the end result?

What are you trying to accomplish, right?

And there's gonna be loads of people who enter into gyms with no realization of what the end goal is supposed to be.

They have all the programs, they have all the systems, but they're not actually making any real progress.

In fact, the same thing happens with diets, right?

Everybody in here, not everybody, most people in here are gonna jump on some diet trend tomorrow, right?

It's Monday.

And uh my family, the my wife specifically has been doing keto for a really long time, and she's seen great results for it because she has, we work through what does the end goal look like if you're gonna be eating this way.

Now, some people have the right tools, but they have no idea how to use them.

And so they actually become more unhealthy in some ways than they become healthier.

Because so she's in this group, and it's amazing what some of these women will post as what they ate today that's keto.

It's like, oh, I went to the gas station, I found a leader of Diet Dr.

Pepper, and I ate a brick of cream cheese.

And it's like, it's keto, okay, but you're gonna die.

Like, that might be keto, but you're not getting healthier, uh, right?

And so what I'm trying to say is we as a church can have all the right programs and tools, but that doesn't equal we're gonna be healthy on the end of it.

You see, we value expositional preaching, we value plurality of elders, we value a two-office church system of elder and deacon, we value missional communities, we value church membership and discipline, we value all of the things that I believe and the elders are committed to makes a faithful church.

But there are churches in and around us that have those same things in place, but I would say and argue that they're not healthy.

They have all the right equipment, but they're out there working out like a fool.

Because they don't know what the end result's supposed to look like.

And so as we look at what makes a healthy church, the temptation and the propensity for us as a church and as a leadership team is actually going to be measuring the things that are most easily tangible.

Things like attendance, budget, baptisms, child dedications.

These are things that are easy to obtain.

And so these are the ones that we would default to measure.

However, I think that's very dangerous.

I think that's very dangerous because we can actually tweak what we're doing to obtain those results.

If all we want to do is fill these seats with people, then we might actually dismiss or displace some of our core values of things that we do to obtain that end result.

If all we want is a bigger budget, we might manipulate or twist the scriptures or set up certain programs to incentivize you even greater to give.

Instead of just making a place where you joyfully desire to be generous toward.

You see, we're gonna be prone to measure things that are easy to measure.

And what I want to say is, as we're going through this sermon series, is look, we are not anti-growth.

I just want to tell you that right now.

We're not anti-growth.

In fact, we're very, very pro-growth.

We want to have as many people come to Christ as possible.

But these metrics, these measurements, they can't be our primary ones that we hold.

They just can't be.

We might get really big, we might grow really fast, we might fill these seeds three times over again, but at the end of it find ourselves extremely unhealthy.

There was a mega church who, in just a few years past, did a survey where they revealed the results and they spent an enormous amount of money on this survey.

They're one of the largest churches in America.

They're pioneers for church growth.

They are the ones who everybody models themselves after to reach the unchurched population.

However, here's what this huge chunk of money and thousands and thousands of surveys discovered.

They never accomplished what they actually meant to.

They never accomplished what they actually meant to.

And so it was a devastating reveal.

It was a devastating report that was released not only to their church, but to the church uh worldwide, who saw them as a role model, who saw them as somebody to uh model themselves after.

In 20 years of efforts, they discovered that they hadn't accomplished what they set out to do.

And if we don't know or articulate what our end goal is, we might find ourselves in the same place decades down the road.

And that's what I don't want.

So as we look for this vision of 2020, we're hoping to lay a stronger foundation after year one of a church plant to make sure that you and I understand what health is.

Because one thing that the elders also value is we want to equip you so well that you can call us out on our junk.

I want to have church chairs filled with people who can hold us accountable if we get goofy.

And we know one of the pastors here is definitely gonna get real goofy.

That's just a numbers game.

It's gonna happen.

So we want to equip you to help you understand.

And so we have laid out four metrics of church health that we want to establish as primary.

These metrics will be held as primary, and they're developed actually from Jonathan Edwards in his book, The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God.

Jonathan Edwards is a Puritan pastor, and he was an integral shaper of the first great awakening kicking off in 1733.

And so, as he was actually part of this huge revival that swept across America, he had all of these different people, one, attacking what God was doing through his ministry, and then he had others trying to mimic what he was doing so that they could grow their own churches and congregations.

