The Uncomfortable Gospel

We have a hope in a risen and resurrected Lord.

And so we're going to be looking at this aspect of the uncomfortable gospel.

So if you're in Colossians chapter 2, we're going to read verses 6 through 10.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

And God's word declares this.

Colossians chapter 2, verses 6 through 10.

Colossians 2:6–10

Therefore, as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

For in him the fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

This is the word of the Lord.

May God bless the reading and the proclamation of his promises.

So here's where we're at.

In Colossians, Paul is writing like he typically does to the church that he is ministering to, encouraging them to keep the faith.

He's encouraging them to stay steadfast.

This gospel which you have cherished, this gospel which has cost you everything, it's cost you family, relationships, resources.

He is encouraging them to stand faithful in it.

Because the church, especially in the New Testament church, was so often, as soon as they embraced the gospel, as soon as they embraced the truth of Jesus Christ as Lord and Messiah, that it cost them everything.

And there was all kinds of temptations, not just from their losses and their sufferings, but there was temptations from false teachings and false doctrines, people who were making up what they uh were calling truths, but were truly lies about who Jesus is and what he accomplished.

And so, Paul continually, if you look through the epistle letters that Paul writes, he typically fights for two things.

He fights for sound doctrine and he fights for them to remember the gospel.

These are two very common themes that we see throughout every Pauline letter.

And he's doing the same thing to the Colossian church.

They're under persecution because of the gospel of which they have believed, they are now facing the temptation to abandon it.

One of the ways that he says that they're facing this temptation is through being taken captive by the current philosophy of their culture.

We're no different than the Colossian Church.

Many of us, while we don't face persecution, struggle, and triumph because of the faith that we hold and because of the culture that we find ourselves in, which we're going to talk about that being a negative thing, we're actually constantly trying to be taken captive by the philosophy of our culture.

Whether you like it or not, whether you're consciously aware of it or not, there are philosophies, worldviews, religious perspective being thrown at you every day from every angle.

No matter where you're at, no matter what you're doing, someone is trying to convince you to believe their message.

The philosophy, if I could summarize the philosophy of our culture, I would put it this way: it's this it seeks to take you captive to simply do two things.

Just to be liked and just to be happy.

And our culture says do whatever it takes to accomplish these two things.

No matter what it costs you, no matter what you have to sacrifice, no matter who you have to hurt, do it.

Because you deserve it.

You deserve to be liked, you deserve to be happy.

We are conditioned through social media and a pop culture to believe this.

Think about it.

How many of you posted on social media this week?

Right?

Probably all of you for the most part.

It's okay.

This is a cooperative uh sermon.

Uh when you were posting on social media, how many times did you think about what you were posting uh under this lens?

I wonder how many people will like this.

I wonder how many times this might get comments.

I wonder if it'll get shared.

Uh, I probably shouldn't say it this way.

I should probably change it so that more people engage with it.

Did we not?

Maybe you took five or six pictures of the exact same thing looking for the best one so that you could put forth your best image so that people would like you.

Because that's what we chase, right?

Social media conditions us to chase likes.

How many followers do you have?

How well are you accepted?

How many people like your stuff, your content, the things that you're putting out, and people are constantly creating false messages of philosophy and worldview just to get more likes.

We have a do-whatever it takes cultural mentality to accomplish these things.

Being happy, being liked is the height of our existence, and we will have it at whatever cost to us or others.

We can tell you stories of not just in our culture, but of our own experiences of where people have abandoned families, have abandoned marriages, have abandoned children for the pursuit of these two things.

I deserve to be liked.

I deserve to be happy.

But what's it doing to our culture, this pursuit, right?

If we are chasing these two heightened things, shouldn't our culture actually be accomplishing them?

Shouldn't our ventures, shouldn't our strivings be bringing fruit to our end goal?

Studies show very clearly it's not.

Let me walk through some statistics of our culture.

Plastic surgery has risen 115% in the last decade.

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, butt lifts are about 252% up.

I don't know why y'all getting butt lifts.

All you gotta do is some squats, just work out.

That's all you gotta do, right?

You got some droopy butts?

That's okay.

They can help you with it.

Depression has risen in America, especially among teens.

The Millennium Cohort study released just January 4th of 2019.

Among teens who use social media the most, more than five hours a day, the study showed a 50% increase in depressive symptoms among girls and a 35% among boys.

When their symptoms were compared with those who use social media for only one to three hours a day.

What else is on the rise?

Personal consumer debt is on the rise.

