"Master Builder" Pt.1

Hi, this is John O'Zanting, lead pastor of Evolved Church, and this is the Evolved Church podcast.

Thanks so much for tuning in.

We hope that you find today's message encouraging and full of hope for wherever you're at.

Well, hey, hey, everybody.

We are starting a brand new series today that I am excited about.

It's called Master Builder.

Somebody already asked me, am I going to be using Lego as my analogy?

You never know.

Not today, but you never know.

If you are watching from home or watching from your car or maybe listening to this audio podcast, if you're able, grab a Bible and we're going to be going to Ephesians chapter 2.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

And I want to start reading right out of the gate from Ephesians chapter 2, verses 19 through 22.

Ephesians 2:19–22

And I'm going to start by reading in the message translation.

So if you've got that or if you've got the Bible app, you can pull open the message translation.

But we're going to go to Ephesians 2 in the message.

And I just, I trust over the next few weeks that God's going to seal something in your heart, pull something new out of your faith journey.

Just enlarge our vision as a church community for what it means to be church.

And I can't wait for your for us to just lean in and grow together over the next four weeks.

Ephesians 2, starting in verse 19, that's plain enough, isn't it?

You're no longer wandering exiles.

This kingdom of faith is now your home country.

You're no longer strangers or outsiders.

You belong here, with as much right to the name Christian as anyone.

Okay, verse 20.

God is building a home.

He's using us all, irrespective of how we got here, in what he is building.

He used the apostles and prophets for the foundation.

Now he's using you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together.

We see it taking shape day after day, a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.

All right, Ephesians 2.

This idea of God building a home and using you as a brick, as a stone to build the home is kind of what we want to talk about and what that means for us as a community, what that means for us who are brand new to faith in Jesus.

You might be watching today.

This could be your very first time experiencing church online, experiencing any kind of Christian community.

You might be watching today and you've been serving Jesus for years and years and years.

And I just trust that everything we share is going to touch you where you're at, wherever you're at, regardless of where you're at, irrespective of how you got here.

That's what the text says.

So we often think about our faith journey in a very individualistic kind of way.

In a very personal way.

We think about it sometimes even in a bit of a selfish way.

My personal salvation story, my personal walk with Jesus, my personal moment of surrender, my personal devotional life, my personal discipline of spiritual habits, my personal relationship with God.

And we often speak in those terms when it comes to our faith.

While this isn't overtly wrong, I do think it's short-sighted and just a small part of the bigger picture of our faith experience.

I love that God, as creator and father, that he longs to be in relationship with every single one of his sons and daughters, and that that is a personal thing.

But we cannot allow our individualistic personal belief system to alter our calling and our purpose of belonging to something greater and more beautiful than just our own life.

We are his church, his building, his home, all of us, collectively, together.

So as we begin a new series of talks called Master Builder, I want to start by saying that these words are for you and not for you.

These words are for you, not for you.

You're confused, right?

Me too.

No, really.

What I mean by you, these words are for you, Jesus' church, the home that God is building.

All of us together, one another.

Not you, the individual, your personal experience.

And so I love that this is our level playing field as we start today, that this talk is for everybody watching.

Irrespective of how you got here, regardless of where you're at in your faith story, this truth, this hope, these words that I'm sharing today is for you, all of us, one another together.

Let me look through this camera lens today and prompt you to dream bigger, to think bigger, to enlarge your faith today, to expand your heart today.

God, would you do that inside all of us?

Last week's Sunday, I was so encouraged by the six dads who shared with us from their experiences and their stories and their journeys.

And two of the thoughts that were shared that I want to highlight real quick, Dave Kirshner talked about this desire to love and soothe his kids, and that word soothe stuck with me.

And on the flip side, Chris Perot made this statement that sometimes being a dad requires discipline.

Sometimes discipline is what's needed.

We love the loving and the soothing aspect of the father heart of God, but we don't always run to the coaching, discipline side of the father.

As one of the pastors at Evolve, and as we use this lingo as dad of the house, spiritually speaking, you let me love you, nurture you, and soothe you.

I appreciate that.

But can you let me bring some coaching, maybe even some discipline, to your walk with Jesus today?

Can you let me bring some coaching and some discipline to your faith story?

Far too often we think about our faith in a very individualistic, narrow lane.

My faith, my personal salvation story, my relationship with God, my moment of surrender, my devotional life, my prayer.

And again, those aren't overtly wrong, but it is short-sighted.

It is just a small piece of a much bigger picture of how Jesus is building his church.

God is building his home.

And he's using you, you, all of us, to do it.

And I love that God as creator longs to be in relationship with every single one of his sons and daughters, but we cannot allow an individualistic personal belief system to alter our calling and our purpose of belonging to something greater and much more beautiful than just our own life, his church, his kingdom, his home, you, all of us.