And so he felt the conviction to labor through what actual distinguishing marks characterize or establish an authentic and genuine move of the Spirit of God.

Because the reality is, if we wanted to, we could create false emotion, false atmosphere.

We could twist and manipulate to get results that we want.

It's a reality of the church of all of history.

It's not an old, it's not a new trick, it's in fact an old trick.

And so I think that we have to labor along with Jonathan Edwards to understand well, how do we know if this truly is a move of the Spirit of God?

Or how do we know if this is just fabricated?

And so in his work, he lays out five different points, but I reshaped them and looked at them to where they could be summarized into four more distinct or more efficient points.

The first one is this Jesus first and foremost.

Making Jesus the focus in every aspect of our lives.

If this is a genuine work of the Spirit of God, then Jesus will be first and foremost.

Number two, transformation, obedience and righteousness.

We want to work with the Holy Spirit to restore God's image in us.

A genuine work of the Spirit of God will produce obedience and righteousness to the word of God and his people.

Number three, devotion, word, and doctrine.

Knowing God authoritatively through his word and in honor to the ancient church.

We want to realize that we're not coming up with everything new now.

We also don't want to live a lie that we're somehow smarter or more intuitive or more knowledgeable than the church past.

We want to honor the ancient Orthodox faith that we rest in.

And we want to submit ourselves authoritatively to knowing God primarily through his word.

And then lastly, affection, God and neighbor.

If there's a genuine work of the Holy Spirit, it'll be seen in demonstrating a life that seeks the glory of God and the good of others first.

There is nothing in the scriptures, hear me out, and we'll get into this in week four.

There's nothing in the scriptures that declares, look out for you first.

Make sure your best life is lived now.

Make sure you get rid of all distractions so that you can be the greatest that God wants you to be.

That is anti Bible, that is anti the gospel, is completely against the nature and character of God and who he calls people to be.

And so over these next four weeks, we want to look at these metrics of church health.

And these are metrics that we're going to hold in primary.

There will be other metrics that we measure, but we'll measure them as secondary.

But we have to emphasize that they're still important.

Things like attendance within missio communities, gathering attendance, membership, baptisms, child dedications, budgets, these things are crucial and vital to measure, but they cannot be the primary things that we try to understand and gauge our health through.

I believe these four are the ones that we need to hold in primary.

So let's look at the first metric of health that we'll hold as a church.

Jesus first and foremost.

Making Jesus the focus in every aspect of our lives.

Jesus first and foremost.

As we opened up the text this morning, we were in Colossians chapter 1 and 15 through 20 is really this passage of scripture where Paul begins to labor the preeminence of Christ.

Colossians 1 · chapter mention

Christ is preeminent.

What does that mean?

Well, preeminence preeminence dictates the fact of surpassing all others.

Christ is truly in all of creation, in all of time, first and foremost.

This is a truth that we cannot neglect.

This is a truth that we cannot change.

It is transcendent beyond us.

We don't get to dictate its reality or not.

It is true, in fact, in spite of us.

And I believe in this first section of the passage, in 15 through 17, what we summarize this is that Jesus is first and foremost in our very lives.

I think there's four primary ways in which the apostle Paul labors to prove this in this short passage of Scripture.

Number one is this, that he is firstborn of all creation.

So Paul comes out the gate in 15, he says that he's the firstborn of all creation.

Well, what does that mean?

One thing it doesn't mean is that Christ was created.

This is not speaking to some creation order as in Christ was created by God and he was the first creation of God.

No, this firstborn is actually an order of preeminence.

It's this order of authority, of surpassing power, prominence, position.

You see, Jesus is called the firstborn of all creation.

But the idea that Paul is trying to communicate that we see from the following line of text is that Jesus has preeminence over all creation.

Not that he was the first created, but that he holds preeminence above all creation.

So Paul comes out and says he's the firstborn of all creation.

He is the first.

And then he kind of unpacks how we see and understand that statement.

Number two is that all things were created by and through him.

All things were created by and through him.

Jesus is the creative power and force behind all that has been made.

There is nothing in all creation that has existed apart from his sovereign omnipotence.

Since Jesus created all, he is first before all.