A heightened sense of awareness without real action is on the rise.

Depression and anxiety among adults, loneliness, envy, less and worse quality of sleep, a cultural despair of complexity, an inability to make healthy decisions, a parental despair over their children's use of devices, an inability to face hard and negative things in our lives.

So we turn back to social media to take our minds off of it.

Right?

We just can't even.

I don't feel like I can adult today.

We don't deal with hardship and struggles and trials and negative things in our lives well.

So what do we do?

We mind-numb ourselves by turning back to an Instagram feed where we continually compare ourselves to how we're not doing as good as them.

Three billion people, which is around 40% of the world's population, use online social media, and we're spending an average of two hours every day sharing, liking, tweeting, and updating on all these platforms.

That breaks down to around half a million tweets and Snapchat photos shared every single minute.

For most of us, for most of us, we can say that these platforms are the pursuit of being liked and the pursuit of being happy, or at best, the platform that we build the illusion that we are both.

The gospel of Jesus stands in stark contradiction to this pursuit.

Now it doesn't stand against your self-worth or against your happiness.

It stands in contradiction to the fountain at which you run to find them.

The gospel declares to us that we are not simply liked, but we are eternally loved.

We are not simply happy, but we are brought intimately near to eternal joy.

You see, we are running to parched desert fountains.

When the fountain of living water that says, If you drink from me, you will never thirst again, stands calling our name.

Jesus is not opposed to you being liked.

In fact, he declares that you are more loved than you could ever imagine, and he demonstrates it to us by hanging on a cross.

Let's dive into the text.

Verse 6, as Paul's reading this Colossian letter, writing this Colossian letter, he states in verse 6, Therefore, as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.

Our reception of Christ came through the proclamation of someone.

Someone declared or proclaimed the gospel to us.

The vehicle at which the Spirit of God brought Jesus to you was through someone having an understanding of the gospel and an ability to declare it.

Fundamentally, the gospel is a proclamation.

And our reception of Christ was initiated by someone sharing that with us, and then it was received by grace through faith.

And so we are to walk in him through the same grace and through the same faith in which we received him.

Verse 7, he says, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

You see, being rooted in Christ, being solidified in our identity in him, in who he is, comes through the continual teaching of God's word.

Notice what Paul says, just as you were taught.

Taught what?

Just as you were taught God's word.

How do we stay rooted in our identity in him and not try to find our identity in other things?

Well, we stay rooted in God's word, anchored.

To not be swayed by the philosophy of the world, we must be anchored by the word of God.

We would pursue less and less the empty praises of men and fleeting moments of shallow happiness if we were running to the Word of God and seeing and savoring his deep love for us and the joy, peace, hope, and comfort that he has given us.

You see, we constantly chase after the praise of men.

And what does that do for you?

What does that do for me?

Here's a confession.

I posted last night as I was working, finalizing this sermon, an update about the launch today.

And you know how many times I took a break from my sermon, opened my tab, brought up Facebook just to see who liked and commented it or shared it?

Literally, I was while writing this sermon running to other things to try and find fulfillment and satisfaction.

Do they like me?

Do people like me enough to show up on Sunday morning?

Do you know how much I struggle with that as a pastor, as an image bearer, broken and humbled before God, trying to understand who I am in Christ Jesus?

I struggle if you were even going to show up this morning.

The fear that consumed me this week that this would fail.

So what did I do?

Posted a picture on Facebook.

I made sure it looked right.

I'm a pretty good Photoshop editor.

So I tweaked it, I put a filter on it, I straightened it up, I made sure that my I was using my rule of thirds.

I put the cool font on it, you know, the kind that the hipsters like.

It looks handwritten, but it's still clean enough to make you feel like you're at some type of uh Joanna Gaines uh uh fair, right?

That's what I did.

And guess what?

People liked it.

And I was like, oh man, this is cool.

People like it.

People like me.

Verse 8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

It is not simply us as individuals who are being made captive by the philosophy of our culture, so is a large chunk of the church as a whole.

You see, today the message of the church is becoming so ambiguous that sermon snippets can sit on cubicle desks as motivational calendars for unbelieving people.

In our efforts to be liked, we are losing the gospel.

And we are also losing people, church.

Listen, we don't need to falsely protect Jesus.

He's not some uh he's not portrayed, he is not in real life as he is portrayed in paintings and pictures.

He's not some soft-skinned, blue-eyed uh uh hippie who's running around just being nice to people.