So today's big question are you ready?

If you're taking notes, you can write it down.

Are we more focused on following our own plans and building our own personal kingdoms and personal homes rather than on following the Father's plan and building his kingdom and his home?

And I've thought long and hard about this.

No one likes to be told that they're doing something wrong.

Even if you're that rare piece of humanity that deeply values correction and even encourages it, my guess is that it still stings you.

Okay, so in the comments right now, if you're watching on church online or Facebook or YouTube, I want you to write a number just on a scale of one to ten.

How much do you love correction?

Ten is like your gaga over correction.

You love it, bring it on.

The more correction, the better.

One is please don't ever coach me, Pastor.

Somewhere between one and ten, write a number right now in the comments.

We want to know how much do you love correction?

Growing up, one of the jobs I had as a kid was working on site with Xanting construction.

That's right, Xanting construction.

My dad was my foreman, my boss, and my dad.

Whether we were building a home for ourselves or for somebody else, whether we were building a deck or doing a renovation of some kind, working on a job site in the construction field always involved me learning what I was doing wrong.

Two types of things were always involved.

Number one, submitting to my boss, and number two, following the plan, following a blueprint.

And if you're in a trade or in the construction field or if you've ever built a home, you know that blueprints are important.

My dad, and I love this about him now.

I didn't love it when I was a kid, but my dad had no problem instructing me or his other employees what we were doing wrong.

And I wrote it down this way: I don't care if you're tired, I don't care if your hands hurt, I don't care if your back hurts.

We are building something great here, and there's work to be done, instructions to be honored, a blueprint to follow.

And maybe you've worked in a different kind of field or different kind of job where you've had a boss that you surrendered to that coached you, disciplined you, corrected you when you stepped out of line.

And with that understanding of two things that took place on a job site, a boss we surrendered to and a blueprint that needed following, I want to ask today's big question.

Are we more focused on following our own plans and building our own personal kingdom, our own home, rather than on following the Father's plan, building his kingdom, building his home?

Listen again to Ephesians chapter 2, 19 to 22.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

I'm gonna read from the Passion Translation this time and uh track with me.

So you, and this is actually you, not you, this is the greater you, the family, every son and daughter, everyone that God is using, irrespective of how you got here.

The author here is talking to the greater you, not the personal individual you, the greater you.

So you, you, are not foreigners or guests, but rather you are the children of the city of the holy ones, with all the rights as family members of the household of God.

You are rising like perfectly fitted stones of the temple, and your lives are being built up together upon the ideal foundation laid by the apostles and prophets.

And best of all, you are connected to the head cornerstone of the building, the anointed one, Jesus Christ.

This entire building is under construction, is continually growing under his supervision until it rises up completed as the holy temple of the Lord Himself.

This means that God is transforming each one of you into the Holy of Holies, his dwelling place through the power of the Holy Spirit living in you.

This is an all-in one another together text, not a personal, individualistic viewpoint, but an all of us together.

In February, we taught a series at Evolve called Closed on Sunday.

And if you weren't a part of this community and you never heard those messages, I want to encourage you to maybe take some time over the next couple weeks to go back to our audio podcast and have a listen there from February of this year of 2020, closed on Sundays.

We introduced the Bible-based concept of what it means to trellis our lives.

And you might remember that.

This might be a trigger for some of you in a really good way.

Like, oh, right, we talked about a trellis and like a vine that grows on a support system, to have a structure and a framework, a framework that we root and then build our lives up against.

And we talked about things like Sabbath and silence and solitude and scripture engagement.

This this idea of a trellis, a structure to build your life on.

Structure and framework are good things, church.

They are good things.

Not just from an individualistic mindset or belief system, but also from this new picture, this idea of you, one another together, his home that's being built, you rather than you.

Okay, track with me.

Big question are we more focused on following our own plans, building our own kingdom, our own home, or are we truly focused on building the father's plan, building his kingdom, building his home?

One of the many things that I love about Evolve is that as a community, I believe we truly desire to be more about the Father's plan than our own.

Even as Nicole and I have walked together with so many of you, as you've faithfully pursued this journey of being church and finding your place as a building block rather than just going to church as a consumer.

So many of you have shared with us that that picture of being church, of living on mission for Jesus as a part of church is a new concept.

Maybe you grew up thinking that attending church was good theology, and we've pushed back against that as we've talked about what it means to be church, to live church.

A healthy church follows the blueprint.

In order for us to build a great home, we need to follow the blueprint.

Why are blueprints important?

Number one, blueprints outline the complete structure of the building, from the foundation to the framing to the room layout and every detail.

Number two, blueprints also give a clear picture of what the finished building should look like.

God's word is the blueprint for his church.

God's word, the Bible, is the blueprint for the home that he's building.