That even unbelieving pagans who don't confess Christ as Lord, even those who are against the gospel and against God, sit down and with every breath exclaim his presence and power.

So Jesus created all things, Jesus created all things for himself, and Jesus holds it all together.

This should communicate to us that Christ is first and foremost, whether we want to acknowledge it or not.

Whether we want to live as that's true or we don't.

Christ is preeminent.

There's a truth to the person of Jesus that far supersedes our own lives.

He is first and foremost whether our lives acknowledge it, and we as believers are called to reflect what is true in our very being, that Jesus is first.

Jesus must be first.

We are created through him, we are created for him, and we are sustained by him.

What would it look like?

What would it look like in our lives if every aspect of our being, every aspect of our existence reflected and demonstrated the truth that Jesus was first to the world around us?

What would it do to our marriages?

That Jesus is first.

Well, one, we wouldn't enter into marriage seeking the happiness of ourself.

We want to enter into a marriage seeking the salvation of the other.

That they could save us, that they could help us.

And guess what?

We all make pathetic saviors.

We all make weak gods.

What do it look like if we understood that marriage was actually just a portrait of the gospel to the world around us?

What would it do to our careers?

If Jesus has already accomplished everything and he has obtained all the riches of heaven and earth, if he has gained an inheritance from the Father, and then Jesus, through his death, burial, and resurrection freely gives it to his church?

What would it do to your careers?

Would you strive and scrape and claw for more and more and more, or would you allow God to use your career for the expansion of his kingdom because you know no matter what, all the riches of heaven are laid up for you?

Jesus first, what would it do to your finances?

Would you white knuckle every dollar that came into your bank account?

Would you white knuckle your possessions because you were so afraid to lose them of what it would mean to you or what it would cost you?

But if you saw Jesus first, we could give everything away.

Nothing would be held in our grip.

But we'd walk with an open hand, and whatever the church would need, we would freely give.

Many of us don't give to the church, we don't give to one another because we're terrified.

Because we don't spend our money like Jesus is first.

We don't budget like Jesus is first.

We don't think of our stuff like Jesus is first.

What would it do to our happiness?

How many of you are just unhappy?

You don't have to raise your hand, please.

Right?

I'm guessing, just according to what I understand about culture, there's a lot of people in here just unhappy.

But what if your life wasn't actually about making you happy?

What if you will never make yourself happy?

Look, the world's mantra and anthem at this point in time is make yourself happy.

Do whatever it takes to make you happy.

Whatever friends you gotta put in place, whatever career you have to make, whatever house you have to get in, whatever hobby you have to do, whatever, whatever, whatever, at any cost, make yourself happy.

Guess what?

We are in the largest culture of depression, anxiety, sadness, suicide.

We are in the thick of an inability to make ourselves happy.

Because you were never meant to be first.

Jesus first.

As we look through verses 18 through 20, we see this Paul establishing that Jesus is first and foremost in our church.

Through Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, he became the first of the church, establishing himself as the head.

Look, this is Jesus' church.

This is not my church, this is not Pastor Jordan's church, this is not Miss Yoday's church, this is Jesus' church.

He is the senior pastor, he is the chief shepherd.

The elders are here simply as under-shepherds, striving to be faithful to his commands and stewards of his flock.

That's what we're trying to do.

Be faithful of his commands and stewards of his flock.

This is not our kingdom that we're trying to build.

This is not our vision that we're trying to see go forward.

We are simply trying to shepherd faithfully under the senior pastor, Jesus.

All of our efforts should be for the building of his kingdom in the glory of his name.

And we as a church should strive to make him the first and foremost.

Jesus is not an add-on or an afterthought, he is the preeminence of our worship.

My family went to a church over a break, and um it was an interesting experience, right?

So, nonetheless, I sat there as the pastor got up and gave his message, and I, from the beginning, because I have some experience with this guy in the past, I said, Oh, I'm gonna count how many times he says Jesus in his sermon.

Zero.

My 11-year-old daughter looked at my wife and said, He seems to be preaching a different message.

If Jesus is not first and foremost in our worship, we are only worshiping ourselves.

You see, he cannot just be some add-on or some afterthought.

We've said this before, and we'll say it time and time again.