No, in the words of Charles Spurgeon, what we need to do, church, is we need to open the cage and let the lion out.

That's what we need to do.

Because the cross and the message of the gospel is the only thing powerful enough to consume our sin that we might be liberated and set free.

How is this pursuit of happiness, this pursuit of being like, when the church embraces the philosophy of our culture, how's it affecting them?

I would ask the church at large, how's it working out for you?

According to a study released by the Glen Mary Research Center, liberal churches, and this is how I define that, define by leaving the historical teachings of the church and embracing the current teachings of the culture, are declining by an average of almost nine percent each decade.

That means another ten years will be another 10%, another 10%, another 10%.

Verses 9 and 10 for in him the fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

In Jesus is the utter fullness of God, and we have been filled by that fullness.

It is through this filling that we have been transformed and brought into a community of people.

When Jesus filled us after believing in him and receiving him by grace through faith, he brought us into his body, the church.

You see, we are filled by Christ.

When we look for these empty things to fill us, these empty moments of happiness and acceptance.

What we don't realize is that the fullness of God, the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Spirit, dwelling in the person of Christ has filled us and seeks to continually fill us so that we might not be hungry or thirst again, so that we might not strive after these empty praises of man, but that we can know that we are eternally accepted, eternally loved, eternally taken care of in every aspect of our life.

So here's our main idea for this morning.

As we start to unpack this, what we see is this that our pursuit to be happy and liked will lead us to abandon the things that prevent them.

Whatever presents itself as an inhibitor, as a roadblock, as something that gets in our way to be liked and to be happy, we will abandon it because that's where our value is, that's where our worth is.

This is what we risk.

We risk to throw away and abandon that which inhibits our pursuits.

We ultimately can throw away the gospel itself simply because we have a higher value on worldly gain.

Me and uh the pastors were talking about this sermon, and we did we we were trying to understand why don't people share the gospel?

Why don't people live on mission for the gospel?

And I think this is what I think, there's two factors.

One, they don't know how.

And so there's in in lack of better language, there's an ignorance that we want to address and correct.

Or two, which is the one that I fear more, they know that if they put Jesus out in front, the relationships that they have in their life come suddenly to a great uh sense of risk.

I want to be liked so I don't share Jesus.

And I'm not talking about the Jesus that our American culture still likes.

I'm not talking about a Jesus who allows you to have the blessings of uh material things and the pursuits of these affections that we seek, to be happy, to be uh the our utmost uh uh worldly experience that we can reach.

No, I'm talking about the Jesus of the scriptures that says, if you want to come follow me, drop and abandon everything.

Because what he is communicating to us through his gospel is that he is everything we could ever want or ever need.

This is what the church is throwing away.

Because the church often is too worried about being liked and promoting self-happiness.

We have become cultural cowards, leading innumerable people away from true acceptance and true joy.

You see, the gospel has many promises, but not one single one of them is that the world will love you for declaring it.

If the world loves you, pastor, preacher, evangelist, Christian, because of what you have to say about Jesus, you're not talking about him biblically or faithfully.

In fact, there's numerous promises of Christ that if you will preach my name faithfully, they, speaking of the world, will hate you.

He said, I'll guarantee it because they'll hate you because they hated me first.

Look at the times that they wanted to kill Jesus, they wanted to push him off cliffs, they wanted to stone him, and ultimately their endeavor and pursuit culminated in them murdering God.

Throughout the gospel message and throughout the New Testament scriptures, we see a promise and guarantee that if we embrace Christ, we lose the world.

That if we preach the gospel, we will have words of hatred and accusation and slander and persecution thrown back at us.

That is what is promised to us.

Not that if we make Jesus cool enough, people will like us more.

Because what's happening is that Jesus is becoming so clouded and he's becoming so distorted that people are able to like him without any real sacrifice, without any real commitment, without any real um uh giving up of what we have in this world to grasp all that he has eternally promised.

I can still be me, I can still be happy in the ways that I desire, and I can still love Jesus.

Those are very conflicting messages.

You see, some of us, in our pursuits, some of us create no real need for Jesus.

And this is what I want to challenge you with.

In our pursuits to be liked, in our pursuits to be happy, what we're communicating to the world around us is that there really is no real need for Jesus.

We will ultimately lose the gospel before we will ever risk losing a friend.

Our lives don't demonstrate any real need for Christ to save us, to transform us, to fill us.

All the world has to offer, church, is a vapor that is ever fleeting our grasp.