It's God's word and only God's word that identifies the foundation and the plan for the Father's home, for the kingdom, for the church.

It is God's word and only God's word which shows a clear picture of what the church should look like.

God's word.

Ephesians 2, 20.

God is building a home.

He's using us all, irrespective of how we got here, in what he is building.

He used the apostles and the prophets for the foundation, and now he's using you, you, fitting you in brick by brick, stone by stone, with Jesus Christ as the cornerstone that holds all the parts together.

We see it taking shape day after day, a holy temple built by God, all of us built into it, a temple in which God is quite at home.

A healthy church follows the blueprint.

In order for us to build a great home, we need to follow the blueprint.

As we start off this Master Builder series, every week I'm gonna offer up some questions and some homework for you to take to your small group, to take to a watch party, to discuss with family and friends.

And today I want to start by encouraging you that sometime over the next seven days, open up your Bible four out of seven days.

There's a plan in the UVersion Bible app.

If you if you want to find it, you can just scan this QR code real quick.

It's called How to Start Reading the Bible.

And a lot of people that even grew up going to church, maybe have been under that sort of teaching that I go to church, they haven't learned how to read the Bible for themselves.

And one of the greatest gifts of us collectively growing in relationship with God as sons and daughters is knowing what the blueprint says.

So, this Bible plan, if you're new to church, this will set you up well to love and value the blueprint.

If you've been following Jesus for a long time, this will hopefully ignite or or even reignite your passion and priority for the blueprint.

But four out of the next seven days before next week's Sunday, I want to encourage you, this is just a four-day Bible reading plan that we can read together.

And again, this QR code will help you find it if you just leaving it up here a really long time.

Just use your smartphones, camera, take a picture, and open up a website that will take you right to this Bible plan.

This picture language of stones and construction and building are all throughout the Bible.

Throughout this series, we're gonna see a part of that picture.

Okay, we're gonna see a part of what God has in his heart for his home that he's building.

The blueprint helps us see what the finished product is supposed to look like.

I want us to have moments where we can take what we are learning together on Sunday and bring it into homes, bring it to dining tables, bring it to backyards, bring it to parks, bring it to hiking trails, bring it to campsites, bring it to coffee shops, and dig in a little bit deeper right now.

As our hearts continue to navigate what we're facing in the world, as our emotions and our psychology and our understanding of who we are continues to be pushed back by global pandemics and upsurge in racism and understanding what's going on in the world around us.

I want us as a community to have moments of one another, togetherness, where we can learn and practically grow wherever we're at throughout the week.

And some of the questions I want to put at you today would be like, what does it mean to be a brick that God is using to build his home?

If God calls you a stone, a brick that he's using, what does that mean?

How do we stay attached to the cornerstone, Jesus, and allow Jesus to hold us all together?

How do we commit to a day-by-day surrender to the foreman and grow under his supervision?

How do we invite the Holy Spirit to transform us into a temple where God can make himself at home?

So those are questions that you might want to write down, but questions we're gonna look at over the next few weeks.

If God is building a home, and if Jesus is the cornerstone, and God is using you, all of us, brick by brick, stone by stone, to build a holy place where he wants to make himself at home, then we cannot allow an individualistic personal belief system to shift us away and alter our calling and our purpose of belonging to something richer and stronger and more beautiful than just our own life and our own story.

We are his church, we are his building, we are his home, we are his holy of holies, and he is building you, not just you.

So as we continue this series of talks over the next week, I want to invite us all to be open to learning from this place of capital you, all of us, Jesus' church, the home that God is building, all of us together, one another.

And not just me, you, my own story, my own individualistic faith journey, my own pursuit, but the gift of one another.

And let me look again through this camera and prompt you to invite Holy Spirit, even right now, to help you dream bigger, to expand your heart, to enlarge your faith today, to understand that irrespective of how you got here, it doesn't matter how long you've been serving Jesus, it doesn't matter if this is your first time tuning in, it doesn't matter that God calls you his son and daughter, that he sees you as a vital brick, a vital stone in the home that he's building, in this gift of together one another.

So maybe wrestle with this question today.

Have you been more preoccupied with following your own plans, building your own kingdom, building your own home, rather than on following the Father's plan, knowing what the blueprint says, building his kingdom, building his home?

This is just scratching the surface over what we believe wants to over what we believe God wants to do in us over the next four weeks together, as we continue to press in and grow together in the sense of what it means to be church, to surrender and submit our lives to the master builder, and to grow and build something beautiful together as we rest on the foundation of what's gone before us and trust the strength of our cornerstone, Jesus, and see Holy Spirit transform us from the inside out.

That's my prayer.

Thank you so much for listening to today's message.

If you're ever in the Edmonton area, hop by for a visit.

And if you need any more information, visit EvolveChurch.com.

We hope to see you.