If you ever come to this church and Jesus is not the central focus of our adoration, if you don't hear that he was born, lived the perfect life, died a death in our place under the wrath of God, was buried, but rose again, conquering death, hell, and the grave, then go find a different church.

We've already strayed too far from the gospel.

This is not our church.

We don't get to make those decisions.

We have to submit to his word and commands and strive to be faithful stewards of his flock.

We want to make every single aspect of our church about Jesus first and foremost.

In our missional communities, in our worship gatherings, in our outreach events, in everything that we do, we want to make Jesus first and foremost.

But here's the problem.

We place other things as first in Jesus as a means to obtain them.

We place other things as first in Jesus as a means to obtain them.

We do this in our personal lives.

We believe Jesus is gonna come into our life and give us everything we ever wanted.

Jesus is gonna come in and fix your marriage, Jesus is gonna come in and fix your finances, fix your career, fix your happiness.

Jesus is gonna come in and he's gonna make everything different.

You're right, but you're real wrong.

Jesus makes everything different in every way you never thought you needed changed.

Your heart, your propensity to sin and unrighteousness.

He washes and cleans you of all of your guilt and shame.

And maybe his goodness and gracious, loving kindness towards you is to keep those things you desire first and foremost from you.

You see, the best thing that we could ever obtain, the best thing that we could ever behold is Christ Himself.

And I believe it's the work of the Holy Spirit and the goodness of Christ to us to strip away every single thing in our lives that pulls our affections and adoration away from him.

Because here's what happens in our stuff, in our career, this isn't, this isn't, this isn't Jesus being some kind of selfish, petty God.

This isn't some Jesus being some kind of unfair dictator.

This isn't someone who's just saying, no, I want all of your love, I want all of your glory for my own self-seeking benefit.

No.

See, we try to put our identity and our worth and our value in things that will fail us.

Constantly.

The school district you moved into, the house you bought, the college education that you received, whatever it is that you thought one day will perish with you.

I love this quote from Charles Spurgeon.

He says that six feet of dirt make all men equal.

You will be able to take nothing that you place your value and worth in today to the grave with you.

Nothing.

And so what happens is we put our hope in false gods, we put our hope in worthless things.

And here's what Jesus is really trying to do when he says, I want all of your love, I want all of your affection, I want all of your adoration, I want all of the glory.

You know why he's doing that?

There is a portion of it and a point to it that is so that you can actually find your worth and value in something that will never fade, something that will never cease to exist in Christ alone.

He does it because he loves you.

So we do this in our personal lives, we do this in the church.

Man, I'm telling you, this is it's easy, it's it's crazy easy to build your own kingdom as a pastor.

I'm telling you, the temptation, the things that we have to fight off as pastors, where it's like, hey, I've got the attention of 200 people, and they all look to me for different answers, and they all want to have my ear, and they all want to take me out for lunch, and they'll all listen to the things that I say.

Do you understand the temptation to build my own kingdom that resides there?

It's a small kingdom.

I mean, you guys are great, but you're pretty small comparatively.

If I was gonna, but I can get my head sucked into oh, I have all this influence, I have all this power, I have all this resource, I have all these things.

And look, church after church, pastor after pastor, gives into the temptation and they build their own kingdom.

When we make our messages about ourselves, when we twist and manipulate the scripture to be about you, when we don't preach Christ and Him crucified, when we don't establish the prosperity and health of the congregation over ourselves, when we don't submit to Jesus as the chief shepherd, we will eventually work to build our own kingdom.

Look, I'm telling you now two things.

One, this is incredibly hard for me.

The temptation, the snare that is set for every pastor who stands behind a pulpit, it is incredibly hard.

But I want you to hear me and hold me accountable to one thing.

I don't care who gets the glory as long as people are one with the gospel of Jesus.

Fight to hold me accountable to that.

Fight to keep me humble to that statement.

Fight to love me.

Ultimately, both in our personal lives and in the church, we're declaring lies to the culture around us when we live this way.

We live as though Christ is first for us rather than us first for him.

Let me say that again.

When we live lives this way, self-seeking, we are telling the culture around us a false gospel.

We are living in contradiction to the commands and ways of the scripture, and we're living a life as though Christ is first for us rather than us first for Christ.