What we often present to the culture is a life that can be complete with what it has to offer.

While under the facade we are a shattered image of false beauty.

Right, right.

It's cool because I can be fulfilled and uh and and just and just look.

Look at the Instagram feeds, look at the Facebook feeds.

Pages, look at whatever social media you want of people that you know in this world that's unbelieving, that doesn't love Jesus, that doesn't serve Christ, and then look at people that do claim Jesus and do love.

Look at how similar they are.

Look, the world wants happy families.

You think that's unique to the church?

No.

They want healthy kids, they want happy families, they want good marriages.

The world often wants many of the exact same things that we do.

The problem is that they hold the accomplishment and the attaining of those things as false gods and idols that will never truly save them.

We just have the exact same social media fee with a little bit of hashtag bless sprinkled in.

Some of us in our pursuits, some of us create a rejection of a false Jesus.

Here's what I mean by this some of us really aren't afraid of not being liked.

In fact, in some ways, there's many of us in this room, we kind of get off on it.

We like the conflict.

We like the argument.

We like the debate.

We're okay if people don't like what we have to say.

We aren't truly suffering for persecution for the gospel.

We suffer persecution for the things that we put in front of the gospel.

Secondary, tertiary issues are things that are not issues of the gospel at all.

Ultimately, what we do is we cloud the culture's visibility of who Jesus really is.

And so they reject that which you put in front of them.

And oftentimes that's just you standing there acting like a jerk.

If we're going to be persecuted, if they're going to reject Christ, let them reject Christ, not the things that we put in front of him that don't honestly reflect or resemble who he has revealed himself to be.

But the beauty and the hope for us, church, is this this is what the gospel teaches.

As we continually pursued our fulfillment in empty things, Jesus came and emptied himself so that we might be filled.

That's what we did, right?

Continually, continually, we have pursued to be filled by empty things.

But Jesus came.

Perfectly obedient to the word of God, perfectly obedient to the will and command of God.

And then he died the death that me and you should have died.

We should have been completely crushed under the hand of God for our sin.

But Jesus stood in our place.

At Missio, we like to say this a lot.

When God thinks about us, often initially, what we see in the gospel is that God doesn't think about happy thoughts.

This isn't some Peter Pan syndrome.

He doesn't see puppy dogs and rainbows.

When God looks at us, it makes him want to kill his own son.

And that's what he did.

He was crushed under the wrath and pleasure of the Father so that we could be filled.

Filled with what?

Filled with him, the fullness of the Godhead, Jesus Christ, who is everything that we could ever want or need or ask for.

He says, I will be emptied out so that you can be filled by me.

Stop chasing after the relationships that continually disappoint and distract and let you down.

Quit chasing after the false idols and false gods of a happy home or a happy wife or a happy husband or a happy career.

Stop chasing them.

Every single thing will perish in the end.

But Christ Jesus and his promises to us are forever.

Yes, and amen.

And he desires to fill us, church.

We are so guilty of chasing after lovers so less wild in Christ our Lord.

And so for the vision for 2019 for Missio Day North, this is what we want to accomplish.

We want to correct this.

We don't just want to correct this.

We want to build sustainable clout inside of your being so that as the culture continually tries to get you held captive by their philosophy, by their worldview, and by their message, you can stay rooted and planted in your identity and who is Christ.

We want to do this in three ways.

The first way is this through the head.

Through the head.

And this is establishing a robust understanding and confident ability to explain the gospel.

Establishing a robust understanding and confident ability to explain the gospel.

As we said earlier in the passage, as you received, right?

How did we receive?

Well, that was through grace, through faith, but it was initiated or inaugurated by someone speaking.

Someone had to proclaim, tell you that Christ died for your sins, that he loves you, that he bled on a tree so that you might have life and life everlasting.

Someone had to open their mouth and tell you that so that you might accept Christ.

The gospel fundamentally starts in the head.

It's a theological understanding of who Jesus is and what he has accomplished.

We need to be equipped to have a head knowledge of the gospel that translates itself into a confident ability to articulate it.

We as Christians have responsibility to tell others the story of Jesus.

If we are a people of compassion rather than a people of narcissism, we will become a people of gospel proclamation.

If we are a people of compassion rather than a people of narcissism, we will eventually become a people of gospel proclamation.

So we want to work on this.

One of the blessings that we have as a Christian people is that we don't serve a God who has concealed himself and left us to our own speculation, but we serve a God who has revealed himself in his word that we can confidently know him and approach his throne to be accepted into his family.