And how much of our lives do we fail to do this?

Making Jesus the ultimate focus, making Jesus first and foremost.

But the beauty of the gospel is this Jesus became the last so that he might become first and bring us with him.

Jesus became the last so that he might become first and bring us with him.

Here's where I'm pulling that from.

Hebrews 2, 8 through 12 declares this putting everything in subjection under his feet.

Now, in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside his control.

At present, we do not see everything in subjection to him, but we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.

For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source.

That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers.

Christ became the last, so that through his death, burial, and resurrection, he might become the first.

In his resurrection, the Father exalted him to the right hand of his throne and gave him the name that is above.

Above every other name.

And the hope that we have is that in Christ we are forgiven.

In Christ, we no longer carry shame of our sin and unrighteousness.

In Christ, we are elevated to sit with him, to be in him, at the right hand of the Father, named as brothers, as children, no longer in disobedience, no longer alienated from the promises and treasures of heaven, but we have it all because of Christ.

Church, Christ is first and foremost.

The question is, will we live as that's true?

And my hope for us as we look at this as being one of our metrics of church health is this that we would live lives declaring that Jesus is first and foremost.

We would live lives declaring that Jesus is first and foremost.

That's how we're gonna measure health in this church.

That's one of the ways.

Are you individually growing in your affection and adoration and esteem for the person of Jesus?

Are you placing him and striving to place him first in every aspect of your life?

Look, the gospel changes everything.

There is not one bit of our existence that the gospel does not completely speak to, transform, and change.

Whether it's your parenting, your finances, your marriage, your career, where you live, how you eat, what you do in society, what your hobbies are, there is nothing that we can look at and say the gospel doesn't impact this.

Nothing.

Do your neighbors and coworkers see this truth evident in your lives?

What gospel is your life?

And the choices that you're making as a family declare.

There's a lot of times that we are making choices as a family.

There's a lot of times that we're doing things in our own personal lives that are so contrary to the truth of God's word, that are so contrary to what the gospel declares.

We are so prone to be this autonomous, isolated being, to make decisions on our own, to make choices on our own.

Instead of submitting them to the collective of the church, to see the church be the functional body of Christ around us.

Where we live, what we do, how we spend our money.

Are you gonna sit there and say you're not allowed or have no place to speak into those things?

Then you're choosing an isolated life that's contradictory to the church and the way God has revealed it to be.

The gospel is supposed to permeate every choice and decision that we make.

And the gospel is most seen and known and evident in the church.

Ask yourself if your life is a faithful proclamation to this eternal transcendent truth.

Because that's what we have to keep evaluating.

There's a truth, and then there's our life.

Does our life match this truth?

Because in every area it doesn't, we communicate a false gospel to the world around us.

Do people see an evidence to this truth in your life?

Or are your words contradictory to the life that you live?

As we look through the other three metrics of church health in this sermon series, I hope that this one will stand out as primary.

This is all about Jesus.

Everything that we're doing is about Jesus.

And I'm telling you, my family, me and Katie, especially me, there's so many places I have to repent that I haven't put Jesus first and foremost.

I'm telling you right now, I'm a selfish person.

Like, really selfish.

And I'm gonna toot my own horn a little bit, but I used all of my Christmas money, not on me.

You don't realize how hard that is.

Ask my wife.

Day after Christmas, I'm gone for eight hours shopping without my family.

That's the normal me.

I got Christmas money, I'm spending it.

Katie and the kids, you can stay at home, do your puzzles or whatever else kind of weird things you do.

I don't want to do them.

I'm gonna go shopping and I'm gonna spend all of my money on things that I want.

And I watch my wife sacrifice and I watch my kids go without, and I watch me say to my kids, you don't need that.

You can't have that.

And I buy and purchase and obtain.

I'm so selfish.

I don't live a life that says Jesus is first.

I live a life that says Justin is first.

In his book, The Distinguishing Works, let me get this ridiculously long title right.

The distinguishing marks of a work of the Spirit of God, in his section on Jesus being first, Jonathan Edwards says this the Spirit begets in people higher and more honorable thoughts of Christ than they used to have, and to incline their emotions more to him.

May we discover ourselves in the midst of a true move of the Holy Spirit.