So we want to fix this in the head.

Secondly, we want to fix it in the heart.

And this is what we mean in this fostering a love for Jesus and spiritual transformation as we explore the gospel.

Fostering a love for Jesus and spiritual transformation as we explore the gospel.

There was a popular saying in Misio for a while, it's okay to not be okay.

And I've grown to both love and hate that statement.

It is okay to not be okay.

But nowhere in the scriptures does it declare that it's okay to stay that way.

The gospel demands change.

The gospel demands change.

And each and every one of us, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, we are changing.

You can't stop changing.

You are a creature designed to learn, to adapt, and to change.

We have to take responsibility and intentional endeavors to make sure that that change is toward the image of Christ rather than the image of this world.

Because you on a daily basis are surrounded by thousands more messages that are screaming at you to conform and change to be like our culture than you are messages that are screaming at you to conform and change to be like Christ.

So the gospel transforms the heart.

This story, this gospel message isn't meant to simply remain in our intellect.

It is meant to permeate into every fiber of our being and bring a holistic transformation to us.

This transformation is one that continually causes us to have a greater love for Jesus and a greater hatred for our sin.

That's what that change is working to accomplish in our hearts.

God has given us the grace of community to help foster this love and transformation.

Look at some of these ways of community.

Family.

God has given us family.

I was able, uh, I'm remodeling a home on top of everything else that I'm doing.

And I love the church because the church has come in and helped me so much to fix this home.

And uh, Brother Paul has been helping me for like over 20 hours this last week, laying hardwood.

Uh, my father-in-law has helped me for days upon days.

My brother-in-law has helped me.

Other people of the church have come painted, tore down things, whatever it took.

This community was beautiful.

And during this time of work this last week with Brother Paul, he talked to me about the conviction that he's had to start family worship in his home.

Men, God has given you a church.

It's called your house.

Shepherd it faithfully.

Don't be passive.

Don't expect me to do the work.

Don't expect Pastor Casey or Pastor Jordan to do the work of discipling your family.

Some of us need the church as a family, and we'll get to that.

And I understand that.

Some of you need new friends, some of you need fathers where yours have been absent.

I understand that.

But men who are here, who can hear me, you're a pastor, you're a shepherd.

Take care of your home.

Lead them to Jesus.

Teach them the word of God.

Sing the hymns of the church of old and worship and glorify God together.

Marriage.

Marriage is God's grace to us as a process of sanctification.

There is no better person in my life to show me how unlike Jesus I am than my wife.

Praise God.

Because I am very tempted to think I'm pretty awesome.

I mean, I can do a lot of cool things.

But my wife continually reminds me that you're not that great.

And she continually reminds me that Jesus is infinitely greater.

We have the church inside of our missional communities.

The church that speaks and demonstrates the gospel to one another.

If you're not in a missional community, you need to get in one.

You need to get in community with people who live out these one another commandments that are in the scriptures to demonstrate and to declare the gospel over you.

When you are failing to believe that you are loved by God, that you are accepted by Him, that there's nothing you can do to contradict His love that He has for you.

Listen, church, there is nothing you can do to not simply lose God's affection on your life, there's also nothing you can do that will cause Him to love you more.

You can't earn it, you never could.

In the famous words of Jonathan Edwards, he said, the only thing you brought to the table of your salvation is the very sin that demanded it.

We need the church to speak the gospel to us and then to demonstrate it among us.

And then in discipleship, we're hoping to launch these new groups called DNA groups.

They stand for discover, nurture, and act.

These are small groups of two or three people who get together and study God's Word, disciple one another, pray for one another, confess sin to one another, and then encourage and hold each other accountable to act.

To act, to live a convictional life.

If we are a people of gospel proclamation, church, we will need gospel community.

In the first century church, the New Testament church, they understood this.

Why do you think Paul writes so much about loving one another?

Not the church to the world, but the church to the church.

To take care of one another, to share one another's burdens, to share one another's joys, to make sure that they have no need or no lack.

You know why?

Because when they confessed Christ, they lost everything.

They lost their families, they lost their inheritance, they lost their status in society, they had nowhere else to go.

So what did they do?

They came together to love and care and show affection to one another.

This became their new family.

There's too many of us that can find ourselves comfortably outside of church community because we don't faithfully proclaim or live out the way that Christ has called us to.

We don't need the church because we don't live a Christian life.

If we lived the way Christ called us to live, and if we proclaim the gospel in the way that He has commanded us to proclaim it, we would see and sense a greater need for just one another.

The world has rejected me.

I've faced so much persecution.

I've tried to convince my coworker of the beauty of the gospel of Christ, and they won't even have lunch with me anymore.

I'm rejected, I'm labeled among the office.

There's emails going out about me of how I'm trying to change people or how I'm not inclusive or how I speak hate.

Church, I need you.

Pray for me, lift me up, encourage me, speak the gospel to me because everything around me is trying to persuade me to give up.

I just want to be liked.

I just want to be happy.

And then lastly, our hands.

Hands.

Discovering my gifts, passion, and place to express the gospel.

Discovering my gifts, passion, and place to express the gospel.

The gospel fundamentally advances through us.

We are people on mission, both collectively and individually.

We all have a place in the story of God to see his glory fill the earth.

And God has uniquely designed you to reach people through mission.

We are one united family celebrating distinct gifting and passions.

This is the way I've been trying to understand it.

My family is a family.

We're six people and we're all unique and different.

What makes us a family is not that we share the same passions and giftings, right?

I have a daughter who loves ballet and dance.

I have another daughter who plays in a soccer club.

I like music and art.

My wife, she loves.

What?

Why are you laughing?

She loves hanging out with me.

I have a son who loves monster trucks and breaking crap.

Um interests and passions, it's that we have a table to come back to that we can share a meal and know that we're loved and accepted.

That's what makes us a family.

And so we're not trying necessarily to get us all on the same mission.

What we're trying to do is identify your gifts, your passions, and celebrate the ways that you uniquely reached this city with the way God has made you.

But let me say this to you, church mission is costly.

Mission demands that we reorient our lives around it.

And we're already used to reorienting our lives around so many different things.

Think about it.

How many of you moved because you got a new job?

You reoriented your life.

You probably reoriented some of your friend groups and so forth because of a job.

How many of you reorient your lives around family?

How many of you are dragging kids like 30 hours a week to all kinds of crazy different events just so that you can have they can have some shot at being successful?

Right?

Schools, sports, extracurricular programs, we reorient our lives around them.

The world needs the gospel.

And we need to reorient our lives around the mission to express that gospel to them.

This means a drastic reorientation of ourselves.

And off there's what we'll discover in this process is not simply how you are designed and uniquely created to do this, but the things in your life that you currently have that you have to say no to.

So that you're able to reorient your life around mission.

God has ordained the world to receive mission and the gospel through you.

Over the next few weeks, what we're gonna hit is this.

Next week, we're gonna talk about gospel-centeredness.

We're gonna work through how the gospel impacts me.

And then after that, we're gonna talk about Missio Day being city-focused.

That's how the gospel impacts culture.

And then lastly, we're gonna wrap up the series with a sermon on church community.

How the gospel changes us together.

That's over the next few weeks, but over the year, our hope is that we are able to equip you, the church, with an holy, integrated gospel.

So we're gonna offer different classes, classes like gospel primer.

This will be a class on just how do you understand and speak the gospel.

I've done so many uh membership interviews here at the church in my years as a pastor.

And I can't tell you how bad most of them are when they when we ask them, what is the gospel?

And then I have to ask them questions like, did he stay dead?

Uh did he die at all?

Is he God?

And these are basic questions, but let me tell you this.

That statement, while I made it tried to make it funny, I take that as a personal indictment on myself.

My job as a pastor and minister of the gospel is to equip you for the work of ministry.

And I'm going to labor, and the pastors here at Mystic Day are gonna labor to make sure that you have a robust understanding of the gospel and a confident ability to declare it.

So the gospel primer will be a course that we lay out.

Gospel care.

How do we speak the gospel to one another?

How do we live in gospel community that reminds us of who we are in Christ and demonstrates the love of Christ Jesus to one another?

And then lastly, we're gonna do a class on gospel mission.

Where is my part in this story?

How do I live so that Christ is made known to this world?

I hope you're encouraged by that.

I hope you're encouraged by this message because if you hear anything, church, hear this.

Jesus is infinitely better than anything you're chasing.

Jesus is infinitely better.

He's worth every cost, every sacrifice, every suffering, every persecution, every slander, he's worth it.

I'm gonna lead us in a time of response.

Our band is gonna actually lead us even in a time of singing through the gospel.

And there's a few ways that you can respond this morning.

There's tons of freedom, but we want to guide you in three very practical ways in that you can respond.

The first one is simply through prayer.

Man, praying to God potentially.